Newsletter #3 - September / October 2018 (Patreon)

This newsletter came in a bit late / early, depending on how you see it, and I apologize for that, life's been busy and both new and old projects are keeping me occupied.

First, as a clarification for those that want to see more projects for GPD Windows-based products again, I'm sorry to tell you that my silicon lottery for GPD has been a rather awful one so far.

Up until now I haven't had a single product (from their Windows-based product line) that didn't fail / break on me during, what I'd call, lightweight usage.

My GPD Win 1 is fully defunct to the point of no longer booting (not even a BIOS screen), my GPD Win 2 had several issues over the last 3 months that I've repaired (on my own cost, obviously) over and over again, starting from the LCD that broke (lines in the screen), to a bad ribbon cable, to it frying my 512GB SSD, and finally, back to a bad ribbon cable again, for which, as of now, I was unable to source a replacement, given that GPD stopped replying to me via E-mail (amazing customer support right there).

Until I can source replacement parts, GPD Win related projects will (sadly) remain on ice, I will gladly accept help from any and all of you if you can somehow source me said ribbon cable. (Get in touch via direct message!)

The GPD XD line of devices, while having their own set of flaws, have faired a lot better so far, with no visible or noticeable damages other than the hinge slowly loosening up (let's revisit this issue a few more months down the road to see how bad it really can get).

But let's get back to what has been keeping me busy this month and a half since the last newsletter.

As you might have seen in the previous teaser post, I've started working on a manga reader application for the Nintendo Switch, which is finally nearing completion.

Since that teaser post I've not only managed to rework the GUI (thanks to a friend of mine named Manlibear lending a hand), but also added full hardware acceleration support, pinch-to-zoom & panning support as well as several bug fixes and optimizations.

The only (IMO necessary) features missing at this point in time are a bookmark and search feature, which will be the focus of the coming month among a few other things.

Next to this, I've also started preparatory work for a second Nintendo Switch homebrew, which is meant to add Bluetooth headset support to the console, more information about this will be provided as I make progress.

And last but not least... I had to format my computer, which forced me to recreate some of my GPD XD+ building environment, things are a bit slow on that end because of it, but don't worry, I backed up all the required materials and simply need to organize all of it in a cleaner manner before continuing that branch of my work.

The next GPD XD+ related work will be another bugfix / optimization build of CleanROM, which should address all (or at least most) of the bug reports I've discovered on Dingoonity and / or have been sent to me via direct messages on Patreon.

As always, I will keep you guys posted, and once again, thank you all for your continued support making all of this possible in the first place.

If there is anything you'd fancy me working on, or if you find a bug in my work that's worth mentioning, please feel free to send me a message.

Until the next time!

- Black-Seraph