What outrageous games do you expect to run on the Advance?

[mad_ady]

I'm thinking of native games, not supported by libretro cores directly.

I think Need for speed 2 SE might run (meveric did it for XU4), and also Quake/Quake2/Quake3?/Half-Life might run, though controls might be clucky...

GTA (1) should run through dosbox, not sure about newer versions. Retro City Rampage DX should make a good title as well.

What about others? What's the most demanding (spec-wise) game you want to try out?

[blu]

I'm looking forward to a pocket computer more than anything else. And this device is close to perfect.

[mad_ady]

Oh, do tell! What use case do you plan for it? It's a bit crippled because of the lack of a keyboard as a pocket computer. What do you have in mind (I'm also not much of a gamer)?

[blu]

Kbd on a pocket device is tricky -- qwetry kbds can't do, other schemes are required. There used to be some clever input schemes for the psp back in the day (I used to do lua on my psp on long commutes). Such a pocket machine can serve as a universal home automation HID, a portable video player*, a pocket music station. Basically what your phone could have been, but without the obligatory walled-environment doorkeepers.

* While the SoC can handle up to 1080p, to get TV out some ingenuity will be required -- usb2 suffices only for 640x480 uncompressed high-color. BTW, what's on the expansion port?

[kamots]

It has a USB port, can just plug in a keyboard (wired or wireless).

[blu]

It has a USB port, can just plug in a keyboard (wired or wireless).

I don't think @mad_ady meant that, and I didn't for sure ; ) It's not the ability to connect an external kbd -- that's a given, it's what fits in your pocket and could be handheld. For me 10" is the borderline of usability for a qwerty kbd, and that's way beyond pocketable, at least for me.

[meveric]

I'm thinking of native games, not supported by libretro cores directly.

I think Need for speed 2 SE might run (meveric did it for XU4), and also Quake/Quake2/Quake3?/Half-Life might run, though controls might be clucky...

GTA (1) should run through dosbox, not sure about newer versions. Retro City Rampage DX should make a good title as well.

What about others? What's the most demanding (spec-wise) game you want to try out?

To be honest, I expect it to run nearly everything the C2 or ODROID N1/N2 can run.
It's a standard ARM64 SoC just low power CPU cores to reduce power usage, aside from that it can do whatever all the other boards can do.
The fact that it's powered by an RockChip SoC is actually very very helpful. They have drivers for nearly everything.
There are GBM + X11 drivers, so you can run your retroarch running of GBM as well as running desktop applications. Although the very low resolution is kinda a show stopper.
I wished it had a 800x480 screen like: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32702042816.html
That way you could also run Android on it and Desktop applications to a certain degree.

Overall though I expect that nearly everything should run on that thing, with more or less work on porting stuff to GBM or not.
Performance will be a limiting factor, but it should be nearly on par with the ODROID C2 in matter of performance.
The C2 has a faster CPU and RAM, but is very limited by the GPU support and drivers, while the GO Advance should definitely better in everything GPU related, heck the GO Advance even supports OpenGL ES 3.2 and Vulkan.
The driver come with OpenCL support out of the box.

Overall I expect it to perform nearly as good as a C2, and in matter of GPU even faster.

You could easily turn the ODROID Go Advance in a low power Linux PC, I actually expect people to use it for much more than just gaming on the go.
You can easily turn it into a mobile server, put owncloud on it, or just NFS, SMB or whatever, and use a USB WLAN dongle, and you have a mobile NAS of sort.

[memeka]

Except for X11
There is no mali driver for X11

[crashoverride]

There is a X11 driver. It has been briefly tested and appears to work (with armsoc ddx).
https://github.com/rockchip-linux/libma ... x11-gbm.so

Further experimentation by the community will be required.

[meveric]

Except for X11
There is no mali driver for X11

There is a X11 driver. It has been briefly tested and appears to work (with armsoc ddx).
https://github.com/rockchip-linux/libma ... x11-gbm.so

Further experimentation by the community will be required.

Yeah I was already about to say I already have the X11 drivers for it packaged up
Also I assume they run best with modesetting rather than armsoc.

It's also why I said you can use X11 apps along side with GBM, as this was also the case with the N1, the only one where both worked out of the box without quitting X11 first (starting Kodi GBM directly from X11 desktop).

