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."

Comments

Oy!

[cheebie]

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.

Horrible Article

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Horrible Article

[jeremy_dot]

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.

My God!

[Monkeys!!!]

*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.

Wii

[hyfe]

Anybody know if random people will be able to program for it? If we can, I image will see a shitload of cool stuff, as that controller is sooo begging for simple cool games. I mean, just something like pong would be insanely fun :)

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)

Emulators for DS

[Anonymous Coward]

I picked up a DS for Nintendogs and because I could run Sam and Max Hit the Road via http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/ ScummVM DS. The rest of the emulator scene, however, is a little hit-or miss.

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!

Re:Who bothers?

[Grey Ninja]

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.

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.

Re:Who bothers?

[lord_rob the only on]

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 ?

Wii Dev Kit

[Xistic]

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

Re:Anyone actually using a GP2X?

[despisethesun]

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.

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