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Homebrew on Consoles Detailed
Yoshi writes "DCEmu have released an article detailing the current State of the Homebrew Scene on all consoles from the PSP to GBA and even to the Next Gen Nintendo Wii, the article explains whats needed to run emulators and games and if its worth bothering for each console."
Will there be anything (expected to be) fundamentally different about the Nintendo DS Lite? I have heard so much good stuff about the DS, I may buy one of the Lite's when they're available.
:)
It's always nice to be able to expand the uses of hardware in ways the developers never intended.
Registered Linux user #421033
I mis-read the headline as "The state of Hebrew on Consoles", which would have been just as interesting. The right-to-left reading would be a challenge.
Of course, it's possible this challenge has been met already. Not being a Hebrew-speaker, I never looked into it.
This article should not have made it to the front page. It's horribly lacking in information and reads like someone wrote it off the top of their head without any research.
For example, under Nintendo Gamecube it says that you can't run homebrew software without a mod chip. Which is weird, because I've got a port of SNES 9x running on my GC to play old SNES games. No mod chip required. All I have is the Nintendo SD Adapter Card and an Action Replay to boot the contents of the SD card. Not to mention you can alternatively use the broadband adapter with Phantasy Star Online to boot from across the network. This has been commonly known about for some time.
I can't speak for the other consoles but if they're coverage is anything like his GameCube coverage, this article is worthless. Judging by the lack of options for the other consoles I think it's fair to assume that this is the case.
The author either spent more time gaming than learning how to spell, or none of these devices have a decent homebrew spell checker.
Anyway, I've heard the GP2X isn't really fast, and porting apps to its rather unique architecture is hard. I'd still love to have one though...
*throws an editor at the article*
My spelling and grammar are quite bad but the article made me want to gouge my eyes out with a spoon.
The Wii-equivalent of 'Mount and Blade' would utterly, utterly rock (M&B is a simple down-to-earth fighting game RPG'ish which gets simple fight-dynamics sooo right)
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
The DS benefits because it can also run homebrew that was developed for the GBA, and consoles from the NES and earlier are emulated well. The SNES and Genesis emulators are just in their infancy, however.
Besides the emuilators, there are a lot of good homebrew games and applications, including most of the usual favorites from linux distributions. Congratulations to the coders of the DS homebrew scene for making such progress on a unique system!
I am the author of Dissonance. Before developing it, I had a tiny bit of NDS programming under my belt, a moderate amount of GBA, and a fair amount of PC. I am not a licensed developer, which means that my work will eventually... as you mentioned, be viewed by a very small number of people. However, it's not always about that.
I wrote Dissonance first and foremost, for myself. I've wanted a portable internet radio client from day 1. As soon as the homebrew scene got to the point that it was realistic to code one, I wrote it. I worked day and night getting it out the door, and it felt GOOD when I got it out the door. I had overcome many obstacles, and had a whole lot of fun coding for such a well made system. In the end, my product didn't do me a whole lot of good (yet), but it made me happy to code it, and I got to code something useful for the NDS. At the end of the day, isn't that why we code things for free? To have some fun, and try to make something that's useful while we're at it? My main interest just doesn't lie with PCs. I prefer handhelds, and I like to have a little more to work with than a cell phone.
A well researched and comprehensive article can stand the author being lazy on his grammar and spelling. This thing is painfully inarticulate, cursory *and* inaccurate.
If accepted submissions had to pass an editor karma check, this article would have been posted anonymously.
I'm interested in a GP2X, but much more for actually running things (emulators, movies, music) than doing development on it. Does anyone have any experience using one to play games and movies? Are the emulators fast enough? Do the batteries last long enough? I'm all for hobbyist coders, and I'm sure people are doing amazing things, but is much of it far along enough to use regularly? Thanks.
The "article" (which is actually a forum thread) says, and I quote, "The State of Homebrew On All Consoles", which is a complete lie. What's missing from the forum thread?
Atari 2600? Check.
NES? Check.
Game Boy pre-GBA? Check.
Sega Master System? Check
Sega Genesis? Check.
And there are probably some that I've forgotten as well, but at least I'll admit it.
"Because we are the only dedicated Homebrew Network on the web covering just about all scenes"? STFU and GTFO, you suck.
FC Closer
Even if this post is a troll, I'll answer anyway. When I was younger, I managed to download a (warezed) version of psyq, the developpement kit for the Sony Playstation 1. Using this program, I wrote a PSX version of "the snake game", the game you could find on Nokia 3210 cellphones. I was pretty sure, none of my (real life) friends would care of that homebrew game, so I never bothered showing them. Anyway, even if almost no one that owned a PSX was likely to care of such things ("yeah the snake game running on a playstation, jesus it's a playstation, not an Atari 2600 you know ..."), it was fun to do and very instructing about the inner workings of the playstation.
