The 20 Games that You Should Have Played for 2007, But Didn’t

January 1st, 2008, 00:50 Posted By: wraggster

There are sure a lot of "best of lists" coming out of the woodwork now since the year is beginning to come to a close. And not surprisingly, many of the lists read basically the same. Many of the games that are on those lists are definitely must play games (Super Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 4, The Orange Box), but whatever happened to the other games that were fantastic throughout the year like World in Conflict, Persona 3, or Lunar Knights to name a few. With just an avalanche of triple A titles hitting us at the end of the year, many excellent games were overshadowed by the sheer amount of press coverage and excellent PR campaigns that were given to those games that were at the top of those 2007 lists. So here are the games that are the ones that have been forgotten because they came out early in the year or worse, never got the credit that they deserved in the first place.

The Xbox360 games in the list:
02) Eternal Sonata (Xbox 360)
10) Overlord (PC; Xbox 360)
14) Bomberman Live (Xbox 360)
16) Virtua Tennis 3 (PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Sony PSP)

http://www.poisonous-pixels.com/2007...ve-played.html

Man arrested for stalking girls via Xbox Live

January 1st, 2008, 00:53 Posted By: wraggster

In Spokane, Washington, a 20-year-old man was arrested on felony stalking charges after chatting to a 15-year-old girl on Xbox Live and eventually threatening to rape the girl and her sister.

At around 9:00pm Friday, Stetar sent a text message saying that he was driving by her house at the moment. The girl's parents in fact saw his car drive by.
At 9:36pm, Stetar sent another text message stating, "Tell the cops that I'm gonna rape you and your sister."
The girl's father called police, and officers found the suspect staying at a nearby Econo Lodge motel.

http://gamerush.zoomshare.com/files/...box_Li ve.htm

Gates picks challenging year to leave Microsoft

January 1st, 2008, 00:56 Posted By: wraggster

Just as Microsoft's past year was characterized by launches, the next will be defined by a departure.
But even as Bill Gates leaves his full-time executive role, the company will be grappling with some of the biggest competitive challenges in its history, particularly on the Internet.
Here's our annual look at what to watch at the company in 2008.

* XBOX: The coming year will be pivotal in the video-game console industry, where Microsoft's Xbox 360 is competing against Nintendo's Wii and Sony's PlayStation 3. Entering the past holiday season, the Xbox 360 and Wii were neck-and-neck in worldwide market share, with the PlayStation 3 trailing.
Microsoft has said it wants its Home and Entertainment Division, which includes the Xbox business, to reach sustained operating profitability in the company's current fiscal year, which ends June 30.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...oftware31.html

Fake PSP Selectively Electrocutes

January 1st, 2008, 01:00 Posted By: wraggster



Buy a regular PSP and the only shock you'll get is how little time you spend actually playing games on the thing. But buy one of these PSPs, and you'll get shocked. For reals! Imaginatively called the "Shock Your Friend PSP Console", sure, it doesn't look exactly like a real PSP. Course, real PSPs don't, as far as we're aware,

http://kotaku.com/339047/fake-psp-se...CI74rQOmvKjYDg

Video game console stolen at gunpoint

January 1st, 2008, 01:03 Posted By: wraggster

A York City man was robbed at gunpoint of a portable video game console and a video game on Christmas Eve.
Zachary Mann of Pennsylvania Avenue told police he was robbed of a PlayStation Portable video game player at 10:23 p.m. at the corner of North West Street and Madison Avenue, according to York City Police.

Police said an unknown man pointed a gun at Mann, and also robbed him of a memory stick and a video game before fleeing.

http://yorkdispatch.inyork.com/yd/local/ci_7808285

PSP Radio v1.18.1400

January 1st, 2008, 01:10 Posted By: wraggster

Slade & Bigdaddie have updated the excellent PSP Radio application for the PSP, PSP Radio Streams music from your PC to your PSP.

Heres the release details:

I know this program is out for a long time now, but with all the talk about Internet Radio on FW 3.80 i just want to refresh this. This awesome program (credits to RAF) still works under the latest CFW, on the Fat and Slim&Lite PSP models Btw it's also a great musicplayer.I´ve also added a playlist creator to the files (credits to Slade).

FreeRadio Version 1.3, 12/31/2007

January 1st, 2008, 01:17 Posted By: wraggster

News/release from Freeplay:

FreePlay presents FreeRadio - a completely serverless radio player portal for firmware 3.80 (and above?)

Version 1.0, 12/30/2007

Features:
Shoutcast playback
Streaming MP3/AAC playback
Podcast browsing/playback
Remote playlist streaming
Web browsing
Links to both official Sony radio players
Customizable lists of Shoutcast stations, podcasts, and raw audio streams
To install, just do what the folder name tells you to do The files go into the root of your PSP, a.k.a. MS_ROOT, ms0:/, X:\, etc.

To run, go to the Internet Radio icon and pick FreeRadio from the list.

To customize the list of Shoutcast stations, podcasts, or raw streams, look in the 'radio\personalize' folder. 'MyShoutcast.js', 'MyPodcasts.js', and 'MyStreams.js' contain the lists of Shoutcast stations, podcasts, and raw streams displayed in the portal, as well as instructions for adding your own stuff.

Enjoy!

