Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System • Hacker News Board

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#341

Post by mastrsushi » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

bubblewrap wrote: post #340

Veedrac wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy a Gameboy. Good games are timeless.

Which one should I buy? I don't really know the Nintendo world.

If you're not concerned with retro aesthetic, get a Game Boy Advance. It's compatible with the entire back catalog.

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#342

Post by neom » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

srik wrote: post #339

_lbaq wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is partially designed by https://teenage.engineering of Sweden, they apparently among other things came up with the crank.

Their OP-1 is one of the most brilliant pieces of hardware I’ve ever used. Very Dieter-Rams esque. Just brilliant. https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1

I have an OP-Z, it is equally as brilliant, also how they built the iOS/Mac app to work as a screen for the OP-Z is really cool, it's very fun to use and the UX (while not easy to master) is very intuitive.

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#343

Post by Laptop_Gaming » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

Strange. I've found the opposite to be true. They do a pretty decent job explaining why you need a web server and how to make a basic one. Once it's set up, there are tons of examples and resources to look at. https://gamalaptop.vn/laptop-gaming/

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#344

Post by sarchertech » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

I refuse to believe that anyone came up with a crank based input system organically.

Here's what I think happened. They decided that they wanted to make a low power black and white game system for people to use while camping. They decided that a crank charger was the best solution for this and went ahead with development.

Further into the process they discovered that they couldn't get the power budget low enough to make cranking a viable option, but they were too far along to abandon it completely.

Then someone had a brilliant idea. Lets make the crank an input system, and develop crank based games.

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#345

Post by dschadd » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:45 PM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #344

I refuse to believe that anyone came up with a crank based input system organically. Here's what I think happened. They decided that they wanted to make a low power black and white game system for people to use while camping. They decided that a crank charger was the best solution for this and went ahead with development. Further into the process they discovered that they couldn't get the power budget low enough to m…

Occam's Razor

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#346

Post by throwawaymath » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #344

I refuse to believe that anyone came up with a crank based input system organically. Here's what I think happened. They decided that they wanted to make a low power black and white game system for people to use while camping. They decided that a crank charger was the best solution for this and went ahead with development. Further into the process they discovered that they couldn't get the power budget low enough to m…

I'm skeptical of this explanation only because the idea of cranking a handheld gaming system has been reasonably debunked by a variety of commenters in this very thread. I would expect (possibly naively) that the creators of this hardware knew - at the ideation stage, prior to any meaningful development - that literally cranking the machine to recharge it would never work.

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#347

Post by moron4hire » Thu, May 23, 2019, 2:49 PM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #344

I refuse to believe that anyone came up with a crank based input system organically. Here's what I think happened. They decided that they wanted to make a low power black and white game system for people to use while camping. They decided that a crank charger was the best solution for this and went ahead with development. Further into the process they discovered that they couldn't get the power budget low enough to m…

I get the impression that you may not have played a lot of indie jam games. A hand-crank is one of the least weird things I've seen done. Hell, I once made a game where the controller was two people arm wrestling each other. At least a crank is practically usable.

As a self-described inveterate hobbyist, I completely understand looking around a workshop full of parts and saying "gee, what could we do with that?" And buying parts completely at random just to full future sessions of "Mystery Meat Monday"

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#348

Post by thebiglebrewski » Thu, May 23, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

Everything Teenage Engineering touches is gold

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#349

Post by alxmdev » Thu, May 23, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

alexvaut wrote: post #315

girvo wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I miss the GP2X and related...

I remember hacking my gp2x adding an USB port, plugging a gps on it, porting driver and a gis/map lib.. so much time to waste and learn new things!

I remember someone back then wrote a script to scrape Google Maps data and make it viewable on the GP2X, so you'd have offline portable maps. This was in 2007 or so, before smartphones became mainstream (not that as a student I could have afforded one anyway, or a data plan for that matter).

Re: Playdate – A New Handheld Gaming System

#350

Post by Stephen-E » Thu, May 23, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

sarchertech wrote: post #344

I refuse to believe that anyone came up with a crank based input system organically. Here's what I think happened. They decided that they wanted to make a low power black and white game system for people to use while camping. They decided that a crank charger was the best solution for this and went ahead with development. Further into the process they discovered that they couldn't get the power budget low enough to m…

Look at some of the other products Teenage Engineering has produced. They have a crank control for the OP-1 (https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1/accessories) plus other LEGO accessories.