Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo e-Reader Gets Homebrew Dot-Code Games
figa writes "Tim Schuerewegen announced that the Reed Solomon error correction used by the Nintendo Game Boy Advance e-Reader has been figured out. This was the last remaining obstacle to creating custom dot-code printouts for use with the GBA e-Reader (more info), which scans special Nintendo trading cards to load in mini-games on your Game Boy Advance. This should be a boon to homebrew GBA developers who want to print their own games - Schuerewegen has examples and documentation on his site, and has released a dot-code version of the homebrew BombSweeper game by SnowBro."
So, when can we load Linux on it, so we can make a beowu...
Now I can develop my own games
Thank god for the awful job market for Geeks like us to have to to reverse-engiNerd this stuff so I can play with it
Wait, the dots resolve into a 6!
Does that mean I owe my optometrist a bunch of money?
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
How fast can you say "cease and desist"?
How long till nintendo has this place shut down under the DMCA!
Just wait until Nintendo gets home and finds out. You are going to be so buuuussted.
Where is the information on the reed solomon code? Get that information out before Nintendo takes this site down. Stupid closed source hackers..
I want P-Readers for punchcards and the ability to swap and exchange thousands of punchcards per games.
So who remembers the old cauzin strip reader from the 80s when source code was actually listed in the computer magazines?
Now if only they could get the games to work without having to blow into the e-reader all the time...
I remember, when these first came out, somebody was talking about the crazy-mad wicked resolution these things were printed at. Have they figured out how to get my HP Deskjet 500 to print these things?
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
Is it a witch's brew?
That's easy, just dab a cotton swab in alcohol and wipe all your cards clean!
Maybe this will give me somethign to do with my HU (football/p3) Card!!
Ok.. just why. Woulden't it be easier to use tiny ROM's? or even some kind of magnetic card?
With this, I think you'll start to see people hacking their eReaders to have enough memory to hold Nintendo ROMS and an emulator, or some such... I think the hardcopy computer code is a pretty cool idea...
In the readme it says to look at his website. How do I print it?!
More in this site. Frankly, it looks too large a device, and the info stored (4 kB) too little. Its price is cheap (US$ 39), but probably not so much for the young kids which would be interested. I would discard it as destined to fail if I didn't know the tremendous attraction that card trading games have for kids (see Magic The Gathering, Yu Gi Oh and Pokemon).
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
What this project has managed to do is extend their hobby to GBA's e-reader system. The e-reader is a hardware attachment that you can plug into your gameboy, and it'll let you play special games for the GBA, written on cards. Though these games aren't as complex and full-featured as those on carts, they are much much cheaper, and great for kids as well as collectors.
As for the GBA being an "ancient little hand-held" thing, they are VERY popular, and with good reason. The machine has matured much with it's long-life rechargeable battery, wonderful backlight, and it's stylish case. Throw in the huge gaming collection and it's portability, and you can't lose with it. It's impressive RPG selection (Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, Zelda: Four Swords, Tactcis Ogre, Golden Sun, etc..) is reason enough to invest in one.
Reed-Solomon codes are also what does error correction in Compact Discs
Saying that a website where you could upload a gamboy sized image and have it produce a pdf encoding an image viewer would be very nice.
There's no need to go to the trouble. You can already get flash carts that let you load far more code than one of these cards. Plus, on the GBA SP, there are both the regular 4-way serial connectors and the secondary I/O connector. I'm not sure the actual limits of either, but worst case you could chain them together, no USB hackery necessary.
Of course, the GBA is hardly very powerful to begin with, as you imply, and this isn't really worth it besides the geek factor. However, 16-player doom might be fun, if you can find 16 people with GBAs...
Or Tetrinet. I wish someone would port Tetrinet. 6 players there, and the GBA seriously lacks a good tetris.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'm not familiar with the actual e-reader mechanism, but from the description I've read of them, they're just fancy printed dots. It looks to me you could just pirate games with a good photocopier or scanner/printer. What are Nintendo's security measures? A special ink, or something?
.. for dot-code infringement. Err.. dot-code is the same as .Net right?
Live web cams
What's wrong with 24? Or do you prefer the more "mature" woman, you grannybashing pervert?
I bought one with the intention that something like this would happen. I'll have to wait until after the slashdotting to translate my games to tiny little paper cards...
:) What's next, the "T-Reader"? I bet a GBA tape deck would really own.
Almost an anachronism, really.
...they manage to produce some good n' old Dot Code Pr0n!!
Is open up the GBA to home-brew developers. I am one of them, and I'm constantly annoyed by how Nintendo keeps me out of creating junk to run on their product that I paid for. I know all other consoles do this, but with such a simple little device, anyone can hack it and their sales of the thing would be even greater. Nintendo also lock out developers of games -- you have to go thru Nintendo and if you don't, you'll never sell anything. Independent developers cannot compete with Nintendo itself, and consequently the game market for the GBA is swamped with games costing $40 a whack that are usually not much more impressive than an old Sega Genesis game and don't appeal to me (I'm not into the whole faceless-anime-nonsense deal with characters and games that have no personality). It's very sad that such a sweet little machine is so closed up.