"Seems like alot of work for no gain."
When you do something like that, the gain is mainly personal. It's a bit like gardening : personaly I wouldn't want to waste time to put seeds of vegetables in earth, expecting to get some crop. But some people like that so what ?
The Wii is interesting because the dev kit is only $2000. That puts it well within the range of an avid hobbiest. If I had a really good idea come to mind about a game using the wiimote I'd consider getting one.
It would be interesting to see what kind of legal agreements come with that dev kit. Can a group a homebrew coders get there hands on one and start churning out free games? Will there be an easy way for us to play these games?
Kyle
BASE Conflict for Quake 3
The article mentions you have to have a modchip to run home brew on the gamecube. Taking advantage of the way Phantasy Star Online uses internet play, you can run homebrew software directly off of your computer using an ethernet cable. I have not tested the method with homebrew games, but linux runs great.
http://www.gc-linux.org/wiki/Main_Page
I just picked up a ds lite and hope to check out linux on that too.
Can the average person just go online and buy rewritable cards for the Atari 2600, NES, 8-bit Game Boy, Sega Master System, and Sega Genesis? Or is it like a lightsaber in the Star Wars universe, where you have to solder one together yourself?
The article mentions you have to have a modchip to run home brew on the gamecube. Taking advantage of the way Phantasy Star Online uses internet play
But then you have to 1. buy a vulnerable version of PSO on eBay, and 2. buy a broadband adapter on eBay. Both can get more expensive over time as collectors snap them up, but so can a modchip.
Has anyone even heard of half of these?
The Ipod is a console?
I must need to get out of my basement more often
It's a gain if you're interested AT ALL in getting a job in the videogame programming field. Anything like this would be at least a bit of help, and/or experience, no?
The slate is always clean when you're the one holding the eraser -Newton Tenderfoot
So it is not entirely true as in the article that Nintendo doesn't care about the homebrew scene. Not suprisingly, PSP commercial games often don't fit on its memory stick but most Nintendo handheld games can fit a dozen to a flash card.
This makes it a lot easier to pirate GBA/DS games then PSP games.
The DS had a revision that forced a new key but I am just not sure wether that revision happened to be the DS Lite. For sure the DS Lite is of the new version however so the answer is still yes. If you check the sites you will find some advice on checking wich firmware you got with your DS. Color background in pictochat if I remember correctly.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I wonder how much Wraggster paid someone to get this posted. I'm sure he can use even more ad revenue.
The granddaddy of all consoles does actually have one of the largest active homebrewing scenes.
Just a random selection of links:
http://www.oreillynet.com/cs/user/print/a/4849
http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/
http://www.alienbill.com/2600/
They mention that it's unfortunate that there's no legal SDK for the xbox. This is mistaken, there is. OpenXDK isn't perfect, but I've been using it for a while in my quest to get my favourite compiler to create xbox executables natively.
It's been a long time.
Why spend hundreds of hours making a game that no one can/would use. Seems like alot of work for no gain. Stick to computers for homebrews and cellphones for portables, easier and much bigger audiences.
"Because it's there."
Why spend hours installing a source-based OS distribution when quicker pre-compiled "ready-to-eat" versions are readily available? Why tinker with anything that works well enough and risk breaking it? Because it's fun! Lots of people have hobbies. Whether it's hacking a console to see how it all works, porting a different platform's games or writing new ones from scratch . . . heck, even knitting a sweater is a long tedious process when there are countless ready-made alternatives. (I can't believe I actually just compared console homebrewing and knitting . . . on Slashdot.) Some people enjoy this stuff. Even if the results turn out kind of crappy, we can still beam with "yeah, well, I *made* that!" pride.
There is some Odyssey 2 console homebrew stuff here for those of you interested in that old and often neglected console.
I never clip my fingernails for fear of dangling symbolic links.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"but its also a Pocket PC type device so you get the best of both worlds"
did this guy bother to check anything at all? The Zodiac ran Palm OS. It says so right on their front page
Si Hoc Legere Scis Nimium Eruditionis Habes
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/ is DCEmu UK, while http://www.dcemulation.com/ is DCEmu.
Scorta futuere amo!
Brew = Develop(ed)
s )
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homebrew_(video_game
The term is frequently applied only on video games that are produced on proprietary game platforms - in other words, game platforms that are not typically user-programmable, or use proprietary hardware for storage. Sometimes games developed on official development kits, such as Net Yaroze or PS2 Linux are included in the definition. Some, however, also refer all non-commercial, "home-developed" games for open architectures as homebrew games, though these typically go under more frequently used labels, such as freeware. The term doesn't, however, include commercially sold games that are developed without console manufacturer's license.
