Zelda Classic on a handheld? Ideas for this inside...

[zyrixnet]

Hello All,

I recently purchased the Linux-based handheld gaming console, the GP2X. Although it has a massive developer community and tons of ports of existing games has been done. They cannot port a game without source-code. I am not asking to open-source the project, but as you do have a Linux port in the works. Would it be possible to cross-compile it to the GP2X? On that thought, you would only need to cross-compile the Player, and not ZQuest, as creating quests with a handheld wouldn't be fun as playing the many quests which everyone has created. The handheld also natively supports TV-out in both NTSC and PAL, making your quests come alive on your TV, as if it were a real Nintendo game.

If the developers of Zelda Classic agree to this port, I would be more than happy to purchase and ship a GP2X to you via FedEx for development and enjoyment of the product. The GP2X retails for around $200, depending where you shop online. Considering a donation for the Zelda Classic project for future development efforts.

For additional information on this unit, check out it's Wikipedia page. Any comments on this, and how difficult it may be to port would be great in this thread. Any questions you have, I would be more than happy to answer.

By the way, I located and downloaded the Zelda Classic Linux beta for my system, and so far it works good. I have no complaints.

[The_Amaster]

DarkNation has actually talked about a port for the GP2X, and possibly for the DS(although unlikely). But yeah, if there was a port, GP2X is the most likely. Maybe he'll pop in here and let us know.

[DarkFlameWolf]

likely response: no.

[Russ]

Don't count on a port to a handheld system. This has been discussed hundreds of times before, and the answer has always been no.

[zyrixnet]

So far, I see two people saying yes, and two saying no. Both that say yes, talk about DarkNation doing the port. Someone from here says yes, and someone from the GP2X forum also says yes.

@Amaster42: As I asked the other guy, do you know of a website which confirms that this port is being developed?

PS DOSbox works on my GP2X, and never tried running ZC in DOSbox yet. Will give a shot soon. :)

[DarkDragon]

There's certainly no concerted development of any such port. DN might be working on it as a side project, but hasn't said anything about it recently.

I've always been very pessimistic about a handheld port, beyond trivial interface issues. Run a little experiment. Launch ZC, and load up a typical modern quest, with layers, custom music and sounds, and maybe a script or two. Open up the Task Manager and look at ZC's memory and CPU usage statistics.

[Dark Nation]

I have been working on a port of 2.10.3 for the GP2X off and on for a while, but I'm running into snags. I suspect that memory may be the issue. I *KNOW* that 2.5 won't fit, and the GP2X doesn't have the speed to run it smoothly anyway.

[EvilDragon]

Well, you might be interested in the Pandora then, a new Linux handheld coming in April. I'm sure I can send you a machine for developing :)

[Strangler]

p esss p p essss p all i want for christmas is a p essss p.

[Dark Nation]

Well, unless Allegro runs on it, we can't do a port for it.

[Russ]

How dependent on allegro is ZC? Would it be a reasonable goal to try to have ZC 3.0 writtend from the ground up, without using allegro, or is that one of those things that would require such a massive rewrite of the code that it wouldn't be possible?

[Dark Nation]

Well, we'd have to use SOME kind of gaming library (graphics, input, sound). ZC was originally written with Allegro. Using a different library in the next version is possible. Switching to SDL has been discussed.

[Russ]

Would it be at all posible to switch to something that would work on a handheld device, or is it just something that is physically imposible?

[DarkDragon]

Highly unlikely, but you're welcome to look for one. Note also that ZC uses over 150 MB of RAM when playing a decent-sized quest, well over the PSP's 24.

[Russ]

Highly unlikely, but you're welcome to look for one. Note also that ZC uses over 150 MB of RAM when playing a decent-sized quest, well over the PSP's 24.
150MB? Wow, somehow I thing ZC's going to be PC restricted for a long time.

[zeldanerd]

That would be veeeeery good...

[Dann Woolf]

p esss p p essss p all i want for christmas is a p essss p.

Mmm... spam-tastic!

Back on topic: Zelda Classic on the go? Hell yeah. Imagine AG teaming up with Nintendo to make a DS version.

[Hitnrun]

Yes I know, I found it and ported to the GP2X, here is the release (with permission from Dark Nation),

http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,26,2549

[Sir-Pimpalot]

It would have to be stripped down quite a bit to run on a Nintendo DS. A 37MHz machine with 4MB of RAM could never run it in its current state. On the other hand the GP2X has a 200MHz processor and 64MB RAM, so that would be alot more likely. :king:

[justgold79]

A cell phone version would be cool too. It would suck porting it to every cell phone. Hopefully android will make easily portable phone apps a reality.

Someone should build a facebook app version too. And give it MMO features. Yeah. That would rock.

The source code is browsable here:

http://code.google.com/p/zelda-classic/source/browse

Note that I am not developing this, I just wanted to make it available.

[Hitnrun]

Version 0.3alpha released, with 70-100% performance increase.
It's on the same link as before.

[justgold79]

Is there a gp2x phone? Does it have PIM apps? I don't want to carry around a pda, phone, game device, laptop, etc....

[Hitnrun]

Is there a gp2x phone? Does it have PIM apps? I don't want to carry around a pda, phone, game device, laptop, etc....

Nope, portable console only.