xdaniel

Prompted by the posting of a certain person on Maco - saying that imports done using Model2N64 likely won't work on hardware because it supposedly doesn't adhere to the F3DEX2 Ucode's vertex buffer conventions - I ended up wondering if any of our hacks, model conversions/imports, etc. have ever been tested on hardware? Be it custom maps, or be it just replaced swords or somesuch, especially regarding if they render correctly. Has ex. the Ura team done any hardware testing yet, also considering how that hack in particular is being made with the real hardware in mind, with the custom soundtrack via the 64drive and such.

Metroid Prime has been mentioned before - multiple times in fact - but I'd like to mention it once more. It's probably my favorite Cube game, and I go back to it every two or so years, starting a new game and playing through it again. I don't always get to the end, but just visiting that world again is great in itself.

F-Zero GX Sonic Mega Collection Sonic Gems Collection Super Mario Sunshine Mega Man Network Transmission Phantasy Star Online 1 & 2 PSO 3 CARD Revolution Naruto: Clash of Ninja 2 Not all of them are "OMG get them right NOW!", look them up and see if they're interesting.

There's update partitions on the game disks themselves. I don't think all games contain them, but certain games - ex. Mario Kart Wii and Galaxy 2, I believe? - do and ask the user to perform the update when they're trying to start the game.

I think what is now "last-gen" might be my last console generation. Durango? Basically a PC with Kinect and connectivity forced onto you. PS4? Basically a PC and by Sony, and you might know my attitude towards Sony Computer Entertainment and their attitude by this point. Wii U? Well... I'm still hoping for it to blossom, but this is probably the least sure I've been about Nintendo in a long time. Granted, the 3DS is still there and that one's been going well, has games I want, etc., so I'll still be gaming on handhelds.

Which files and tables would need fixing after rebuilding the DMA table? Code's scene, actor and object tables, the room addresses in each scene file (command 0x04), what else?

Man, I remember that! Really nostalgic... Don't think I believed it back in the day, but I was and still am impressed by all those castles.

Got the Humble Bundle with Android 5 a bit earlier, has some interesting games in it. I've only played Beat Hazard for Android so far, but that's already been pretty cool, although I believe I'm going to prefer it on PC with a controller and actual analog sticks

This. Also heard of the switches themselves not working right anymore. WTF are these people doing to their consoles?

Can't say for sure, but that sounds like a Lodgenet N64 system, or some Lodgenet thingy in general. Never seen one in real life, tho, just photos of the controller, screenshots and the like.

Well, mine doesn't, so I have to mess around with software solutions to get any homebrew, imports or copied games to run Granted, I can run burned games if I first patch the ISO image for the ESR loader application, burn it to a DVD, then insert the patched DVD and run the game through ESR. That doesn't work for all games, tho - IIRC only single-layer DVD-based ones, everything else has to be rebuild or something - and is kinda annoying if you have an original import game you just want to play but can't, unless you rip, patch and burn it first...

Obviously not for just any common ROM you find on the net, but having those instead of internal memory to download games from ex. the eShop to. Plus, there's precedent for that: the Nintendo Power cartridges (not the magazine) for Game Boy and Super Famicom in Japan, and by extension the Famicom Disk System before, whose disks could also be rewritten at special kiosks.

I know, but that's how it is... I'm actually a bit wary of starting any sort of project, fearing that it'll just turn into an unmanageable monster like SO did, or like SayakaGL did. Or that I'll just drop the project after jumping into it head-first, then hitting said head on the floor of the pool, that is, the proverbial wall. I really fear that one of the two will happen to this as well, which is why I gave that negative kind of estimation.

Good idea, yes, but I'd only be interested if it was done perfectly, with no compatibility issues, etc. And that said, there's two problems that I see: replicating the base hardware and original game and peripheral support. The base hardware would either need to be the original hardware, to maintain perfect compatibility with all games and all real cartridges, or an equally compatible reimplementation. The former would mean getting obsolete chips back into production - a mid-90s MIPS CPU, Nintendo's/SGI's graphics and sound hardware and the RDRAM - while the latter I fear might be impossible even for Nintendo, as that would AFAIK basically be an emulator in hardware - and we all know how, realistically speaking, terrible N64 emulation is, including Nintendo's own efforts on VC. I mean, the games that are on VC run well, but try to run something that isn't on VC by injecting the ROM into another game's emulator, it's hit-and-miss. Support for the original cartridges and peripherals is probably quite difficult as well, especially if they'd go for the reimplemented hardware approach instead of authentic chips. I'm not sure if they'd be able to test every single game and every single piece of hardware released for the machine back in its day. If it doesn't have 100% compatibility, it's no better than existing software-only solutions like VC or our hobbyist emulators like PJ64, Nemu or Mupen64. Imagine plugging in a cartridge of Rouge Squadron, expecting it to work like it does on an old N64, only to find garbled graphics or no graphics at all. Well, too bad, looks like the developers did their own thing with the graphics Ucode, sorry! Things like the Transfer Pak, or more obscure extensions like the microphone and VRU for Hey You Pikachu might be problematic, too. I don't know of any emulator to emulate the latter's voice recognition hardware period, and Transfer Pak emulation appears to be limited to basic data exchange, with the GB Tower in the Pokemon Stadium games, which lets you play the GB games on the TV SGB-style, not working at all. That original hardware support would likely also be the deciding factor for me to buy one of these. If they cannot guarantee that every game works on it, or if it doesn't have a cartridge slot at all and only has downloadable games, I wouldn't buy it. Only having downloadable games would simply make this a stand-alone Virtual Console, which in turn would likely mean that, first, only the "big games" would come out for it, only things Nintendo can legally put out (bye-bye GoldenEye!), and second, that there's the chance of them dropping support after a year or two, considering the so-so job they've been doing with VC on Wii and 3DS. In short, it sounds like an interesting idea, and if it was done well I'd really think about getting one, but I can't see this working out in practice.

