Like usual, my time to work on these projects is little. But I did manage to get at least 17 maps completed for the quick rpg I mentioned in some previous blogs ago.

Currently one interior area is nearly done, the Mines is composed of 9 maps, 480x384(standard size), and 8 overworld maps. Tiles have been slightly reworked, more varieties added, some extra decorative bits that cast shadows and so on. I'll treat you to a screenshot onslaught or something close when I get a little more done.

In other news, my interest in open source consoles is still alive.

Heres what I know of so far…

Open Pandora, runs on linux, small laptop-GB-DS hybrid like thingy. Cost about $350, which is more then netbooks. Its powerful, has emulators… It all sounds cool except when you get to the price…

GP2X Wiz, and its previous consoles are promising, also linux based. In fact everything I'll mention is running linux of some kind. This handheld is about 150-160, closer to a DS with various emulation support, but shakey company practices. Nobodies perfect I guess.

Dingoo, very small handheld, only $99. Don't know much about this, but its kind of promising, espcially at that price. Supposedly it also supports emulation.

FuzeBox and Uzebox, are Arduino microcontroller powered 8-bit consoles. You'll need a grasp of C and possibly Assembly to use this, its about $60-90 in cost and you can build it yourself. Drawback would be how you code in it and the limited memory it has. Its interesting, but I don't think it has too much future.

So I found a few pieces of hardware that can potentialy make a console/handheld at a decent price. Less then the pandora, but probably more then the Dingoo.

First off is the AVR32 microcontroller, a 32bit chip capable of running linux. Its cheap and arduino compatible for the accessories(I'm pretty sure). Of course you have to build it yourself. Still an interesting piece of hardware.

Second is using a Micro-Itx Intel Atom board, they range $60-70 for cpu and board. The on board graphics controller supposedly has tv out support, which I will test tonight. I picked up a vga to rca conversion cable to see if I can get my netbooks to output to my TV, since they use the same kind of setup as this.

Third and final brings me back to handhelds, a Samsung FriendlyArm system that runs linux, comes with a 3.5" screen and other nice goodies and it only runs $99-110. All it needs is a case and buttons.

So the last two mentioned seem like the best choices to make consoles/handhelds at a competitive price. The Atom setup would require additional parts: Ram, powersupply, controls, cables and a case. But it would also be an x86 processor and capable of running Windows XP. Although I rather leave XP for linux for this, since linux is free and won't bloat the cost.

Another benefit of the Atom is that theres already a lot of them on the market, and developing for it would be easier using a similar system, or the system itself.

The portable samsung unit runs an ARM processor, so your developement choices are more limited.

So in theory, both the console concept and handheld concept can be close to or possibly under that of mainstream consoles currently on the market.

Another thing I found out, most older ARM processors can't divide to save their life.