Goban Advance

   

Fwiffo: I'm curious if there is any interest in a game recording tool or SGF editor for the Gameboy Advance. There is plenty of information out there for programming that platform, and the units are cheaper and smaller than a Palm or Pocket PC (or at least, handhelds as cheap as a Gameboy Advance are pretty crappy). The screen is comparable in size to a handheld (240x160) and the hardware is certainly sufficient to handle the necessary features.

http://www.phong.org/misc/goban_gba.png
Screenshot (not really)

Here are some of the things it could (hypothetically) do:

  • Record games in a SGF or a format that could be converted to SGF
  • Link to another GBA to play an actual game or act as a clock
  • Let you study problems on the road
  • It would be totally l33t

Drawbacks:

  • Storage space for recorded games would be limited to 64k (this would still probably hold perhaps a couple dozen games if it uses a format that is more compact than SGF)
    • The "gray market" stuff also helps here alot.
  • Transferring data between the GBA cart and your computer might be complicated and may require gray-market hardware (which is not discussable here)
    • Complex is a relative thing. But I doubt the "grey market hardwere" is anymore grey than soft made by unlicensed ppl or companies - They didn't even officially disclose specifications or anything - Look at their site for details - Getting a license is...
  • Entering comments would be tedious
    • With a "grey market" link, all of the work can be done on ur comp and sent to the gba...
  • Distributing the software would require a developer to lay out significant money to burn a minimum of 500 or so carts (end-users would pay $5-$10 for a copy and would have to buy a new one if upgrades came out) or would require users to have the aforementioned gray-market hardware which is expensive enough to nullify the cost advantage over handhelds
    • I doubt card burnning is an option - Unless u get a license to write soft for it and... You shouldn't be able to! Only the "grey market" way here - Well if it's the actual gba - Visual Boy Advanced and the likes can be used for emu on the pc itself... But it's kinda pointless to make another pc editor - It just has to be the "grey" stuff... (Look at the details of getting a license on site...:S)
      • Zarlan: Actualy, card "burning" (burning?) is quite possible. You just have to have the right hardware. Though I'd say that's grey market area. There also exists cartriges which you can put normal memorycards in and play from those, but again: Gray.
  • The GBA hardware isn't powerful enough to run an even moderately interesting AI opponent (couldn't hope for much better than the Hikaru Handheld Game).
    • But then again, for most ppl (I assume the avg player strengh is 2k?) gnugo and the likes(without 6h+) aren't much of a challange either...

Zarlan: Neat idea. I think it would work even better on the Nintendo DS. Especialy concerning storage space (I think it would be rather more on the DS) and transfering to computers. The dual screens and tuch-feature would also improve some things. Entering comments being one.

It would also mean the possibility of a better AI opponent, but I don't think it would be worth including anyway

Fwiffo: I had considered the DS, but there are a couple of drawbacks.

First and foremost - it sorta defeats the purpose. The SP is currently everywhere and cheap - lots of people have them. The form-factor is tiny and really fits in your pocket. The DS is larger than the original GBA and is currently an expensive and perhaps even exotic game system. If you're using the DS with a stylus for this purpose you're better off with a PDA, which is smaller than a DS.

Second, the development specs just aren't out there yet for the DS. The GBA has tons of info, hardware, compilers, emulators, etc. already available

As far as storage space is concerned, the only problem is where to store the games that you enter on the GBA itself. They have to be stuck in the SRAM of the cart, which is limited to 64k (yeah, I think some flashable carts have more, but you have to access it through a proprietary interface that won't work if somebody has a different brand cart or you eventually decide to produce real carts). If you want to have problems or game collections stored on the cart, you can stick them in ROM, which is 64MB (which is tons of space for that kind of data).

npy? this should interest you : [ext] http://sourceforge.net/projects/dsgf/

Reuven - Maybe should take a look at the current softwere availible - Is there no way to use some standart editor ported to different devices? All this re-inventing stuff, lately...

Fwiffo: Well, I'd port what I could (e.g. maybe some SGF processing code), but something like a GBA is an entirely alien platform compared to a PDA. You don't have, e.g., an operating system.


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(OC) 2007 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.
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