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well as I said it runs opendingux, plays dingoo games, so where it leaves Blaze I don't know.

If they really were stupid enough to copy the Dingoo I cant see how they would have got away with it but I have now gone from being disappointed with the console to being reasonably happy. Its a shame they have revoked the developers discount code as for 1 hour you could buy the console after discount for £26!!! But not sure if they have honoured those orders if any were placed.

Oh and im still waiting for the refund for the difference in price

I have just been reading that opendingux runs on the GG with no modification so I looked about and found it is simple to do and works a treat.

This has basically just removed the need for Blaze to open their emulator store as you can get everything you need for opendingux. The console is truely open.

If anyone has a file for the dingoo written with GLB I am more than happy to try it out

Apparently they are refunding the difference to all the early adopters as well, how this will work with the people who bought with the dev discount I don't know.

I had no reply to my email to them but they are busy trying to get everything done for the 1st May deadline they have given themselves to get everything working. If they miss that after going silent on the forums and websites after promising so much I think people will give up on it. So far its looking like a portable Megadrive with 30 average games (the last update removed the function of being able to play any SMD file on the sd card, so you are stuck with what they give you now)

Hmm, just noticed you are waiting for me to do a review. Well here I go lol

First the offer was £55 plus vat at 20% (£11), hence the £66 price.

I will post here the comments I have emailed Blaze. My main concern is over how the development software works. Basically, you have to put the device into sandbox mode (boot with an sd card in with the sandbox firmware) then telnet into the device using linux (the whole dev system needs Linux to run) then manually run the program. You cannot just add the game to the sd card and run it without a computer. So useless for testing on the bus

Here is my mail to them, I will let you know the reply

Mark,

I have been reading the comments on Facebook while I have been waiting for
my Game Gadget to arrive and felt that a few people were being over harsh
but refrained from commenting as I didn't have the device. I picked the
console up from the post office tonight and I would like to share my first
impression views. I am also a prospective developer so will include that
view in my comments

Box - Probably one of the best boxes I have seen on a handheld console. On
the shelf this would stand out. One thing that I will admit to though is I
slid the outer sleeve off and then spent a minute trying to push the box out
of what I thought was an inner sleeve But I would say a definite 10 out
of 10 for the box

Console - First impressions is it is light, maybe too light giving the
impression of a cheap build. The battery cover does not fit right on my
console. The plastic looks like a test moulding rather than a finished
product. Maybe a bit of shine on it would help, it also seems very thin
which is backed up by the power lights shining through the side of the case.
The SD slot looks ugly. I would have gone for a micro SD or an SD card slot
that can be covered up. The buttons are acceptable, shoulder buttons seem a
little loose though. The USB port seems very tight. My screen is not fitted
totally straight with a couple of pixels hidden under the case on the left.
I don't like the way when the console is off and you insert the usb lead it
turns it on, surely having the screen on all the time when it is charging
will reduce the life of the backlight and take longer to charge fully? The
lack of volume buttons is a big minus, maybe when in the main menu you could
have a setting that allows you to use the shoulder buttons as a volume
control? I have the GP2X console which I consider is a similar console to
yours and the build seems a lot better than the Game Gadget. For the look
and feel of the console I would only give it a 4 out of 10

Activation -  All went well with activation but I have ended up with all the
games being listed twice and every time I connect the console I am
downloading an update which is the same as the one I received the last time
I plugged it in. Any tips on how to solve these problems would be
appreciated

Store - The lack of store is disappointing but will pass no further
judgement until you have it up and running, but the lack of store and no
projected date is a disappointment and I can see why the negative comments
on FaceBook regarding this.

The Megadrive emulator - As this is the only software that can be run it
should be 100% to showcase the console, unfortunately it isnt. It is slow
and seems unoptimised for the device. When the volume is muted on the device
the emulator seems to override that and still play sounds. It does not bode
well for the future emulators.

Finally from a developers point of view your dev system is poor. Only
available on Linux is a bad point, if I do graphics and sound the best
utilities are on windows or mac not linux. If you are going to persist on
sticking to Linux only for compiling then at least provide a complete
virtual box virtual machine with the dev system preinstalled so users of
other  OS can run it with minimal hassle. Also the sandbox system is not
acceptable. This means every time I want to run a game I have to be
connected to a PC to run it. What if I want to test a game I have written
while on the bus or the train? You have totally removed the portability of
the system. I am hoping this will be resolved in future updates so you can
fully install your own games but I fear it wont because then there would be
nothing stopping anyone writing their own emulator and therefore bypass the
purchases from the store. I hope I am wrong though.

I hope you will pick the good and bad points out of this email, the Game
Gadget has the potential to be a great product but you need to iron out all
the issues

Gary

While on this subject I keep typing != as I am used to writing in C, If the alternatives get added could this be added as well?