Using a PS2 Network Adapter, an old IDE hard disk of 20+ GB and up to 128 GB (or more, but only that will be usable) and certain HDD disk images floating around, one can easily get their PS2 to run homebrew software, game backups, etc. from the HDD - just hook it up to your PC, write the disk image to it, put it back into the PS2 and you're done. No need to somehow copy stuff like Free McBoot to a memory card anymore, everything is on the hard disk! ...well, almost everything. The program that backs your game disks up to the HDD, called Kermit, needs to be copied to and run from a memory card, otherwise the games won't be made bootable from the Browser. Also, out-of-region import games cannot be read by the PS2 itself no matter what, so those you'll need to install either via network - with the PS2 as a server, and a program on the PC shoveling the game over - or by plugging the HDD into your PC - using another program to write a game either from ISO or a DVD drive to the HDD. Also, getting software onto the HDD in general seems a bit... complicated, just like customizing their appearance in the Browser. To, say, have the game's cover art display in the Browser, you currently need to hex edit sectors on the HDD itself, as there doesn't seem to be a program (neither on PS2 nor PC side) that allows you to do this. I probably won't bother doing that unless I can find such a program. Note: I don't think I can link you to said HDD images, tho, as they contain some copyrighted stuff - at the very least the HDD-capable PS2 Browser - but Google and "HDD-OSD" should do the trick. Maybe "PSBBN" too, as that, the "PlayStation Broadband Navigator", is the main feature of the disk image I used. (Triggerheart Exelica Enhanced installed on HDD; the game running without the DVD in the drive) (Also, please excuse the crappy photos, it's past 3 am and I can't be bothered to take better shots right now...)

Where have you been, young man?! Look at the time! ...and get that lazy butt of yours off the couch and wipe the floor already, the mop is in the closet!

Plans, yes, but I've gotta be honest, haddockd is right about the mood thing. My usual approach to coding is pretty much "get really into something; once the passion fades, do something else". I do return to the unfinished stuff periodically - see SharpBoy, although that still hasn't seen the next release I promised in October or thereabouts - so that SO rewrite... or rather, yet another one I've been toying around with, after being inspired by the design of marshallh's racing game editor he gave me the source for... anyway, that is still on the cards, that is still something I'm working on, on and off. It will take time, I don't want to make a mess of it again, like with nearly every project, every unfinished POS I've done so far - and if anyone with any understanding of C# has ever looked at ex. SO's source (ex. haddockd?), they know what junk it is. tl;dr: Still want to replace SO, still toying with stuff, maybe better don't count on it. Or at least not during this year.

There's also GameCube Rebuilder - http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/619/ - which can rebuild an ISO from the extracted data, IIRC also allowing files to have a different size than the originals. It is rather slow, tho, depending on how big the game is.

It does automatically inject each room one after another by default (can be disabled from the Options menu), but it does not look for free space by itself or anything like that, true. It also doesn't check if it overwrites any existing data, so offset management is something the user needs to do. Granted, it also doesn't tell the user how big each generated room file will be, so the consecutive room injection still requires some guesswork.

Had seen some of those errors before (Adult Ruto, the Redead problems), but not the others. I'll need to look into those. As for features, I'm planning to add whatever is needed for things to... look passable, I guess, "perfect" will be impossible I'm guessing Loading and rendering files separately is kinda already in, tho, in that you should be able to right-click a (display list-containing) in the filesystem list, load that to its RAM segment and let the program parse and render any display lists in it... although that appears to be broken in the last build I posted...

5. When you can still remember the days of HGB, DGen and iGBA.

Note that currently Sorata is merely a viewer and is supposed to become more than that. Also, SayakaGL, level editor akin to UoT but with less features. Most recent "inofficial" build (supports more stuff like transition actors, was never 100% tested): http://magicstone.de/dzd/random/SayakaGL-v011x.rar

Ohh, the "Digimon! Digital Monsters!" thing, right? Yeah, that's... yeah. Well, if it's any consolation: While the TV series were dubbed based on the Japanese version complete with original OST and localized songs, we only ever got "Digimon: The Movie", never the three movies separately (and the proper Bokura no War Game is freaking awesome <.<) nor any of the others. I soo need to watch them again! XD There should still be VHS tapes of at least Beinhart and Das muss kesseln! at my mom's place, I don't have a VCR tho...*checks Amazon* ...hah, there's DVDs! Think I know what I'll get next month or so...

Man, I haven't seen either of them in ages...

Not the program's doing, but the .obj exporter's. Check the Ka and/or Kd values in the material file. In your Luigi model, Kd is 0.282353 0.368627 0.352941, so a dark, bluish green. Regardless, good job with the program to everyone involved