August 2014 – Giant Pockets

What You Guys Liked in July 2014

August 30, 2014 ekianjo Leave a comment

semi

I just noticed that I’m almost one month late to tell you what articles were popular in July ! Looks like the heat has got my wits… Well we did not get a great summer in Japan, it’s been hot and rainy and there were more typhoons that we expected. July is also the month of semi (cicadas), these huge alien-like insects making a ton of noise in the trees. They don’t live too long, so by mid-end August they are all gone and dead after partying like crazy for 2-3 weeks at the end of their life. Hey, that’s a pretty cool way to go, if you think about it.

Unreal Tournament Running on Pandora [ExaGear Tech]

August 29, 2014August 29, 2014 ekianjo 1 Comment

Are you surprised? Maybe not ? Well, it’s true that a while back, Lunixbochs from the boards was able to make the Unreal Tournament demo run through a modified build of QEMU and glshim to make it run on a Pandora 1 Ghz, but if you remember the result was less that stellar in terms of framerates. Now, a new solution is available (while still in development), and it’s coming from a Russian company called ElTechs.

The Pyra from a Developer’s Eye

August 28, 2014August 28, 2014 ekianjo 3 Comments

neo

In our previous feature of the Gamescom, you have seen what has been disclosed during the show a couple of days ago, as well as what was going on in the backroom. As you know PtitSeb and Notaz (two of the most active porter/coders on the Pandora) were there and actively trying stuff on the Pyra. So, what do they think of what they played with so far?

Weekly Software News August 18th to 24th 2014

August 27, 2014 ekianjo Leave a comment

August is already almost over. It seems like most people in Europe had got a mediocre weather if what I heard was right. Well in Japan it was not great either, lots of rain and very humid days in between. I’m coming back to weekly updates since there’s a bit more activity these past few days, with PtitSeb releasing Daikatana on Pandora!

Weekly/Monthly Software News July 28th to August 17th 2014

August 18, 2014 ekianjo 2 Comments

Not a ton of updates in the past couple of weeks, hence the reduced frequency. And it’s summer and high temperatures make me a little lazy. Note that we get a new Firefox version which is not half-bad, Flappy Bird finally on Pandora, a cool version of Quake with filter effects, and more. All in all, a lot of stuff worth checking out!

The Aluminum Cases Are Happening!

August 18, 2014 ekianjo Leave a comment

aluminium

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago, following the release of the case data for the Pandora, one community member mentioned he would make Aluminum cases for the Pandora in case there’s enough demand for it. At least 100 units. Well, today Evil Dragon announced that he pushed the button to make them happen.

Flappy Bird: What I Did For The Pandora Version

August 17, 2014August 18, 2014 ekianjo 2 Comments

flappy

Since nobody had released a Flappy Bird clone on the repo, I took some time a couple of days ago to look for some of them that may be working without much effort on the Pandora. Since Flappy Bird was a such popular and, honestly, not very hard game to program, there are a ton of clones out there for many programming languages. Python and Pygame are included by default in the Pandora firmware, so I was set to find something running with those on GitHub, and it did not take too long to identify the right candidate.

The Pyra at GamesCom

August 17, 2014August 18, 2014 ekianjo 4 Comments

If you follow the small world of Videogames, you are probably aware that the biggest European event, aka the Gamescom, is going on in Cologne right now. The first day was reserved to businesses only, but the rest of the days are open to the public. There’s one more reason to go this year: to see the Pyra prototype at the Dragonbox Booth. And some of key community members. Here’s a quick report from the first couple of days.

Squared: 2048 on Your Pandora

August 13, 2014 ekianjo 15 Comments

2048

In case you have been living under a rock, you probably know of the recently popular game 2048, which was itself based on the popular mobile game Threes. 2048 ended up being more popular than Threes, making Threes look like a ripoff of it, which is quite funny when you think about it. Anyway. Squared, by Gandi, is a clone of 2048 for the Pandora. It’s pretty good.