Sitting comfortable at 2244a is the latest version of OpenBOR from developer SX. Most notably OpenBOR now supports SecurePAK mods. So what I suggest: playing Night Slashers X.

Be patient — she takes awhile to load.


OpenBOR v3.0 Build 2244a changes:

Moved DebugInfo Option from video options to system options
Added new option in System Options to Disable File Logging. Which improves load times if you are not concerned about log files and in-gameplay logging slowdown. Default Enabled.
New Default CPU speed for PSP is 333 MHz
SecurePAK is supported in the Build

I’m very excited to announce that this new release is packed with great stuff.
First, it ships with a cool new card: Clone. This card is here thanks to gdspsp, who requested it in reply to the article I wrote few weeks ago. Wagic now has new functionalities that will grow with time: “when … comes into play, you may…”, and copy effects. Again, thanks gsdpsp for this great choice that definitely improved the engine!

Clone itself would be a good reason for a new release, honestly. Hell, a new card in the Revised set? That hadn’t happened in ages! But I didn’t stop here. I learnt recently that Manalink (a.k.a Shandalar) now allows people to play Momir Basic. I was curious, and it turns out that it was quite easy to add this game mode to Wagic.
Yes, Wagic is the first and only freeware that allows you to play Momir Basic against an AI. If you don’t know what Momir Basic is, google for it, I swear it’s great for casual play! People who’ve been playing Wagic for a few months now will really enjoy this refreshing mode. Oh, and Momir Basic mode is a great reply to comments I got, saying that “there is no good reason to play MTG on a PSP”

What else? Oh, since you’re our best clients, we added 300+ new cards in there too, but shhh, don’t tell the boss (Who would have known that your old Phat PSP can handle more than 1600 cards?).

Oh, wait, I almost forgot, necessary explanation for newcomers:
Wagic is an heroic fantasy trading card game in which you play as a sorcerer against the AI. It is inspired by the rules of a famous card game that shalt not be naymed, because it would then be free advertising for Wizards of the Coast and apparently they don’t like that.

Many thanks to all beta testers!

Changelog
New card: Clone! (thanks gdspsp!)
New game mode: Momir Basic! Play against the AI with more than 800 creatures in a mix of random fun and strategy! I’ll explain later on this blog (http://wololo.net/wagic) how to unlock this extra mode
More than 300 new cards, including cards from the sets Mercadian Masques, Mirrodin, Odyssey, but also in other sets (10th edition, Revised, Shadowmoor, Eventide, Shards of Alara, Conflux, Ice Age, Invasion, Lorwyn, Mirage, Portal, Tempest…). Wagic now allows you to play with more than 1600 cards! (many thanks Dr.Solomat and leungclj!)
Improved memory usage for card textures (For those interested, JGE now allows you to load jpeg files in 5551 while being in 8888 memory mode)
New “cache size” option. Slim owners might want to try to push it up to 60, while Phat owners probably need to stay below 20. Increasing the cache size while improve game speed if you play with card pictures, but might increase the risks of crashes. Try to find the value that best suits your needs.
Improved stability. The game has been reported to crash less than version 0.5.1
New parser keywords: mustattack, cantattack, cantblock, may, copy. I will update the “create your own cards” page soon.
New alternate deck format (card names rather than their id), should make it easier to create your own decks (for yourself or the AI) with a text editor.
The test suite now allows card names rather than their id, makes it easier to write tests.
Small shop improvements, to make it easier to buy cards and boosters
Victory is becoming more exciting than before, as you get bonus credits depending on how well you beat your opponent.
5 new AI decks (thanks Abrasax)
Bug fixes for the following cards: Arcanis the omnipotent, Elvish Piper, Fastbond, Fountain of youth, Nevinyrral’s Disk,Spirit Link, …
Other bug fixes related to the following: lifelink, more than 100 cards in deck, more than 64 abilities in play, nightmare with 0/0 that doesn’t go to graveyard when it comes into play, selling cards in deck editor…
With so many cards, more than 20 opponent decks, 2 extra features to unlock (difficulty mode and Momir Basic mode), I’m confident that Wagic now has a replay value equivalent to (if not better than) many commercial games. All of this for free (*wink* *wink*, the donation link is at the top of this page )

Some of the new features (such as the new deck format) require me to write a few extra explanations, which I’ll do in future posts!
In the meantime, have fun!

I realized my description from the last post wasn’t entirely correct, the emulator isn’t actually new per se, it’s just new vis-a-vis those that I’ve already released. Most everyone guessed correctly that it was a Commodore 64 emulator - it’s VICE, to be exact. I realize a port of VICE already exists (called PSPVICE), but as I mentioned before, I port software because I enjoy doing it, not necessarily because it’s needed

To answer some of the questions that are already coming in, yes it will have a virtual keyboard (it’d be pretty stupid to have a computer emulator without some form of one), and yes, it does support CRT files. VICE PSP is based on the latest version of VICE, 2.1.

The amusing part of this is that VICE PSP would have probably been released half a year ago, if it wasn’t for a misinterpretation of its performance, on my part. Due to a variety of factors, I was getting what seemed like surprisingly poor performance from the emulator; work on it was shelved for months, until I decided to take another look.

I still don’t have a definite release date, but work is progressing well, and a release shouldn’t be that far off.

The Moonlight team offers the beta version 11 of Moonshell 2.00, the most popular multimedia player for the DS.

Quote:
2009/04/24 Version 2.00 beta.11

* System: Replacing the boot loader (Boot loader) with a more secure.
* File Browser: Fixed a bug that caused noise while playing MP3/ID3TagV2.2/V2.3. the APIC (images of artwork) are not supported.
* Remove parameters TCS_DetectCharCode_ANSI, TCS_DetectCharCode_UTF8, TCS_DetectCharCode_SJIS, TCS_DetectCharCode_UTF16BE, TCS_DetectCharCode_UTF16LE of language files.
* Added parameters DV_Popup_Pause_Play, DV_Popup_Pause_Pause, DV_Popup_PreviousFile, DV_Popup_NextFile, DV_Popup_Volume, DV_Popup_Seek, DV_Popup_BacklightLevel in the language files.
* Remove image mp_modelbl_allrep.png, mp_modelbl_random.png, mp_modelbl_repeat.png skin.
* Added parameters SSC_ScreenSaverTimeOutSecTitle, SSC_ScreenSaverTimeOutSec10sec, SSC_ScreenSaverTimeOutSec30sec, SSC_ScreenSaverTimeOutSec60sec, SSC_ScreenSaverTimeOutSecOff in the language files.
* Added parameters DV_Popup_Pause_Play, DV_Popup_Pause_Pause, DV_Popup_PreviousFile, DV_Popup_NextFile, DV_Popup_Volume, DV_Popup_Seek, DV_Popup_BacklightLevel in the language files.

weeaboo proposes a new version its homebrew "DS Visual Novel", which is now in version 1.4.7. This homebrew allows you to read stories and novels from the DS. The news, which should be in a special format, can be obtained in two ways: either by downloading on the official site, either directly from the homebrew.


Quote:
v1.4.7 2009-04-23
================================================== ==============================
bugfixes:
- A glitch in the image cache caused corrupted images to display
- Scripts with a starting choice command did not load properly
- An incorrect linenumber would be saved after following a goto
- Text commands starting with a space were rendered incorrectly
- Large (> 1KB) save files sometimes caused stack overflows while loading