Myth 2 on ARM

[Maquis196]

Hi! did some looking around and I saw a mention about someone's request to have the 1.8 Linux version compatible with the Raspberry PI but I wanted to throw another device in the mix that would _love_ this game;

http://www.openpandora.org/

It comes in 3 flavours (due to logistics). We have the original 600mhz with both 256m and 512m ram with new 1Ghz version with 512m.

The GPU is different to on both models due to different SoC's used but we have a GPU that can play quake 3 quite happily and an even faster one on the 1ghz version.

Is there a chance that this gaming device could tilt the balance for an arm port? I obviously have no idea how much x86 specific code is in myth2 nowadays but there is an entire community that would love to get there hands on a game of this quality.

I'll link this thread in the pandora forums and I myself promise to beta test this if you need anyone (my 1ghz pandora arrives this week). Oh and the Pandora runs android as well, so 2 birds one stone hardware wise

Thanks and keep up the good work!

[Maquis196]

More in depth guide to technical specs;

http://openpandora.de/index.php?option= ... =6&lang=en

[punkUser]

I don't believe there's much x86-specific code, if any. The changes on the graphics side would be a bit more relevant as OpenGL ES has some limitations that would require changes to Myth. Nothing major, but would take some doing.

Usually the porting issues in the past have been more political than technical (certainly for iOS devices).

[Maquis196]

At least the work required for OpenGL ES would open up Myth to the mobile market? Most modern mobile devices seem to support standard 2.0.

In a way im glad, at least it doesn't mean work that will only benefit one platform! I'm sure someone else here must be drooling at the prospect of playing Myth2 on their tablet!

[punkUser]

At least the work required for OpenGL ES would open up Myth to the mobile market? Most modern mobile devices seem to support standard 2.0.

Sure, but like I said it hasn't really been technical issues holding it back, more political. i.e. you need some way to be able to copy the Myth files to whatever device you want to us it for, and we can provide a new executable. On iOS stuff for instance this isn't possible (without rooting the device), and we do not have permission to host or release the original game content. It won't be hard to support GLES when necessary.

Regarding tablets, note that Myth will be fully playable on any of the x86 Windows 8 tablets obviously, including the Surface Pro or whatever Microsoft calls it. We've even added some preliminary multitouch support in 1.8 to this end. It's quite usable for watching films or even some casual gameplay.

[Maquis196]

Ah very true...

Well at least if anyone is up for it, or at least want's to get it working on the mobile platform whilst not caring about how the data gets there (like current Linux build tbh) then Pandora would be an excellent choice.

I just wish I had a spare device to lend to a dev who would fancy the challenge. (I don't know if the Raspberry PI would be a suitable dev tool, even if a bit slower)

[Eddaweaver]

There's actually a heap of ARM-based board computers out there, the Raspberry Pi just being the most famous and probably the cheapest. The Raspberry Pi is only just strong enough to run Myth II but there'll soon be hundreds of thousands of the things out there. The Pandaboard ES seems to give the best value for money as an actual development platform.

Nice touch having S-video support on the Pandora. I can't understand why people even bother to put composite by itself on these kinds of things - the quality is hopeless.

I see your post is here
http://boards.openpandora.org/index.php ... e-pandora/

Update: This would be better than the Pandaboard ES, for Android at least.

[Maquis196]

If there was will to do a port from the dev's (yet was only missing the hardware...) I wonder if a kickstart style project would solve that?

Myth2 is fairly unique in that a previously commercial AAA can be ported without any Loki-esque hassle. So I'm certainly willing to throw money at this, I hope enough other ARM users would be as well.

Of course with no desire, the hardware shouldn't help .

On that note though, I wonder what Icculus would be happy porting if he had access to a pandora... /me checks his site.

[Myrd]

How many people actually own such devices?

Even the Linux x86 version of Myth has seen very little uptake, while presumably that would be a bigger user base than these new ARM platform...

[Maquis196]

afaik, about 5000 I think.

It's a platform that's mostly used for emulation and open source games, as you can imagine there aren't many regular titles that have been ported over (A few indie games have been ported, the rest are mostly former humble indie bundle games that have had source code released like uplink).

Hence why I believe this game would be a fairly unique opportunity

It's a shame there's no way to buy this game as new, this would easily be one of the biggest titles on the Non android/ios arm platform. (imho)

[Eddaweaver]

It is really up to the devs as to what they consider worthwhile expending their efforts on. Android on ARM tablets is undergoing absolutely explosive growth so vanilla Linux on ARM as exemplified by this device could be a good stepping stone towards that.

I wonder if a kickstart style project would solve that?

I'm pretty sure there would be legal issues if you tried to pay PM for a port

The Raspberry Pi Model B recently had its RAM upgraded from 256mb to 512mb which makes it quite alot more useful.

[Nod]

The best Linux ARM device to target is the Raspberry Pi (not inculding Android here). Raspberry Pi has some real momentum, there are 750,000 of them out there right now and lots of them are in the hands of children (who like to play games). They even have their own app store: http://store.raspberrypi.com/. The Raspbian distro is just debian ARM with a few teaks. It runs quake3 fine [1][2] (OpenGL/SDL) but it looks like thats using OpenGL ES [3][4] so porting to ES would be required but that gets you onto nearly all of the newer mobile devices out there so would be pretty useful.

[1] http://gurucustoms.wordpress.com/2012/0 ... pberry-pi/
[2] http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianQuake3
[3] http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewt ... 30&t=18212
[4] http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=36318

[vinylrake]

There are tons of Rasberry PIs out there but that's just because they are cheap and easy to embed into projects - they are a DIY project component not a solid platform for gaming. I would be willing to bet that the # of PIs that are configured in a way that would let someone play Myth on them (RAM/HD-flash-memory/graphics/controller/etc) is less than 1% of the total # of PIs out there.

It would make way more sense - IF one were considering porting Myth to a new platform - to port it to either iOS or Android, as there are millions of each OS device already on the market that could probably handle a game like Myth without major modifications.

[Nod]

Android/ARM/IOS all require OGL ES so that seems to be the first step for porting to any of those platforms. Once mythii has OGL ES support it should "just work" on the pi. Adding OGL ES support to mythII gets you on the pi "for free".

Porting to the pi requires changing from OGL to OGL ES, everything else should be exactly the same as building for standard linux (eg see the quake3 build link).

In terms of "RAM/HD-flash-memory/graphics/controller/etc" all pis are pretty much the same (besides modelA vs B differences and occasional upgrades to the hardware). As far as I can tell the _only_ thing required to play myth ii on any pi is OGL ES support, a mouse, keyboard and monitor.

[vinylrake]

I don't know the precise technical details of what Myth requires these days, but obviously the pi would need the same things any other computer needs to run Myth. Fast enough CPU, enough RAM, enough graphics power to render things at a reasonable rate and enough storage space to store the game executable and the tag files. (and as you mentioned of course a mouse/keyboard/ monitor/tv )

The specs seem decent enough, the FAQ says it's "real world performance is something like a 300MHz Pentium 2, only with much, much swankier graphics" so for just Myth itself that's probably fine - I used to run Myth II on a 200Mhz CPU Mac with less than 1 GB of RAM and it was playable. That WAS before detail textures and hi res units which even some modern full-power computers with integrated GPUs can stutter over, but the basic game was perfectly acceptable on that level of hardware.