How has this not been posted yet? Retro VGS

[Andromeda Stardust]

Nope! Most Android apps are written in Java which is the first hurdle to overcome in porting them to RVGS. Getting direct access the frame buffer isn't possible in iOS or Android, its all done with surfaces and a display controller manager. Surfaces are normally accessed through an API like OpenGL(ES) or DirectX. Yep, even 2D games use OpenGL for texture handling and display. Due to their parallel nature GPUs take some of the load from the CPU. When you are down to bare metal programming (as is implied with the RVGS) managing your resources gets a whole lot more complex e.g. all the "industry standard", built in libraries that you've relied on (in order to get your game out the door) have to be written by the developer team from scratch or ported. That adds time, complexity and has the potential to introduce more bugs.

 

Just because its ARM doesn't mean its easy .

My point was that you've got code that is running on the identical same chips as the Android, iOS, and Windows mobile. An instruction is still an instruction. If I tell the GPU to place pixels on the screen, or tell the CPU to add X plus Y, it's using exactly the same machine code to do it. As long as the RetroVGS guys include all of the necessary function calls and APIs that developers need to port over their games, then all is good. An extremely lean OS with just the bare necessities would be embedded in the cartridge.

 

I believe the term is Kernel. RetroVGS provides the developer with a special Kernel included in the devkit to use in game development that has all the tools necessary for the developer to tap the hardware, and the Kernel is bundled with the game code on the cartridge. Retro systems like NES or SNES for instance used a kernel to poll the controllers and handle basic I/O stuff so developers could focus on important stuff like physics and AI. Each RetroVGS game cart would have a simple Kernel program or bare bones OS with no user interface except to load the game and get it running.

 

Java is just a programming language. The compiler converts it into machine code, ie ASM. The ASM is what's present on the game cart and runs natively on the CPU/GPU with the Kernel handling the low level grunt work in leiu of the actual game executable. Instead of compiling to an Android APK, you're creating a self contained Game ROM that runs natively on the hardware. Any function calls, libraries, APIs, drivers, or other resources the game needs to function are embedded into the Kernel at compile. The OS and excecutable are self contained in the game ROM. Best part is, the compiler knows exactly what resources the game uses, and any OS bloat that doesn't need to get loaded won't be included in the build.

 

90% of Android or iOS is connectivity and drivers and media and stuff that will never get used on RetroVGS, so games may actually get away with running on lower specs or smaller memory footprint because the added bloat of a full mobile OS is never present on the device to begin with. Your ARM isn't conserving battery power or waiting for a call or pinging a server or doing useless background tasks while your game is running. The entire CPU and GPU is devoted to running the game and nothing else so even an underpowered processor may run just fine.

Edited September 20, 2015 by stardust4ever

[GroovyBee]

My point was that you've got code that is running on the identical same chips as the Android, iOS, and Windows mobile. An instruction is still an instruction. If I tell the GPU to place pixels on the screen, or tell the CPU to add X plus Y, it's using exactly the same machine code to do it. As long as the RetroVGS guys include all of the necessary function calls and APIs that developers need to port over their games, then all is good. An extremely lean OS with just the bare necessities would be embedded in the cartridge.

Nope! Due to the fact that there are multiple GPU vendors, they are not programmed in assembler. If you have a shader it'll be done in OpenCL and compiled at run time on the target platform. If your game is written in Java it runs in a virtual machine, again thats not native instructions either.

 

Java is just a programming language. The compiler converts it into machine code, ie ASM. The ASM is what's present on the game cart and runs natively on the CPU/GPU with the Kernel provided to handle the grunt work.

Nope! Java is not compiled to ARM directly. It requires a virtual machine. The virtual machine can be done in hardware like ARM's Jazelle or the platform needs a Just In Time (JIT) compiler to get decent performance.

[Andromeda Stardust]

Nope! Due to the fact that there are multiple GPU vendors, they are not programmed in assembler. If you have a shader it'll be done in OpenCL and compiled at run time on the target platform. If your game is written in Java it runs in a virtual machine, again thats not native instructions either.

 

 

Nope! Java is not compiled to ARM directly. It requires a virtual machine. The virtual machine can be done in hardware like ARM's Jazelle or the platform needs a Just In Time (JIT) compiler to get decent performance.

