Raspberry Pi - cab CPU & game dev platform?

[Zobeid]

I really didn't even know which forum to put this one in....

I'm hyped over the new Raspberry Pi computer that's coming out.  For those of you who've been living in a cave, this is a computer about the size of a credit card -- currently being sold without even a case, although there will be some sort of case when they get into true mass production.  They are selling for $35!  It's got a 700 MHz ARM6 processor, a pretty powerful GPU, and 256 MB RAM shared between them.  It will be supported with various Linux distros.

This was designed as a platform to teach programming, but it's a true general-purpose computer that people are coming up with a huge range of potential uses for.

Of course, I thought about using one to drive an arcade cabinet.  I'm sure MAME will run on it, though the ARM processor is pretty weak by today's standards.  I've heard it compared with a 200 MHz Pentium.  The GPU is mighty, but it won't really be of any help with MAME.  So...  That's kind of boring, it won't do anything we haven't already seen.  I'm guessing it'll run 8-bit games OK, and possibly some 68000-based games, since 68K emulation in MAME is pretty well optimized.

Then I realized, what we really need is to design and program our own arcade games for this thing!  Running natively and taking advantage of hardware accelerated OpenGL ES and OpenVL (for 2D stuff), it should have plenty of power for games.  Now you're looking at something in roughly the same league as the original XBox.  It's all open to programming with C (or Objective-C, or C++) or even with Python.  I mean, obviously you're not gonna make the next Halo on it, just because of the sheer size and costs of a project like that.  However, I can think of buttloads of computer and arcade games from the 1980s that could be recreated and given a new spin by one programmer, or by a few guys working together, just like the "demo scene" of old.

The whole cabinet experience has been great, and I'm proud of the couple of MAME cabs I've built.  To me, creating our own games seems like the logical next step, to take it to the next level.  With the Raspberry Pi we're gonna have a platform that is cheap, is standardized (anything that'll run on one of them should run on any of them, and with the same performance), is well suited to games (powerful GPU) and is wide open to programming without any licensing or expensive developer kit.

[Zobeid]

Wake us up when you actually have one in your hand....


Zzzz.....

They're shipping!  I haven't even placed my pre-order yet.  They've got 350,000 pre-orders logged, so even with the factory cranking them out it's gonna take a few months to catch up.

[Turvey]

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=117319.0  and http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=118476.0

[Zobeid]

I noticed there were a couple of other threads about the Raspberry Pi, but they mostly seem concerned (understandably) with running emulators.  I can see where that would be cool for some purposes....  like really small "bar top" cabinets, maybe.

I'm just thinking along different lines and remembering the Amiga heyday and some of the cool free games that hackers and demo coders cranked out for it.  (There probably would have been more of those, if they didn't already have such a flood of pirated commercial games making the rounds!)

Obviously, I will be happy to post when I get my hands on a Raspberry Pi.  I don't think it's too soon to be thinking about what we can do with it, though.  Most Linux boxes (or even Macs, I think) can be set up with PyGame and the like.  And the Pi's specs are pretty well documented.

EDIT:  Incidentally, before I ever heard about the Raspberry Pi, I was interested in the Trim Slice.  The catch there is that the "bare bones" Trim Slice is $213, and it just never garnered much attention.  At that price point you might as well go ahead and spring for an Atom-based nettop anyhow -- or a refurbished tower system off eBay.  And if they aren't sold in large numbers, and don't reach "critical mass" of people using them, then there's a lot less support and everything is harder.

[yotsuya]

Zobeid-

I pre-ordered one. I figure when it shows up, it shows up. 

I like your idea of using it for homebrews.

[jimmy2x2x]

I am really excited by this kind of prospect, a fixed hardware platform that's cheap, open and hopefully will have an active community.

It harks back to the bedroom programming days for me and hopefully others with see its 'limited' (by todays standards) feature set appealing and it should be very interesting in seeing how others push the hardware in interesting ways.

This kind of platform somehow reminds me of some of my favourites from the past like the c64 or amiga and I hope it has a lively community supporting it.

[EightBySix]

I was reading about how to apply a boot up splash screen to it at a low level. You can incorporate progress bars, animations, true type fonts etc. Should make for some projects that look professional - not even a bios boot screen to worry about.

[Ed_McCarron]

Wonder if freenas'd run on it... Although I don't think freenas will handle USB drives yet...

[404]

Wonder if freenas'd run on it... Although I don't think freenas will handle USB drives yet...

there is no freenas build for the ARM architecture. hell, don't even think there is a BSD port for ARM yet.

[kahlid74]

I posted before about this but there are three primary Linux distros on the Raspberry Pi right not and one of them is super slick with the other two being blah.

I was one of the first 200k to pre-order so I should be getting mine in this batch but who knows when it will actually arrive.  I'm excited to just mess with it period.  There's so many cool things I'd like to try with it.

Potentially I could use this to power droves of Arduinos and basically make a PLC for a fraction of the price.

[BobA]

Looks like the competition is ramping up.