BTW: There are no graphics here, folks. I'm no graphic designer. BUT: If you want to contribute your own graphics, feel free to toss them by me I'm certainly not averse to making this look pretty.

Version 1.1

Changelog from 1.0:
Per suggestion from Torch, the player no longer stops playing when you switch between sections of the portal.
(Unmentioned in previous version...) You can toggle radio muting by pressing the Start button.

Version 1.2,

Changelog from 1.1:
Added a few graphics to [try to] make it more attractive
Fixed support for rendering HTML properly in RSS feeds
Added a 'clone tab' feature
Added support for another type of RSS feed thumbnail
Added a few more default RSS feeds and podcasts
Added support for separators (e.g. group headers) in the Shoutcast station, RSS feed, and audio stream lists

Version 1.3,

Changelog from 1.2:
Various podcast player bugfixes and RSS reader compatibility tweaks

Test My Controls V2.0 Final

January 1st, 2008, 01:26 Posted By: wraggster

News/release from Johnny McKinney:

As I promised I updated the program to fix the weird progressive display.

V2.0 Changelog:
* Fixed the display of the image that made it look like a tv in prgressive mode (Thanks to Ziethiec over at psp-hacks for helping me in figuring out I forgot to end my function with a bracket, silly me lol)
* Adjusted the anologs sensitivity.

Known Bugs:
None

To Use:
I have adjusted the sensitivity for the analog so the use has changed slightly for better more accurate results.

Basically if your analog stick is acting up you can find out if you need to replace it by using this program. If the X and Y are not between 120 and 130 then thats ok, if they are above the 140's or below the 110's you may need to clean your analog stick. If the X and Y are above the 160's or below the 90's you may need to consider replacing your analog stick.

Additional Information:
This is the final version unless some bugs pop up that I need to handle. Therefor I will now be starting work on a homebrew game. I am looking for a partner if anyone is interested then feel free to PM me. I think I have an idea of the game I want to make.

Snes9xTYL++ Source Codes

January 1st, 2008, 01:32 Posted By: wraggster

DaveX gave a present to all developers interested in taking Snes emulation on the PSP Further:

Hi everybody!

By Chilly Willy advice, I have decided to publish the full source code of the different Ruka's versions of Snes9xTYL++ which I have.

When I was working in the autofire and quicksave features for Snes9xTYL++, I just thinked that I only need to replace the files in the original Snes9xTYL source code with the ones provided in the diffs that Ruka published in his website.

I was wrong. If you do such a thing, you'll get something that it's not compilable. I don't know if it was intentionally, but not all modified files were published in their respective diff version.

What I did then, was to check for those unpublished files and modified them accordingly to get a fully compilable version.

The latest one version which I was able to rebuild is version 26. I know it's not the latest one, but when I have a more recent version, I will publish it.

Greets,
Davex


Snes9xTYL++ Version 26 (3439 KB)
http://rapidshare.com/files/80245510...kaV26.zip.html

Snes9xTYL++ Version 23 (3440 KB)
http://rapidshare.com/files/80246908...kaV23.zip.html

Snes9xTYL++ Version 18 (3445 KB)
http://rapidshare.com/files/80246263...kaV18.zip.html

The 20 Games that You Should Have Played for 2007, But Didn't

January 1st, 2008, 01:37 Posted By: wraggster

There are sure a lot of "best of lists" coming out of the woodwork now since the year is beginning to come to a close. And not surprisingly, many of the lists read basically the same. Many of the games that are on those lists are definitely must play games (Super Mario Galaxy, Call of Duty 4, The Orange Box), but whatever happened to the other games that were fantastic throughout the year like World in Conflict, Persona 3, or Lunar Knights to name a few. With just an avalanche of triple A titles hitting us at the end of the year, many excellent games were overshadowed by the sheer amount of press coverage and excellent PR campaigns that were given to those games that were at the top of those 2007 lists. So here are the games that are the ones that have been forgotten because they came out early in the year or worse, never got the credit that they deserved in the first place.

The PS3 games in the list:
03) Super Stardust HD (Playstation 3)
16) Virtua Tennis 3 (PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Sony PSP)

http://www.poisonous-pixels.com/2007...ve-played.html

TVersity Media Server v0.9.11.4 - PS3 OS v2.1 Support

January 1st, 2008, 01:40 Posted By: wraggster

via ps3scene

A new version of TVersity Media Server has been released. TVersity allows you to stream pretty much any media (music/pictures and video) format to your PS3 (with on-the-fly transconding if required) from a Windows PC.
What's new/fixed:
* Transcoding
o Transcoding configuration can now be done on the file/folder/url level, in which case it wil supersede the system wide settings.
* Customizable Menus
o It is now possible to set the menus to be organized by folders only, this is in additon to the default menu organization and the custom one.
* Devices
o Turn off transcoding of AVI/DIVX (version 4 or higher) for the Sony PS3 (Divx3 is still transcoded) since firmware 2.1 can play them natively.
o AVI/Divx that do not play natively can still be manually configured to be transcoded. This for examples solves the PS3 problem with Divx files larger than 2 Gb.
* Bug Fixes
o Do not register a Windows shell context menu command for files (since it gets invoked when double clicking on file types that have no other handlers). The context menu command for folders is still kept since it has no undesirable side effects.