[memeka]

Except for X11
There is no mali driver for X11

There is a X11 driver. It has been briefly tested and appears to work (with armsoc ddx).
https://github.com/rockchip-linux/libma ... x11-gbm.so

Further experimentation by the community will be required.

Yeah I was already about to say I already have the X11 drivers for it packaged up
Also I assume they run best with modesetting rather than armsoc.

It's also why I said you can use X11 apps along side with GBM, as this was also the case with the N1, the only one where both worked out of the box without quitting X11 first (starting Kodi GBM directly from X11 desktop).

I thought there is no Mali binary driver for X11 for bifrost, only for GBM and Wayland. And Panfrost doesnt work with bifrost.
EDIT: hm wonder where that driver comes from.

[mad_ady]

One use case (other than gaming) I see the Advance perfect for is a replacement for C2 + 3.5" LCD. It's cheaper, portable, has more GPIOs available. But, oh... there's no touch-screen, so, would only work as a dashboard... Forgot about that...

[lordhardware]

You could install a resistive touch layer with little trouble.
And as the Rockchip was historically a PMP chip there would be lots of touch code examples for it

[rooted]

I think it will be a good device to consume audio from a server such as mpd and locally.

Also could be a good wired/wireless penetration testing rig, may need two WiFi dongles as I don't know if you can do AP and scan with the same dongle.

[lordhardware]

It would be cool to see downscaled res versions of mid 00s games like Doom 3 and similar.

Controller configs become a little more limiting the further forward in time you go however.

[jutleys]

I want Quake3 standard and it will run well on the specs.

[mad_ady]

How will you use "mouse look" with the available buttons? I wouldn't mind a good shooter myself...

[meveric]

How will you use "mouse look" with the available buttons? I wouldn't mind a good shooter myself...

Analog stick I'd say

[rooted]

How will you use "mouse look" with the available buttons? I wouldn't mind a good shooter myself...

Analog stick I'd say

That might just work

[mad_ady]

Ok, and how do you move around? I'm not an octopus in my left hand so I can't move the dpad and analog stick at the same time...

[rooted]

Ok, and how do you move around? I'm not an octopus in my left hand so I can't move the dpad and analog stick at the same time...

X B Y A would work like Up Down Left Right, Left Trigger to switch weapons, Right Trigger to fire, and analog to look.

[lordhardware]

Ok, and how do you move around? I'm not an octopus in my left hand so I can't move the dpad and analog stick at the same time...

X B Y A would work like Up Down Left Right, Left Trigger to switch weapons, Right Trigger to fire, and analog to look.

This is how I played quake 2 on the DS

[mad_ady]

Ok, thanks for teaching me

[lordhardware]

Ok, and how do you move around? I'm not an octopus in my left hand so I can't move the dpad and analog stick at the same time...

X B Y A would work like Up Down Left Right, Left Trigger to switch weapons, Right Trigger to fire, and analog to look.

Actually on the ds it was DPad for movement (WASD equ: Forward, back, and strafe), and the A,B,X,Y buttons acting as look.

The odroid has the benefit of having dedicated left stick AND dpad which can be assigned to action buttons, use, etc.

[maker_gamer]

I'm not familiar with Emulation Station (I use RetroArch for consistency across my hardware PC/Android/Wii/RPi).

Is there a way to add "Apps" to the Emulation Station launcher so we have it launch every thing from Kodi, to CLI apps/scripts to FrameBuffer Apps?

I want my Go Advance to become a "Swiss Army Knife" having Apps like:
* Game control using Motion (for steering racing games or shooters like Quake) via USB 6DOF sensor
* WiFi Deauth via USB WiFi Dongle
* IrDA control to Remote Control TVs (turn off in bulk via Infrared Remote USB dongle)
* GPS (simple lat/lon compass or better yet, wishfully using OpenMaps) via USB GPS
* SDR to tune in Radios (AM, FM, Public Service Scanners, etc) via RTL-SDR dongle
* Weather Station via USB Temp/PSI/Humidity/etc sensor

The USB dongles are so small anymore, they are almost like game cartridges or part of a "Socket Set". Sure, I'll be rocking my games on it but it can do so much more. Look at Hackaday.com for some additional maker inspiration or what read through all the USB devices that Linux supports (thousands of things). After a simple UDEV rule is created, UDEV makes the USB Feature toggle effortless given it lacks a keyboard.

Cheers, MG

[rooted]

I'm sure there will be a RetroArch port, there is no way I know of to add shortcuts but I'm not super familiar with it either.