Have fun and utility with the camera

[master883]

Hello, I welcome the very possibility of playing games with the camera. And I must say that my friends were amazed.

Currently in beta chdk for A530 there are only 2 games, I would be very grateful if you could in the future find more games, including scripts, not to the heaviest chdk. An example would be snake (old game for nokia phones).

Of course I know that the camera canon is not a symbian system, but may be useful applications such as calculators, unit converters. As is useful, for example, the timetable. If in the next release (or scripts) there will be many utilities to help photographers in their daily work, I think that cameras canon, and chdk not have equal and will be among the leaders, such as symbian mobile phones are in their field.

I greet all and thank you for your attention

[Barney Fife]

Deleted

[amatos]

chess would be just amazing! I love chess and I play regularly, but playing against the camera would be (speachless)....

[Barney Fife]

Deleted

[wontolla]

chess would be just amazing! I love chess and I play regularly, but playing against the camera would be (speachless)....

I guess there is not enough memory in a camera to run a game like chess. Even if we use an 8Gb SD card as the game memory.

"The Minimax Game Tree is used for programming computers to play games in which there are two players taking turns to play moves...the tree can get very big with only a few moves, and to look even just five moves ahead can quickly overwhelm a simple computer" Cprogramming.com: Your Resource for C++ Programming

The first chess playing computers were no match for humans. 20 years latter, improved Artificial Intelligence algorithms couldn't, yet, beat a human. But then computers started to have lots and lots of memory, now the best human players don't dare to play against a machine.

Humans are no longer the best chess players in the planet, but they are the best at building champion chess playing computers!!!

Back to topic: Memory, it's all about memory. (At least with computers, no offence to chess players).

[amatos]

well, there is always yahoo games for chess

[PhyrePhoX]

just counted the rough size of sokoban & reversi: about 1800 lines of code. thats alot, more than most of any others modules's sources of chdk. in my guess, games will play a really small tiny role in future releases of chdk, and i'm pretty sure at least sokoban will be deleted from trunk soon because of lack of memory (it's level database is huge). the poll POLL: Most useful features does reflect my opinion as well.
on the other hand, i had snake in my personal chdk-to-do-list anyways, since it should be no resource hog and easy to write.but it definitly has no priority, sorry to disappoint you. first of all, chdk's purpose is to take photography to another level,  not games & gimmicks

[GrAnd]

just counted the rough size of sokoban & reversi: about 1800 lines of code. thats alot, more than most of any others modules's sources of chdk. in my guess, games will play a really small tiny role in future releases of chdk, and i'm pretty sure at least sokoban will be deleted from trunk soon because of lack of memory (it's level database is huge).

Reversi is 419 lines and sokoban is 336 lines of code. The most code is sokoban's levels data. But it can be at least packed or separated to an external file.

[PhyrePhoX]

Well i counted the level data as code,it eats space,no matter what

[whim]

Ah ! This has turned into an interesting and fundamental discussion - reminds me of computer history, with fixed, non-expandable RAM ...

GrAnd
....But it can be at least packed or separated to an external file.

That will provide some 'breathing space' for the memory load, but what about the future ? As more and more people come
up with usefull and/or nice additions, problems will most likely increase.

It seems inevitable in the long run, that some mechanism must be implemented to load executable code dynamically;
that would require heavy duty ARM assembly coding (just guessing - far beyond my reach anyway).

In a simpler approach, games and/or other non-photo related functions could be integrated into a stripped CHDK core, if necessary (memorywise) on a per game/function basis.
The stripped core would contain only the boot and the gui functions (that is, all photo related stuff stripped out).
The main 'photo CHDK' would then be able to boot straight into each of these alternative bins/firs.
As a beneficial side effect, you could of course also boot into other CHDK versions/configurations.

wim
 

[PhyrePhoX]

yes, that is a good idea, i like that alot. so, next feature implementation should be the possibility to load different flavors of chdk onto one sd card and make them "switchable". would be a great benefit for all.

[master883]

Ah ! This has turned into an interesting and fundamental discussion - reminds me of computer history, with fixed, non-expandable RAM ...

GrAnd
....But it can be at least packed or separated to an external file.

That will provide some 'breathing space' for the memory load, but what about the future ? As more and more people come
up with usefull and/or nice additions, problems will most likely increase.

It seems inevitable in the long run, that some mechanism must be implemented to load executable code dynamically;
that would require heavy duty ARM assembly coding (just guessing - far beyond my reach anyway).

In a simpler approach, games and/or other non-photo related functions could be integrated into a stripped CHDK core, if necessary (memorywise) on a per game/function basis.
The stripped core would contain only the boot and the gui functions (that is, all photo related stuff stripped out).
The main 'photo CHDK' would then be able to boot straight into each of these alternative bins/firs.
As a beneficial side effect, you could of course also boot into other CHDK versions/configurations.

wim
 

Smells like linux, my dream.
Making something like that would be as pioneers of the revolution of free digital photography. No joke, I can imagine the effect that would have a similar development. If we give at the simple cameras (limited origin) tools with functions that are at levels high-end (like mine A530), all manufacturers should take note of the need to improve and strengthen the offering software, otherwise it would be too forward canon. Imagine that you with an entry-level canon from 100euro you can take raw, zebra functions, games,an indipendent new operating system, programs like as symbian (I remember in my old Nokia6600 everything works with 6MB of RAM). Is a killer application in the world of cameras.

What has been done already, it is already a tremendous step forward. Time ago I bought a small camera, and with chdk I discovered the actual potential that this gives me. I was undecided whether to buy a camera better than other brand, but certainly rest with Canon for life, and chdk allows me to do things that I could do only with high-end cameras. Is not all that fantastic? It is like comparing winVista with linux. Perhaps you have the keys for revolution in the world of software cameras, more competitive and functional, free from commercial strategy and major producers, especially for certain segments of the market,   based only on the real capacity optical and mechanical properties of the product.

   
This is true freedom, but not as symbian such as Linux.

Do not worry if discuss whether it is better games or raw, we are only beginning, there will be a dedicated sdk and anyone propose their own software, gpl or not.

Let me know what you think, but we must not forget that everything is the result of free people offering their skills to improve things (like eMule), we should thank them  instead of complaining about the Bugs.

Meanwhile i'm going to polish the magic button, which I had never used before (alt button).

thanks for all.

[Barney Fife]

Deleted

[wontolla]

Include Packman in the poll. I bet it's not a tuff game to implement. One of these days CHDK will play WAV files with sounds of
ghosts beeing eaten.

[amatos]

that would be very nice