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The Hydra Game has arrived in Australia — Parallax Forums

The Hydra Game has arrived in Australia

OzStampOzStamp Posts: 377
edited 2006-11-25 21:36 in Propeller 1
Hi to all.

Just returned from the UPS depot.
We have our first shipment of Hydra Game Kits in stock.
.
Also a batch of books as well.

The book .. what a masterpiece..

This looks awesome well done Andre... Xmas has come early


Ronald Nollet·· Australia
Parallax OZ disty
·

Comments

  • Peter JakackiPeter Jakacki Posts: 10,193
    edited 2006-11-24 08:35
    Ron, you know I want one of those (as does everybody), not forgetting the juicy manual either.
    Ahhh, now we won't have to put up with others talking about it and being envious and frustrated at not being able to try it out ourselves.

    *Peter*
  • OzStampOzStamp Posts: 377
    edited 2006-11-24 09:48
    A few people in the background working hard to make it all happen ...

    A special thnx to the people at Parallax for shipping some of these units
    so quickly to us here in Australia just before their holiday.
    Special thx to Paul B and Lauren B for their efforts.

    Ronald Nollet
    Parallax Australia distributor
  • AndreLAndreL Posts: 1,004
    edited 2006-11-24 10:52
    Cool. Hopefully Silicon Chip magazine does some good editorial on the unit as well. Glad you like the system and book, A LOT of work went into everything by everyone that much is for certain.

    Andre'
  • paulmacpaulmac Posts: 51
    edited 2006-11-24 11:37
    AndreL said...
    ... A LOT of work went into everything by everyone that much is for certain. Andre'
    Thomas Jefferson said...
    I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
    smile.gif
  • OzStampOzStamp Posts: 377
    edited 2006-11-24 13:00
    Hi Andre

    The Silicon chip mag people have a Propeller demoboard that we/Parallax donated months ago.
    Still awaiting a promised evaluation on that as well.
    They promise but not much happens...they take our dollars for advertising though.

    I started reading the book .. awesome stuff Andre I have never done much with video /graphics
    so this is interesting reading for sure.
    Not enough hours in the day.

    Ronald Nollet
    Parallax distributor Australia
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2006-11-24 15:57
    Time for me to get shopping for my Hydra.
    If I wait, I won't be the first in Taiwan.

    ▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
    "If you want more fiber, eat the package.· Not enough?· Eat the manual."········
    ···················· Tropical regards,····· G. Herzog [noparse][[/noparse]·黃鶴 ]·in Taiwan
  • Ym2413aYm2413a Posts: 630
    edited 2006-11-24 18:46
    I still have to get my Hydra as well.
    I got to wait until I get my xmas shopping done before I can buy my self any gifts. (lol)
  • AndreLAndreL Posts: 1,004
    edited 2006-11-24 21:46
    Hmmm, I got them to do a pretty good eval or new product release on the XGS I think, but the key is always talking person to person on the phone to make it happen. Anyway, I gave the marketing dept at parallax my contact at silicon chip, so hopefully they can get a good editorial on the hydra and at very least a "new product" announcement.

    Andre'
  • GavinGavin Posts: 134
    edited 2006-11-25 04:52
    Ron,

    I wish you had not told me you just got them in.
    Don't need any distractions at the moment, too busy trying to understand cog asm code.
    Should have got the manual, pdf's suck.

    Andre,
    What are the 20 pin·I/O pins? wondering it this board would be useful for a control application.
    Possible to port Doom to the Hydra? Well Wolfenstein would be nice to start with.

    Ron, you can guess what the gamepads could be used for[noparse]:)[/noparse]

    ·
  • AndreLAndreL Posts: 1,004
    edited 2006-11-25 05:14
    The 20-pin interface header has 8-bits of i/o multiplexed with the VGA which is cut off by a buffer switch, so when you use the I/O the VGA doesn't get your signal. Also, power, clock, usb, and networking are connected to the I/O pins of the 20, so you can pretty much interface anything you want to it.

    And the prop has the power to do wolfenstein, but memory of course is the major limiting factor, one texture even 64x64 is going to 4K bytes, thus, different approaches have to be used like external ram, etc.

    Andre'
  • GavinGavin Posts: 134
    edited 2006-11-25 05:46
    More memory, more colours.
    I'm sure Chip and the guys·has been told already.

    Not being a game expert, need to get your book first, texture bit maps are going to take up room and Doom requires more colours than the 8 bit VGA drivers can generate (Chip I will read up on VGA hardware soon)

    How many cogs are left and could they be used to generate textures on the fly from algorithums?

    I will save other questions till after I get the book bacause you probably address these issues in it.


    ·
  • AndreLAndreL Posts: 1,004
    edited 2006-11-25 06:24
    Doom uses 256 colors with multiple palettes. But, you can also use really simple textures, but the 3D sprites need 2-3 frames of animation per sprite per orientation (8 of them) and htey have to be 64x64 min, so tons of memory of the sprites as well. Wolf is an entirely different animal than DOOM, wolf is a ray-caster which is fairly easy to implement, DOOM is a full poly engine with a BSP tree for rendering order, huge data structures, etc. both use 3D sprite scaling. Doom also has lighting which amounts to color mapping and palette animation. Both games are bitmapped, so you need the bitmapp buffers, textures, and sprites and FAST math to do all the calcs.

    Andre'
  • GavinGavin Posts: 134
    edited 2006-11-25 12:43
    Andre,

    Can the Hydra games/code be used on the demo board?
    I would be interested in learning more about game programming but as a way to learn more about programming the prop.

    I have a demo board and·don't want to buy the game kit yet, just the book and cd.
    Can I then get just the Hydra board without the other stuff later on?

    How about a portable version with LCD later on[noparse]:)[/noparse]

    Gavin

    ·
  • AndreLAndreL Posts: 1,004
    edited 2006-11-25 20:04
    Yes, the demos etc. will work on the demo board with small changes to video pin group, mouse and keyboard pin group. But, demos that use teh gamepad of course wont work, you have to delete the gamepad code or something. The idea of the hydra book is to teach hydra, prop, and game dev. Its obviously best to have the hydra, but a prop on a solderless breadboard or the demo board will suffice for all the programming, demos, etc. discussions, but you will just have to make small changes (about 1-5 mins per demo, that's it).

    Andre
  • potatoheadpotatohead Posts: 10,261
    edited 2006-11-25 21:36
    It's not a biggie to run the stuff. Pull the clock header info off the Parallax code samples, do the same for the graphics pin groups, modes, etc...

    The gamepad stuff has proven easy to delete, to get stuff to run. Don't forget the glowing LED object too.

    5-10 mins is about right. No biggie.

    From there, you can see it go. Then you code your own input and tweak from there and actually interact with it. This is actually educational as it exercises a lot about the prop. --cool, IMHO.

    One could very easily just write a gamepad like object that takes the input of their choice and presents it like the gamepad object does. I didn't bother as I'm really just looking for examples to learn to build my own stuff from and plan on getting a Hydra system anyway. Once this is done, the number of tweaks required to run other bits provided with the book would be minor.
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