Official Site: http://tversity.com

Mammary Advance

January 1st, 2008, 01:46 Posted By: wraggster

METALVOTZE has released a new Adult game for the GBA/NDS

Cant give any more details and make sure your over 18 before downloading it.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

Vloz's pong

January 1st, 2008, 01:51 Posted By: wraggster

Vloz has released his own version of the classic pong game for the Nintendo DS.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

GhostBustersDS v0.4

January 1st, 2008, 01:57 Posted By: wraggster

Sephiroth_FF7 has released a new version of his rather cool looking Ghostbusters game for the Nintendo DS.



Adding the fight against Grozer
The keys on the keyboard are still more red
- Opportunities to cancel purchases of objects
- The ghosts can be caught on the end of the journey
- The ghosts are no longer paralyzed when they are affected by emanations
- Fixed a bug on the bank accounts

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

Powder v0.95 - Rogue Clone for DS/GBA

January 1st, 2008, 02:03 Posted By: wraggster

Jeff has released a new version of his Rogue clone for the Nintendo DS and GBA, heres whats new:

* Your armour now longers glows $B1, but instead the correct colour.
* Scrolls of remove curse and enchant weapon are no longer scrolls of crash the game. Not only are they fixed in particular, but the underlying problem has some sanity tests so errors like this in the future should just result in bad grammer.
* Can now load bitmaps that are taller than necessary as custom tilesets. This ensures that we will have forward compatibility with larger tilesets of the future.
* Maces and clubs are made slightly more powerful, giving them the same average damage as their corresponding edged weapons: shortswords and longswords.
* Thrown knives to hit bonus raised slightly so they can be more equivalent to thrown daggers.
* While spears are meant for throwing, for a two handed weapon to have the same attack as a one handed longsword is embarrassing. They have been slightly powered.
* "..looks like your funeral" style messages now have ". " after it.
* Creatures casting force bolt will no longer target themselves.
* Fix rare case where you could start the game standing on another creature.
* When you are fetched by another creature, the map will scroll and FOV update immediately.
* Correctly save RNG state when building monsters inside of rooms, this ensures if populateRoom is invoked early in the map building it doesn't change the RNG seed for the rest of the map. This saves about 300 bytes per level for saved games for many map types.
* Climbing back up the stairs after winning the game will not trigger the win message again. (Clare Boothby)
* Changing levels will not display the new level as black if a long message requires your input prior to the full level change.
* Description text is given for lava, water, acid pools so those who first encounter them can e'x'amine them before jumping in.
* Unchanging prevents turning into a lich or ghast.
* Creatures with unchanging will no longer be tamed by Bind Soul.
* New level honouring ><0|V|. This is an optional level reached via a dimensional portal on level 20.
* If a creature teleported onto a trap that killed it, the game could crash. This has been fixed.
* If a creature is killed by zapping its own wand, there is no longer out of bound reads when determining if the wand should be ided.
* Stress test mode is accessible without needing a custom buld in a similar manner as Wizard mode.

Leech the right version:

Gameboy Advance [382k].
Nintendo DS [735k].

NetHack DS V1.15a Released

January 1st, 2008, 02:10 Posted By: wraggster

News/release from Abcd1234:

Welcome to the home page for my port of NetHack to the Nintendo DS. The goal of this project is to create a port of NetHack for the DS utilizing the unique features of the DS to create an easy-to-use NetHacking experience. I think I've succeeded in that goal. I'm probably wrong.

Features
An unscaled, scrolling map view on the lower screen, which can be interacted with using the touchscreen.
Minimap, message, and status information rendered to the top screen.
Support for 16- and 256-color BMP tilesets, including non-rectangular tiles (tiles must have dimensions which are a multiple of 8, e.g. 8x8, 8x16, etc).
Support for text mode, with optional full color and IBM graphics.
Popup command window for easy access to the full command set.
On-screen keyboard for text input and extended commands.
Keys are almost completely configurable.
Support for both left- and right-handed modes.
Save and restore.
Sleep mode.
News

December 31, 2007
Version 1.15a Released.

Yes, already. Fixed a map rendering bug in graphics mode caused by wall tile substitution in the NetHack core (this was evident when going from the regular dungeons to Sokoban, where the wall colours are supposed to change, but didn't).

Version 1.15 Released.

Added the CHORDKEYS configuration option, which allows the user to define which keys may be used in combination of others for the purpose of key binding.
Removed triggermode (yes, after just two versions), in lieu of CHORDKEYS.
Display help for key bindings if a chord key is pressed.
Changed extended command input to use a menu, rather than the virtual keyboard.
Added the ability to bind keys for toggling boolean options (eg, holdmode, hpmon, etc).
Added "Show Keys" command, which pops up a window listing the current key bindings.
Added hilite_pet support.
Added new option "keyrepeat", which controls whether or not keys repeat in the game (default on). Doesn't affect menus, command window, etc.
Now, you may ask, "why did you remove triggermode?!?". Well the answer is simple: CHORDKEYS allows the same functionality, only moar betar! Specifically, if you set CHORDKEYS as follows:

CHORDKEYS=up,down,left,right,rYou can then bind Up+B to Up, Up+Right+B to Up-Right, Right+B to Right, and so on. And this happens to be identical to triggermode. BUT, it also allows one to bind Up+X, Up+Y, and so forth, which is basically triggermode on steriods (and allows one to duplicate other key arrangements, such as that found in DSCrawl).