And all this tools will be included in the devkit and anything necessary to run the game will be imbedded in the kernel. Instead of the OS/firmware on the device it is present in the cart instead.

 

What's so difficult about including a scaled down RetroVGS operating system on every cart instead of in the parent device?

Edited September 20, 2015 by stardust4ever

[GroovyBee]

And all this tools will be included in the devkit and anything necessary to run the game will be imbedded in the kernel. Instead of the OS on the device it is present in the cart instead.

 

What's so difficult about including a scaled down OS on every cart instead of in the parent device?

And who in the 3 men behind the project is going to write all this code for day 1 release? Will developers have to share their IP?

[Atlantis]

Maybe this is the only chance Retro got on this.

Sure, the right way should be to not rush it, find a investor to build the prototype, then go KS and paradise.

But, with a high risk project like this, there's no one interested in such a "investment", therefore no proto, no KS and no results.

Maybe they should've searched for investors and put this all several years into the future, but since that's not realistic at all, this is their only chance.

Ok, the didn't get backed - but they tried ALL they could, out of the circumstances. For trying, that they lived up for.

No damage on CV, their business ideas is of the past, sorry (I'm no hot stuff either, so), and retro fans buy *real* retro games. That seems to be the case.

[Andromeda Stardust]

GroovyBee, I'm as skeptical as you they will pull off a proper devkit with a one man team, but it should be entirely possible in theory to run anything available on iOS or Android to the RetroVGS. Maybe licensing of assets would be an issue, say if there is a per device licensing fee for certain proprietary closed source hardware drivers as specified by the chip manufacturer, then they might have to pay out this fee for every game cart it's included on instead of once per console.

 

Atlantis, you bring up another point. Should RetroVGS not get funded, I wonder what comes of the molds after it fails? I have this scary mental image of that thousand pounds injection mold sitting a giant crucible on it's way into a furnace at a scrap processing plant.

Edited September 20, 2015 by stardust4ever

[GroovyBee]

GroovyBee, I'm as skeptical as you they will pull off a proper devkit with a one man team, but it should be entirely possible in theory to run anything available on iOS or Android to the RetroVGS.

Sure, given enough man-years of development . Will Indie developers invest months of their time for low income (probably less tan $10K in royalties at best) to get their game on RVGS? I highly doubt it somehow because not everybody buys all the games that become available.

[Atlantis]

Atlantis, you bring up another point. Should RetroVGS not get funded, I wonder what comes of the molds after it fails? I have this scary mental image of that thousand pounds injection mold sitting a giant crucible on it's way into a furnace at a scrap processing plant.

That would be their final contribution, destroying it! Like me wanting to axe kick my Rayman cart, the might go: "Hey, we own it - we can do whatever f**k we like with it", and AA hated us so we will hate back now.

 

But some of "my" antagonists here, who'd like the Jaguar forum to be shut down etc, would ofc love that to happen: no more Jag carts in the future, the ultimate masochistic pleasure.

 

Hopefully they resell it and not make such an attack of arrogance. Like they in their own movie, found this fantastic relic, the mold, they'll let the relic pass over to someone else.

[Atlantis]

NOT a noble act!

[Keatah]

Catching up on the thread. And with the new information provided since the campaign began we will continue talks tonight. Though I'm afraid it will be over basic burgers as opposed to white tablecloth discussion.. And it enters my arena now! It's a big deal, not because we'd be backing the campaign by purchasing 1 single console, but many. As gifts to our tech and gaming acquaintances as well as prizes for our annual tech bash'n'smash and as giveaways to a few local less fortunate kids.

 

Meantime lots of quotes!

 

 

Well, After seeing their IGG page, and how the FPGA is gone? or significantly reduced from their system, I can't stay silent any longer. As many know, there was talk of various "cores" on the RVGS, and that I was going to be the dork supplying them. Anyways, I thought I would inject a little bit of sanity into the whole "FPGA videogame system" realm and show off what I have been able to do alone, and without any kind of outside funding.

[..]

 

I noticed in the IGG that they are allocating around $100K(!) for prototype development. This is an insane amount of money, considering I am in for around $1000-1200 on my latest "advanced" prototypes- around 1% of what they are seeking. No, I am not going to start asking for money, just thought it was interesting to point out. Total development time from concept to prototype PCBs+parts was around 2-3 months. This included the design time in Altium, learning Altium, and getting the boards manufactured.

