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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."
I have GC Linux booting, and running off of an NFS share from my file server. I also hear that the optical drive is accessible from Linux. I'm not sure about regular homebrew, but I would imagine it's not much different. My intention though is to leverage the NFS share for all it's worth, and make my GameCube into a media terminal. I have mostly just been playing around with it though, and haven't gotten it doing anything constructive yet (I'm too lazy to recompile the kernel with the patch for my keyboard). I did buy an 8cm DVD-RW though.
Dude, Xbox.
I've got a couple dozen emus on my Xbox, with rom sets thanks to a hard drive upgrade. The hardest part is figuring out a button layout that's comfortable on the Xbox controller, once that's set up it's smooth sailing.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
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
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
I picked up my DS Lite at 12:04 last night at WalMart. It replaces my original DS, which the wife is getting. The screen is way brighter, the case is a bit smaller, the stylus is larger (1cm longer, and slightly thicker) which makes it easier to hold... the microphone moved to the center of the console, and the status lights are now EASILY visible when the case is closed.
The only minor drawbacks are the new start and select buttons are itty bitty, and require a bit more effort to push accurately.
It was definitely worth the upgrade.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
According to rumours dev-kits for the Wii are expected at a mere $2000 while PS3 dev-kits should be in the range of $50000+. Ofcourse these are all rumours and any developer has to sign an NDA. A little bit more info
My freeware games
I've got one, and I'm pretty happy with it. Right now it's got a pretty good number of emulators running at or near full speed (the Genesis emulator in particular is great, and there's a very accurate PC Engine emulator that just hit 1.0 that does most games full speed with sound). Some emulators are still coming along though, which should be expected somewhat with a machine that's only about 6 or 7 months old. There are also some pretty good "interpreters" out for it (ports of Doom, Commander Keen, Quake, and Duke3D are all notable.) Batteries are a bit of a sore spot for some people, but if you can get your hands on some good 2500mAh NiMH rechargeables, you can expect about 5-6 hours per pair. Not great, but better than a PSP's battery life and you can swap them out when they die. Like I said, I'm happy with mine but it's got its quirks so it's not for everyone. Do a bit of googling and find out if it's for you.
This poo is cold.
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.
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?
You can purchase 2600 and 5200 homebrews here:
http://www.atariage.com/store/
A 7800/2600 "CuttleCart" (which allows you to play games from a MMC card) can be purchased here:
http://www.schells.com/cc2.shtml
You'll note that the CuttleCart3 will be for the Intellivision. There used to be a cart called the "IntelliCart" that used a serial cable, but it's been unavailable for several years. There doesn't seem to be anyone releasing Intellivision homebrew carts despite the thriving homebrew community. So you'll need to find a used IntelliCart, or purchase a CC3 when it comes out.
Homebrew Odyssey^2 games can be purchased on PackRatVG's site here:
http://www.packratvg.com/o2hbrews.html
Even more O2 homebrews, along with Colecovision and Vectrex homebrews can be found here:
http://www.classicgamecreations.com/
Note that O2 homebrews tend to be a lot better than many of the original games.
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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/
Mod parent up.
As an amateur Nintend DS developer:
In the "good old days" one could buy a device called a PassMe (a glorified device that performs a JMP into the GBA cartridge's ROM thus executing unencrypted code. They come in several variations such as the PassMe and the SuperPass). Nintendo was not happy with the PassMe and made all the recent DS systems (after and including firmware 4.0) and made the handshaking between the DS and the DS cartridge a bit more complicated and on a game-by-game basis. Now, one needs a device called a PassMe2 which essentially pretends to be a game. Beyond this, there are "NoPass" devices which don't have to do the handshaking with the DS.
As it stands you can't use the rumble addon like the article implies, largely because both slots on the DS are taken up with the current state of homebrew (a GBA cart containing the code you want to run and a PassMe-like device in the DS slot). The DS section of this article is misleading. For more information, I suggest DualScene.net and MaxConsole.net for information on homebrew games and programs. One can check DSLinux.org for information on, appropriately, DS Linux, and one can check GBADev.org for information on DS and GBA development.
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.
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
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 ]
Other than the drastically improved screen quality, better battery life and smaller form factor, they're identical machines. From the perspective of the software, the *only* difference is the ability to control the backlight brightness. In fact, it takes significant effort just to tell them apart without screwing with the brightness register.
StoneCypher is Full of BS