next »

[atphalix]

This is a video of the original Quake1 demo running on the xo.it's the first 3D game
to run on the xo limited hardware (without OpenGL).
the I'm trying to make an educational 3D game based on quake, so any ideas for the game
are welcome!

more info at the project page: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Projects/abcube

UPDATE: QUAKE2 is running too on the XO!

for instructions and how to: http://olpc-maroc.blogspot.com/2009/08/quake-2-game-on-olpc-xo-1-laptop.html

[Wayan Vota]

I love that you are trying to take a first-person shooter and turn violence into positive educational fun.  If only someone had done this with Doom ages ago.

[mavrothal]

3D software rendering looks pretty smooth on the XO. Well done!

I do not know what is the target user segment and how much of the original game will be kept, but neither the layout nor the shooting would be appropriate for ages 5-10. A village maze and water-balloons/water-hose/water-buckets would be better.  For 11 and above the environment could be acceptable though a laser gun could be better than the realistic quake guns. However, keep in mind that the XO is destine for many conflict areas where (as you may know) real guns might be used by kids, so I would think that is better without, even if it decreases the “thrill of the game”.

Plot-wise it could start from basic letter recognition (keyboard learning), to rooms that will have a word at the door and must shoot only the right letters in (or out) of order, to words forming by shooting letters and then use it to open the proper “synonym”, “opposite”, “sound like” room from a selection of doors, to finding the missing word, to a full riddle that must be identified and solved to “liberate the wizard/family member/friend”. If vocal instruction/clues can be provided, comprehension tests can be devised, though a written paragraph could also do the job. For example determine the “enemies” from the story and in a mixture of characters, shoot only these ones.  

Math-wise similarly you can have number recognition from the very fundamental (how many balloons it takes to bring down “5”) to more formal math, geometric shape recognition, problem solving etc. Of course you can advance to more “discreet” clues like up-down, bigger-smaller, straight-bended, circular-rectangular  etc. Or shoot only shapes similar to the entrance, numbers bigger than the steps up or smaller than the steps down etc.
In any case a curriculum with the required skills would be the guide for the battles and signs/shapes/numbers on doors/corridors in addition to the characters, the “plot”.

Would be important the  “battles” to be easily customized, since different school systems may have different order/priorities in teaching and thus “disagree” with the original build/order.

It is also important that a detailed playing record will be kept so the teacher/guardian can identify strengths and weaknesses at a latter point, if not on line.

My 2 cents.

Again. Well done!
Keep it up.

[atphalix]

First thanks for all your ideas, I will seriously consider them once I will get over some important technical problems like displaying the game in full screen at playable rate
(now it is 800x600 and bigger make it unplayable and slow).
I just got the XO last week from the OLPC's Contributors program so I'm still trying to get used it, and into it's unique hardware features.

Another thing must be clear by now is that the project, is not about making violent video games on the XO (neither for children or adult), but it's just an experiment to see
if 3D games can be run and customized to be educational in someway, despite of the technical difficulty imposed by the hardware : slow CPU and no OpenGL rendering.  

[mavrothal]

First thanks for all your ideas, I will seriously consider them once I will get over some important technical problems like displaying the game in full screen at playable rate
(now it is 800x600 and bigger make it unplayable and slow).

I am probably off my league but you may not need to make it work at full resolution but just change the screen resolution  for this application. 800x600 in a 7.5" screen should be very playable.
It may need a new version of the os to include the latest Xorg driver or some other way, but it may allow you to focus on the application sooner.

Just another 2 cents

Another thing must be clear by now is that the project, is not about making violent video games on the XO (neither for children or adult), but it's just an experiment to see

Good to hear.
Apologies for any misunderstanding.

[atphalix]

Finnaly it's running at fullscreen!

First you'll need to install the latest driver using:
rpm -vU
http://ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/updates/10/i386/xorg-x11-drv-geode-2.11.0-1.fc10.i386.rpm

that way you can switch to a lower resolution to make quake playable
you'll have to add the following to .xsession your home folder
xrandr --newmode 800x600 0 800 0 0 0 600 0 0 0
xrandr --addmode default 800x600
and finnaly write the following into a file inside the quake directory and
run it.

#!/bin/sh
# lower the resolution
xrandr --output default --mode 800x600
# add below your activity:
./sdlquake -mem 32 -winsize 800 600
#go back to normal resolution mode
xrandr --output default --mode 1200x900

[mavrothal]

Nice
Now as I said you need to convince OLPC  to release 8.2.2 and include this geode diver because (as far as I know) you can not include it as part of the activity installation. Would be unlikely to expect (or expect to be allowed by the schools) kids to tinker with the core system.
Hopefully, by the time the activity is ready some service release (not F11/F12 based) will come out.