Intel unveils new Ultra Small

[kahlid74]

Looks like the competition is ramping up.

Intel unveils new Ultra Small

I read about those before.  Kicking stuff but the price tag of $100 they say is unrealistic.  The manufacturing process and computational power puts that unit in the 200 dollar and above price range when it's released.  The primary difference between it and Pi will be price.  You get what you pay for.

[Generic Eric]

I'd like to know more about how folks that plan on using this Raspberry Pi for emulators are going to hook up their joysticks and buttons.  Will the keywiz or iPac work?  I've only hooked the keywiz to a windows machine.

[kahlid74]

I'd like to know more about how folks that plan on using this Raspberry Pi for emulators are going to hook up their joysticks and buttons.  Will the keywiz or iPac work?  I've only hooked the keywiz to a windows machine.

That's the million dollar question dealing more with the distribution of Linux you use.  There are plenty of USB drivers available but the real question will be what compatibility will exist since these distros will be super slimmed down.

[eldiau]

Recent versions of both keywiz and iPac are presented to the system as USB keyboards and they will surely work on PI.
In many Raspberry PI videos over the Internet they are using USB keyboards as the PI doen't have any PS/2 port.

[MonMotha]

Anything adhering to a USB class standard fully and not requiring any special software to use is likely going to work.  The drivers required just aren't that big, so there's little reason to axe them.  This should include things like mass storage (flash drives, card readers, etc.), HID (keyboards, mice, etc.).  USB webcams (UVC class - aka "Vista Compatible") should work fine if they bother to include Video4Linux, which frankly isn't that big.

Where you'll run into trouble will be the typical vendor-specific stuff like printers, scanners, Wi-Fi dongles, etc.  These are things that have spotty support to begin with and that require somewhat substantial userspace software to help make them work (CUPS, SANE, etc.).  Many Wi-Fi dongles on Linux are supported by something called NDISWrapper that basically loads the Windows driver.  Unfortunately, this is essentially impossible on ARM since the Windows driver is x86 only.

I've done Linux on ARM for years.  In general, if your SoC is supported, once you get the kernel booting on it, lots of stuff "just works".  It was a somewhat funny experience to go from a system that frankly did NOTHING USEFUL (Kernel wasn't booting) to a login prompt with full Internet access, USB flash drives working, keyboard/mouse hooked up to an X server, etc. in about 15 minutes.  The big challenge is putting a usable desktop environment on it, if that concerns you.  Getting a command prompt with all the "guts" working is easy and surprisingly small (I've crammed it into 8MB pretty easily several times).

As for using it to replace a PLC, you can certainly replace the LOGIC side of it - it's MORE than capable.  Heck, a little 8-bit, 8MHz MCU is about as capable as your average PLC these days in terms of computation.  The reason PLCs cost so much is the bulletproof I/O on them.  Swaths of isolated, ESD, and AC line voltage fault tolerant I/O lines just aren't cheap to build.  It's a lot of hardware.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I have yet to see a commercial PC based arcade game that makes any real attempt to hide the fact that it's PC based.  Most of them show all the BIOS startup screens, and many of them even show the Linux bootup or Windows startup sequence.  I'm sure some games hide it, but most don't bother.

[AlanS17]

Is there even an ARM version of MAME?

[MonMotha]

Is there even an ARM version of MAME?

Even if there isn't, MAME is open-source.  As long as the programmers didn't make any x86 specific assumptions (and I believe they're careful not to, as a matter of project policy), you can just compile it for ARM.  Somebody surely will if it hasn't been done already.

Handily ARM has similar conventions to 32-bit Intel x86 (similar usual type sizes, endianness, etc.), so even if some assumptions were made that may be non-portable, it may just happen to be compatible regardless.  Most of the libraries MAME uses on Linux are known to build on ARM already.

Looks like Debian (which is what most embedded "full" distros are derived from - the other popular options being OE/Angstrom and buildroot which are not really "distributions" in the typical sense but more of a "distribution builder") doesn't have a package built for ARM, but it apparently builds for SPARC, which is about as different from x86 as it gets, so it's probably just a matter of somebody doing it.

[Generic Eric]

This is kinda relevant

Tutorial - Python - Space Invaders

[kahlid74]

Is there even an ARM version of MAME?

Yes, there is an ARM version of MAME but it's built of RiscOS so it's a no go for the Pi - http://caesar.logiqx.com/php/emulator.php?id=armmame

MAME is also available in the Debian repositories but withou XMame it fails.  This guy appears to have gotten XMAME to work on Debian Arm - http://old.nabble.com/cross-compile-X-mame-td10267580.html

Thanks for the clarifications MonMotha!

[eldiau]

MonMotha, thanks, you have been much clearer than me 

Apparently, compiling advmame 0.106 on Raspberry Pi is as easy as "./configure; make ;make install" :
http://1337technophile.blogspot.it/2012/03/easier-to-compile-advmame.html

and 700Mhz should be plenty of power for golden age arcade emulation

P.S.
I pre-ordered my PI too, can't wait to start hacking