Slashdot Mirror

Besides, most games take up at least one full CD.

99% of that is datafiles. The executable code for each platform generally takes up less than 4 MB. Stuffing FreeBSD, Linux PPC, Linux x86, Windows, and Carbon Mac binaries (which will run on Mac OS 8.5 and up) should cover most bases and not take too much space away from the game. So you'll have to bump each image's JPEG level down a notch. So you'll have to bump your game music .ogg files from 192 kbps VBR to 188 kbps VBR and decrease the height of your cut-scene clips by 5%. Big fucking deal.

as long as games are fairly easy to develop on it. Windows is the easiest right now.

Sega Genesis is also quite easy to develop for. So why not just distribute your game as a ROM with DGen?

If all we need is running games on linux, why don't we emulate consoles?

TuxNES, DGen, and SNES9x (both available from Zophar's Domain) are console emulators ported to GNU/Linux + X11. Those consoles are from back in the day when games were games and not merely interactive movies. Want shooters? Lifeforce for NES and Zero Wing for Genesis are still as fun as it was when it was first released (and still more fun than modern shooters such as Q3A/UT/Tribes). And yes, software is still being developed for NES.

I believe what I'm thinking about was the Sega Genesis. I might be wrong on the name. It was portable, horizontally aligned and in color, and that was nearly a decade ago.

The one that played 8-bit Master System games was the Game Gear. The one that played 16-bit Mega Drive games (such as Zero Wing) was the Genesis Nomad.

a paltry 160x120

160x144. Eighteen rows of twenty tiles each. Count the lines of text on the original Tetris®'s copyright screen (including the blank lines). Picky, but when you use numbers, you should use the correct ones.

If Sony ever decided to make a handheld device that could play PS One games (which has been rumored for years now)

Then they would need to invent shock protection like I've never seen. Kids. Drop. Game. Boys. And they use them in moving vehicles, where vibration and ever-changing effective-g directions are big concerns.

and a tinny sounding speaker to hear the grunts

Assuming you don't have it hooked up to the car stereo (with the big thumping 12" subwoofer; all your bass are belong to us) or Sennheiser headphones.

What I really want to see is a port of Zero Wing.

Does it require people to manually update their master certificates? This usually doesn't go down too well with joe-sixpack.

Then provide an "installer" program to update the certs. If Joe Sixpack will run elfbowl.exe or sextris.exe, then he'll probably run install-certs.exe. And if you play some cheesy animation while the certs are being updated, this program will spread just as fast as elfbowl.

I found it. Zero Wing is an arcade game circa 1989 with poorly translated "Engrish" in its opening sequence. There's actually a web site devoted to the "all your base are belong to us" quote, with videos and everything. Amazing.

The key difference is that a pure multiplayer game (like Quake3 or Phantasy Star Online) will always have the network connection active and so the validation is no big deal.

Except Quake 3's network design is nothing like Phantasy Star Online's, and Quake 3 has a single player.

I understand central authentication being used in games that require a connection to the full Internet, such as massively multiplayer games such as EverQuest. I don't understand such authentication being used in LAN-oriented games such as Quake 3 or Tribes (AYBABTU). A LAN-party network may not even be connected to the Internet.

Thing is, Tribes 2 is going to use central authentication, but it isn't massively multiplayer. I can't see people buying business DSL just to get multiple IPv4 addresses so that everyone at a LAN party can authenticate to Sierra's central server.

I'm sorry but I have a modded PS One

When I saw that console, my first thought was "What? This is the kind of console that would be packed in a Barbie playset." Then, after a bit of pondering: "No, that's too cute to be Barbie. It looks more like Precious Moments style."

and my Japanese games look just fine.

What region are your console and TV designed for?

... Americans

The screen corruption I mentioned requires that 50fps software be run on 60fps TVs or vice versa. (See other comments nearby about PAL60 TVs; however, it's very hard to find a 50fps TV in the US unless you have a video capture card in your PC.) Because NTSC-U/C and NTSC-J regions use identical 60 Hz NTSC television standards, there is no graphical corruption.

I wrote: "European games are optimized for 50 fps PAL, while North American and Japanese games run on 60 fps NTSC ... Games that don't conform to the television will fall out of sync." Did you miss this part?

But I agree that keeping Japanese games out of American hands, especially when not a lot of text is involved and the community accepts bad translations as humorous, is a result of outright greed.

thanks for that link! oh man, this is kick-your-ass funny.


--

http://www.planetstarsiege.com/allyourbase/
---

Thou, this thing rocks for games that you want to move things on the screen around, and still have the mouse free for clicking & dragging objects. Ages of Empire rocks with this, I'm going to try out Red Alert later this week, should make me extremely fast with the macros.

Also the thing works flawlessly in windows. I was able to map keys in windows, and there is no reason you couldnt use it for CAD, Level Design, or some type of production software. The thing has realtime keyboard macro recording.

Side note, I haven't figure out how to turn off its lights when you have a button programmed. The button lights up after its been programmed. Real eye-sore at night. Now I have 2 things on my desk that glow at night, the intellimouse optical explorer and then system commander.

-Brook Harty

-=-Wheres my tribes2 beta!
http://www.planetstarsiege.com