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.
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.
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!!
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...
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
On the site he has a seperate app for printing: dotcode-print-v10.zip
Cheers
"If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." - Mitch Hedberg
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
Can you print tiny Roms or magnetic strips? Enh? Enh? Didn't think so. Ok posibly you can but some one just geting into programing for the game boy probably dosn't have a rom writer or a magnetic strip writer (and definetly dosn't have a magnetic strip reader for thier gameboy). Don't kick this for no reason it's neat and fun and if it turns more people on to programing then good for them. If not, atleast some game boy programers can share there games more easly.
If you have to ask why, do you really deserve to read /. now? :)
RagManX
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.
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
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!
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
How can this be "informative"? It is total bull**.. game cardridges are not screen printed.
Try some IC-fabrication 101 textbook.
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.