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."

Comments

Re:Translation, please?

[lotsofno]

As apparently, a real geezer, I have no idea what this post is about. Is it just saying that the "Game Boy Advance" has been reverse enginnered, so people can write games for it? And why exactly is this interesting? Isn't the Game Boy a relatively ancient little hand held thing?

People have been able to create their own games for game boy for a while now, and there's even hardware/software to write your own carts for use with the gameboy, to play them. Nintendo looks down on the usage and sales of these carts/cart-writers as they are mostly used to "burn" and play pirated ROMs. Nonetheless, there are many people who use these carts to make GBA games as a hobby.

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.

Also used in CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Reed-Solomon codes are also what does error correction in Compact Discs

Re:Also used in CDs

[spinkham]

As well as par and par2 files, digital television, ADSL, and many other places.
Reed-Solomon coding is one of the most popular methods for data recovery in use today.

Re:Also used in CDs

[Cryptnotic]

Reed-Solomon codes are of a class of codes called block codes because they work on fixed-length blocks. They will take a message of length M bits, add K bits of extra parity data and output a codeword of length N. R-S codes are systematic, meaning that the first M bits of the N-bit message have the same content as the M bits of the message, so in the case where there are no errors, the message can be read out directly. R-S codes can detect up to K bit errors and correct K/2 errors.

BCH codes are similar, except that they are non-systematic. The message is scrambled by the code and needs to be decoded. The advantage of BCH codes is that they can correct K bit errors in the message.

For both types of block codes, the blocks are required to be some power of 2 minus 1, i.e., M = 2^i - 1, where i is some integer, if I recall correctly. It is possible to pad bits with a known value (e.g., 0 or 1) in the case where you want to have a shorter message.

Re:How do I print these?

[medication]

On the site he has a seperate app for printing: dotcode-print-v10.zip

Cheers

Re:OMG, OLD SCHOOL JOKES

[funny-jack]

Repeat after me: Gameboy IS NOT OLD SCHOOL.

Huh. It looks like he's right.

Re:Curious like me ?

[Maestro4k]

• 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).

Actually considering that Nintendo is once again failing to promote a cool idea (the e-Reader) you might as well discard it. Currently there's little to no marketing to push the e-Reader, and it's dying a slow lonely death (at least by mass-market standards). Nintendo's let this happen before with other addons in the past, and only they know what logic there is to spending money to develop something cool then letting it languish in marketing hell.

Re:Too much work

[Lord Graga]

You could start with this kernel :)

Re:Anti-piracy measures?

[The Human Cow]

They're really, really, really tiny dots. Too tiny to be scanned and reproduced by the equipment in most people's houses.

Paperdisk

[Anonymouse Cownerd]

Does this remind anyone else of Paperdisk? Paperdisk

I'll better clear some things up.

[Lord Graga]

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 :)

Re:I'll better clear some things up.

[Abcd1234]

Actually, the compiler used is called GNU GCC. Credit where credit is due, people. Devkit Advance is just a nice, convenient packaging of GCC cross-compiled for the ARM, and the same is likely the case for that other kit you mentioned.

Of course, personally, I just built my own development environment by downloading and building my compiler and related tools by hand.

Re:Translation, please?

[ArsSineArtificio]

Game Boy: ancient green-screen handheld portable game player

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.

Re:The one thing Nintendo should do...

[Chibi Merrow]

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.

Obviously you're not looking very hard.

games that have no personality

I mean, really, you sound like a whiny film student...

Re:Hacked eReaders

[iantri]

Um.. it has an NES emulator built-in to it: http://www.nesworld.com/ereader.htm

Now, it only supports enough of the NES's features to work with anything but very simple or very old games, but this is exactly why they are able to distribute Excitebike, Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong, etc.

They are the NES games running under emulation.

Theoretically, I guess one could convert some of the older games by yourself to play on it.

Re:Who cares about a demo game..

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Uh...dude, R-S codes are common and well known in academia. My dad works with R-S codes.

And the point of open source is not to evade the law. If it is, you're here for the wrong reason; go find some warez group on IRC. (Disclaimer: that does not count as an endorsement of warez.)

Re:How they print the cartidges for games

[Bender_]

How can this be "informative"? It is total bull**.. game cardridges are not screen printed.
Try some IC-fabrication 101 textbook.