Dedicated hardware

[vlish]

I wanted to play crawl on the go (like during commute), so I built my own little portable computer with full keyboard. This is a second version, the first one was even uglier . Still rough at the edges (sometimes litearally), but good enough for its intended purpose.

So, I just want to brag . Check it out, let me know what you think. Anyone else doing this? Is there a better way?

P.S. I do prefer ASCII. I do like offline play (and my commute involves tunnels).

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[Siegurt]

Put in a coin slot that you have to pay for every time you want to start a new game

[Shtopit]

Really, really nice Does it only play Crawl, or did you add other functions?

Put in a coin slot that you have to pay for every time you want to start a new game

Oh yea, that would be so cool! You know that whole thing, where to spare money you should put a few coins everyday in a jar, and when you have enough you can buy that thing you would otherwise have immediately bought, in spite of not needing it right away?

[zedzed]

On that note ... what else have/do people use to play Crawl when on the move? My laptop is just a bit too bulky on the train/bus.

My issue is that I need a full keyboard with the NumPad keys ... I just cannot get the hang of the alpha keys for movement, and every time I try I end up moving in the wrong way, and we all know that one false move in Crawl can be fatal

[vlish]

Really, really nice Does it only play Crawl, or did you add other functions?

It is a full-blown raspberry pi computer running linux, so it can do a lot more. However, I use it for crawl only. That was kind of the point of the device

[vlish]

On that note ... what else have/do people use to play Crawl when on the move? My laptop is just a bit too bulky on the train/bus.

That was exactly my reason for building the thing - the laptop is too bulky. I know someone created an android fork but I believe it requires a rooted phone/tablet. Besides that, I am not sure I would like virtual on-screen keyboard with crawl.

My issue is that I need a full keyboard with the NumPad keys ... I just cannot get the hang of the alpha keys for movement, and every time I try I end up moving in the wrong way, and we all know that one false move in Crawl can be fatal

Before I built the device from the original post (which btw has the numpad) I played crawl on a laptop and had the same problem. I ended up using number keys (the top linear row) for movement - it was not a hard or long process to get used to them.

[vlish]

Put in a coin slot that you have to pay for every time you want to start a new game

Permadeath means I will have to lug around a lot of coins which would defeat the purpose of a light-weight device

[chequers]

Very cool. What is the battery life like? What did the build cost you? Does the system just boot up and automatically launch crawl?

[MisterPersonMan]

Cool! How much did the components cost? How much can it store?

[vlish]

Very cool. What is the battery life like? What did the build cost you? Does the system just boot up and automatically launch crawl?

Thanks, the most expensive component is screen which is ~$40 on Amazon and ~$20 on Alibaba. This particular build utilizes a quite expensive ($20?) Adafruit boost/charge controller because I had one at hand; but I also tried a dirt-cheap Alibaba controller and it works equally well. Then there is a $5-10 raspberry pi, the keyboard and various small/cheap components. So, maybe $40–$80 depending on the components?..

As for battery life, I use a 2500 mAh lipo battery which lasts for about 3 hours for me, but there is a lot of free space so I could put a bigger battery if needed. In fact, for one of the early experiments I used two beefy 18650 batteries and measured ~30 hours of continuous idling iirc.

The system takes a minute or two to boot up and launches crawl automatically. The start up time could be optimized but I never bothered.

[vlish]

Cool! How much did the components cost? How much can it store?

See my reply above for rough cost estimate: $40-80.

As for storage, assuming you mean "disk" space, it is whatever microsd you put into it. I happen to use a 16Gb one, which is an overkill for the task.