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To Lee or Whomever:

I have several questions, that I'm sure others have as well, that might be keeping a few of us from making the jump to writing the Netbook games / apps.

1.) Do we need a special version of DBPro / Dark GDK?

2.) Any Special Compiler Options we have to set ahead of time?

3.) What are the netbooks 3D Capabilities, such as PhysX / shaders?

4.) Default System Specs: Base memory, Color Depth, Atom CPU Speed?

5.) In Respect to the #4, how will those specs relate to # of Polys, Lighting and Physx and Shadows, do we have to lower the number of models & shrink the overall level size?

6.) Are there any filesystem concerns?

7.) Sound File Support: mp3/ogg/wav what are the limits or the netbooks capabilities as far as audio?

8.) Interface / Controls - Should we stick to KB & Touchpad or will the target netbooks also have the tablet screen interfaces?

9.) Multiplayer? Network / Local / Wireless / Bluetooth or something completely different?

10.) Can we use pretty much all DBPro / GDK Plugins? If not, which won't work well on a netbook?

11.) Most importantly: Any ideas how we could emulate a netbook, are there any emulators, or can we get by with just setting our apps screen resolution to 1024x600 and testing on a lower performance laptop?

12.) Well I lied, this is the most important one.. Do we have any netbook examples showing an example 3D Game, with levels, models and such, so we can see how say for instance a Cartography shop level loaded using the special loading code from the forums, and the enemies created from either DirectX Models / or DBO objects, say have up to 4 of those in some rooms of the level, and of course a Model for the main character, since I am thinking mainly about a 3rd Person Camera styled game, something like a shooter, or maybe if the system can't run it fast enough, switching to an iso / overhead 3/4 view and shrink down all the models, and go with box rooms with DirectX models loaded for items, I plan on using PhysX for the Gravity / Jumping / Shooting and Dark AI for the enemy AI stuff.

So I guess the real question is: I know there is not an example showing all that, but do we have something, I don't care if it is simply loading a Cart Shop level, and just throwing cubes in for players, enemies to see that it works, and doesn't slow to a 3 FPS Crawl speed. Something showing how good a 3D Game works on a netbook, meaning speed test of spinning cubes and stuff, too see if it is too much, also do you think the Cartography shop level loaded and displayed, with a main character model and enemy models, loaded and animating etc.. will actually run at a decent speed, or should I just go another direction right from the get go, like simply making Direct X Based modeled rooms, with just a few items, and maybe some texture baked details, and sprites, that is if netbook can do bump mapping shaders and transparent and lit sprites, and don't have each room connected, but load or change rooms when the player opens the door, I'm just grasping here, I know the game i want to do, I just don't know if a netbook with an atom processor can handle it or not..

So in short, please help answer these questions, and any / all samples or examples on how to do some of this stuff, in a way that will be quick enough for a netbook, or even if it is just a simple example showing the performance of a netbook app running in full blown 3D with models / CShop maps, the whole thing with physX, maybe some screen shots showing it running, with FPS and how the screen looks, with examples of how big the level is, and how many poly's the models have, so we have some sort of idea what were working with, golly, I wish I had a netbook to use during all this..

Thanks in advance for any and all help, and I hope other users will jump in and also ask other questions I forgot to mention or didn't think of, and that this becomes a catch all end all be all topic for the game developers for the netbooks for the contest as well as just plain developer notes..

Thanky, Ciao' 4 Now,

StOrM3

7-10:

Netbooks are just smaller, less powerful laptops, they have the same capabilities, but just at a lower speed.

@StOrM3

Seems that you have a lot of questions concerning netbooks. Most of them I would like to see answerred too. But, maybe you should have posted this in the Intel competitions thread? Maybe a mod can put it there.

I don't have an answer to all your questions, but as for what kind of games you can play on a netbook, or how well they perform, look at this (you'll be amazed):

Netbook Games

Netbook video

Of course, it all depends on the notebook, but you can play some really amazing games on them, I think.

Cheers

Most of the answers are in the Intel Competition forum.

It would seem though that most of those games, are very very old, version 1 / 2 type engines, definitely no shading, no dynamic lights and shadows, as the guy who tried Halo states he had to turn off all the shading and lighting, etc.. So I'm also going to assume, that it means a big NO on the use of PhysX and Dark Physics plugin.. Oh well I guess that would have made things too easy..

PhysX works best when the hardware is there to support it. Considering that all the Netbooks seem to have Intel graphics, there is no hardware support for PhysX. You could still run it in software, but the 1GHz (typically) CPU isn't going to be up to the task.

Sparky's DLL and a little math works quite well though.