I've recently tried booting emulators of various types on my Dreamcast (latest post and this older one) and my PS2 (posts on modification and emulators). The homebrew scene for both of these is interesting, although the Dreamcast clearly has the more lively community. If only the Dreamcast had a bit more power, it could be the ultimate system (short of a Xbox, see the end of this post and the comments below it) for me, since it could handle Atari 2600, NES, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, Commodore 64, MAME, Quake, and Doom. As it is, however, the Genesis and SNES emulators (DCGenerator and DreamSnes, respectively) aren't very good. I had to go to PGEN on the PS2 to get a really good Genesis emulator. (Even then it has a bug; Earthworm Jim 2 has a control issue that makes it unplayable.) The SNES-Station emulator for the PS2 is also not as good as it should be, so the Xbox appears to be the only home console which can adequately emulate the SNES.
The DC homebrew folks have made some nice ports of DooM and Quake as well, which I recommend folks check out. It's a great use for your Dreamcast, if you've been letting it collect dust.
If you do anything, however, try out NesterDC (my experience here). A great, featureful NES emulator which supports everything you could want, including a DC light gun acting as an NES light gun for games like Duck Hunt! (Also, don't forget that you should only download ROMs for the cartridges you own. Even if you don't own any, there are a good number of homebrew NES games in the public domain that you can use to try out the emulator itself. My NesterDC disc has all the homebrews I enjoy playing and the ROMs for my entire NES collection.)
Nights for the Sega Saturn had a special Xmas version that used the internal clock in the Saturn to release special items during Christmas. Sadly, it appears that GameFAQs doesn't have any information about it specifically, but you can read the FAQ by STowle on this page for Nights which has a description in an appendix.
Finally, Heavy Gear II apparently has little red-and-white Santa hats on the Gears on Christmas day. I don't know for sure if this works in all versions, but I know it did in the Linux one.
You GNU folks in the audience should like this one.
I'm in favor of giving away games for free. Honestly I am. But Sometimes Free Isn't Free Enough explains why game companies should be doing the free games thing a bit differently.
The upshot is: learn from id Software. Their games will now live forever, with no overhead for the developer, because they released their source. Even source releases under a not-quite-free license would be better than a binary-only release. As a bonus, the game assets (graphics, models, music, sounds, etc.) can all be sold for use with the freely available clients, providing a small trickle of income over the longer term.
Anyway, I got flamed for this in the comments on the story when I wrote it, and I expect more, so FLAME ON!:^)
Sorry, I wish I had time to reply to your whole post, as I think I'd like to elaborate on the other points, but I only have time for this clarification on my original post. (Blasted holiday season eats time like nothing else I know...)
My issue with the delayed games is that they're pushing people to check prices on games that are delayed, and by definition, won't be out for quite a while. I'm not a fan of pushing people to pre-order games, and I think that in the case of delayed games, esp. those like Half-life 2 and Dark Alliance 2 which are in a sort of limbo between existence and non-existence (for various reasons), it's not exactly honorable to be pushing people toward preorders. If they'd put Duke Nukem Forever in that list with a "Check Prices" link, I'm sure my point would be more obvious, but that's the general idea.
You can still disagree, naturally. I just left out some verbiage that needed to accompany my original post to make my issue with the GameSpot post.
Maybe I'm just a pie-in-the-sky idealist, but I'm more and more disappointed that the "media" are really just vehicles for pushing the products they claim to evaluate. Do all media outlets now provide "check prices" and "buy now" links when they're supposed to be evaluating products?
As another poster pointed out, what's the deal with a "Check prices" link on every game, even the ones that are supposedly terrible? The answer is that GameSpot is probably obligated to provide those links because of deals they have with publishers or game retailers. Not only does that particular category reveal them for the captialists that they really are (i.e. not independent press), but then they actually have a category called "Most Disappointing Delay" populated with games that are not out now and (in the case of Half-life 2, at least) may not be out for several months yet.
Frankly, I think they could have listed themselves among the category "Most Despicable Product Placement".
After a post was made in the news about several requests for scanner drivers, I pointed out the open Linux drivers for several non-supported-on-OS-X scanners like two years ago to a fairly-well-trafficked Mac site. No reply. Not even a grunt of interest. Not that I thought it'd be chump work, mind you, but rather that if people really had the itch there was a means to scratch it. And it was even free!
Now, that idea finally comes to fruition. I'm glad that someone in the Mac community picked up the ball and ran with it. Thank goodness.
