Doom 2 seen running on an E-Ink display

[PoP]

To the ambitious Kindle developers that might have missed this: http://www.geek.com/articles/gadgets...splay-2011048/ based on a port of http://prboom.sourceforge.net/about.html to the PocketBook.

[B_Lizzard]

We could have things like this if SDL worked. I've tried SDL with DirectFB and SDL with the plain framebuffer backend and none do screen updates. I guess I'll have to add some e-ink specific code to the backends in order for them to work.

[DixieGal]

Ipad does it better.

[kranu]

Originally Posted by DixieGal

Ipad does it better.

Nintendo DS would work better than the iPad :P

[DixieGal]

Originally Posted by kranu

Nintendo DS would work better than the iPad :P

Probably so. But even though the gray tones in the video make it nearly impossible to see, it is still sort of cool to see the edges that they are squeezing from such limited graphics ability.

[axsdenied]

I was reading about EPD controllers and they seem to be able to easily do 50HZ refresh rates on e-paper screens:
http://vdc.epson.com/index.php?optio...=287&Itemid=99

Also, as shown by this demo, the slow refresh is possibly just a software thing and not the e-paper technology.

[kranu]

I'd rather have color than a screen that refreshes 50 times per second. You've gotta remember that E-Ink draws power every time the screen changes. Fast refresh will drain the battery like crazy.

[twobob]

[root@kindle games]# prboom -help

prboom v2.5.0 (http://prboom.sourceforge.net/)
I_SetAffinityMask: manual affinity mask is 1
M_LoadDefaults: Load system defaults.
default file: /home/root/.prboom/prboom.cfg
found /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
IWAD found: /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
PrBoom (built Sep 23 2012), playing: DOOM Shareware
PrBoom is released under the GNU General Public license v2.0.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
It comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. See the file COPYING for details.
V_Init: allocate screens.
found /usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad
D_InitNetGame: Checking for network game.
W_Init: Init WADfiles.
adding /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
adding /usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad
W_InitCache

M_Init: Init miscellaneous info.
R_Init: Init DOOM refresh daemon -
R_LoadTrigTables: Endianness...ok.
R_InitData: Textures Flats Sprites Tranmap build [........]
R_Init: R_InitPlanes R_InitLightTables R_InitSkyMap R_InitTranslationsTables R_InitPatches
P_Init: Init Playloop state.
I_Init: Setting up machine state.
I_InitSound: couldn't open audio with desired format
S_Init: Setting up sound.
S_Init: default sfx volume 8
HU_Init: Setting up heads up display.
I_InitGraphics: 640x480
I_UpdateVideoMode: 640x480 (fullscreen)
V_InitMode: using 8 bit video mode
I_SetRes: Using resolution 640x480
Couldn't set 640x480 video mode [No video mode large enough for 640x480]

Hmm a little bit more massage still required

[twobob]

[root@kindle root]# export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=dummy
[root@kindle root]# prboom

prboom v2.5.0 (http://prboom.sourceforge.net/)
I_SetAffinityMask: manual affinity mask is 1
M_LoadDefaults: Load system defaults.
default file: /home/root/.prboom/prboom.cfg
found /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
IWAD found: /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
PrBoom (built Sep 23 2012), playing: DOOM Shareware
PrBoom is released under the GNU General Public license v2.0.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
It comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. See the file COPYING for details.
V_Init: allocate screens.
found /usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad
D_InitNetGame: Checking for network game.
W_Init: Init WADfiles.
adding /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
adding /usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad
W_InitCache

M_Init: Init miscellaneous info.
R_Init: Init DOOM refresh daemon -
R_LoadTrigTables: Endianness...ok.
R_InitData: Textures Flats Sprites Tranmap build [........]
R_Init: R_InitPlanes R_InitLightTables R_InitSkyMap R_InitTranslationsTables R_InitPatches
P_Init: Init Playloop state.
I_Init: Setting up machine state.
I_InitSound: couldn't open audio with desired format
S_Init: Setting up sound.
S_Init: default sfx volume 8
HU_Init: Setting up heads up display.
I_InitGraphics: 640x480
I_UpdateVideoMode: 640x480 (fullscreen)
V_InitMode: using 8 bit video mode
I_SetRes: Using resolution 640x480
I_UpdateVideoMode: 0xe0000000, SDL buffer, direct access
ST_Init: Init status bar.
G_DoPlayDemo: playing demo with doom/doom2 v1.9 compatibility
P_GetNodesVersion: using normal BSP nodes
^CI_SignalHandler: Exiting on signal: signal 2
[root@kindle root]#


So it runs okay. Just need to fix up the fbcon stuff...

[twobob]

Progess!!


