benad's Journal: Infinite Energy!

Now, this may not look like it, but this is a rant. The first (and maybe only) cheating device for GameCube (ActionReplay, usually more popular in Europe) should come out in January. Should. And it's one of those crappy "you can't make your own codes" kind of devices, but I'm stuck with that 'cause the GameShark for NGC project was canned. Joy.

Now, I know some people hate cheating devices since they can be used to cheat on online games. But then, blame the game developers to have a security model where you fully trust the console client. Duh.

While a cheating device basically only changes memory values, this alone makes it possible, to some level, to legally reverse-engineer a game. From a "want-to-be" video game conceptor and software engineer, this is a gold mine of "know-how" I wouldn't be able to get anywhere else.

Some of you familiar with emulation engines and the excellent cheating system of MAME might expect something similar in console cheating devices. Well, except for the ones of the "GameShark" series, you're wrong. Dead wrong.

Go to codejunkies.com, the makers of the ActionReplay, and dare look at the codes. We're all expecting memory location - value pairs, but those numbers seem... random. Well, you guessed it, they're encoded. Some kind of crazy checksum is embedded to each code. It may not be as difficult as, let's say, trying to crack Animal Crossing codes, but even if you do crack the "code"... You still can't search the memory yourself!

Please, please let them have any competition that allow you to make your own codes... I'd really want to put some of those PPC assembly skills to practice!

- Benad

Nice

[Freston Youseff]

I bought a CD64 for my N64 a couple years ago and did a little MIPS assembly, even wrote a demo. That was pretty fun. Do you think there is a demoscene future for the GameCube? I'd be interested if there is. On the note of GameCubes, do you know if Metroid Prime is any good? I ordered it from Target online, should be here in a couple days. I heard it's one of the best games this year.

Re:Nice

[benad]

Do you think there is a demoscene future for the GameCube?

Possibly. What I imagine is a some kind of "boot disk" which uses the 10Base-T port to connect to your computer and does everything using TCP/IP.

But don't be surprised if the first version is only for Macs...

Actually, there migh be a lot of pressure from Nintendo behind the scenes to avoid copying disks to your PC, as emulating the GameCube on a G4 would be partucularly easy and FAST...

On the note of GameCubes, do you know if Metroid Prime is any good?

Don't know... Have to wait for Christmas! Must... avoid... looking... at... screenshots...

I heard it's one of the best games this year.

You mean "2nd best game of video game's history"? Look on gamerankings.com [gamerankings.com]!

From what I heard, yep, it's that good.

- Benad