But note! If you change CHORDKEYS, your keybindings are reset! This is necessary, as there's no clean way to migrate an old keyset forward if the CHORDKEYS setting changes.

And yes, this modification is backward compatible with the old keybinding file, so your settings won't be lost (again, unless you change CHORDKEYS).

Lastly, in CHORDKEYS, the free shoulder button is always "r", whether or not lefthanded mode is enabled. Call me lazy...

MK5 8G/16G GIGA cart upgrade core V1.45 + 2.54 XMenu [01-01-2008]

January 1st, 2008, 02:14 Posted By: wraggster

News from Neoflash:

MK5 8G/16G GIGA cart upgrade core V1.45 + 2.54 XMenu [01-01-2008]
* fixed FF4 bug
* fixed some DLDI bugs

download: MK5 8G/16G GIGA cart upgrade core V1.45 + 2.54 XMenu [01-01-2008]

Makaron Test 9.1 beta released

January 1st, 2008, 10:39 Posted By: JKKDARK

New version of the Dreamcast emulator for PC.

The next information about this release is from the official site:

Here's Makaron Test 9/1. The main purpose of this release it to fix some issues T9 had, but there are other changes as well.
Firstly there's the new AEG code in AICA - not entierly correct mind you, but it will get better in time. I belive I've explained it enough before but just to be sure: It makes AICA module somewhat slower. Nothing is free you know. It should be offset by ARM7 code being recompiled this time.
Second major change is the addition of fog processing. You will need at least Pixel Shader 2.0 for this to work, and it better be fast (worst case scenario, that is palletized & filtered texture with fog and color clamping, is 9 textures lookups + some 50 other instructions per pixel).
This also causes Makaron to lag a bit at startup now, as it has to recreate some 200 PS programs to cover all possible cases.

I tried not to touch SH4 code much, but I did change how HOLLY handles DMA transfers. This might break quite a number of things but was necessary to fix couple of games. Mostly CAPCOM ones, go figure. Some people out there should really learn how to use DMA... There are games that start the DMA and assume it's going to finish before the program advances to the point where it has to use the transferred data - without actually checking that. The easiest way around this problem is to complete the transfers the moment they are started - but of course there are other games that get confused by immediate end-of-transfer interrupt, or miss it, and hang. Yet other games require that the transfer at least advances a bit once started, or the unchaged counter will make them think it's already done. All this is also very timing-related, might work or not depending how fast the emulator goes and when the interrupts actually arrive. Not funny.
I solved this by forcing DMA transfers to take time to finish - just like on the real hardware. The difference is a DMA in progress will slow SH4 (because it's blocking memory bus or HOLLY) and Makaron doesn't account for that. Not to mention I can't exactly check for interrupts every instruction, like SH4, as this would kill performance. I came up with timings that should work well on both slow and fast systems - but it might still need some tweaking.

As a side effect you now get to experience loading times. Just like on your good old Dreamcast. Yay! So be patient when staring at blank or "Please wait" / "Now loading" screens. I know this feature will not get good press but I like it. So it stays.

By the way, fixes to DMA engine (although not timing-related) made "Soul Calibur" and "Dead or Alive 2" dialogs re-appear.

Emulation speed/statistics information is no longer displayed. If you want it, re-enable it in F12 menu.

On a special request from Yuki I've looked into MakaronPAD plugin. It is now possible to assign normal digital buttons to POV directional pad. The plugin version has been bumped up - not a big deal, but it won't work in T8/T9 unless you hex-edit it. You shouldn't be using those anymore.

Portable VNC v1.2.7 (minor bug fix)

January 1st, 2008, 12:29 Posted By: zx-81



First of all,

I WISH YOU ALL A HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!

Here is a new release of Portable VNC for Custom FW 3.x and FW 1.5.

For those for haven't seen previous versions, VNC let you access
to your PC desktop from anywhere using a wifi connection.

What's new in version 1.2.7 :

+ Fix issue with fw3x (not enough heap memory)
+ Fix issue with irkeyboard (linked with latest version)

The IR keyboard support is based on the work of Harald Fielker (author of the PSP IR Keyboard Library),
and the Virtual keyboard is based on the Danzel code.

PSPVNC has been written by NHD from TeamXos, and it's based on the PalmOS VNC client.

It is distributed under GNU licence, and sources are provided. You can download it on my blog : http://zx81.zx81.free.fr/


Enjoy,

Zx.

