Slashdot Mirror
DOOM Port for Digita OS Digital Cameras
Greg Hackmann writes "Those nuts behind the MAME and MESS ports for the Kodak Digita cameras have done it again. Now DOOM has been ported to the Kodak Digita OS, which powers a number of digital cameras. You can pick it up at the MAMED homepage if you're so inclined. Now, I like DOOM as much as anybody else, but I think this is just a little bit insane." I gotta get one of these cameras. I don't want to take any pictures, I just want to play.
By that logic, we should probably be spending all our time helping fight disease in Africa, saving the whales, and doing other incredibly useful things, but spend no time writing posts on slashdot. So, you don't seem to be following your own philosophy :).
But the real problem with that, imho, is that it's not easy to figure out what's the best thing to do. Porting doom to a camera gives valuable experience to the developers (which can be used later for beneficial software), and shows off the capacities of the camera, which can have many positive effects.
Also, you gave the example of OS design as something more useful. But the vast majority of free OSes are used by no one, and are no more useful than the doom port.
Imagine how much better the world would be if God had given you talent instead of arrogance. You go off and fight crime, I'll port video games. OK, superhero?
Back OT, I think stuff like this is great. Just shows how close we really are to a totally intigrated world. Kinda makes me wonder how many other gizmos are capable of such things. So, lets check the score, Linux on iOpener, hacks on the TiVo, Doom on digital cams... the list goes on. I'd like to see perhaps all of these such devices connected together. Bring your digital cam to grandma's, upload the pics to her iOpener, play a quick game of Doom or 2 while you're connected to it, and set the TiVo at home to record "Hackers" because you just saw a preview for it and you didn't know it was going to be on. Ah yes, I can't wait. Now, who said ports like this are useless?
--I assume full responsibility for my actions, except the ones that are someone else's fault.
We all need a little fun, and these people have chosen this as theirs. Sure, they could be doing something 'constructive', but so could we all. I'm wasting my time posting here on SlashDot for example, when I could be trying to cure cancer. One nice thing about living in a free society is that we can make these choices (and we can also lament them, as is your perfect right as well).
wonder, if we can have digital cameras with processors that can run Doom, and lots of RAM to store images, why can't we have a PDA with the same power?
I don't have experience with the Kodak Digita camera, but if it's anything like my Kodak DC260, the batteries have a lifespan measured in minutes if you use the display screen. I don't think you'd enjoy having to lug around a car battery to power your PDA for a full day.
You are painfully ignorant of the history of Linux and BSD, and are blaming Linus for something that is not his fault.
See A Brief History of FreeBSD for some of the gory details of how FreeBSD got started, out of personal and legal fights over the old 386BSD code in 1993. FreeBSD didn't get fully clear of the legal problems until December 1994.
Meanwhile, Linus started writing Linux in 1991, and he did so because there was no freely available Unix-like operating system for x86. For heavens sake, Red Hat had already been founded by the time FreeBSD had a clear legal status!
So don't blame Linus for not working on BSD. He did NOT fail us miserably. (By the way, I have nothing against BSD - I use FreeBSD at work, and have an OpenBSD machine at home.)
And what's with your attitude that people should do what's best for the community? What community? Who decides what's best for the community? You? A system like that really would deserve the label "communism" that Free Software has been unjustly stuck with.
Free Software has historically been about people writing software that "scratches their own itch". If somebody's itch is to play DOOM on their camera, who the hell gives anyone else the right to say they should be doing something else?
God forbid that we end up with an "Open Source Community" that tells people what to do.
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
Torrey Hoffman (Azog)
"HTML needs a rant tag" - Alan Cox
There are some cool games on Sega CD, which does not include Trivial pursuit. On my Genesis (2nd gen) with SegaCD (2nd gen) the answer was ALWAYS "true". No word on whether that's normal.