 

I figured if I was going to sell this thing, I was damn well going to have a working prototype of what I wanted to manufacture, and have the software fully working too.

 

[..]

 

As for the cartridge adapters, I came up with this idea almost 2 years ago, and the evidence can be seen on my above prototype PCB. I anticipated selling adapters in "groups". i.e. a single adapter might contain 3 or 4 cartridge ports each. The main stopper of course is packaging them into some kind of enclosure (requiring expensive molding, but today it isn't TOO bad). Frankly the electronics on something like this isn't too hairy, it always comes down to how you are going to package it, and who's going to want to pay for it. hehe.

Just thought I'd drop the bomb in here about how I have basically created what they are trying to create, but actually have gotten it manufactured and did it all on a shoestringish budget.

(If anyone thinks this doodad would fly with a $200-250 price point, lemme know. The only reason I have not tried to sell it was because I thought it was too much money to get a lot of support on i.e. Kickstarter)

 

 

Nice work in demonstrating prototyping can be indeed be done with sane "funding". If I was to want to buy this I personally wouldn't care a whole lot about the housing. I'd just fab my own. And frankly I might prefer it be marketed both ways, board only, and board + housing. You needn't worry about colors. Remember when getting a new Buick during war time? You could get any color as long as it was black.

 

I don't know about multi-slots for different machines' cartridges on one daughtercard. One cart converter per system would do nicely.

 

If you prepared a semi-turnkey package or hobbyist's pack, yeh I could get behind this. $200-$500 would be my range. I guess.

 

 

 

Wow. Kevin ?!?!

 

First off, we were going to pay Kevin his asking price for the licensing of the cores and this was build into our funding goal ($10K/core) and had another $50K +/- in our funding budget to pay him for the 16 bit cores he has yet to develop. And these could have been shared with the community or whatever, not exclusive to us. And I could care less if Kevin used these cores to sell his board in addition to ours, he could have had both opportunities. We are selling two entirely different kinds of products. It really is amazing how everything gets turned around in these forums.

 

We are just three legitimate guys who want to bring a cool product to market. It's as simple as that. And set up it up as a real sustainable business that can continue to support the platform for a long time.

 

As of this post, I am going to chime out here as there is nothing that even remotely comes in the form of meaningful constructive criticism. And Kevin, I guess we will look elsewhere for our core development.

 

Ouch..

 

 

Kevtris,

I had to read your post a few times to wrap my head around the specs of this little masterpiece of yours.
Just my two cents on a few things:
1) Don't bother with anything else than HDMI, today it's just not worth the trouble to support the older audio/video outputs, IMHO.

 

Totally agree on the HDMI. Anything else is adding cost. Composite could be useful, but lack of it is certainly not a deal-breaker by any means.

 

 

Piko, you were a developer for the RETRO VGS? I need to go back through this thread (I was at around page 35 or so and realized there were 60 pages total then skipped to the end).

I am thinking about writing another article about them losing their FPGA core developer, and apparently Piko Interactive if I can find proof of that.

 

This is important. I want to hear about it.

 

 

So it's kind of been long proven that prolonged exposure to the Jaguar plastics causes some kind of inexplicable insanity... It seems that exposure to the actual Jaguar plastic mold dies causes something infinitely worse beyond anyone's imagination.

 

The stink even comes in through my broadband connection. Somehow.

 

 

I like marshmallows.

 

Burned mine again.

 

 

Not sure I totally agree. At the very least, keep analog audio an option. I'm tired of using splitters to breakoff analog audio to the sound system. Anyone using a DVI monitor with HDMI sources will know what a pain it is buyingadapters to separate andparse the audio.

 

Also, some gamers prefer the soft nostalgic composite or analog video fed to a CRT.

 

I strongly prefer 2 output options. Analog audio + HDMI. Composite? optional... That's really all you need.

 

 

^^This!

 

That.

 

 

No damage on CV, their business ideas is of the past, sorry (I'm no hot stuff either, so), and retro fans buy *real* retro games. That seems to be the case.