Much the same thing for me. A little while back I was looking up poker timers and found that the ones with any decent sort of functionality were horribly expensive. This kinda annoyed me (this aint rocket science and the hardware is pretty cheap) - so I'm writing one for the Nintendo DS at the moment (it's the only handheld I have).
It'll probably cost me more (in time) in the long run. But at least I'll be able to make it available to people as another option. Will probably write one for mobile phones at some point too.
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
I don't know much about the NES homebrew scene, but I do know there are a lot of them. Look around and you'll probably be able to find carts for purchase.
I used Google, AllTheWeb, Yahoo!, and MSN. All the results were for GBA flash carts to which one can write an NES emulator. The only relevant result from the first page of each search engine's results (ars, citing source) was disappointing: "While you can buy the circuit boards from this guy he's pretty adamant about not selling the finished product". If this product requires soldering, then it is a proof-of-concept, not a finished product. Which other keywords on which search engine should I use, or what other method of "look[ing] around" should I use?
If you want to be able to play handheld video games without any mail order, using only products and services available in a brick-and-mortar shop throughout the developed world, then homebrew may not be for you. Stick to PDA software.
The term Homebrew is probably a holdover from the '70s homebrew computer club, where the likes of Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Jobs, Woz and other mainstream computer founders would get together and display their own computers, or computer programs. It's a part of our computing heritage, so it can easily be applied to computerized games, though I do agree that the term is probably used a little too much in place of DIY.
What you lack is a frame of reference.
Read again and compare to the DreamCast entry.
The basic difference is that, on DreamCast, you only need to burn the homebrewed software you need, put it into the DC, and it just-works(tm). Any stock machine is designed in a such way that you can boot anything you want on them. (Maybe it was initially designed so, to enable e-zines to ship CD with their issues. The protection for games is provided by protection code in the games and the fact that games don't come on CD-ROM but GD-ROM which were, at that time and in SEGA's mind, much harder to read - Note: they guessed wrong).
You don't need to buy anything, except empty CD-R to burn whatever homebrewed softs you want to test.
All other home consoles need some hacks to get homebrewed stuff running.
XBox can be hacked in a way that makes it able to boot what ever you want in a persistant way. But :
1- This prevents you from going on XBoxLive.
2- You have to do some hacking, be it chip- or soft- modding, before you get your console permanently in this state.
Your GameCube exemple is worse. If you want to run some homebrewed code, you need to : buy special equipement (either card reader or broadband adapter) and software (either Action Reaplay or a game) and everytime before you run your code, you need to either use something that's basically a soft-mod (Action Replay) or to exploit bugs in a game.
It can't even be made permanent. If you want to be able to boot watever you need (which is the point of this article), your only solution is to put a mod chip inside the box (and thus void the waranty). Otherwise you're stuck at doing obscure voodoo tricks each time you want to run something other than Nintendo-licensed product.
That's their point : in the realm of home console, DreamCast is the only thing that let your run whatever you like. Other consoles don't. You need to either do obscure trick, or do hard/soft modification that can get you expelled (or void your warranty).
So in this perspective, their article doesn't lack that much information. Maybe, it just fails to mention that some hacking technique (soft-mods or bugs exploit) may make the mod-chip un-necessary.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You're confusing two things-- why we do things and why we make them free.
You said it yourself:
We write software out of a need to scratch an itch. And we do it for selfish reasons. Selfish is not a "bad word" though.
So then the question is, why do make them free? Is it that we think our work is a failure in the end, or is it that we're boasting, or both? Or is it that we look for contributions, job offers, fame and fortune? It has to be one or more of those things...
here is my question:
When will I be able to write a game using Nintendo's Game Development SDK (NSDK), publish it on my Nintendo Net home page, and have my friend download and playin on his Nintendo console? And then when will Nintendo pay me a butt-load of cash for the copyright to make it better and sell it since it's SSOOO AAWEEESOME?
Tomorrow? Tuesday? What about Thursday?
C'mon...we all know that this is where it's going...
-- A cat is no trade for integrity!
In the past you have had to present a complete business plan when applying for a license, and I don't think that will change.
Do you, or does anybody else reading this, have tips for writing a business plan for a game studio?
It's a gain if you're interested AT ALL in getting a job in the videogame programming field.
So how does homebrew help me earn the thousands of dollars that it would cost me to move from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Greater Seattle, Washington, and live for a few months while I interview at 100 different video game development studios?
