XGameStation and Hydra

By: Derek Yu

On: June 26th, 2007

I think a lot of would-be game developers have heard the hallowed name of Andre LaMothe, author of “Tricks of the Game-Programming Gurus,” “Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus,” and “The Black Art of Seducing Women Through Game Programming.” (Followed quickly thereafter by a less popular 3-page pamphlet titled “The Not-So-Black Art of Seducing Men Through Game Programming.”)

In 2005 (or so), Andre released XGameStation, an old-school “a do-it-yourself video game system,” created for engineers to tinker with to learn the ins and outs of hardware and software development for games.

Jump forward to a few months ago, and apparently Andre has put out a new console, called Hydra, that’s more focused on software development and geared toward novices.

Now that’s kinda nifty! (Goes back to writing inefficient code that gobbles up memory the way that dude from Stephen King’s 1996 horror movie Thinner gobbles up pie.)

(Source: Sensible Erection [NSFWish])

Posted in Developers, Homebrew

http://rav.realitybytes.tk ravuya

Bollocks! Gobbled my comment…

Of particular note is the Propeller chip that’s the guts of the machine; Parallax has had this baby out for a while and it’s an amazing piece of hardware.

http://parallax.com/propeller/

A good introduction for people who want to write multithreaded applications on tight hardware; SPIN is also a really cool language.

Also check out the Propeller Demo Board at the link above; it’s a more electronics-oriented board that has mostly the same functionality and jacks as the HYDRA board.
MedO

That chip sure looks sweet.

I’m in a microcontroller course at university, and we’re basically trying to create a tiny game console from a chip of the ATmega-line from Atmel. These are 8-bit, up to 20 Mhz, and the one we’re currently using only has 1kb of RAM and 16kb of program memory.

Using a chip like the Propeller instead would solve A LOT of problems, but I guess it would also take some of the fun out of it, because it would be a little too easy :-)
oldskool

So.. it’s like a computer?.. with a joystick?.. that you can program?.. to play simple games?.. in BASIC?

That’s so cool! Why didn’t anyone ever think of that before?

At least it’s got a cool name: “Hydra”!! At least it’s not called “Apple ][” or “Atari 800” or “Commodore 64” — none of those names sound nearly as innovative.
http://www.the2bears.com the2bears

Makes me feel like playing around with the embedded Java chips we make at work… for no other reason than “just because” :)

I hadn’t seen this hardware before, but it’s pretty intriguing.

Bill