Although we skimmed a little bit on this week's Ask Joystiq, we'll be back in full force next Friday!

If you have any burning questions, unsolved gaming mysteries, or just a desire for musings from our knowledgeable cadre of writers, drop us a line at ask AAT joystiq DAWT com (and yes, we write it that way for a reason).

Q: In January of 2007 you reported that three new games would be coming out for the Dreamcast: Last Hope, Trigger Heart Excelica and Karous. What is the status of these games? Are there any more Dreamcast games coming our way?
-Wonderflex

A: In short, the status of these games is: they're out in Japan. Last Hope hit on Jan. 31, Trigger Heart Excelica came in on Feb. 22, and Karous was released on March 8. Dreamcast owners can search for the limited-run games through importers, but non-Dreamcast owners have options too -- Trigger Heart Excelica recently hit Xbox Live Arcade, and Karous is now available for the Wii in Japan (Wikipedia currently lists a PS2 version of Last Hope, but we couldn't find any other evidence that it's even planned).

We couldn't find any evidence of new retail Dreamcast games being planned, but Dreamcast Scene and DCEmu continue to update with plenty of homebrew games and apps. Sure, most of these freebie releases don't have the polish or appeal of a retail release, but some are good enough to get ported to the DS. Good hunting.

Miro is a Ide LUA programming, it allows you to write your applications in Lua. This Ide is oriented programming scripts Lua for PSP.


Key Features
-- The interface has been revamped with a very similar to the Microsoft ide, as Visual Studio.
-- Operate your work not only by opening the script but managing individual projects include images and more.
-- The code is colored.
-- In addition to a series of code numbers will help you find your line quickly.
-- Can be more open with the same script thanks to a program interface cards.
-- A spell put in place your upper and lower so that there can never go wrong.
-- While writing a small window, such as those that have been introduced in the new Microsoft Visual Studio, suggests the words in a way that does not remember exactly costringervi all keywords in the language.
-- A small tool helps you easily find the coordinates on a screen the same size as that of the PSP. On this screen you can also now import an image in order to help even more.
-- Ability to follow and LUA scripts on Windows with known LUA Player for Windows.
-- You can export your project as Homebrew directly to your PSP or on your PC.
I remember that to get a good return on this council to create projects that include more than the script all the files necessary to execute the same script (images, fonts, etc. ...).
-- It 'can change the language [English - Italian]
-- You can perform searches on the text and also make substitutions

Improvements compared to v2.0
Improvements compared to v2.2
-- Fixed execution error: "error: can not open script.lua: No such file or directory"
-- Adding export opportunities with the new LUA HM5 Player for PSP with Kernel 3.xx
-- Added features LUA Player HM5 to the dictionary functions available

This is just what you think it is, yet another pong clone. Nothing much is different in this version than any of the millions of other versions, except that I added the ability to move horizontally as well as vertically. In my opinion, it's nothing really that special. This game started as a mini project that I worked on to teach myself the ropes on programming for the PSP as well as programming games using SDL. As a side effect of using SDL, this game also runs on Linux, Windows, or any other platform that is capable or running SDL. Still though, that's not the reason I am releasing this. The main reason I am releasing this is the source. While trying to figure out how to run SDL on the PSP, I came across much conflicting information, and there weren't many examples. If this code can help even one person out there use SDL, then I'm happy. However, that said, I'm not saying I'm using SDL correctly or in the most clever and efficient way possible. The code does compile and run as intended though, so I must be doing something right.

Installing
1.50 PSP
Navigate into release/150, and copy both of the Pong directories
into the GAME folder on your PSP.
3.xx
Navigate into release/3xx, and copy the Pong directory into the
directory on your PSP setup to run games in 3.xx kernel mode. This
will either be GAME or GAME3xx (replace xx with your firmware
version).
Windows
No installation is required. Simply navigate into release/windows
and run pong.exe.
Linux
No installation is required. You must have SDL, SDL_image, and
SDL_ttf installed however. Simply navigate into release/linux and
run the pong executable (from the terminal, "./pong"). The
pre-compiled version of this game was built on a 64-bit operating
system, and may not work on 32-bit systems. To get it to work,
compile it from source (see below).

Controls
PSP
Menu
Up D-Pad Up
Down D-Pad Down
Select Cross or Start

Player 1 Player 2
Up D-Pad Up Up Triangle
Down D-Pad Down Down Cross
Left D-Pad Left Left Square
Right D-Pad Right Right Circle

PC
Menu
Up Arrow Up
Down Arrow Down
Select Enter or Spacebar

Player 1 Player 2
Up W Up Up Arrow
Down S Down Down Arrow
Left A Left Left Arrow
Right D Right Right Arrow

Source
Yes, I included the source. If for some reason you wish to compile it
yourself, simply navigate to the src directory and issue a "make". This
will make all of the targets and put the executables in their proper
directories in the "release" directory. If you wish to build only a
specific target, "make 150" will compile a kxploited version for 1.50
PSPs, "make 3xx" will compile a 3.xx kernel version for 3.xx PSPs, and
"make linux" will compile the application for Linux. The compiled game
will be put into its proper directory in release. There currently is no
make command for Windows, as I compiled it using Dev C++. To build the
source, you will need SDL, SDL_image, and SDL_ttf. If you wish to build
the PSP versions, you will also need to have the PSP toolchain installed.

Real developers, if you see anything that is horribly wrong in my code, please alert me. I'm still learning

As I promised, here is my latest release of SpriteMakerXP.
This is the first time I post on this forum, but maybe you have noticed some of my homebrews.
So, back to my HB, this is a program which allows you to create a sprite resource usable in your homebrews and also in RPG Maker XP. Actually, the elements I used for this HB are those you can find in the Character Maker XP of Saphiro. But my program is (I think) better than his own and than almost I have found.

I'm sorry for those of you who can't read french, but (yes I'm french ) I'm trying to make an english translation in the next release so you can easily understand what you're doing.

what's new in v1.02:
-you can now import png files and add some features in it
-you can configure the tiles' priority for all categories (which tile is blited first, second...) (sorry, don't know how to say better)