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DS Flash Cart Clearance Sale - Last Few Items

January 1st, 2008, 12:57 Posted By: wraggster

GP2x Store have let me know they only have a few flash carts left, heres the listing of price changes:

DS-X 4Gb Flash Cart
Offering a SINGLE unified solution which allows you to do the unthinkable and...
$94.99 Sale Price: $74.99

Supercard Lite Micro SD
Supercard Lite is a miniature mobile NDSL file Manager and Bakup device. To...
$54.99 Sale Price: $34.99

SuperCard DS One
As the first extra flash memory game cartridge, SuperCard team has been...
$54.99 Sale Price: $32.99

SuperCard SD Slot 2
SuperCard SD is a miniature mobile GBA(SP)/NDS/NDSL file Manager and Bakup...
$44.99 Sale Price: $24.99

Supercard Lite Rumble Micro SD
The Supercard Rumble uses a Micro SD and features a rumble system which can...
$34.99 Sale Price: $23.99

Touchmods SIP VoIP client for iPod touch is out tonight

January 1st, 2008, 16:54 Posted By: wraggster

via engadget



Got an iPod touch? And some audio input hardware? Want to make some VoIP calls? If you answered yes to all of the above, you'll want to check out the Touchmods site later tonight, when they'll supposedly be releasing their full-on SIP client for the touch. Hopefully by now it's a little more prettied up than the last time we saw the thing above. If those last videos are anything to go by, though, it looks like it will be.

http://touchmods.wordpress.com/

ARCwelder gives root / binary executable to Archos 605 and 705 players

January 1st, 2008, 16:56 Posted By: wraggster

Ah, how we do love a good root-hacking resulting in the ability to run homebrew code. And being that we also have a soft spot in our heart for Archos's 605 and 705 series players, ARCwelder ought to do our kind and yours quite nicely. If yours is running firmware 1.7.13, check it out, it should get you root access to the device's Linux shell, enabling you to do all kinds of fun things, like develop and run your own apps, or see how long it'll take to break the DRM on downloaded media. Did we say that?

http://code.google.com/p/arcwelder/

Forum Slowdown Solved

January 1st, 2008, 17:03 Posted By: wraggster

Problems and always at the wrong time

anyway just found out the reason for the really slow forums the last 24 hours and ive removed the code until our server admin fixes things, the forums and sites are now running lovely again.

We also know about the corrupt files and that will be fixed asap (those bloody hackers and the server crash have really hit DCEmu hard)

wraggs

Rumorang: MGS4 on Xbox 360, 12-14 months late

January 1st, 2008, 17:04 Posted By: wraggster

We know we don't need to tell you guys this, but Metal Gear Solid 4 coming to the Xbox 360 is still a rumor despite gaming site Xbox Family saying, rather unequivocally, "Metal Gear Solid 4 is coming to the Xbox 360. This is not a rumor." Well, duh ... it's a rumorang.

With that caveat out of the way (and stowed safely in a locker somewhere), we'll proceed to relay the rumorang your way: An unnamed Konami rep apparently dropped some knowledge on Xbox Family, whispering that MGS4 would sneak onto the Xbox 360 12 to 14 months after the PS3 version is released (whenever that is). The site also published a lengthy email from Microsoft's John Porcaro basically saying "no comment" which they also suspect may be further proof of the rumor. (Why did he write so much? He's very polite, you know.)

With Konami execs straight up saying that Metal Gear Solid 4 may go to other consoles, and MGS4 producer Ryan Payton saying the game needs to sell a million copies on day one to make the pricey production profitable, it's not like Konami's showing their best poker face either. But that doesn't mean it's not still a rumor which, of course, we don't need to tell you guys.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/01/ru...4-months-late/

Rumor: UT3 on Xbox 360, 90% complete

January 1st, 2008, 17:05 Posted By: wraggster

Considering it's due on the Mac in early 2008, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the on-again, off-again Xbox 360 port of Epic's Unreal Tournament III isn't "on hold" any longer, and may even be as far along as 90% complete – if we're to believe a scanned image from a German gaming magazine. Our German is a bit rusty (read: nonexistent) but the folks from ********** are saying the release is expected sometime around April of next year.

If accurate, that means the PS3 enjoys a four-or-so-month timed exclusivity, including the lucrative holiday season. Now, if only those pesky sales would pick up ...

http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/31/ru...0-90-complete/

Makaron Test 9.1 - Dreamcast Emulator for Windows

January 1st, 2008, 17:10 Posted By: wraggster

DKnute has posted a test version of his Dreamcast Emulator for Windows called Makaron:

First I'd like to dedicate these two picture to people who claim that so-called 2D games should run better and require less resources to emulate than 3D ones. This is Bangai-O:

As you can see, if there is a 3D hardware then 2D games will use it. Why? Because it's faster to have another processor (GPU in that case) rasterize things for you - with alpha blending and transparency, and even filtering if needed. This is full-blown 3D, just that the third dimension is used for composing multiple layers, including background and text messages.
Many such games not only use 3D - they abuse it. Use thousands of small triangles with most of those having individual, unique textures (which are probably not only palletized, but also compressed in some way). And change that a lot every frame - that is 50/60 times per second. Now try to keep up with that!
This is not an 8-bit console calculating and writing every pixel to VRAM (although it does happen, true 2D is still used from time to time; SEGA logo is one example). I may not need to keep things cycle-correct here, but I've my own problems handling graphics.

Okay, now some more fog (you'll find it's used in quite many places actually):

Ah, but that's not all. Here are some more interesting uses of fogging:

Case 1 - fog used as a special effect to light up parts of objects that are being hit by player. And yes, that could've been done in several other (easier?) ways...

Case 2 - now this is grand, Bangai-O uses fogging to show selected buttons

There's a special today - a frontend to Makaron donated by slrhui - you can get it here. Please contact the author about it should you need any changes done. And be sure to thank him if you find it usefull.