 

Of course they do. Real retro games are like from the early arcade years, and the first few generations of consoles - the late 70's through all the 80's. Of course "retro" is a moving target from some gamers. And retro may come to include the current PS4 at some future date. But not today.

 

Real retrogames are games like BattleZone, Missile Command, Asteroids, Tempest, Gyruss, Tac/Scan and all the games of that era, including consoles. Not this neo-nuvo retro-styled shit. Please no hi-res stylized "blocky-on-purpose" graphics in 5,000 shades of some arbitrary color. No SpongeBob like squareness, no fake over-emphasized pixelization either.

 

The exact games we grew up with are the exact games we want to play now today. And of course we welcome new titles all the time and will give them a fair shake. Just don't give us poser crap that appeals to what you think we want.

[Atlantis]

Fine.

[toiletunes]

This is why it helps to have a working prototype BEFORE launching a campaign...

So... they lost the guy supplying the IP for their key selling point, huh?

[Keatah]

From:

http://retrogamingmagazine.com/2015/09/19/retro-vgs-sees-immense-social-media-backlash-as-crowdfunding-project-begins/4/

 

"Also, there has been little to no discussion about any kind of quality control system. We are effectively at the mercy of indie developers being able to produce good/great games the first time (there is no way to patch/update or otherwise change the games or the console after release)."

 

The question is are developers capable of working under that restriction of no updates? Judging by the amount of patching of nearly all of today's software, I'd say no. Emphatically.

[PlaysWithWolves]

I'm guessing all that money Parrothead waved in front of Kevtris before taking it away would only come into play if they hit the $3,800,000 stretch goal. Of course, we don't know what FPGA goes into which tier, because they haven't told us. It sounded like even Kevtris himself was unsure.

 

This "using low-end FPGA unless they get 2x funding for high-end FPGA" thing (paraphrasing) is a real burr under my saddle, since they've essentially been promoting the high-end one for months. So now that bridges have burned, not only is there no proof of any prototyping/developing, we know for a fact they also have no FPGA cores. Maybe if ducks were in a row, Kevtris wouldn't have felt the need to speak up?

 

"SoCalMike" Kennedy is a host (and founder?) from at least the 2009 premiere episode (@ 0:23:35). Without a proper disclaimer, this is incestuous and dishonest:

 

 

I know someone briefly mentioned his involvement before, but I wanted to bring it to the forefront.

 

 

I do hope this is planned into their business plan.

 

I'm pretty sure they did put it in their business plan:

 

[roland p]

With this board, I finished up A LOT of systems. All of these systems are DONE and 100% finished and tested, ready to be targeted ("ported") to nearly anything with an FPGA inside it:

* NES

* SMS

* Game Gear

* Colecovision

* Atari 2600

* Atari 7800

* Gameboy

* Gameboy Colour (has 1 or 2 tiny bugs left, but 99.9% of the games run)

* Intellivision (with Intellivoice, computer add-on, etc)

* Odyssey^2 (with The Voice add-on)

* Creativision (with tape drive support)

* Arcadia 2001

* Adventure Vision

* Videobrain

* RCA Studio 2 (lul)

* Fairchild Channel F

* Supervision (crappyish LCD handheld)

 

Great work!

 

Maybe offtopic, but is it possible to implement save-states?

 

Btw. the PCB you made looks really professional. For the final product you should put it in a transparent case

[cimerians]

 

Great work!

 

Maybe offtopic, but is it possible to implement save-states?

 

Btw. the PCB you made looks really professional. For the final product you should put it in a transparent case

 

 

Save states

 

[CGQuarterly]

The campaign went live this morning at 9AM pacific time, which is late afternoon/early evening in Europe. And it's afternoon in Australia right now. I don't think there is going to be any more of a "surge" of supporters. I think they will get some more tomorrow, and after that unless this thing gets some coverage that goes viral, stick a fork in it

8 hours later and they've only made another $3k. So 10 more backers. This is going nowhere fast.

 

 

My conclusion is that the retro-console would need to be really low-tech, so that bedroom coders would be interested in making games for the system if it came with a development suite (with emulator) for PC and Mac.

This would be great. A system aimed at enthusiasts. I can imagine that there would be some great games just coming out of the forum membership here. Obviously bedroom coders could just make games for the PC, but to have a "hobbyist" retro-style console, created by a guy like Kevtris, would be really exciting.

