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Two-Player Pong Homebrew Arrives On PS3
Croakyvoice writes "Dragula96 has released the first 2
player Homebrew Game. Using the Blue Disc Java runtime on the PS3 and the Minimal
BD-J (Java) Devkit, this will run on any PS3 on any firmware — Pong finally
arrives on PS3."
OMG! Can you say killer app?
You just got troll'd!
They've nearly caught up to the commercial offerings.
This "two-player" version of Pong sounds much more difficult than the original single-player version!
-Peter
While not wanting to take away too much from this, in the early 80s, Radio Shack released a version of Breakout (the ball and bricks game) that had nine modes including 2-player versions in both cooperative and competitive modes. You could put English on the ball (square) because of the 2-D paddle motion (not just 1-D). In some modes (bricks at top of screen), gravity also affected the trajectories.
For the Color Computer ("CoCo") -- 1K of RAM (included the screen memory) and 4K of ROM for the program. Don't remember if there was anything like a BIOS but I believe not. No OS, no virtual machines, or any of the fun things available nowadays.
I spent many long nights squeezing my code into that tight shoe -- and along the way fell in love with the Motorola 6809 as probably the best designed microprocessor ever made. (I haven't seen anything since then to change my opinion on that.)
The more things change, the more they stay the same ....
For most purposes, 355/113 is close enough.
Unless I missed something (which is entirely possible), I think the more important story here is that someone has found a way to be able to load what appears to be ANY Java-compatible code on the PS3 via nothing more than a USB memory stick. At the moment, this has manifested itself in the form of Pong. But it'll be exciting to see what else people come up with in the coming weeks and months.
This guy's the limit!
Remember how Sony said to give them another year? The wait is over, maybe they will release an extreme version with multiple colors?
As typical on Slashdot, anything that relates to technology in a game system is attributed to the game system itself. BD-J is Java for Blu-ray disc players. It's not PS3 homebrew - It's Blu-ray homebrew.
As apposed to what? 1 player pong?
a good game for the PS3 is out! I told you guys that this would happen! Now you'll all be sorry that you bought your 360s and Wiis, 'cause PS3 is finally gonna OWN!
While I applaud their efforts, was it seriously that difficult to implement a simple AI for a 1 player mode? You know, move the paddle to the same Y coordinates as the ball...seems trivial to me.
As apposed to what? 1 player pong?
Some videoairhockey chips implemented a 1-player variant called "squash" where the player bounced the ball against a wall at increasing speeds. A more sophisticated 1-player videoairhockey game uses two paddles, one on each side of the screen, one controlled by the player and the other controlled by the computer. The computer calculates where the ball will end up when the ball reaches the computer's side, using incidence = reflection, and then moves its paddle to block the ball.
I've been waiting for the justification and if this is'nt it to spend $300 some odd dollars on anouther game system I don't know what is!
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
Oh wait... I can top that.
Pong, on a PS/3 controlled with Wiimote.
I did that a long time ago.
http://ps3computing.blogspot.com/2007/01/ps3-goes-retro-pong-using-wiimote.html
http://www.stolk.org/tlctc
and along the way fell in love with the Motorola 6809 as probably the best designed microprocessor ever made. (I haven't seen anything since then to change my opinion on that.)
I learned on that machine, and figured all machine language was like the 6809, I couldn't believe some of the goofy things my friends had to deal with on other procs. My favorite thing was the 16 bit multiply.
This is hardly the first 2-player homebrew game on the PS3.
I released my Puzzle Bobble clone pubble almost a year ago. That actually supports 2-5 players.
What's more, it's open-source and written in Python using my PS3 2D sprite library, python-ps3 which has a good library of SPU-accelerated sprite and alpha-blending routines, wireless sixaxis support and rumble support on a dualshock 3. I'm currently working on 3D rasterisation too, although that will be some months off yet...
Java? I was almost excited by this. :(
I'm just wondering if they'll close this off (running BD-J off of non-disc media) in a forthcoming firmware update...
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
As others have noted, though, the particular 'game' in TFA plays on an unmodified PS3 without Linux on it, because it takes advantage of the Java subset built into the PS3 for Blu-ray support. It is to that extent interesting, as it is a 'homebrew' game that can be played on an unmodified PS3 using its built-in, stock OS, without having to pay Sony a license fee.
It's debatable how useful this will be, as BD-J seems fairly limited (particularly w/o signed code), and Sony could update the firmware to prevent running such things off a flash drive, but still, this development is noteworthy.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
1080p compatible?