Slashdot Mirror
Do-It-Yourself-Game-Console
DrCarbonite writes "Andre' LaMothe is releasing a brand new game console, the XGAMESTATION which may fulfill the fantasies of Slashdot readers everywhere. 16-bit Motorola CPU with a graphics architecture "similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II". Its an electronics kit being marketed as a game system that wants to be hacked/modded/rebuilt. It supports homebrew everything-- joystick adapters, displays, software, roms, the whole nine yards."
...those old systems could also be fitted with your own joystick, mods, etc., as well.
Except they've already got a software base. This, on the other hand, does not.
Hrm.... would I rather mod out my C=64 (heh, already did, oops) with thousands of software titles freely available online and from the massive boxes of disks in my basement....
Or will I pay a good chunk of my paycheque for a system limited in both hardware capabilities and developer base?
Great strategy guys. Really. You'll make millions.
Urban Detail
I remember buying one of those silly "Teach Yourself Game Programming in 21 Days" books by this guy. I was like 12 at the time, and barely knew what QBasic was. I didn't care, I just wanted to make games because it sounded cool.
To my dismay, I didn't understand the C code. I recently opened the pages of this book and read it. It was surprisingly coherent and well written (and up-to-date for its time).
This sounds like a pretty neat thing and sounds like another plug for Andre to get another book deal, even if there's an eBook included (or it could be because someone wanted to play frogger and thought it'd be cool to get Andre's name on the console).
How does one transfer the software to the cartrige though? I don't see a programmer included in the hardware details on the about page, nor do I see that the console can be used to program the card.
This will be fun, though. As I'm only 19, I'm not old enough to remember the bringing out of the Atari 2600 (and other similar systems), but I have played games on it. I hope this brings out the games of "yesteryear" and encourages developers to write some cool games.
Any inside specs on the prices yet?
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
It's one of my dreams - having a do-it-yourself-mobile-phone. Packaged with full GPL-ed source code CD, data cable and IDE for developing it's software. A have-it-as-you-want-it phone. You like Nokia menu? Build it yourslef. Like command line interface - bash is your choice :)
A an intelligent and open device made for geeks.
Has anyone seen something like it? :)
Perhaps Andre doesn't quite understand how logic synthesis differs from procedural coding. He hasn't even prototyped the FPGA version as far as one can see on the site, and his XGS schematics are unreadable.
If your fantasies run in this direction (as mine do) you'd be much better off buying a Xilinx/XESS prototyping board. They're available now, they work great with free toolchains, and they're a lot less expensive than anything Andre will bring to market in the next two to three years. Plus you can read their schematics and design your own (as I've done) if you don't have $149 handy.
Great, but how long until we see a port of Contiki?
Heh.. obviously the majority of Slashdot readers don't have particularly high expectations for games consoles then ;)
There are plenty of awesome games that were nowhere to be found on the NES. Many, in fact, were exclusive to home computer systems, or the non-Nintendo consoles (!) of that era.
Where was Robotron 2084 for the NES? The original Boulder Dash (Apple II had it in 1981, NES didn't get it until 1990)? Ballblazer? Night Mission Pinball? Galaxian? Swashbuckler? Battlezone? Sargon III (way before NES had chess)? Joust (not until 1988)? Hard Hat Mack? Defender? Montezuma's Revenge? Miner 2049er?
I still have my Apple II Plus, and am able to play all of the above.
The coolest voice ever.
It's more powerful and there's lots of emulators already ported to it.
Here's a link from Google to one reseller.
If they actually release the vector graphics module that is described on the webpage, I will definately buy one.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
``And this is cool because lots of people have these machines and can recognise the hack.''
I agree, but... Think about new generation growing up - some of them of course will get some of modern consoles (ps2 etc). Some part of them will have an idea to do something not conventional with it (hack). But probably not - most of them will become games addict etc.
And for example if such young person will get a piece of electronics (that look really cool - like electronics stuff) he may feel the spirit and do something, then noone says that he will not switch to hacking xbox'es and other stuff!
If only the academic community didn't shun anything with 'game' in the title
Just a few years ago The Main project for the electronic Design Lab at McGill was to build a mouse-controlled Multi-level Pacman on a old Svga monitor out of a fpga board (Hardware design fashion, no software here).
Probably the coolest Lab I've seen... So it is not as if every school run away from these
(Unfortunately, when I took the course they where in a change of system process so we ended-up implementing a rather boring 'simulation' of a digital camera system)
I'm giving Andre full support on this idea and hardware. He seems to know what he is doing and judging by the details of this hardware, it is PERFECT for anyone wanting to program, design, and engineer their own game system, even a computer if they want. I'm going to be ordering at least 3 of these things and I will promote his product as long as it's around. I respect Andre's decision and I will stand up to my word and help him as much as I can. So please stop bashing his work, I doubt any of you have a clue what a 7474 TTL Flip Flop does anyway :-).
