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Homebrew Community Blends Gamers and Hackers
MSNBC is running an article on the gaming homebrew community. They examine the 'do it yourself' attitude of the folks that make mods, knockoffs, and emulations possible. From the article: "So lively is the homebrew scene that some PSP fans -- it's impossible to say how many -- say they don't buy or play new games because they don't want to upgrade their gadgets and lose their homebrew software. There's even a circulating joke slogan: 'Friends don't let friends upgrade their PSPs.' Unable to break through recent versions of the Sony software, PSP homebrewers have moved on to another trick: downgrading their PSPs to earlier versions."
Do they set the blender on puree?
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
It should probably be pointed out that PSP is only one of the many systems that can be homebrewed for. There are many other systems, such as the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, ColecoVision, with a pretty strong homebrew community, and within the next year or three, the NES and Sega Genesis will probably see a rise in homebrew programming.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I am the author of the Luminesweeper game that the article mentions. If you have any questions about that game, ask away :-)
I don't get PSP "hacking" - if you want to write code for a cool handheld, why not get a GP2X, which is totally open, easy to develop for (using the standard GNU toolchain), runs Linux, and doesn't have a multi-national corporationa attempting to thwart you at every turn?
Plus, a GP2X is $169 USD, instead of $199, and you'll save a fortune using SD cards over Sony's proprietary (and absurdly expensive) Memory Stick.
For the record, I own a GP2X, a PSP, and a DS.
I'd love to have one unified, well-designed, attractive and ergonomic handheld game unit preloaded with a lightweight, unlocked, extendable OS and emulators for every system ever made.
I'd pay a lot of money for that.
But that won't happen in my lifetime, because of the approach the game companies take to copyright law and the razor-and-blades marketing approach.
--
(Waves Hand.) There is no sig here.
Homebrew Community Blends Gamers and Hackers
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Wonderful. Were can I buy these new-fangled machines?
Since I'm sure making homebrew games is against the PSP eula, does this mean that Sony can revoke the license and force people to return their PSPs? After all, they don't actually own the unit, just have permission to use it, right?
If you purchased a PSP, you own it. You did not purchase a license to use, or a license to rent, or a license which limits certain uses of the device. You own it and can do whatever you wish, including throwing it out a window or bricking it with bad homebrew software.
A EULA may be attached to copyrighted software and functions as a contractual agreement between the author and the user. This agreement may set terms for duplication of the software, limit certain uses of the software, and as well as set different pricing for various categories of users or regular per-use payments. The EULA is thus expressly bound to copyright and contract law, and lives between the boundaries of the two.
The PSP is not copyrighted (though firmware within it might be). Thus, it should be legal to use or abuse your PSP however you see fit. However, downgrading firmware might constitute a EULA violation since it constitutes duplication and installation of software - which, depending on the contract terms, could be deemed breach of contract and a copyright violation. But installing emacs, cross compiling the source and installing doom/quake/whatever, or even shoving that PSP up one's ass and mailing it back to Sony for service -- all that should be perfectly legal.
Please note: IANAL, but I do own a PSP - bought at launch. Given Sony's obnoxious and rude behavior to the homebrew scene though, I regret that purchase. It has not lived up to my expectations, both as a gaming machine (the games mostly suck) and as a homebrew platform. I think I would have been much happier with a DS.
Oh well, Sony seems intent on economic suicide. Good riddance.
Have they started to abide by the license that they obligated themselves to when they chose the linux kernel?
Before I get one of these, I'll probably end up with a Zaurus or some other PDA that I can run linux on.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Honestly, I consider people basically stealing code because they can't be bothered to comply with the license to be rather more shitty than Sony shipping a non-open device.
Half the homebrew developers on the GP2X seem to prefer working directly with the hardware anyway - for which, guess what, the damn source code for the hardware is rather a lot of help.
I don't know whether Sony has complied with the (L)GPL. If I have a rootkitted music disc, can I get a copy of the LAME source code from Sony?
How does the terminal emulator work if the GP2X doesn't have a touch surface on which to press keys? And making the Nintendo DS programmable costs about 70 USD nowadays (MAX Media Launcher + GBA Movie Player + CF card).
I hope Sony notices the significant demand for the missing functionality provided by these homebrew systems. Some people are willing to go through extraordinary lengths to get these additional features - likely many would pay for them if they were offered as a supported add-on that could increase Sony's revenue stream, and start to dust off their so very recently tarnished name.
Of course Sony doesn't seem to be reasoning rationally as of late, but one can dream...
Congrats! :-D
What would the DS have to offer for this sort of game? It's not a 3D playfield, it doesn't really need the extra VRAM, it doesn't need the "analog" [1] control of a touch screen, and I don't know what the second screen would display. The only reason that I can see why a DS port would be needed is if SLOT-2 (GBA) flash cards were to become unavailable as all the Chinese manufacturers shift to SLOT-1 cards using NoPass technology.
[1] Common misnomer for "approximately continuous".
Sure, playing musical CF cards is a bitch. But:
Wireless boot through DS Download Play was the past. The future is HTTP Download Play, where you run WinApache on your development machine, use an HTTP client on the DS to pull each build down to your CF card through the same wireless router that you already use for Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, and then run it on the DS.
Are those still widely available, or have manufacturers moved on to other chipsets (as denoted by the * in the master list)? And doesn't WMB as we know it require a PCI card, meaning that if all of my PC's PCI slots are full I have to buy another PC?
Well, I don't know where you live, but where I live (Switzerland, by the way), SanDisk Memory Sticks cost only a bit less than Sony's own Memory Sticks. Generally, the cheapest Memory Sticks cost a little less than twice as much as the cheapest SD cards for the same amount of storage space.
So, yeah, I got a GP2X with 2 gigs of space and the TV adapter, and it cost over 100 bucks less than my PSP with a 1 gig SanDisk memory stick.
The DS was still cheapest, and most fun to boot :-)
The real and obvious alternative is ofcourse that you want to be able to pirate or atleast run commercial titels aswell. With the GP2X you are quite screwed when it comes to commercial support so all there is is homebrew and emulators, with the PSP largest reason are probably that you can copy games, and it's also fun to be able to run emulators, and even if you ignore the illegal piracy stuff you can still atleast run emulators AND buy games to play on it (althought you probably want to rip those or something so the console doesn't upgrade.)