Here's Makaron Test 9/1. The main purpose of this release it to fix some issues T9 had, but there are other changes as well.
Firstly there's the new AEG code in AICA - not entierly correct mind you, but it will get better in time. I belive I've explained it enough before but just to be sure: It makes AICA module somewhat slower. Nothing is free you know. It should be offset by ARM7 code being recompiled this time.
Second major change is the addition of fog processing. You will need at least Pixel Shader 2.0 for this to work, and it better be fast (worst case scenario, that is palletized & filtered texture with fog and color clamping, is 9 textures lookups + some 50 other instructions per pixel).
This also causes Makaron to lag a bit at startup now, as it has to recreate some 200 PS programs to cover all possible cases.

I tried not to touch SH4 code much, but I did change how HOLLY handles DMA transfers. This might break quite a number of things but was necessary to fix couple of games. Mostly CAPCOM ones, go figure. Some people out there should really learn how to use DMA... There are games that start the DMA and assume it's going to finish before the program advances to the point where it has to use the transferred data - without actually checking that. The easiest way around this problem is to complete the transfers the moment they are started - but of course there are other games that get confused by immediate end-of-transfer interrupt, or miss it, and hang. Yet other games require that the transfer at least advances a bit once started, or the unchaged counter will make them think it's already done. All this is also very timing-related, might work or not depending how fast the emulator goes and when the interrupts actually arrive. Not funny.
I solved this by forcing DMA transfers to take time to finish - just like on the real hardware. The difference is a DMA in progress will slow SH4 (because it's blocking memory bus or HOLLY) and Makaron doesn't account for that. Not to mention I can't exactly check for interrupts every instruction, like SH4, as this would kill performance. I came up with timings that should work well on both slow and fast systems - but it might still need some tweaking.

As a side effect you now get to experience loading times. Just like on your good old Dreamcast. Yay! So be patient when staring at blank or "Please wait" / "Now loading" screens. I know this feature will not get good press but I like it. So it stays
By the way, fixes to DMA engine (although not timing-related) made "Soul Calibur" and "Dead or Alive 2" dialogs re-appear.

Emulation speed/statistics information is no longer displayed. If you want it, re-enable it in F12 menu.

On a special request from Yuki I've looked into MakaronPAD plugin. It is now possible to assign normal digital buttons to POV directional pad. The plugin version has been bumped up - not a big deal, but it won't work in T8/T9 unless you hex-edit it. You shouldn't be using those anymore

Enough Makaron for this year. Silmeria still needs to be rescued and I want some strong monsters to test out triple Nibelung Valesti combo (Hrist->Lenneth->Alicia)

ScummVM DS v0.11.0 beta2

January 1st, 2008, 17:19 Posted By: wraggster

Agentq has released an updated version of ScummVM for the Nintendo DS, heres whats new:

Hi Everyone,

Here is a second beta version of the 0.11.0 release of ScummVM DS. It needs lots of testing, since there are so many games that I don't have time to do much of it myself. So please download it. Please post, even it it works fine!

The new scaler makes text a lot more readable, at the expense of some slowdown in some of the newer games.

New function keys should make all the AGI games playable.

This is a beta release, therefore there are not full instructions. This is designed for those who already know how to use ScummVM DS. Full instructions for the older version 0.10.0 are provided on the ScummVM DS website. Please refer to these instructions, as this beta works in mostly the same way.

Also, I have been told that the same code which runs Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max can also run some of the earlier HE games, so I have added these to the list below. They seem to work fine. Please test them too!

Changes

Beta2
- Future Wars and Gobliiins now work again
- Swapping the screens while the software scaler is enabled no longer causes odd effects


Beta1
- New games supported: Elvira 1 and 2, Waxworks (Amiga version)
- Software scaler for improved image quality. Turn it on using the DS options screen (press select during the game). Thanks to Tramboi and Robin Watts for this feature!
- Function keys added to virtual keyboard (used in AGI games)
- Plenty of bug fixes

Supported Games


Build A:
Manic Mansion
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Loom
Passport to Adventure
The Secret of Monkey Island
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Day of the Tentacle
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Bear Stormin' (DOS version only)
Fatty Bear's Birthday Surprise (DOS version only)
Fatty Bear's Fun Pack (DOS version only)
Putt-Putt's Fun Pack (DOS version only)
Putt-Putt Goes to the Moon (DOS version only)
Putt-Putt Joins the Parade (DOS version only)

Build B:
Beneath a Steel Sky
Flight of the Amazon Queen

Build C:
Simon the Sorcerer 1/2
Elvira 1/2

Build D:
Sierra AGI games
Gobliiins 1 - 3
Bargon Attack
Ween: The Prophecy
Future Wars

Build E:
Inherit the Earth

Build F:
The Legend of Kyrandia

OpenPoké

January 1st, 2008, 17:23 Posted By: wraggster

Kyoufu Kawa has released a rather nice looking Pokemon RPG type game for the GBA (NDS) heres the last info from this release:

Open
• Running speed is equal to walking
• Frame's not right after startup — might be strange SRAM contents.
• Type (dis)advantages are screwy

Open and understood, but not yet fixed
• Paralysis is applied after fainting — just that. Paralysis should check for fainted status.
• Help system doesn't set all things, so the cursor might be outside of the screen or the whole thing's a little darker.