When will I be able to write a game using Nintendo's Game Development SDK (NSDK), publish it on my Nintendo Net home page, and have my friend download and playin on his Nintendo console?
As soon as you have successfully sold the same title on the Microsoft Windows platform first. Use the mouse to prototype how the Wiimote control would work. You can use sales of the PC version of your game as evidence in a business plan to present to Nintendo.
This comment is detailed.
Come on, "homebrew" has lost its meaning, all it means now is the ability run emulators loaded up with lots of roms and the ability to run illegally obtained commercial games/software. People care more about running that stuff then some pong-knock-off or an application.
I swear, each time I see an announcement about some sort of PSP related exploit, you get a bunch of fake "this is good news for the homebrew community" BS. Won't see it much on slashdot.org, but a good amount of the comments on other forums/sites consist of people creaming their pants at the possibility of playing the newer games without paying. You get a lot of "OMG YES, NOW MAKE IT WORK WITH ISOS," "Cool, I hope they can get it to work with *Insert-recent-game-here*, etc. That is the real reason people get up in arms each time Sony fixes and locks things down with a patch.
Seriously, most "real" "homebrew" people care about if their new DS Lite will work with brand X cart/dongle, and how good the cart/dongle is at running GBA/DS/etc ROMs(i.e is there a slow down, do they need any patches due to new DS firmware, can they brick my system, etc) then they do about running Linux, some IRC program, a tech-demo or SCUMMVM.....
Now cue the "I use it only for 'homebrew'" posts, but keep in mind that if you are really being truthful(i.e no pirating games, no running emulators with massive amounts of games you probably don't own or dumped yourself), people like you are few and far between.
It's a gain if you're interested AT ALL in getting a job in the videogame programming field. Anything like this would be at least a bit of help, and/or experience, no?
I suppose it is. This *and* the fact that I am about to get a master degree in computer science :). Do anybody think it would be the kind of thing to put on a CV (the PSX little game thingy not the CS master of course) ?
I don't have any evidence of this but I honestly don't think that the tiny developers that would be developing for the Virtual Console would actually need a hardware development kit.
Hypothetically speaking, if Nintendo wanted to make a truly viable platform for 2D development they could create a virtual machine which was completely capable of displaying 2D sprite based graphics at (aproximately) 800x600; you could then produce a software development kit to run on your PC along with a boot disc (which would allow you to load your game onto the Wii via SD card) for playtesting. You could sell this entire dev kit for under $100. They could have the restriction that if you wanted to sell it using their online service that it had to gain the Nintendo Seal of Aproval through Nintendo based tests.
You're correct that Nintendo does look for established developers for most development, but the main reason for this is quite different than you think. One of the main reasons that the XBox was hacked so quickly and the Gamecube took so long is Hackers had their hands on XBox dev-kits (and were familiar with the inner workings of the system) months before the system actually released. On the other hand, with the gamecube Hackers had to reverse engineer the system to gain any understanding on how the hardware functioned before they could attempt to circumvent the copy protection. If you're virtual machine is well built, and ultimately hostile to code being run on it you should be able to freely distribute the virtual machine without any fear of it being cracked to alow for piracy.
The up front fees to become a console dev don't cover the actual cost to the company. The hardware you'll get costs a few bucks, the software costs them a few bucks, and just getting their time so they can get it to you and get you up and running on it costs more than a few bucks.
When selling one of these kits, N is certainly expecting to see some back-end revenue from the license fees when you sell your game. So giving away a game is probably not going to fit into their plan.
Additionally, the legal agreements will restrict you from doing a lot of things, and probably require you to get an ESRB rating (which isn't free). It'll also keep you from sharing info with others, if it's like typical agreements.
Additionally, $2K is a lot, and this is slashdot, people don't even like paying $500 for dev tools (Dev Studio), $2K is far out of the ballpark.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Which are available for sale where?
That was this, but unfortunately, "While you can buy the circuit boards from this guy he's pretty adamant about not selling the finished product".
That's the one I already linked to, for which no finished pieces will be made available for sale. Should everybody who wants to develop or even just run a homebrew NES program be forced to learn to solder?
Which also is not for sale.
OK, so once I have a feature-complete prototype of my game running on a PC under Microsoft Windows, the business plan becomes
- Port to console;
- Sell games;
- PROFIT!
So how do I flesh out steps 1, 2, and 3 in order to convince the console maker that all three will be successfully achieved?Hehe, maybe we do play some dodgy games too, but speaking form personal experience of most games these days I'd prefer to play Monkeyt Island 1 and 2 again on ScummVM. Then again maybe I'm just getting old. I even have a code wheel around here somewhere! MMMm Codewheel!