Not such a bad idea. Suppose my digital camera's memory card was NTFS. Well, then, I'd be out of luck under Linux unless I had the NTFS driver in my kernel. Last time I really compiled a kernel (ages ago) that driver still said experimental, or some such, and as I recall didn't have write access, just read. Furthermore, any other drive formatted with NTFS that I wanted to access, like a USB or Firewire hard drive, would be similarly difficult with a Linux machine.
And, while I'm rambling, what about the FAT driver in the Linux kernel? Is it in violation of the patent? I really don't know, and I'm too lazy to research it myself. (Isn't that what/. is for? Shouting questions into the void to see what answers come back?;^)
You got me. I didn't follow the link. Still, pretty offensive to me to see someone store an integer that way. I spend a whole semester teaching my students to store their data in binary form...:^)
If the number is 2^20996011 then it will take 2099602 bits to store it, or 2624501 bytes along with 4 extra bits. Let's just call it 2624502 bytes. Now, 2624502 divided by 1024*1024 (number of bytes I'd say are in a megabyte) is about 2.5. Which is all to say that somewhere around 2.5 megabytes would be required to store this number, not 6 megabytes as the post here claims.
This is all perfectly true, modulo an arithmetic error on my part.:^)
I can't believe nobody else has thought of this before, but what about mouse gestures in javascript?
Well, if that were only the case.
A quick search through the USPTO database shows that in fact Amazon has already claimed the mouse-gestures patent, specifically referencing Javascript. Not only that, but they've also patented the one-gesture purchase, apparently to be implemented on their site at some point in the future.
It doesn't stop there, however. IBM claims that they patented this back in the 1980s, but didn't specifically mention a mouse but rather a generic input device. And SCO, in one of their counterclaims, says that gestures are part of the original UNIX and that in fact there are over a million instances of copyright infringement in both IBM and Amazon's patent filings.
And, if only that were the end of it. Disney has jumped into the fray with claims that Steamboat Willie has mouse gestures in it, reducing this to a boiling cauldron of copyright, patents, and trademark issues.
Perhaps the author of the Javascript code should look more carefully into possible IP infringement issues before posting what amounts to a boast on Slashdot about how novel and clever they've been.
Interview with Jeff Vavasour, one of the developers of Midway Arcade Treasures, in three parts: Part 1 on technical questions about emulation Part 2 on the business of emulation Part 3 on personal questions and the future of emulation
"Our groundbreaking portability development continues to keep pace with the industry's recent and most challenging games written for Windows," remarks Peter Hunnisett, Manager of TransGaming's Linux Development Team. "Dynamic sound, rich graphics and riveting game play are matched
and, in some instances, surpassed with our WineX technology." [my emphasis added]
I take that to mean that the Windows game plays better under Linux using WineX than it does under Windows. I know people will say things like "no BSOD!" to be funny, but doesn't this strike anyone else as a lot of malarkey? What runs better...Mine Sweeper?
For the first two years, I used my PS2 about every other day. More recently, it's been less frequently. I've played literally dozens of games, several to completion, including PSX games. I'd say that I'm a moderately heavy user (but not a very heavy user). Check website in signature to get an idea of what.
(For the record, my PS2 for launch day is still working. I'm on cube #3)
Count me in the list of "launch day" PS2 owners with a working system. No problems and I've toted it all over the town to visit with friends and across several states to visit the in-laws.
If anyone cares, I use my standing upright. I wonder how much that matters.
My Cube is holding up so far. Haven't heard about nearly as many problems from the Cubes...you're the first.
Incidentally, this is also coming out for the PS2, although without the graphical upgrade and soundtrack enhancements, AFAICT. But that's not why I posted.
Biggest Missing Feature: Motorcycles in Liberty City.
Honestly, that would suck me into playing GTA3 all over again, just trying out the bikes for hours seeing what I could pull off. If they added that, I'd consider selling my GTA3 and GTA:VC for the PS2 just to have the upgraded version of GTA3 in the double pack.
Surely they thought about this. What's holding them back? Make it an easter egg, if need be, so you can avoid the "we couldn't test all situations and it wouldn't pass QA" argument.
Oh, and while you're reading, I always love plugging this little article. In short, GTA3 much better than GTA:VC, and that's all there is to it. Flame on!:^D
Some of you are forgetting who we're talking about here. This is a company that's got the money and technical resources to burn on this initial step into the gaming market.
They're going to shower developers with hardware, software, and cash bonuses to bring truly revolutionary games to their platform.
They're going to snap up all kinds of free talent to put together daring and innovative first-party games.
Their integrated online gaming is second-to-none, with the kind of features that Playstation2 and GameCube players only dream of.
And they've got a terribly impressive hardware platform, on which they're probably already building the next generation.
