I've been learning Godot and working on a game with my son. Recently we made a DIY console with an Orange Pi 4 to play it. Here's a write-up and guide for anyone interested.
Cheers!
I've been learning Godot and working on a game with my son. Recently we made a DIY console with an Orange Pi 4 to play it. Here's a write-up and guide for anyone interested.
Cheers!
A fine article with some very good recommendations. Having played around with single board computers before, I definitely appreciate your experiences with figuring out what OS to use. This can be a big time saver when someone else has already done the research and testing.
I truly lament the current state of Raspberry Pi availability. I can't blame you for going with the Orange Pi instead. The Raspberry is a much more established and well documented platform, but the current state of actually acquiring one is abysmal. The whole point of the board originally was to have a ubiquitous, low-cost educational platform. It's insanely hard to justify spending $100+ USD on something that by design is supposed to be available for $35.
For controllers, I personally recommend getting something from the 8bitdo line. While using older console controllers can be a viable option, it often introduces technical hurdles that can add to the frustration. Pretty much all of 8bitdo's current line-up of Bluetooth controllers have universal pairing for Switch, PC, and Android. They are also cheaper than most current-gen official console controllers. An especially good option if you don't currently have any bluetooth controllers available.
I might have to pull out one of my existing Raspberry Pis and see if I can get something similar working. I just finished up a Godot script for integer scaling pixel graphics, a feature that would pair very well with a low-spec machine. And I've never had any problems exporting Android projects from Godot, it's a good option for deployment of this nature.
richard-kain I'm still a big RPi fan. But it wasn't just the availability. It was also the lack of Godot 4 exporters. Hopefully that will get resolved this year. It might even become an officially supported platform. Either way, it's not bad to have multiple competing ARM SBCs that can be used to make Godot consoles.