[root@kindle root]# export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=fbcon
[root@kindle root]# prboom -width 320 -height 200

prboom v2.5.0 (http://prboom.sourceforge.net/)
I_SetAffinityMask: manual affinity mask is 1
M_LoadDefaults: Load system defaults.
default file: /home/root/.prboom/prboom.cfg
found /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
IWAD found: /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
PrBoom (built Sep 23 2012), playing: DOOM Shareware
PrBoom is released under the GNU General Public license v2.0.
You are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.
It comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. See the file COPYING for details.
V_Init: allocate screens.
found /usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad
D_InitNetGame: Checking for network game.
W_Init: Init WADfiles.
adding /usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad
adding /usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad
W_InitCache

M_Init: Init miscellaneous info.
R_Init: Init DOOM refresh daemon -
R_LoadTrigTables: Endianness...ok.
R_InitData: Textures Flats Sprites Tranmap build [........]
R_Init: R_InitPlanes R_InitLightTables R_InitSkyMap R_InitTranslationsTables R_InitPatches
P_Init: Init Playloop state.
I_Init: Setting up machine state.
I_InitSound: couldn't open audio with desired format
S_Init: Setting up sound.
S_Init: default sfx volume 8
HU_Init: Setting up heads up display.
I_InitGraphics: 320x200
I_UpdateVideoMode: 320x200 (fullscreen)
V_InitMode: using 8 bit video mode
I_SetRes: Using resolution 320x200
I_UpdateVideoMode: 0xe0000000, SDL buffer, direct access
ST_Init: Init status bar.
G_DoPlayDemo: playing demo with doom/doom2 v1.9 compatibility
P_GetNodesVersion: using normal BSP nodes
^CI_SignalHandler: Exiting on signal: signal 2

So that's fbcon happy. time to add some fbflips methinks.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by twobob

... So it runs okay. Just need to fix up the fbcon stuff...

I could look at fbcon (RSN). Build instructions?

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by axsdenied

I was reading about EPD controllers and they seem to be able to easily do 50HZ refresh rates on e-paper screens:
http://vdc.epson.com/index.php?optio...=287&Itemid=99

Also, as shown by this demo, the slow refresh is possibly just a software thing and not the e-paper technology.

That 50 Hz is partial non-overlapping region update rate. You can have multiple simultaneous updates in progress, but if they overlap, the get queued up serially. Each update can take up to 300 msec according to the docs. I "overclock" that to 130 msec but not waiting until "ready" before starting another update. Going faster than that causes intolerable artifacts, unless you do region management yourself to prevent overlapping a new region update with a region already in progress.

The K4/K5 use an EPD controller built into the freescale i.Mx508 Soc, which can process 20 simultaneous update reqions, as I recall. The K3 uses an external EPD controller chip that is slower and cannot handle as many simultaneous eink updates.

The overlapping region management in the eink driver code is a bit complex. Interestingly, the K4 booted from main emulates K3 eink in a HAL layer, but when booted from diags it uses K5-style eink management. Of course, that COULD change with a firmware update...

[twobob]

we also have an xorg.conf

which should fill us with some confidence.

# Automatically generated by makexconfig
Section "Serverflags"
Option "DontZap" "true"
Option "DontVTSwitch" "true"
Option "DontZoom" "true"
Option "BlankTime" "0"
Option "StandbyTime" "0"
Option "SuspendTime" "0"
Option "OffTime" "0"
Option "NoPM" "true"
Option "IgnoreABI" "true"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "EinkPanel"
DisplaySize 91 121
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Kscreen"
Device "eink"
Monitor "EinkPanel"
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Visual "StaticGray"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "eink"
Driver "imx"
Option "fbdev" "/dev/fb0"
Option "FormatEPDC" "Y8"
Option "Rotate" "CW"
Option "NoAccel" "true"
Option "BackingStore" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "whitney-button"
Driver "evdev"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/event2"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "AlwaysCore"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "zforce"
Driver "multitouch"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/event3"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "AlwaysCore"
Option "AccelerationProfile" "-1"
Option "AccelerationScheme" "none"
Option "AccelerationNumberator" "1"
Option "AcceleartionDenominator" "1"
Option "AccelerationThreshold" "1"
Option "XkbRules" "evdev"
Option "XkbModel" "evdev"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Kindle"
Screen "Kscreen"
InputDevice "whitney-button"
InputDevice "zforce"
EndSection

[twobob]

Well. The Proboom build is part of the buildroot stuff. Without actually just GITting down a copy the extracation of the interim build files may well be meaningless. As the targets will likely be missing. However this is a completed and working build for the 5
(I included them anyway for your delectation or extraction)

The SDL build actually builds completely unpatched (I had a look in the BR makes)
I'll include my last (as-is OOTB build) here for your perusal.

I think the SDL page flip stuff you gave me just needs shuffling in the right spot. Im looking in src/video/fbcon/SDL_fbvideo.c and .h as a starting place

/* Update for double-buffering, if we can */
if ( flags & SDL_DOUBLEBUF ) {
if ( vinfo.yres_virtual == (height*2) ) {
current->flags |= SDL_DOUBLEBUF;
flip_page = 0;
flip_address[0] = (char *)current->pixels;
flip_address[1] = (char *)current->pixels+
current->h*current->pitch;
this->screen = current;
FB_FlipHWSurface(this, current);
this->screen = NULL;
}
}

Looks a likely recipient of love.

[twobob]

[root@kindle root]# SDL_MOUSEDEV=/dev/input/event3 SDL_VIDEODRIVER=fbcon prboom -width 592 -height 800 -file /mnt/us/usr/share/games/doom/prboom.wad -iwad /mnt/us/usr/share/games/doom/doom1.wad -nosound -nosfx -nomusic -noaccel -save /mnt/us -fullscreen -nomonsters

would be an easy one-liner commandline.