That first step made, they'll crush the competition with the momentum they're gaining every passing week, and then we'll see Sony weeping over poor sales of the Playstation3 and Nintendo having a going-out-of-business sale where they auction off Donkey Kong to the highest bidder.
Yes, just wait. Microsoft and the Xbox cannot be stopped. THEY ARE THE FUTURE OF...
What's that? Nokia, huh? A phone? YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE BATTERY OFF TO CHANGE GAMES?
Sorry, everyone. Wrong thread. Yeah, N-Gage is doomed.
Once a troll... (actually serious post)
on
Max Payne 2 Gone Gold
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Last time I brought up how mind-numbingly weak Max Payne was, I got flamed. So I'll ask this time, just for fun.:^)
Was Max Payne's story, with hammy voice acting and so forth, a joke or serious? That is, did they think they were making a work of serious fiction or were they trying to spoof the hard-boiled detective "noir" genre?
I never found a story or interview indicating that it was meant to be parody/satire, but I could have missed it. So I took it as an attempt to be serious, one that was painful to watch. Others saw it as intentionally bad for humourous effect.
So, anyone have hard evidence one way or the other?
Anyway, here's hoping MP2 is somehow better. I didn't realize it was coming out on the PS2, so I guess I'll have a chance to rent it to see it for myself. (Previous curmudgeoning of Max Payne here and here for the morbidly curious.)
If it's $99 for a Cube and nothing else, then this is not a terribly significant event. Before it was $149 for a Cube and a game (Zelda, e.g.) or $149 for a Cube and GameBoy Player (GBP). Each of those extra items is roughly $50 retail, so the Cube itself could have been thought of as being $99 for a while. Regardless, they can now advertise is as $99 and people may actually think that it's a new deal. In a sense, it is, since now they can pick the game to go with their new cube (instead of having to buy a specific one) but the net effect is still that the Cube cost $99.
Now, if in fact the $99 price still includes either a game or a GBP then this is a significant deal. Honestly, with the GBP the Cube becomes a great little system to have. I recently finished Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow entirely on the GBP and that was a GREAT experience. Other GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance games also benefit from the big screen format, although you may finally realize how awful some of that 8-bit sound was on your older games. Those older games are relatively cheap to get used, so you can get by inexpensively on those. Add in Animal Crossing and other great games on the Player's Choice list and then you're talking a good time. Heck, you can even play Soul Calibur II, if you want.
Sure, you won't be playing Halo 2 or the next Grand Theft Auto, but there is still some good gaming to be had on that cheap Cube.
I searched for "used video games" and "Raleigh, NC" and the first ten results are about anything but video games. Try it for yourself, and figure out why the Teachers.Net trade show is listed.
GTA3. That the main character has no name (even less information than Freeman!) and never speaks was a brilliant choice. There are other reasons to think so (many of which I've written here in my review) but that quality of the protagonist in GTA3 is one of the most important distinctions that makes GTA: Vice City much less of an interesting game. Tommy Vercetti might very well be a classic bad-ass, but he doesn't have the every-man quality that the character in GTA3 has.
Back on topic, I'm not sure I ever thought that there needed to be that much writing to go with Gordon Freeman himself. The writing was mostly in what Cigarette Smoking Man said and what all the people around him said.
And I'll go ahead and say it now: if Gordon speaks in HL2, then it will ruin the very quality that the parent comment to this one spoke about.
Let's assume that the boxes that PS2 consoles are shipped in are 18 inches by 18 inches by 8 inches. That's 1.5 cubic feet. If you multiply by 60 million, you end up with 90 million cubic feet. The cube root of 90 million is 448 plus a bit. Assume 15 feet per story in a building.
Then if all the boxes for all the PS2 consoles sold were stacked up in a cube, it'd be roughly 30 stories tall and as long on each side as about 1.5 football fields.
I'm sure I forgot to carry a one or something. Maybe even a divide by zero somewhere. But that's probably close.
Now if I only had a dollar for each console sold...
Slashdot Mirror
The DC homebrew folks have made some nice ports of DooM and Quake as well, which I recommend folks check out. It's a great use for your Dreamcast, if you've been letting it collect dust.
If you do anything, however, try out NesterDC (my experience here). A great, featureful NES emulator which supports everything you could want, including a DC light gun acting as an NES light gun for games like Duck Hunt! (Also, don't forget that you should only download ROMs for the cartridges you own. Even if you don't own any, there are a good number of homebrew NES games in the public domain that you can use to try out the emulator itself. My NesterDC disc has all the homebrews I enjoy playing and the ROMs for my entire NES collection.)