What I'm more upset about is the lack of a playable saturn emulator. The Sega Saturn was a kick-ass system, though it is considerably more complex than SegaCD. Then again, I have a chipped Saturn hooked up to my 25" trinitron, so I guess I'll do okay.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Leknor
http://Leknor.com/
(need to change my sig)
Leknor
http://Leknor.com
Leknor
http://Leknor.com
"So many idiots, so few comets"
I fully expect to hear about some legal or moral action group against the use of Doom with digital cameras.
It would be more important than the paper vs. bidet battle of the late 20's.
I find that these kind of things are part of a natural cycle. First, there is the prototypes, with little features at all. Then, there is the gizmo stage where all the companies put bells and whistles out, and people hack together completely unrelated items to be used with a given peice of hardware (this is where cameras are today). The third stage, is simplification, in which complicated features are hidden or removed, which is the stage PCs are in right now (*cough* netappliances *cough* emachines).
====
Crudely Drawn Games
Benchmarks for the various cameras are here
HP C500 Photosmart is best -- 33 fps!
You know, this kind of makes the 486 that I had 5 years ago seem really obsolete.
--
I wonder, if we can have digital cameras with processors that can run Doom, and lots of RAM to store images, why can't we have a PDA with the same power?
--
Look at how many great programming problems remain unsolved. People are dying for better graphics and video capabilities (particularly a video editor) for Linux, which is certainly a much more popular OS than Digita! Even in the realm of entertainment, there's a lot of better things to do (we still don't have a working Sega CD emulator!). And there's always distributed projects like SETI@Home, the hunt for prime numbers, and the RSA cracks.
It's sad that the most talented people are often the least willing to contribute to society. I hate to see brilliant kids behind hacks like this fritter away their time instead of committing to the important stuff. Imagine if Linus had spent his time porting Bubble Bobble to his digital calculator instead of coding the Linux kernel.
One of the responsibilities that comes along with being talented is using that talent in a responsible manner -- and this is a good example of a good way of not using talent to help people. No, there' nothing specifically wrong with porting DOOM to Digita OS, but it's hardly a project that's going to benefit anyone. It's like those old superhero comics, where Spiderman or the X-Men realize they can't ignore the powers they've been given and decide to fight crime.
How about porting MAME over to the devoted handheld units, like the Atari Lynx?
Something strange here. There's better resolution on these digital camera screens(and color) than on a typical PalmPilot, and they play games better.
Then again we have candy with artificial flavors, but Pledge with REAL lemon juice.
Your Web site is down, JJJ, as of 12:15 AM PST...
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I read the site, and they mention several times that ROMs are required to run the emulator... but surely this doesn't apply to Doom. So, my question is, does anyone know did they guy convert Doom to run natively on the cameras processor or is there some sort of thunking layer that coverts x86 opcodes to whatever processor is in one of those cameras?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Maybe not quite as cool but there is a CE version here for all you pocket PC guys
why so many people complain about how useful playing doom on a digital camera when you have a big powerfull computer. Sheesh people it is not like these people had a digital camera and not a computer and needed to play doom. They did it because it was a challenge, because it was interesting, and because they could (some of the same reasons I am building an 80" tall desk that sits next to my bunk bed). I would go so far a to say Geeks in general enjoy doing strange and unexpected things that don't make sense to a "normal" person.
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
I have a Kodak DC280 camera. Will the DOOM and MAME ports run on my DC280, or is there some technical difference between the 280 and the 290 that will prevent them from working on my camera?
I cannot imagine the battery life is > 1 hour but maybe I am wrong. It is really more practical for _taking pictures_ but it will be hard to convince the /. audience of that. I do think it is nifty that hardware is being exploited beyond its "intended use". Maybe one day all devices will be able to do everything (...wait, that would mean we would only need one device...perhaps with a "Don't Panic" in large-friendly letters on the front).
| Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Them Kodak cameras have been running MAME for almost a year now, as reported previously here on Slashdot. Good, now they've got the a direct port of the PC/Unix version of Doom.