Posting here, as suggested in the How to Register thread, to show I'm not a spambot.

I'm here hoping to get some help with the MagPi articles.

Ok all you Beagle owners, I'm sorry its an old board but tbh I wasn't very impressed when I 1st bought it, aside from having eMMC on it, its a really slow and tired board, at least for graphics, I'm sure its still quite awesome for maker projects with so many I/O options on it.

But I've fired up my old one, now that I have a bit more info around me..with only a single core 1Ghz system with "3D acceleration" I'm not expecting too much here.
But this is a popular board and I'm sure some of you have them.. so lets see how it does. (After a long wait for an update to occur)

I don't actually have a Fire version but given the only difference is a network RJ45 connector I'm going to assume it will produce the same result. I connected wireless and it handled that fine, but quite slow. But in terms of graphical results I have to say there's nothing to report.


Its not really a game board, having only one USB and HDMI its hard to imagine it would have any use. Its Debian as supplied by Friendly Arm is  quite a limited version with low res 720 HDMI .Its also no longer in production so the OS isn't being updated, and even Armbian don't have it, but one of the other S5P4418 builds might work.

But it is a functioning system, when all said and done its another mini  quad core S5P4418 with a Mali 400, but only 1 core I think. I could install libs and get building but just wasn't able to get a screen to display, and even without the screen it was reporting painfully low update rates, so I think its a no go as a graphics target. But fun as a deadless device for some non graphical usage.

I am going to try a Nano2AFire image which has OpenGLES2.0 support, not sure if it will work any better, but it is a more uptodate OS for the same CPU and though the board has some differences in layout it seems to have the same functions (famous last words)! The download links all seem to go to the same S54518 support page, I'll let you know.

As you might notice we get a lot of spam bots trying to log on to the forum, a few do get through, but I am doing a pretty good job of keeping them out. But even so, up to 20 applications a day are recieved from spam bots, which are booted mostly before they get a chance to post.

Registration here is easy, just log in, register and wait for your email.....which will never come... I've disabled the emails because the spam bots were automatically responding and gaining access.

So all access is down to me checking your IP is not listed on a spam check site, and approving.

It is also helpful if you post a notice on the open parts of the forums to verify you are indeed who you claim to be.. Just a hello, and why you are here is enough to ensure a smooth ok on your application. Even without a post I will validate your request within a day or 2 and feel free to come back and check if you have access.. Then please post a hello notice or ask any questions you might have.

If you have registered and not been given access after a few days, please just post here in the open sections, it will be moderated, but I will see the thread, and activate you.

All part of the service, keeping this forum spam free.

Not an actual error but a change of content from the book so best to list here.

Most of the projects available for download are including lib files where needed, this tends to make them self contained but also rather large. GLM in particular is a large repetitive download on each project.

So over time I am going to be assuming that Bullet, STB and GLM are reinstalled on your targets using git clone, (see details how to install here), for Raspberry that will put the dirs in.. /Home/Pi

For non raspberry systems it will got into /Home/XXX where x is your user name when you logged on.

This will reduce the download size of the projects but may, just may, result in some incompatibility of projects expecting specific versions of the GLM (in particular as its live) libs. I will try to maintain regular updates of the libs and resolve changes as I find them, and note them here.

I've avoided doing a full switch to the 3B+ for a while now, not because it worried me at all, but the MagPi articles and occasional mails I get from book readers tend to be more related to Raspberry 3B with Jessie. My old 3B allowed me to keep a hybrid updated Jessie/with stretch libs on board so I could test code. The 3B is pure Stretch. 
 
But I've now updated fully to the 3B+ and enjoying the little extra kick of speed both on builds and execution as well as debug with the faster ethernet.

I don't really anticipate any issues with this transition, the system is pretty much identical, mostly I'll have problems with tools or templates I had stored on the old machine and now have to replicate on the new. If I get people having issues with older code I can still hook up the 3B

onward and upward.

Now we know how to speed things up, lets get retro and fill the screen.
Discuss the separation of logic and display and work out a way to scroll.

Also lets make a start on using some fonts on our system to display text

Time to think about our baddies and the basics of a state system to give them some logic.
Also we're starting to push our systems a bit, what can we do to make it better, delve into the workings of the GPU, thats what?

I've been getting a little behind on updates here, but I'm starting to catch up.

Issue 71 is now up and ready for you to play with, animation and interaction with our maps now take centre stage

Unless you know how to use git on your Raspberry, the article where STB was first installed doesn't make it totally clear how to do it. The "what you need" insert provides you with a shortcut which might not make sense.

The simplest way is to enter this in your terminal

git clone https://github.com/nothings/stb.git

and voila you will now have an STB dir in your /Home/Pi directory

likewise for GLM 
git clone https://github.com/g-truc/glm.git

Installs GLM, in the /Home/Pi directory ready to use (this is a much bigger download though and not all is needed but best to have it all)

Bullet is installed on your terminal window with
sudo apt-get install libbullet-dev

One very tiny point to consider with git cloning, is that unlike an apt-install. The files you place on your computer do not update automatically on an apt-get update/upgrade cycle when the libs update.
Glm in particular updates from time to time, though stb is pretty much finished with.  (oh no its not, its had a couple of small updates)
So you may, have occasions when working with other people, where you have different versions of the libs. Be careful to check what others are using, and update this from time to time with another git pull and try to always use the latest version (unless, as can happen, you find the latest version does not work with your code)

Edit... Also if you are using a Raspberry 4 or an X11 render buffer, we need to change the resolution to be less than 1080p as most MP2 and MP4 GPU systems can't quite handle full screen games at that res. Raspberry's other than the 4B can resize their display buffer to the screen res allowing smaller render buffers to keep the speed up but for X11 a different method is needed. I've found a nice library that allows us to do that, and is installed with

sudo apt-get install libxrandr-dev

Do this after you install your mesa libs. The new graphics.h/cpp files will shortly have a change resolution function to set and reset resolution on X11 systems. you also need to include xrandr as a library in your cofiguration files.
Of course you can also choose to set your SBC up in a lower graphic resolution using whatever built in display change systems you have, such as xrandr on the commandline, but then your system has to stay at that resplution. Your call.