Finally, Heavy Gear II apparently has little red-and-white Santa hats on the Gears on Christmas day. I don't know for sure if this works in all versions, but I know it did in the Linux one.
I'm in favor of giving away games for free. Honestly I am. But Sometimes Free Isn't Free Enough explains why game companies should be doing the free games thing a bit differently.
The upshot is: learn from id Software. Their games will now live forever, with no overhead for the developer, because they released their source. Even source releases under a not-quite-free license would be better than a binary-only release. As a bonus, the game assets (graphics, models, music, sounds, etc.) can all be sold for use with the freely available clients, providing a small trickle of income over the longer term.
Anyway, I got flamed for this in the comments on the story when I wrote it, and I expect more, so FLAME ON! :^)
My issue with the delayed games is that they're pushing people to check prices on games that are delayed, and by definition, won't be out for quite a while. I'm not a fan of pushing people to pre-order games, and I think that in the case of delayed games, esp. those like Half-life 2 and Dark Alliance 2 which are in a sort of limbo between existence and non-existence (for various reasons), it's not exactly honorable to be pushing people toward preorders. If they'd put Duke Nukem Forever in that list with a "Check Prices" link, I'm sure my point would be more obvious, but that's the general idea.
You can still disagree, naturally. I just left out some verbiage that needed to accompany my original post to make my issue with the GameSpot post.
Maybe I'm just a pie-in-the-sky idealist, but I'm more and more disappointed that the "media" are really just vehicles for pushing the products they claim to evaluate. Do all media outlets now provide "check prices" and "buy now" links when they're supposed to be evaluating products?
As another poster pointed out, what's the deal with a "Check prices" link on every game, even the ones that are supposedly terrible? The answer is that GameSpot is probably obligated to provide those links because of deals they have with publishers or game retailers. Not only does that particular category reveal them for the captialists that they really are (i.e. not independent press), but then they actually have a category called "Most Disappointing Delay" populated with games that are not out now and (in the case of Half-life 2, at least) may not be out for several months yet.
Frankly, I think they could have listed themselves among the category "Most Despicable Product Placement".
After a post was made in the news about several requests for scanner drivers, I pointed out the open Linux drivers for several non-supported-on-OS-X scanners like two years ago to a fairly-well-trafficked Mac site. No reply. Not even a grunt of interest. Not that I thought it'd be chump work, mind you, but rather that if people really had the itch there was a means to scratch it. And it was even free!
Now, that idea finally comes to fruition. I'm glad that someone in the Mac community picked up the ball and ran with it. Thank goodness.
Not such a bad idea. Suppose my digital camera's memory card was NTFS. Well, then, I'd be out of luck under Linux unless I had the NTFS driver in my kernel. Last time I really compiled a kernel (ages ago) that driver still said experimental, or some such, and as I recall didn't have write access, just read. Furthermore, any other drive formatted with NTFS that I wanted to access, like a USB or Firewire hard drive, would be similarly difficult with a Linux machine.
/. is for? Shouting questions into the void to see what answers come back? ;^)
And, while I'm rambling, what about the FAT driver in the Linux kernel? Is it in violation of the patent? I really don't know, and I'm too lazy to research it myself. (Isn't that what
Give that man a cookie. ;^)
And if someone brings up storing numbers in base 20996011...
You got me. I didn't follow the link. Still, pretty offensive to me to see someone store an integer that way. I spend a whole semester teaching my students to store their data in binary form... :^)
If the number is 2^20996011 then it will take 2099602 bits to store it, or 2624501 bytes along with 4 extra bits. Let's just call it 2624502 bytes. Now, 2624502 divided by 1024*1024 (number of bytes I'd say are in a megabyte) is about 2.5. Which is all to say that somewhere around 2.5 megabytes would be required to store this number, not 6 megabytes as the post here claims.
:^)
This is all perfectly true, modulo an arithmetic error on my part.
A quick search through the USPTO database shows that in fact Amazon has already claimed the mouse-gestures patent, specifically referencing Javascript. Not only that, but they've also patented the one-gesture purchase, apparently to be implemented on their site at some point in the future.
It doesn't stop there, however. IBM claims that they patented this back in the 1980s, but didn't specifically mention a mouse but rather a generic input device. And SCO, in one of their counterclaims, says that gestures are part of the original UNIX and that in fact there are over a million instances of copyright infringement in both IBM and Amazon's patent filings.
And, if only that were the end of it. Disney has jumped into the fray with claims that Steamboat Willie has mouse gestures in it, reducing this to a boiling cauldron of copyright, patents, and trademark issues.
