To keep Skewworks going it looks like I’m either going to need to start doing some commercial apps; so I thought I’d ping the community to see what they’re interested in.
Here’s a few thoughts I have:
RLP graphic framework, enabling GIFs faster render and Pyxis-like performance on smaller Panda-type devices.
Game engine; the engine itself would be free with a commercial application to quickly design and develop the games.
Custom Development; use the Skewworks expertise to get your project running quickly.
I see commercial use for this and developers would really need some nice components to use on the display. An RLP to handle graphics on Panda II…possible free for non-commercial use and some reasonable fee for commercial use? You can even charge for the RLP sources as users wouldn’t need them as they program in C# but commercial users may need to optimize them.
One simple thing that comes to mind is in reading a standard bitmap from SD card and displaying it on screen. This is very simple to do on larger devices but on smaller devices, this has to be done on-the-fly.
Development on our first commercial app in 2 years has begun; code-named “Monkey Wrench” (after FEZ mascot, of course).
For those interested please take a look at the features below and offer any suggestions/feedback.
Target: Panda II w/ Touch LCD
1: Managed / Native graphics options (entry level & pro pricing)
2: Font loading support
3: Full screen bitmap rendering support (streamed from file; RAM too small)
4: Pyxis 2 controls (in multiple DLLs so you can use only what you need)
5: Full Bitmap (BMP) Support
6: Custom image format for faster load/render
7: All basic graphic methods (Line, Rect, Ellipse, etc)
8: Anti-aliased graphic function (Pro/RLP only)
Available Controls: Checkbox, Combobox, CommandButton, Form, Icon, Label, Listbox, Numeric Up/Down, Panel, Picturebox, Progressbar, RadioButton [italic](Obviously some of the big players like Filebox will not be ported due to space restraints)[/italic]
This sounds pretty great. I am starting on my first exploration test app for the Fez touch this morning. After I work with what is there natively, I will have a much better idea of what I want. Do you have target pricing for the product? Will it be an SDK plus per device licensing? SDK plus royalty free for devices? What model are you thinking of? I look forward to seeing it. We have been playing with Pyxis on a Cobra for eth past few days and it is great.
How about a full screen image rendered straight to the LCD from a single file?
We’ll throw in some more alpha blended rects too.
And just for good measure fonts being down with and without a solid background.
Haven’t done exact timings yet since it’s slated for Managed & RLP. Rough estimates full screen bitmap read from uSD and render 1-2 sec. Text render under a second per line (even the transparent background ones). Alphablending is pretty long. Probably a sec+ for each of those 32x32 rects.
I’ll give timings after the RLP version is done.
It’s a busy weekend here but I’m hoping to have a control or two running by late tomorrow.
Note that GHI has spent (as always) a long time optimizing every single detail to give you best results. Unless you go to great measures optimizing your drivers you will not brat the GHI optimization
Drop GHI and email and tell them you want a new fresh one