pouët.net

OK, I know: PocketPCs sux etc. But, today I decided to visit the-one-year-unvisited theprudukkt.com website and saw this: http://www.theprodukkt.com/mobile

Wow! A real demotool and a concept demo (video) for PocketPCs! They say, technology demo is available by request. Maybe anyone have it already?

And btw, which demos do you have for PPC? Except for those at pouet?

First off, PocketPC's don't "sux".

I'm "working" on an engine for a while now, Will eventually do something as soon as I get it finished.

PocketPCs sux? Welll, that shows what you know. :) Mind you, a PocketPC accompanied by MilkyTracker is pretty much the bomb while travelling.

PocketPC compo anyone?

Yeah,
it's AWESOME!

really good to see the fr guys managed to find a practical use for 64k-esque technology. which is, i guess, something a fair few people in the scene have been trying to manage.

i suspect they'll run into problems in the business because of a) long precalc times pissing people off, b) other people finding it very hard to use their tools (which is true of all the werkzeugs i guess), c) the complete change it requires for art production methods - even if it's a good idea, people just dont like change - and d) the relatively finite lifetime of such a technology - it's only practical when available memory and cpu power greatly outweighs the available storage, which could completely change in the next year or two.
i'll be very interested to see how it goes for them.

they need to add a clipper to their 3d engine for the next video tho :)

2ALL: I forgot to place quotes with the 'sux' word ;)
I am a big fan of these toys, honestly! I have a HP iPAQ hx2110 with WM5.
Erm, I should name the topic as 'WindowsMobile Demoscene'...

Honestly, which one do you think is a nicer name, PocketPC or Windows Mobile.. ehm Device(?).

smash: let's not forget that uncompressed textures take up a lot of ram, and that most proper texture compression schemes preferably should be done offline as they are quite damn cpu-heavy.

i don't think the generator-on-mobile-devices idea is useless, but i doubt that it will become a big hit within the next few years. hopefully by then we will either have more download-bandwidth or other distribution-methods, imo there are simply too many unsolved problems with the generative approach now.

kusma: yea, exactly my point :) you need a lot of cpu and a lot of memory compared to very little storage to make it worthwhile, and it's very questionable whether you have that. mobiles dont have so little memory that you need scenes to only take 1.4k. :) i suspect developers would rather make low-bit depth and small textures that take like 4k each and still look good enough on a small screen, without taking so much memory and cpu, and that are possible to make using their traditional production pipeline.

there is a side-benefit of scalability this way tho - you can generate the textures+meshes at a different res depending on the power of a particular mobile without changing the assets.

technical aspects aside, i still believe the biggest downfall of the approach will be the usability of the tools for your typical games industry artist. there's a load of other business drawbacks like ports from "higher" platforms that reuse assets not being possible, etc etc.

may the Force be with the Farbrausch folks! :D

smash: both low res textures and meshes would work fine...on paper. in reality, you usually have shit-loads of baked textures and hand-optimized meshes, that is really difficult to produce without ridiculous loading-times. i too believe that people will be able to produce quite good content with more traditional techniques like lowering bit-depth, and be satisfied with that.

Shameless plug: http://umlaut.intro.hu/~gargaj/zsirc/