Does this remind anyone else of Paperdisk? Paperdisk
http://www.rayn.net . Funny. Stuff.
As a 1337 homebrew GBA coder, I think I should clear some stuff up: :)
First of all: Yes, you can write your own code for GBA. The most used language is C, and ASM for heavy optimizing. The compiler used is called Devkit Advance, but there's an even better one called... DEVKIT ARM (which also supports Gamecube and Gp32).
The GBA is reverse engineered pretty much 100%, and everything documented in some way. It's really simple too. Just set a few registers, and ZOOOOM, you have everything ready to use, I recomend it to everybody who needs a short break from everyday coding.
Also, ARM ASM is really cool to code for too
Game Boy Advance: modern, insanely popular, color backlit handheld portable game player, backwards-compatible to old Game Boy games. Basically a portable Super NES.
e-Reader: A contraption you attach to your Game Boy Advance, which works like a magnetic paper card reader as in a subway or parking garage. Nintendo sells packages of paper cards, printed with dots. You swipe these through your e-Reader, and load small games onto your Game Boy Advance.
Point of story: Somebody has figured out the system of dots so that you can print your own software onto cards, and swipe them through your e-Reader into your Game Boy Advance.
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
No, you can't do that in straight up C. You CAN however, in C++, use a thing called a map container. For more information on that, try out your favorite Standard Template Library (STL) reference or take a look at a document called "C++ annotations"
Just do a search on google for "C++ annotations" and you'll find it available for free download. It's a godsend for those sorts of references.
I am the penguin that codes in the night.
Frontlit.
There was a gameboy printer out at some point. I'll be REALLY impressed when somebody figures out how to get the GBA to print its own cards for itself...
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
hmm, in a while, their slashdot error correction will fail as well. mmmyes.
to recognize that as a Hitchhiker reference?
Technoli
Would it be possible to use optics to reduce the apparant size of a larger printout? Some sort of fixed lens device to project the image of the card onto the reader. Without seeing the actual specs of course, I have no idea if this could be done, the cardreader may have to reflect its own light, or the enlarged card could need a track or conveyor to make its image appear as a regular card.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
Well, I can't seem to get it to work, printing on cardstock on my HP Deskjet 990C..
p an>
I found something else interesting, though. From the index.htm file:
<!--
<span class="title2">Modified version of VisualBoyAdvance with e-Reader scan support</span>
<br>
<span class="normal"><a href="../download/">VBA 1.7 + e-Reader scan support (version 1.1)</a></span>
<br>
<span class="normal"><a href="../download/mfc71.zip">MFC71.DLL</a></span>
<br>
<span class="normal"><a href="../download/msvcr71.zip">MSVCR71.DLL</a></s
<br><br>
-->
Unfortunately, this server does not allow directory browsing. the mfc71.zip and msvcr71.zip files are there though.
I just wish this guy released information on what he did to convert the Bomberman game (an NES game, the e-reader has a simple NES emulator built-in) to e-Reader format..
Er, yes you can do that in plain C (say, most basically, as an array of void pointers to different things). Of course C++ can make the syntax much nicer and lets the compiler do type checking, but under the hood it's still smoke, mirrors, and pointers. Remember some C++ compilers did nothing more than generate C code.
Decompiling games in not necessary to copy them, so this really doesn't mean anything for piracy.
Copying a Nintendo cartridge and reproducing it is easy, you take a stainless steel screen stretched on a frame, coat it with emulsion, bring it over to a screensetter (or film and a light source), burn a copy of the games instructions onto the screen, wash it out, block it out, and print the game onto a piece of silicone with conductive metal, cure it - and plug it in. Once set up (couple hundred dollars per cartridge) it costs barely more than the materials themselves to mass produce these.
With a high resolution scanner, Photoshop, screen printing equipment, silicone, and some conductive alloys with a low melting point you can reproduce a thousand cartridges for the price of 10 games in one day.
Remember when these were all over the place (10 years ago!) ? You'd buy a cartridge for $100 and it would have 150 games on it. I still have a couple of those, although most of the games are in Japanese.
One of the things that has irf'ed me about PC's is a lack of long term storage. While CD's are said to be long-term, I can tell you from experience that I have several original discs that already started to have issues on being read. There are some certain small files that I would love to archive to paper. Does anyone know of any PC software that would could print dot codes and use a scanner to reencode them?
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
Hopefully someone will make the source open so ROMs could be converted & printed.
:P It'd kinda suck without a save feature, but it'd be cool nonetheless.