+----------------- | What is the question!
There are many reasons people run homebrew. Unfortunately Piracy is one of them. But to say that people only use it for illegal purposes sounds quite short-sighted and fairly ignorant. There are other reasons people write and use homebrew games and applications.
First it is to get the console to do something that people want it to do but, for some reason, it doesn't. The XBox media center is a good example of this. I believe it plays videos, music, and can even download podcasts (I do not own an XBox, so I am not completely certain). These are all legitimate purposes (yes, they can be misused for illegal purposes, but few things can't). Not everyone wants to wait for Nintendo to release software to let the DS stream Internet radio. It may happen, but it probably won't. Why not write it yourself?
The second is to add more games to a commercially dead console. Not everyone can afford new games and in some cases games can be hard to find. There are plenty of free or cheap alternatives. The Atari 2600 has a thriving homebrew scene. I doubt that most of those games and such are for illegal purposes (yes, there may always be some for illegal purposes). The dreamcast also has a large following. It doesn't need a chip (at least for the models before a certain date, I believe). It is, I think, not that hard to write for it since it uses a modified version of Windows CE. And since it uses CD-ROMs as media, any one with a burner can download and burn the disc. Yes, this will lead to some piracy and so forth. But it also means that people are porting many open source games to it, and even writing their own. This means that more games can be played on this great console.
There are plenty more homebrew games than just clones of pong or other 1980's arcade games. The reason why there are so many old arcade ports are because they are easy to write. They are usually used as a building block by developers to learn about the system and how to code on it. If you want to program on a system that you are unfamiliar with, you don't start on something as complex as an FPS or RTS or anything like that, you start small. For game programming, Pong is a good place start. Learning to program on a console is another reason people homebrew. It is a challenge and overcoming intellectual challenges are fun.
Don't start saying that all homebrew is piracy or that letting people write their own applications will only lead to illegal activities. There is a lot of good in homebrew development. Will it be misused, yes. But does that mean that most, if not all, of it is just warez and illegal applications, no. This is the same thinking that put even tighter restrictions on software and development.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
There are NES-, SNES-, N64-, Genesis/Megadrive-, GBA-emulators for the Gamecube
What a sad state of affairs when the only memory most kids have of Nibbles is from their cell phones rather than qbasic... Gorilla, however, owns all!
Its the lack of such 2D games that makes me regret wasting money on PS2.
If only MAME emulator would run fine on it..
Actually, my game was called Nibbles :). But I must admit that I did not remember that.
Note that there is still a very active PS2, PSP homebrew scene. Check PS2Dev for example.
Newbie! :-) My memory of nibbler/snake is from 1982 on the VIC-20, not the more recent (1990?) microsoft version. I think it was a clone even back then, as an arcade version was released in 1982. I hadn't played the 1977 arcade game hustle, but IIRC the 1982 game Tron had a version too. I'm sure loads of kids wrote clones of that game themselves as a learning exercise, in those pre-tetris days.
Well said, I mod my consoles not so I can pirate games but so I can play imports that I would otherwise be unable to play. The whole argument that modchips/homebrew = piracy is so annoying to me because my hobby is being associated with something it's not.
I've got 3 GP2X's, and they're all wonderful little machines .. such a dream to code for ..
.. there's a ton of life in this little console. Today i wired up a USB cable so I can plug it directly into my GP2X, and connect my battery-powered 60gig JOBO datatank hard drive .. with this little combo, I've got hours and hours and hours of movies to watch, more games than I can possibly play on one vacation, and a veritable Ark of storage for use with my digital camera .. absolutely, positively, the most value-for-money computer investment I've made in a long time.
..
the GP2X games scene is constantly releasing new and interesting stuff for it, the compiler/dev scene is very well advanced, and well
If you're a linux hacker: get a GP2X. Its a wonderful, wonderful toy
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yes, the PS1 has a GREAT, NES emulator.. and it does run at full speed. http://imbnes.gamebase.ca/ Not to mention the PS2 has many emulators on it already.. Snes-Station (Super Nintendo) and PGEN (Sega Genesis) both work well, with some minor compatibility issues. PSMS (Sega Master System) also works. snes-station.gamebase.ca psms.gamebase.ca www.gamebase.ca/pgen If you want a full detailed list, go to www.zophar.net
Why not that we simply do it for fun, and want others to share in that fun?
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
From somebody stuck in proxy hell -- thank you!
Hmm, wasn't there a version of the DC loader that used the LAN adapter?
On eBay, the Dreamcast broadband adapter still costs about a hundred dollars.