Unconfirmed resolved
• Writes in mirrored or invalid VRAM areas

Resolved with a cheap trick
• Game freezes just before Cearn battle — somehow, the dialogue box statemachine doesn't like very long strings. "Fixed" by cutting Cearn's lines in half.

Resolved
• Things on the map sometimes use the wrong sprite — randomizer gave weird results, fixed by using unsigned int
• Characters can move into the same spot when both are moving at the same time — because the sprite collission checker should test the tile being walked to. Thanks to tepples for suggesting this.
• When spotted by a trainer to the right, the player uses a "zapped" sprite instead of looking right — facing = ( facing + 2 ) % 4.
• Helping Hand — most enemy moves are now checked for sensibility.
• Growl, Tail Whip et al affect user
• Potions heal above max HP — thanks, Cearn!

Not bugs at all
• No Poké Balls to catch with — try pressing Right in the inventory screen.
• No weather effects — only fog is implemented, and has no effect on battle.
• No sound — sound has been left out of the demo to cut download size. Also, the engine used is illegal.
• Levelling up goes really fast — done on purpose. You get triple experience for demonstration purposes.
• Backpics do not use chosen colors — now fixed.
• Conversion failed — effect missing. Conversion is just one of them. Missing effects auto-fail.

iPhone Chess v1.2

January 1st, 2008, 17:24 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

Robota Softwarehouse updated their port of GNU Chess. Here comes version 1.2, which fixes a bug. Update is highly recommended. http://www.robota.nl/products/iPhone%20Chess.html

iPhoneHome v0.7.3

January 1st, 2008, 17:25 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

iPhoneHome is an app available in the Installer.app through the Ste Packaging source. This is an app that allows you to change the double tap feature of your home button. In the Settings on your iPhone under general there is a setting for your home button…you are given three option to change it to on a stock iPhone; Home, Phone Favorites and iPod. iPhoneHome allows you to change the double tap feature to any app on your iPhone or even a phone number or blank email. When you open the app you get a screen that has two options Change App and Save & Quit. Just tap Change App and it will bring up a scroll wheel of all the apps on your iPhone. Just tap on the app your would like to set as your double tap and tap Save & Quit. Your iPhone will reset and now when you double tap the home button it will take you to the app you selected.
http://appleiphoneschool.com/iphonehome/

iNewsGroup v1.0.3

January 1st, 2008, 17:26 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

iNewsGroup is a newsgroup client for the iPhone.

Changes:

"Real Name" option in preferences now in order to post with your name
Dates are now visible in thread and group views
Fixed numerous UI glitches
Actually think that 'message from top' bug is finally gone.
Fixed potential cause of crash on initial installhttp://code.google.com/p/inewsgroup/

PhotoBoard v0.3.1

January 1st, 2008, 17:26 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

PhotoBoard is a multitouch photo browser.

Changes:

Settings menu enabled (user can change the wallpaper brightness)
Bring the pictures on top when touched (change layers order)
Allow user to add photos from a list of thumbnails / names (instead of adding them without selection)
Allow jpg and png files
Resize pictures when loading them to improve performance (max bounds are 800x800);
Keep ratio aspect (for example, if you have a square picture, it will not stretch to 4/3 ratio).
Some minor graphics improvementshttp://cedsoft.blogspot.com/search/label/multitouch

Dashbuster v0.7.3

January 1st, 2008, 17:27 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

Manage your blockbuster queue from your iPhone.

Changes:

Added options to choose any of the of 5 screens for the phone. including Favorites, Recents, Contacts, Keypad, and Voicemail.http://iphone.dashbuster.com/iphonehome.html

iAthan 0.02

January 1st, 2008, 17:28 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

This application might be interesting for muslims: Get prayer (salat/salah/namaz) timings for your local city along with Qibla direction, distance and athan (azaan/azan) now on iPhone and iPod Touch!
http://www.guidedways.com/mobile/iat...oad_iathan.php

MobileScrobbler v1.2.3

January 1st, 2008, 17:29 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

MobileScrobbler connects your Apple iPhone or iPod Touch with the Last.fm social music website. As you listen to music on your device, MobileScrobbler sends the title, artist, and album to the Last.fm website. Last.fm uses this information to suggest new music, new friends, concerts, and events based on the music you listen to. http://dev.c99.org/MobileScrobbler/

Jiggy

January 1st, 2008, 17:31 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

Simply put, Jiggy is the easiest way to create applications for the iPhone (or iPod Touch). With just Jiggy and a browser, you'll be able to write an awesome iPhone application in a matter of minutes. JiggyApps run natively on the iPhone, so there is no messing around with HTML and the limitations of Mobile Safari. At the same time, you don't need a compiler or even a Mac, because JiggyApps are written in JavaScript.

Jiggy comes with a browser-based Integrated Development Environment that is both powerful and easy to use. You just run Jiggy on your iPhone and it will URL you. Then, on your computer (Windows, Mac, Linux, C-64) point your browser at the URL and in minutes you will have a shiny new JiggyApp up and running. http://jiggyapp.com/

Lyrics.app v0.2

January 1st, 2008, 17:32 Posted By: wraggster

via pdroms

Lyrics.app is a lyrics viewer for iPod touch and iPhone.
http://code.google.com/p/lyrics-app/

BNclassicDS

January 1st, 2008, 17:35 Posted By: wraggster

News/release from Unkwar:

Hello,

I just give you a little game conducted between 2 evenings watered during this tough period which is the end of the year: A set of Battleboats

How to play:
In stylus ...

