Pandora battery

Hrm, only a short time after getting my Pandora, the battery is dead...

Luckily I noticed the failure while using it sat in A&E with a suspected broken arm (thankfully not actually broken, came off bike in bad weather) so while it was somewhat swollen (the battery) it did no damage to the casing of the machine...

Now for the hard part, getting hold of ED to sort out a replacement, might be quicker just to buy another one but they're 22 quid + postage and I've not even had the machine 3 months... additionally it's only actually been run on battery for perhaps 24-36 hours in that time...

Also, been using the new HF6 alpha 4 firmware with the additional code intended to preserve the battery for longer!

I am unimpressed and this will probably slow progress on my various Pandora projects...

Elite port is up to 1.1.0.3 now... Changes:

1.1.0.3

Added touchscreen support to local and galactic charts
Added basic destination planet info in right pane (charts, docked)
Changed scanner so asteroid 'lollipops' appear as orange
Fixed bug in the status/position panel text display routine

1.1.0.2

Fixed pandora game category
Fixed planet capitalisation in charts
Fixed F to find planet in charts
Fixed frequency of "Docking computers online" message to match original
Fixed Sun (it didn't previously exist after launching from station)
Added A, B, Y when docked for short, long range chart and planet info
Added help page when paused (P)
Added new style roll/dive/climb indicator at top/left of scanner
Improved readability of in-flight messages

Same url as before... http://www.pokenet.co.uk/misc/files.pandora/pandelite.pnd

For 1.1.0.4 so far only a couple of things and it's nowhere near done

Fixed hyperspace messages to use new more readable text
Added Velocity locked limitation for Torus Jump (must be max speed)

Initial Pandora Elite beta available

Don't anger the coppers!

But yes, the beta is done, get it from here: download pnd package

Note that there's currently no icon despite me designing one and specifying it to pndtools, not sure why that is:

Controls:

In flight:

Directional: D-Pad or , . S X (left, right, up, down)
Fire lasers: A or game X button (or red area on touchscreen)
Missiles: Target T or game A, Unarm is U or game B, Fire is M or game Y
Speed: Space, blue + touch button or left shoulder button to increase, / (fn+z), blue - touch button or right shoulder button) to decrease

Energy bomb: Tab (fn+space)
Escape capsule: Escape (fn+q)

ECM system: E

Hyperspace: H (if target selected in 5 or 6 charts)
Galactic hyperdrive: Select+H (it costs 5000 credits and can only be used once)

Docking computers: C

1-4: front, rear, left, right view

8: view market prices

While docked:

1: Launch
4: Buy ship equipment

Everywhere:

Start: Bring up load/save/config/quit menu (you can only save and load while docked at a station)

5: Local chart
6: Galactic chart
7: Planet description
8: Trade on planetary market
9: Pilot/ship status
0: Inventory of cargo

Note that the virtual directional pad can be used but you'd probably want to use the gamepad

And, surprisingly, it's an Elite image

Click to embiggen, all touchscreen code finished now, redesigning of the original interface and better icons and ogg playback still to be done...

More elite -.o;

All graphics code finished now!

Almost done...

Click to embiggen...

Seems there might be a license problem with this code preventing my release of it, this is rather irritating, heh, usual Braben related objections although I have a suspicion his objections have no legal basis so I'll see...

Interface tidying, more touchscreen only support...

Click for larger images... Keyboard will be enabled via a config option and will appear only when required.

Getting there...

(Click to view full size)

No touchscreen issues thankfully, where you click is what's reported unlike some libraries I could mention...

Pondering adding touchscreen directional / fire controls in those grey frames to the left and right of the main viewscreen so it can be used on touchscreen only devices such as phones... multitouch would be a must though.

Directional controls on left, velocity and fire on right...

Progres...

Keyboard/gaming controls done now, touchscreen support and additional side content still to do....

Hyperspace bug mentioned previously fixed thanks to the original TNK author C. Pinder (seems the original source had a bug which caused suns and planets to be treated as ships in certain circumstances but the PC binary didn't so it was nothing to do with the ARM platform after all)

Elite problems...

Well, managed to rule out the library version as the problem...


Video quality terrible, blame energy saving bulbs and my phone which doesn't seem to have heard of a macro mode...

But aye, you can see the game more or less works but something causes it to segfault when you arrive in another system (or fly away from the station for a few minutes but NOT if you enter witch space which is sort of an artificial system)

Left/Right graphics are temporary and unfinished.

Elite...

Some success so far...

Couple of  problems, one small, one rather large...

No MIDI music, will avoid that by using MP3s although that will mean the package will be about 3.7MB larger than it would otherwise be (still less than 5MB total though)

Something in the hyperspace routine is doing a fandango on core which results in a crash or strange behaviour when you hyperspace into another system (although there's no problem if you land in witch space so I suppose it's something to do with the setup when you arrive, market prices and so on)

Right on, Commander!

Yup, designed for 800x600 so not quite there yet but running very nicely

Now if only I can get it released without being sued...

The news of the world...

Well, perhaps I'm being overly cynical but:


    Domain name:
        thesunonsunday.co.uk

    Registrant:
        News International Newspapers Limited

    Registrant type:
        UK Limited Company, (Company number: 1885543)

    Registrant's address:
        NI Group Limited
        3 Thomas More Square
        London
        E98 1ES
        United Kingdom

    Registrar:
        News International Newspapers Limited [Tag = NEWSINT]
        URL: http://www.newsint.co.uk

    Relevant dates:
        Registered on: 05-Jul-2011
        Renewal date:  05-Jul-2013
        Last updated:  08-Jul-2011

    Registration status:
        Registration request being processed.

    Name servers:
        ns.123-reg.co.uk
        ns2.123-reg.co.uk

    WHOIS lookup made at 00:34:58 10-Jul-2011