Homebrew on Consoles Detailed 143
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."
Horrible Article (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Who bothers? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am the author of Dissonance [drunkencoders.com]. 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.
Horrible indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
If accepted submissions had to pass an editor karma check, this article would have been posted anonymously.
Re:Who bothers? (Score:5, Insightful)
"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 ?
Re:Spelling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wii (Score:1, Insightful)
Nintendo is family friendly. What is stopping someone from making a pornographic Wii game? Or even just use the Wii as a vector for pornography of any kind? Is Nintendo responsible if some hack and gore homebrew game is being distributed on their "Connect24" network and played on their consoles? Or what if I write a file sharing application for Wii?
Look at Napster/Kazaa vs MPAA/RIAA. Or look at the rediculous ESRB or Christian censorship groups.
You better believe Nintendo is going to police the content available on the Wii. And since it takes a LOT of money and people to censor it's just easier to only allow official licensed developers to use the online distribution service.
If you want "we don't care, do what you want" mentality keep an eye on the PS3. Sony is the company that has already released consumer dev kits for its previous home consoles. They also jump at games like Grand Theft Auto and Mafia. Like they care about a family friendly image.
Re:The other consoles differ. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bootable multimedia functions for music CD's. [wikipedia.org]
Personally, I thought the Atari Jaguar's went out in style (unlike the rest of it's lifecycle). At the pushing of several developers who had games in development but no remaining company to license through, Hasbro Interactive, who had acquired the rights, simply let them go [atariage.com]. Now anyone who is so inclined can make games for the Jaguar and release them commercially. It's really too bad that such a thing didn't happen with the Saturn or PS1, as you'd see some amazing homebrew games out there. Hasbro Interactive gets lots of points for giving the system back to a tiny community of diehard fans.
Re:Horrible indeed (Score:2, Insightful)
No it can't. The author's lack of spelling and grammar knowledge undermines any other work he may have put into the article. You could have the most well-researched and accurate article ever, but if every "paragraph" is a run-on sentence you're still going to look like an idiot. For crap's sake, at least load the article into a word processor and fix what it complains about (run-on sentences, dammit)! I'll forgive an occassional its/it's or their/there mix-up (if you mix up they're, I will hit you). I can even ignore apostrophes to pluralize abbreviations (apostrophes don't pluralize [angryflower.com], dammit). I can't forgive an article that is screwed up to the point of unreadability, even if the research behind it is good.
in short, no... (Score:3, Insightful)
When selling one of these kits, N is certainly expecting to see some back-end revenue from the license fees when you sell your game. So giving away a game is probably not going to fit into their plan.
Additionally, the legal agreements will restrict you from doing a lot of things, and probably require you to get an ESRB rating (which isn't free). It'll also keep you from sharing info with others, if it's like typical agreements.
Additionally, $2K is a lot, and this is slashdot, people don't even like paying $500 for dev tools (Dev Studio), $2K is far out of the ballpark.
Re:NES flash cards? (Score:2, Insightful)
GBA link cable multiplayer and DS wireless multiplayer are forms of LAN party networks. (A LAN party is a local-area network restricted to one room.) LAN-party and residence-area networks are local-area networks. LAN and Internet in turn are networks. Thus, simultaneous multiplayer video games are either single-head or network or (in the case of your Halo) both.
That's called turn-based, and very few popular genres that aren't also publishable in the form of a board game admit turn-based design.
Same-room normally refers to gaming that does not involve an Internet connection.
The problem here is that only two platforms make it feasible for a homebrew developer to sell copies of the shared-view simultaneous multiplayer game that he or she has developed, namely Windows and the Dreamcast. The problem with Windows is that there aren't enough families willing to connect a PC to the TV, meaning the equipment for four players cost well over 2,000 USD (four PCs plus four monitors). The problem with the Dreamcast is that 1. it's not yet emulated on the PC and 2. the "coders cable" for loading programs into Dreamcast RAM is limited to dial-up speeds, creating a major bottleneck in the edit-compile-send-test cycle.
Re:The other consoles differ. (Score:3, Insightful)
On XBox, Microsoft tries to detect non-authorised modification done to a XBox and bans the user. Most people wnating to be able to both play online AND run homebrewed software use a mod-chip with a switch (to switch between XBoxLive compliant BIOS and BIOS for Homebrewed software)
Soft-mods don't work because most of them rely on subverting the XBoxLive entry on the menu.
About the mod chip :
First they didn't say "only".
Then the action replay is a fucking soft-mod. It's not a hard-mod (mod-chip) but it's still a mod. The cube needs to be (soft) moded to run non-licensed code. And the soft-mode isn't very handy, you need to repeat it each time. From this point of view, telling the people that they should better use a mod-chip to make mods parmanent isn't wrong.
The bug exploit is just that : eploiting bugs in a game. There may be dozens of them on each system, and the article would be made un-necessary long and the research to make it exhaustive would be boring. There's at least half a dozen of such exploits for the X-Box alone. And in the end, it doesn't even enables you to "just pop a MiniCD-R or MiniDVD-R in the cube and have it working". On the other console, booting software requires just that : put the software in and it boots (with or without some mods). On Cube achieving the same *does* requires (hard-)mods.
But if you feel justice hasn't be done, then you can start your own article online listing all the games that can get exploited to run code...
Re:More appropriate title "State of the Warez Scen (Score:3, Insightful)
First it is to get the console to do something that people want it to do but, for some reason, it doesn't. The XBox media center is a good example of this. I believe it plays videos, music, and can even download podcasts (I do not own an XBox, so I am not completely certain). These are all legitimate purposes (yes, they can be misused for illegal purposes, but few things can't). Not everyone wants to wait for Nintendo to release software to let the DS stream Internet radio. It may happen, but it probably won't. Why not write it yourself?
The second is to add more games to a commercially dead console. Not everyone can afford new games and in some cases games can be hard to find. There are plenty of free or cheap alternatives. The Atari 2600 has a thriving homebrew scene. I doubt that most of those games and such are for illegal purposes (yes, there may always be some for illegal purposes). The dreamcast also has a large following. It doesn't need a chip (at least for the models before a certain date, I believe). It is, I think, not that hard to write for it since it uses a modified version of Windows CE. And since it uses CD-ROMs as media, any one with a burner can download and burn the disc. Yes, this will lead to some piracy and so forth. But it also means that people are porting many open source games to it, and even writing their own. This means that more games can be played on this great console.
There are plenty more homebrew games than just clones of pong or other 1980's arcade games. The reason why there are so many old arcade ports are because they are easy to write. They are usually used as a building block by developers to learn about the system and how to code on it. If you want to program on a system that you are unfamiliar with, you don't start on something as complex as an FPS or RTS or anything like that, you start small. For game programming, Pong is a good place start. Learning to program on a console is another reason people homebrew. It is a challenge and overcoming intellectual challenges are fun.
Don't start saying that all homebrew is piracy or that letting people write their own applications will only lead to illegal activities. There is a lot of good in homebrew development. Will it be misused, yes. But does that mean that most, if not all, of it is just warez and illegal applications, no. This is the same thinking that put even tighter restrictions on software and development.