Done:
The game 1 player with 3 modes of difficulty, music, automatic positioning of boats ...

To do:
Manual positioning of vessels
Multiplayer modes
Possibly a way to test how wi-fi program the thing ...

Voila, I hope it entertain you, if you have any ideas for improvement, they are welcome.
I have not yet been able to test it on DS so if ever you find a bug please let me know.

PS: Sorry for the interface really ugly but good, I am really sous-doué Graphic ...
PS2: The bug his departure under my version of NO $ GBA but apriori everything going well on DS.

Yoshi's Labyrinth Screens

January 1st, 2008, 17:37 Posted By: wraggster

Circus has posted some screens of his WIP project called Yoshi's Labyrinth





No release date as of yet but looking very good

http://playeradvance.org/forum/showthread.php?t=17705

DSONE/DSONE(sdhc) OS3.0 SP1 released

January 1st, 2008, 17:43 Posted By: wraggster

Happy New Year to all of you. DSONE/DSONE(sdhc) OS3.0 SP1 released. We redesigned the realtime save program. Realtime save function speed is much faster than before. Especially for SDHC version. It can be saved and loaded in 2 seconds. It has become a very very applied function. We supercard team release it as a new year gift for all DSONE user.

Main Feature:

Upgraded the Realtime save function speed. Now, save/load speed is much faster than before. SDHC version can save and load in 2 seconds.
Added RESET plug in. Homebrew software Imgview can press START to use RESET function.
Fixed DLDI data align problem.
Homebrew software do not creat *.sav and *.sci files to save the storage space.
Added the config database for each game. Player can setup patch info. for each game dividual.
Added write card check-up to avoid error when writting card.
Fixed some problems in patch database.
If realtime save make noise, please close NDS to sleep mode and open can fix the problem.
Important:Please backup the save before upgrade OS.

http://eng.supercard.cn/

GlovePIE 0.30

January 1st, 2008, 17:54 Posted By: wraggster

Carl Kenner has updated glovepie:

GlovePIE stands for Glove Programmable Input Emulator. It doesn't have to be used with VR Gloves, but it was originally started as a system for emulating Joystick and Keyboard Input using the Essential Reality P5 Glove. Now it supports emulating all kinds of input, using all kinds of devices, including Polhemus, Intersense, Ascension, WorldViz, 5DT, and eMagin products. It can also control MIDI or OSC output.

Control Games with Gestures, Speech, and Other Input Devices!
With GlovePIE you can now play any game, or control any software or MIDI devices, using whatever controls you want. This includes joysticks, gamepads, mice, keyboards, MIDI input devices, HMDs, Wiimotes, trackers, and of course, Virtual Reality gloves!

NEW! Wiimote Support!
Now you can use your Nintendo Wii Remote (Wiimote) to control PC games (or emulated games)! Also new in this version is support for TrackIR, FakeSpace Pinch Gloves, and Concept 2 Rowing machines. And it still supports the full range of other input devices added in the last couple of versions.

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

Albion Alpha 3

January 1st, 2008, 17:58 Posted By: wraggster

Updated release from M-HT:

Hi,

I finished a new version of Albion for the GP2X.

List of changes:
* fixed a bug when drawing a transparent wall (in 3D view)
+ added a sync call after saving a game
* turned off hw mouse cursor
+ configurable buttons (A,B,X,Y,Select,R+A,R+B,R+X,R+Y,R+Select)
* minor bug fixes

Download and Give Feedback Via Comments

PS3 NAND Dump Extractor for Infectus Chip

January 1st, 2008, 18:03 Posted By: wraggster

via ps3scene

A tool has been released on ps3hax.net to read the PS3 NAND chip with the Infectus chip:

This tool is used to interleave, then byteswaps both dumps of the PS3 NAND.
Upon completion, it creates a 'user readable' file.

This file is then scanned by the tool, and the flash files are extracted to a folder.
This folder is named PS3Nand-XXX.XXXX, where XXX.XXXX is the SDK Version magic in the flash (usually the version number of the firmware)

.B .A usually works, however in some cases .A .B order is required.
The tool was made by mainman, assisted by the PS3News.com Developers!

apascan - Handy tool for (PS2)Linux

January 1st, 2008, 18:05 Posted By: wraggster

News from Chewi:

I've written a program for Linux that scans APA partitioned hard drives and uses Linux's device-mapper to create block devices for each partition. This means you can plug the hard drive into your PC and work directly with any Linux partitions you may have on the drive. No more fudging around with sector offsets! You can even mount installed games as ISOs, though I'm not sure whether that's really very useful.

This program could also potentially be used to boot the PS2 into Linux from an APA partition. It runs in userspace but an initrd/initramfs could do the necessary work before the system boots. I have Linux 2.6 in mind here but MontaVista's APA code is adequate for 2.4. I did try and update that code for 2.6 so that everything could be done in kernelspace but the non-contiguous partitions made it too messy.

Anyway, it's actually not 100% finished yet, it doesn't seem to get the offsets for the additional partition segments quite right but it's nearly there and you can still see it in action.

It's ready now. It seems to work well, the only problem I've had is that the DMS HDD Format Tool appears to create partit