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ledow · 07-10-2013, 10:10 AM

Hi,

I just picked up a Kobo Mini - ridiculously cheap and I thought it would be quite hackable. I'm not disappointed!

I was looking at porting a piece of software that I'm familiar with - Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection - to it. It seems a good match for the touchscreen, limited colours, slow screen updates, etc.

I've previously ported this to the GP2X which runs on an ARM chip, so I'm hoping to reuse most of my work but it's the display that I'm finding a pain.

Do we have any way to refresh / draw direct to it reliably across all Kobo models yet? I've looked into the files on my device and it seems to think it's a 16-bit display and framebuffer (when I dump the contents of fb0), but I'm assuming that's just a variation on published information which says the Kobo tends to give 4- or 8-bit framebuffers.

I don't mind interfacing direct with the framebuffer for now, and calling pickel for screen updates, but I'd like to move to a more integrated solution eventually. Do we have any information that way yet?

Also, I'm going to be re-using my SDL-based backend. Probably, initially, I'll just disable the SDL graphics functions and use it as a pixel-shifter on a dummy framebuffer, but I was wondering if there is any SDL library available for the device yet, or will I have to get compiling? I don't need video-access or acceleration, but I just use the SDL_gfx library a lot in my port of the puzzles collection along with various SDL_Surfaces as the backend storage for screen images. At worst, I'll just compile SDL in a "dummy" mode and use it to generate bitmaps that I'll throw at pickel's "showimage".

Apart from that, anything else I should know? I have ARM-compatible code, I assume tslib is available for touch screen interfacing (or, at worst, probing the Linux input devices directly), I don't need sound or fast graphics updates, I have plenty of storage, it seems, so I'm hoping it'll be quite a nice port.

Is there any information about getting a link to an executable into the menu of the Kobo so it can be run directly? I've seen it done with a "book" that ran an executable.

(Also, did anyone else spot that in the SD card there are other games for the menu? My UK WHSmith Kobo only shows Sudoku and Chess but there's Linux .so's in there for Boggle and all sorts).

07-10-2013, 10:10 AM	#1
ledow Junior Member Posts: 2 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jul 2013 Device: Kobo Mini	SDL and/or FB access for a ported game Hi, I just picked up a Kobo Mini - ridiculously cheap and I thought it would be quite hackable. I'm not disappointed! I was looking at porting a piece of software that I'm familiar with - Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection - to it. It seems a good match for the touchscreen, limited colours, slow screen updates, etc. I've previously ported this to the GP2X which runs on an ARM chip, so I'm hoping to reuse most of my work but it's the display that I'm finding a pain. Do we have any way to refresh / draw direct to it reliably across all Kobo models yet? I've looked into the files on my device and it seems to think it's a 16-bit display and framebuffer (when I dump the contents of fb0), but I'm assuming that's just a variation on published information which says the Kobo tends to give 4- or 8-bit framebuffers. I don't mind interfacing direct with the framebuffer for now, and calling pickel for screen updates, but I'd like to move to a more integrated solution eventually. Do we have any information that way yet? Also, I'm going to be re-using my SDL-based backend. Probably, initially, I'll just disable the SDL graphics functions and use it as a pixel-shifter on a dummy framebuffer, but I was wondering if there is any SDL library available for the device yet, or will I have to get compiling? I don't need video-access or acceleration, but I just use the SDL_gfx library a lot in my port of the puzzles collection along with various SDL_Surfaces as the backend storage for screen images. At worst, I'll just compile SDL in a "dummy" mode and use it to generate bitmaps that I'll throw at pickel's "showimage". Apart from that, anything else I should know? I have ARM-compatible code, I assume tslib is available for touch screen interfacing (or, at worst, probing the Linux input devices directly), I don't need sound or fast graphics updates, I have plenty of storage, it seems, so I'm hoping it'll be quite a nice port. Is there any information about getting a link to an executable into the menu of the Kobo so it can be run directly? I've seen it done with a "book" that ran an executable. (Also, did anyone else spot that in the SD card there are other games for the menu? My UK WHSmith Kobo only shows Sudoku and Chess but there's Linux .so's in there for Boggle and all sorts).