I have one on order, they are doing it for £66 if you register as  a dev. But I am concerned it will just become an emulation machine once they get the store bugs sorted out. It is not a promising start though and possibly not a must buy as an android phone can do pretty much everything the gamegadget can do and more

Good old NMIs, used to use them a bit on the C64

To me the terms machine code and assembler are interchangeable, my reason for this is you can take raw hex dumps and convert them back to assembler (ok, minus any labels but it is still readable as assembler). Try doing that with a C or GLBasic compiled code

Ha, right now I would donate $50 to remove that annoying splash screen that always seems to be in the way! 

I will split that cost with you Slydog, I thought it was just me on my computer that seems to have the splash screen up for 15 seconds after you have opened the project how about a check box for registered users in a settings menu to turn splash on/off?

Personally I would go for the major upgrade fee like when V11 comes out and can build directly to iOS on a PC or a new platform is added. Most standard bugs are resolved before a major update is done and its only the big new feature that introduces new issues.

I use quite a few programs that give you free updates for a year and then you have to renew and they don't have the option that GLB has of a functioning free version that will let you test paid features before committing to the purchase

had a play last night and did find one issue. I left the first dock, hit comm by mistake, hit pilots guide as I didnt realise at the time you could press comm again to make the pop up display go and the game displayed the pilots guide screen with the buttons but without displaying the guide. The buttons were inactive so I could not quit out of the screen and had to hit the home button to exit.

Just downloaded the game for my new iPad (aka iPad 3) and although I'm stuck in work so cant really play it the game looks and feels as smooth as silk, the visuals are spot on (no sound yet else my boss will know what I'm up to lol).

Will give this some serious game time tonight I think.

I had forgotten about this gem until I was going back through the app store release thread so thought a deserved bounce for a game that has obviously had a lot of time and effort put into it. Just wish I could code something half as good myself.

Gary

just as a follow up to this PRINT does not seem to be working either. I put some code in to display the size of one of the sprites (to make sure they are being loaded ok) and again it works on my dev computer but on production it doesn't display anything.

This has had me stumped for 2 days now so time to ask the gurus for help 

I am working on a project and have a routine for displaying text by loading in the individual letters as sprites and breaking the string down into individual characters and drawing the sprite for the letter, setting the xpos to the width of the char plus current print pos so its ready to print the next char. The widths are in a look up table as I figured it would be quicker than getting sprite size on the fly each time.

Code (glbasic) Select Expand


FUNCTION stringprint: string$,stringxpos,stringypos,center = TRUE

LOCAL numchars, ctr, charypos, nextchar$,strlen=0

numchars = LEN(string$)

IF center
stringypos=stringypos + 11 // I moved the graphics on the screen by 11 pixels and this was easier than reentering all the ypos values on each draw command
FOR ctr = 0 TO numchars-1
strlen = strlen + char_width[ASC(string$,ctr)]
NEXT
stringxpos = stringxpos - (strlen/2)
ENDIF

FOR ctr = 0 TO numchars-1
DRAWSPRITE 500+ASC(string$,ctr),stringxpos,stringypos
stringxpos=stringxpos+char_width[ASC(string$,ctr)]
NEXT

ENDFUNCTION


On my dev computer it displays fine as per the first screen shot. On the computer it needs to be deployed on it is missing the text totally. I did also try Peejays/morus text drawing routine (but as its a commercial project I dont want to use it for production as its their code) and this does exactly the same.

I have tried removing some of the graphics to keep the overheads down but that doesn't change anything so I am stumped.

The graphics card in the deployment PC is an Intel 82845G/GL/GE/PE/GV which I know does not do everything in the 3d department but I'm not doing anything fancy. All other sprites display correctly and everything else works apart from this one aspect.

Anyone else have any ideas as to what I could try? I'm on the verge of going back to a standard font and using the PRINT routine Its not a difference between full screen and windowed as the issues stay regardless of the settings

Thanks
Gary



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this needs to be in the showcase for GLB, even in its current state it is virtually commercial quality.

Yet again another program that shows the lack of limits as to what is possible with GLB, now the next question, has doom been done with GLB yet?

it would also remove the need to specify how many times to repeat the sample when loading it which I believe takes up 4 times the memory if you tell GLB to play the sample 4 times at the point of loading.

Is any of the above posts requests at all possible kitty?

I had exactly the same problem using dropbox, if I sent the raw files I got an icon on the dock I could not get rid of. Good thing was I was using parallels to run windows so I could right click on the folder, open in finder and run it straight from there and not send via dropbox.

So just to back up what others have said, zip everything up to send it to another OS, much safer than a raw send (and quicker too)