PS: By the way FreeDoom also runs on the XO though I had only tested it with the Fedora7-based os656. It may be "lighter" on the XO, though I do not know if it has the same capabilities as an activity platform. The XO activity is still around

[Destarus]

Hello all,

I'm running Ubuntu Intrepid and have tried numerous times to get xrandr to work as you describe.

First and foremost, I can't install the geode drivers you've posted above.
I'm assuming the drivers are exclusively for Readhat and won't work on Ubuntu?  If so, where would I get the latest Ubuntu drivers?  I've been trying to install the latest drivers for a while now, and honestly, as a linux n00b, I'm not even sure what version I have anymore.

How can I check what version of my xorg geode drivers I have?

Heres the results of xrandr:

$ xrandr --newmode 800x600 0 800 0 0 0 600 0 0 0
works with no errors

$ xrandr --addmode default 800x600
works with no errors

$ xrandr --output default --mode 800x600
Yields the following error:
X Error of failed request:  BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
  Major opcode of failed request:   145 (RANDR)
  Minor opcode of failed request:   7 ()
  Serial number of failed request:  15
  Current serial number in output stream:   16

$ xrandr
Yields the following information:
Screen 0: minimum 800 x 600, current 1200 x 900, maximum 1200 x 900
default connected 1200x900+0+0 (normal left inverted right) 0mm x 0mm
    1200x900            51.0*
    800x600                0.0

Hopefully, it's something simple.  Thanks for the help.

Jeff

[atphalix]

The driver I posted is an update to the driver on the fedora linux
on the xo,so obviousely you can't use it on the ubuntu.
unfortunately I don't have ubuntu so I can't test or help
to know the installed version of a particular package:

Code:

apt-cache showpkg package name

to search by name:

Code:

apt-cache search package name

p.s: Note that you can switch to a lower resolution to play all other SDL based games that use low resolution (e.g. zsnes emulator) in fullscreen on the xo.

[mavrothal]

Hopefully, it's something simple.  Thanks for the help.

Jeff

It is not
As described in the original xrandr thread, will work in DebXO and Sugar but NOT in Ubuntu 8.10. The new driver is in Ubuntu 9.04 but 9.04 is not on the XO yet...
Trying to "force the issue"  in Ubuntu 8.10 may not be a good idea either, though it should be feasible. People have also tried compiling the driver in 8.10

[Destarus]

I appreciate the responses, even if they weren't what I was hoping.

I am curious:  Above atphalix said I could play SDL games (or emulators) at a lower resoultion.  I installed ZNES and it functions at '640x480' but the XO remains at 1200x900 with the 640x480 rendering centered in the middle.  Any attempt to run it at a higher resolution uses OpenGL... which reduces the framerate to like 0.25 FPS.

So... if I can't play Quake fullscreen, how can I play any SDL based games in fullscreen? (starting with ZSNES)  I realize this isn't the right thread, but you guys know what you're talking about.

Thanks,
   Jeff

[RalleyWolf]

Woa. And now Quake2? holy crap I gotta try this...  http://olpc-maroc.blogspot.com/2009/08/quake-2-game-on-olpc-xo-1-laptop.html

I'm a bit of a linux newbie so I'm having some trouble with the instructions. can some one tell me exactly what to enter into the command line?  It says I need to create a new directory quake2/ but where do I make it, and how?

[atphalix]

Woa. And now Quake2? holy crap I gotta try this...  http://olpc-maroc.blogspot.com/2009/08/quake-2-game-on-olpc-xo-1-laptop.html

I'm a bit of a linux newbie so I'm having some trouble with the instructions. can some one tell me exactly what to enter into the command line?  It says I need to create a new directory quake2/ but where do I make it, and how?

You can download a binary archive here: http://abcube.googlecode.com/files/quake2-demo.tar.bz2
just uncompress with :

tar xjf quake2-demo.tar.bz2
cd quake2
./run.sh

P.S: sorry for the delay, I was not checking this thread often 

[RalleyWolf]

Okay so I finally got around to trying quake2 on my two xo's. Both machines are running different firmware, and operating systems. It runs consistently on the older sugar, fedoracore11 build8(gnome and sugar) and teapots ubuntu.

One annoying thing is that any mouse input makes the screen spin wildly. Even when using a usb mouse. I couldn't seem to get around this problem.

I've also been playing with Marathon on the XO and no mouse problems what-so-ever! (I recomend a usb mouse for better acuracy.)

[atphalix]

Thanks for your tests.
I tried the game on the new XO 1.5 with Fedora 11 but unfortunately
the graphic driver is still buggy and incomplete (no 3D acceleration even that there is a chip capable of), no video scaling (can't play video in fullscreen without CPU doing the whole work).
So this is still a long way to go for the XO until we can do some impressive graphical activities...