Perhaps the author of the Javascript code should look more carefully into possible IP infringement issues before posting what amounts to a boast on Slashdot about how novel and clever they've been.
Hope this helps.
Interview with Jeff Vavasour, one of the developers of Midway Arcade Treasures, in three parts:
Part 1 on technical questions about emulation
Part 2 on the business of emulation
Part 3 on personal questions and the future of emulation
Ok, flame on!
Off-topic, sorry. PainKilleR-CE, could you contact me through email? I wasn't able to find another contact method. jvm@linuxgames.com
Thanks.
For the first two years, I used my PS2 about every other day. More recently, it's been less frequently. I've played literally dozens of games, several to completion, including PSX games. I'd say that I'm a moderately heavy user (but not a very heavy user). Check website in signature to get an idea of what.
Incidentally, this is also coming out for the PS2, although without the graphical upgrade and soundtrack enhancements, AFAICT. But that's not why I posted.
:^D
Biggest Missing Feature:
Motorcycles in Liberty City.
Honestly, that would suck me into playing GTA3 all over again, just trying out the bikes for hours seeing what I could pull off. If they added that, I'd consider selling my GTA3 and GTA:VC for the PS2 just to have the upgraded version of GTA3 in the double pack.
Surely they thought about this. What's holding them back? Make it an easter egg, if need be, so you can avoid the "we couldn't test all situations and it wouldn't pass QA" argument.
Oh, and while you're reading, I always love plugging this little article. In short, GTA3 much better than GTA:VC, and that's all there is to it. Flame on!
Some of you are forgetting who we're talking about here. This is a company that's got the money and technical resources to burn on this initial step into the gaming market.
They're going to shower developers with hardware, software, and cash bonuses to bring truly revolutionary games to their platform.
They're going to snap up all kinds of free talent to put together daring and innovative first-party games.
Their integrated online gaming is second-to-none, with the kind of features that Playstation2 and GameCube players only dream of.
And they've got a terribly impressive hardware platform, on which they're probably already building the next generation.
That first step made, they'll crush the competition with the momentum they're gaining every passing week, and then we'll see Sony weeping over poor sales of the Playstation3 and Nintendo having a going-out-of-business sale where they auction off Donkey Kong to the highest bidder.
Yes, just wait. Microsoft and the Xbox cannot be stopped. THEY ARE THE FUTURE OF...
What's that? Nokia, huh? A phone? YOU HAVE TO TAKE THE BATTERY OFF TO CHANGE GAMES?
Sorry, everyone. Wrong thread. Yeah, N-Gage is doomed.
Was Max Payne's story, with hammy voice acting and so forth, a joke or serious? That is, did they think they were making a work of serious fiction or were they trying to spoof the hard-boiled detective "noir" genre?
I never found a story or interview indicating that it was meant to be parody/satire, but I could have missed it. So I took it as an attempt to be serious, one that was painful to watch. Others saw it as intentionally bad for humourous effect.
So, anyone have hard evidence one way or the other?
Anyway, here's hoping MP2 is somehow better. I didn't realize it was coming out on the PS2, so I guess I'll have a chance to rent it to see it for myself. (Previous curmudgeoning of Max Payne here and here for the morbidly curious.)
Now, if in fact the $99 price still includes either a game or a GBP then this is a significant deal. Honestly, with the GBP the Cube becomes a great little system to have. I recently finished Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow entirely on the GBP and that was a GREAT experience. Other GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and GameBoy Advance games also benefit from the big screen format, although you may finally realize how awful some of that 8-bit sound was on your older games. Those older games are relatively cheap to get used, so you can get by inexpensively on those. Add in Animal Crossing and other great games on the Player's Choice list and then you're talking a good time. Heck, you can even play Soul Calibur II, if you want.
Sure, you won't be playing Halo 2 or the next Grand Theft Auto, but there is still some good gaming to be had on that cheap Cube.
Bizarre.
Back on topic, I'm not sure I ever thought that there needed to be that much writing to go with Gordon Freeman himself. The writing was mostly in what Cigarette Smoking Man said and what all the people around him said.
And I'll go ahead and say it now: if Gordon speaks in HL2, then it will ruin the very quality that the parent comment to this one spoke about.
Then if all the boxes for all the PS2 consoles sold were stacked up in a cube, it'd be roughly 30 stories tall and as long on each side as about 1.5 football fields.
I'm sure I forgot to carry a one or something. Maybe even a divide by zero somewhere. But that's probably close.
Now if I only had a dollar for each console sold...
LAN Parties and single player STEAM games require connection.
HTH.