[jaybird3rd]

So... they lost the guy supplying the IP for their key selling point, huh? I'd recommend starting here :-

 

http://www.embedded.com/design/operating-systems/4415940/Porting-Android-on-embedded-platforms--a-step-wise-approach

https://source.android.com/devices/

That's starting to look like a more likely outcome, if the project makes it that far. In the Subscribers area last night, I wrote that ...

... his whole approach with the console project is so unrealistic that, even *IF* his fundraising campaign succeeds and even *IF* he is able to produce a working piece of hardware, it is likely that it will be quite different from what he initially promised. If he makes it that far, I predict that his backers will eventually get tired of vague promises and 3D renders and vapid sizzle videos, and he'll be so desperate to produce something tangible that he'll end up dropping some off-the-shelf game hardware into a Jaguar shell and calling it good.

At this point, I can easily see them resorting to a cheap Android tablet SoC as their "off-the-shelf" solution. The much-vaunted "retro cartridges" may end up being little more than SD card adapters, or perhaps offboard parallel flash memory with the games and a complete Android image bundled together in every cartridge. It might barely satisfy the stated goals of the project, as nebulous as those are, but there won't really be anything "retro" about it. But since it doesn't seem likely that they'll make their fundraising goal (just under 24 hours in, they're languishing at a 49% projection), it's a moot point.

[Keatah]

Btw. the PCB you made looks really professional. For the final product you should put it in a transparent case

 

I want a case made out of transparent vapor-gas. A Steampunk hologram. Where you can program how it looks by loading in different descriptors.

[Mux]

Somewhat off topic but here's an arcade emulator I made the size of a stick of gum.. The idea was to stick (no pun intended) it in a tiny, custom arcade cabinet but alas.. I suck at that kind of stuff without a CNC router. I've got some videos somewhere if anyone's interested but basically it's emulating pacman and ms-pacman and has / had a main menu where you could select multiple games a la 60-in-1. Same problem as my other board is that each game would need a separate executable and thus be developed separately.

 

 

Single 8-core XMOS chip and SMT parts. Unfortunately, XMOS did a bit of a 180 and hiked up their prices and (probably) is on their way out. That said, I did some fun things with it, like my first VDP core..

 

 

-Mux

 

P.S. I guess my point is that prototypes show better than shiny 3d videos and cardboard cutouts with parts glued on them...

[phoenixdownita]

More glide path news, but we have to account it is Sunday, maybe a low day for campaigning I have no idea.

23h for 56K -> 821h to go -> 34 days

The Sunday on Australia, Asia and Europe did not bring much ~3K (on FB many complain about the 70eur for shipping or something along those lines).

Yep it's still afternoon in Europe but if that extra 70 is true it just added 20% to a pledge value by itself.

[Pixelboy]

Somewhat off topic but here's an arcade emulator I made the size of a stick of gum.. The idea was to stick (no pun intended) it in a tiny, custom arcade cabinet but alas.. I suck at that kind of stuff without a CNC router. I've got some videos somewhere if anyone's interested but basically it's emulating pacman and ms-pacman and has / had a main menu where you could select multiple games a la 60-in-1. Same problem as my other board is that each game would need a separate executable and thus be developed separately.

 

Wow! With a bit of remodelling, you could probably fit that in a Coleco arcade tabletop casing.

[phoenixdownita]

Somewhat off topic but here's an arcade emulator I made the size of a stick of gum.. The idea was to stick (no pun intended) it in a tiny, custom arcade cabinet but alas.. I suck at that kind of stuff without a CNC router.......

Ever thought of partnering with Lotharek, he seems to have access to CNC machines somewhat on the cheap.

[Mux]

Never heard of him but yeah, I'm starting to think AtariAge is actually a really good place to meet people who've got access to machinery and tools that I don't :-) I've been saving up for a small CNC router so I can do my own stuff but for injection molding stuff and what not, I could really use some contacts!

 

Thanks!

 

-Mux

[Mux]

Wow! With a bit of remodelling, you could probably fit that in a Coleco arcade tabletop casing.

 

It's a lot smaller than that actually but yeah.. I went a bit overboard and stuck the joystick and buttons on the PCB as well. From a construction point of view probably not the best idea given the abuse controllers get...

 

-Mux