Imagine printing out and playing Zelda
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
JG
Young man, you've been writing some code, I said,
Em
Young man, think it ought to be showed, I said,
Am
Young man, but what you shoulda knowed, is some
D
Things... must... be... left... un-said
Young man, there's a law that's been passed, I said,
Young man, we hoped it wouldn't last, but now,
Young man, if you break it, your ass will be
Hauled... a-way... to... Club Fed
--- G
We cannot stay with the DMCA
Em
Get hauled away with the DMCA
Am
You cannot circumvent
Any music or book
D
Can't even let your kid take a look
That's why we're flamin' the DMCA
Our guy was framed on the DMCA
The Man gives us rules
That we've got to obey
But encryption just gets in the waaaaaay...
Young man, there's no need to feel down, I said,
Young man, hide yourself underground, I said,
Young man, 'cause the Feds are in town, you know,
There's no place you can hide,
Young man, there's no place you can go, I said,
Young man, when they don't like your code, if you
Stay here, I am sure you will find
That you haven't got no more time.
(chorus)
You sir, I hope you understand, we're im-
Pa-tient, hope the Feds free our man, but no-
Bo-dy... can resist our demand, we'll shout
Til... they... free... D-mi-try
Dima's... fate lies in our own hands, so please
Help us... make them meet our demands, so call
D.C., make them send this young man, back to
His... own... home... and... fam'ly
Just wait. Lik Sang got made to stop selling cartridge writers because they were capable of copying games.
But photocopiers can copy these barcode games. So how long until Nintendo shuts down Xerox? ;-)
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Wouldn't it be even easier still to buy a 256Mbit Flash2 Advance cartridge and writer, and hook it up to your computer, using the Windows or Linux software to copy your code straight to a cartridge which works directly in a GBA?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Actually that might not be too hard. An image viewer is pretty trivial, and then you just need to see how much data you can compress into the size they allow for the code.
OMG, imagine printing fake eReader cards which look just like the original, but when run display TubGirl on the GameBoy!!!!
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Indeed. The only console that rivals the GBA in terms of the size of it's homebrew community is the Dreamcast.
Umm... call me crazy, but I see far more homebrew for the Xbox than I do for the GBA.
The GBA may be ridiculously easy to develop for, but the Xbox is a PC.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Please, folks. Doom, Doom 2, Wolfenstein have already been ported to the GBA and sold commercially, let alone by hobbyists.
Whinning about keyboards and mice is a boring lament from those PC gamers who can't be bothered to learn how to use anything else.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Slap it into a GBA and it plays in color.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
Now we might actually see some Game & Watch cards like Nintendo promised back when the E-Reader system was initially released.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
"Game Boy Advance: modern, insanely popular, color backlit handheld portable game player, backwards-compatible to old Game Boy games. Basically a portable Super NES."
I'm pretty sure that the GBA SP is side-lit, not backlit.
Just saying...
He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn : A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.
Has anyone made an emulator for Mac OS X or Windows for the reader?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
E-Reader capable cards are released all the time. The last Super Mario Advance game--a remake of Super Mario Bros. 3--lets you load in levels, powerups, and demo runthroughs!
Please, they didn't abandon squat.
You must be forgetting we're talking about Doom here, not Quake... I never used a keyboard for Doom, only my Gravis Gamepad. Doom did not require aiming, jumping, ducking, mouselook, or any other myriad of 3D activities. It plays _very_ well with just a pad and a couple buttons. Part of the magic of it, in my opinion.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
What they really should've done is embed the dotcode into the holographic cards, in such a way that it's only visible from a particular angle and looks normal from others.
This would render moot having the details released, because folks would have to either hack their reader or have a holographic printer to use that information. It would also enable the entire card to be used for storage, to hold way more than 5kb/card. They could possibly even have the reader examine the same point from two separate angles to make sure it got different bits, and use such a technology to verify the authenticity.
They'd push their market by making the foil cards worth more (especially by adding foil commons and uncommons, possible making a new "rare-common" card), and it would help them cross the boundaries of table vs computer games in BOTH directions.
ham is what the elf where was it
Your deskjet won't probably print their games, but you can probably print your own games with a lower density and with less code.
These types of devices look at things in a relative way; i.e. short exists relative to long, although they do have a broad absolute range as well.
They have to have a lot of flexibility, because you're scanning by hand. You might scan quickly or slowly, but it should still usually work. That means that the absolute frequencies will differ, but the relative frequencies will be the same.
Wow, this guy is rather amazing. Tim Schuerewegen also wrote a Cybiko emulator, used by virtually everyone in the Cybiko development community.
I've seen USB to GBA cables.
And I've played Crystal Chronicles; in Crystal Chronicles multiplayer, you use the GBA as your controller. Stats, items, spells, even radar are displayed directly on the GBA. When you first turn it on and between FMVs, it has a long please wait pause; I'm assuming it's transferring program code down the link. There is NO ROM in the GBA for this to occur. I wish they would reverse engineer this protocol.
Among other things, you could use your GBA for HUD in an FPS, create your own code without having to burn or print anything.
Geek heaven.
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!