The one you fear is fear itself.
This is vaporware. Those pictures are 3d rendered, not photos.
~ valvano/index.html
From their descriptions, this is just a simple board with an off-the-shelf Motorola 68HC12 microcontroller. These are used in many universities, such as UT Austin for embedded systems interfacing and programming courses. True, there are a fair amount of students out there that might be capable of writing games, but I don't see this creating a business demand. The graphics are handled by an Altera FPGA. This looks amazingly like some reference boards I've seen used by universities as well.
Here's a good HC12 programming resource if you want to get an idea of HC12 features/programming:
http://www.ece.utexas.edu/
similar to the Commodore 64, Atari 800, and Apple II
The Apple II just had a big, dumb frame buffer, plus a static character mode. The C64 and Atari 800 had raster interrupts, redefinable characters, sprites, hardware collision detection of sprites, etc. The Atari 800 was even further out there, with direct hardware support things that needed ugly graphic hacks on the C64 (like mixing graphics modes in arbitrary ways and multiplexing sprites).
"I think this is exactly the point: have a computer with lots of ready-to-use-software, OS, libraries, and you don't learn nearly as much as if you need to write all those nifty things yourself. And let a beginner use somethink like OpenGL/DirectX8 and they won't understand simple basics like "How do I draw a 3D cube on a 2D display?""
As a learning tool for testing low level theory I can see some value. However, they are targetting a very, very small niche market.
I can't see this being successful (selling more than a few thousand units) since you can learn all of that on a regular PC, and if you wanted to do assembly you can choose one of dozens of CPUs that are easily emulatable on any given PC.
The only advantage is you get to see your code work on actual low level hardware. It's good training if you want to learn low level stuff (including direct hardware interaction and potential pitfalls) and if you want to learn how to produce small, efficient code.
Again, neither of those things are really applicable to the vast majority of today's programmers, and since the hardware platform, unless very cheap ($10-$50), is not viable as a commercial product in and of itself, I simply cannot see it becoming much more than a puff of smoke, lasting maybe two years tops, and selling fewer than a thousand units.
But then, I've been wrong before, and I'll do it again - probably sooner rather than later.
-Adam
Many have died that deserve life - can you give it to them? Be not so hasty to deal out death.
Because they're all too busy buying Amiga from each other to make cable boxes, email stations, thermostats, game consoles, fire plugs, or what-the-hell ever else they thought they'd do with dormant non-PC architecture.
I waited patiently for ten years for whichever current owner of Amiga technology to prove to the world that they were going to come up with SOMETHING amazing. Then I built a PC. Now if I'm feeling nostalgic I either run UAE or boot to my Amithlon partition. I wouldn't dare throw money away on any new hardware that is guaranteed to sell a few hundred units, all to rabid Amiga fans desperate for anything with a rainbow checkmark logo or Boing ball demo.
...less interesting on the software side. You can already do development using MAME, various 8-bit computer emulators, and the Game Boy (and the GBA).
But the primary advantage of this system is to understand how the hardware works. That's something you rarely ever see. Even back in the 8-bit days, almost no one really understood machines like the Apple II and Atari 800 on a hardware level. For example, no one ever attempted to redesign Atari's ANTIC chip, because that info just wasn't available. This hasn't changed at all over the last 20 years. FPGAs are cheap and widespread, but not the info about designing graphics hardware.
Back to the software. If you're into game design, and you design and implement a game for MAME (say, on the Williams' 6808-based hardware), then that game is runnable on any PC or Mac right away. Not so with this new system.
Overall, LaMothe has always been very much into writing and teaching about game programming, but he's always completely avoided game design. He develops and writes about lackluster knockoffs of existing games, and offers little to advance the medium. In it's own way, for teaching purposes, that's a good thing. But the last thing we need is everyone to build this new system, then start writing versions of Tetris and Asteroids and old Commodore 64 games for it. If you want to move forward in design, you can do it for existing "hardware."
It gets closer than that. It's got a socket for an additional 65816 CPU (high-speed, 16-bit 6502 CPU), although the 68HCS12 @ 25 MHz could probably emulate a 6502 well enough.
Run your old favourites... if you really wanted to.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I hope the decide to give this some decent coin-op support, or maybe a good coin-op module. It is a bit primitive, but there could certainly be some interesting things done with it. Be it commercial games, or 'customized games for people', or your homebrew arcade cabinet kind of thing.
BTW... that Asteroids looked decidedly low-resolution for vector. Like an equiv 640x480 resolution, verses a typical 1024x768 equiv vector resolution. Is there a hardware limitation in the vector DACs, or what is the story here?