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Shiru

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  1. FPGA emulation is only really makes sense when emulated platform needs to work with actual, not emulated external devices, such as original cartridges. That's the only proper way for a emulated console to run games off cartridges, as the emulated HW would act exactly like the original one, down to all timings. Retron5 does it other way, it just dumps game, then runs it via software emulation. It works, but emulator needs to know about games it is able to run beforehand, to know how to dump them, so it is inconvinient if the game libary is not 'finalized'. Software emulation is sure cheaper, and in case with CC it is the proper way, if it is not intended to run original cartidges (it really shouldn't unless it has all slots built-it).
  2. What was really strange to me as the Toyfair thing started is that the whole talk about using FPGA ressurected again. When CC was first mentioned, that it is going to be cost-effective now, I was totally sure it is going to be an ARM SoC, without FPGA at all, at least not for emulation purposes (maybe as glue logic for cart interface). Really, there is absolutely no point to have a FPGA core for anything, if you're not going to use actual original cartirdges for the old system. If you only going to re-issue a handful of games on new media, software emulator is all that it really takes. Much cheaper in all regards (development, licensing, production of everything) as well. So it really looks like actual development of the newer system never took place, even at conceptual level.
  3. Sure, they're magically 'wrote' a near-perfect SNES FPGA core (which is no one ever made so far) in no time since the last failure, while everyone else put years of work into things like that, but unfortunately they had no time to make a few times simpler Genesis core. These guys are not afraid of challenges, for sure. Maybe one day they'll even dare to lit a LED...
  4. Let's assume the best case scenario for a second, that they're actually going to make a SNES clone hardware, with USB/HDMI etc additions. How does this apply to the idea of 8-16-32 bit style games? Also, programming for the SNES, while is not a rocket science, is a real pain in the place, due to the overall system complexity, various limitations, and really underdeveloped tools (C compiler, for one, is simply broken). There is just a few guys in the world who making SNES homebrews at the moment, and having a clone system won't help with that at all - we already have the original, but a very few homebrews and even fewer developers. A clone system like that would be just doomed to have almost no new games. An ARM SoC, on the other hand, would be lightyears easier to program with modern tools, and cheaper to produce as well.
  5. What it is really looks like is that they have totally nothing to show. This is just plain existing SNES board and SNES flash card, with SNES games and original SNES hardware - not a newly made clone, not a RetroN-like emulator. Just the old original thing hidden under a Jag shell. They don't even have an engineer capable to connect that damn power switch and a LED (I myself personally did that at 13, plus much more) - which is like 5 minutes of work. So that's actually even worse than the original RVGS disaster. However, I should acknowledge, that's all is pretty chameleon'y to me.
  6. The video shows two well known SNES games played with a SNES controller. So, they're developed a SNES, woohoo.
  7. Most game consoles since 8-bit era used video RAM with indirect access, and had to load graphics into it (often uncompress as well). All ColecoVision (yeah!), Master System, Genesis, TG16, SNES games doing that, and good amount of NES games did it as well. That's kind of 'load times', just without explict loading bar. SNES also used audio RAM that had to be loaded with data as well, not too fast too. In extreme cases that could lead to noticeable load times, see Batman Forever for SNES, it even had a 'hold on' screen. I personally hid that sound loading time with a copyright screen in some SNES homebrews, and suspect that some commercial games did this as well. So, while we were calling these delays, caused by moving data from media into RAM, 'loading time' only on systems with non-solid state media (tapes, floppies, CDs), because it was explictly called like that there, similar things were exist on systems with solid-state memory as well, just not that noticeable, and thus not called so explictly.
  8. Seems that major amount delusion is still apply to (ex-) RVGS members. Learned how to offer, yes. How to deliver, no. A system that performs more like empty promises than any of the named products, by price of the both combined plus extra - and that's for a special price. Seriously, I can easily get Pi 2 and PS3 here for $260, new from a shop. And the last part about 'outsiders', I just wonder who would even want to be a member of this team.
  9. One problem, though, that it likely means less and less new homebrew games, maybe occasional quality stuff by hardcore enthusiasts, but certainly small scale. Projects like Gunlord or Pier Solar just won't be created, unfortunately they're not possible without money involved.
  10. I also find it interesting that despite of all the PR stuff, the campaign does not seem to having much public attention. The promo video at YouTube is still under 10K views, in ten days, with about 100 persons cared enough to like or dislike it. Even if each view would be from an actual person who'd pledge $100 (pretty good average), that would still be not enough to fund the campaign. And considering realistic expected convertion rate of about 2% at best, which is the case, they're doing pretty well with average pledge being $320. There is just not enough people interested or aware of the campaign, and even with that average it would need to be about 6000 pledges, which is very far from ~200.
  11. Why this is stated as a matter of fact? Getting FCC approval isn't some magic that is only available for chosen ones, and it does not necessarily cost as much as you can read in the interview. I'm totally sure this won't be the showstopper would kevtris decide to aim retail stores.
  12. No matter CF or a totally protected propietary thing, users totally will do all of this sooner or later. Happened to every and each console. Not even Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and everyone else, with all their billions, were able to prevent it.
  13. That's the question that puzzles me so much, because he constantly reffering to it everywhere, but somehow shy to name it. And no one asking for details by some reason. 'Few years back' can mean a slim PS3, Vita, maybe Portable, but seem it is not one of these, and that's the problem with naming it.
  14. So the HW specs boiled down to an 1.5 year old Android stick/box (MK908 and such), just with a cartridge interface - exactly what Retron5 did. They'd better to hurry up to patent it, sure. I also imagine how much fun they'd have if they ever get to license software emulators for the thing. Retron5 had issues with this for a reason. And the SW emulator+cartridge thing is totally flawed for 'no updates' approach, as emulators have to detect each game they're running in order to access the data properly, so a DB of all supported games is required, making complete compatibility not achievable.
  15. There is so many things about that interview (thanks a lot for it) that it is really difficult to choose the highlights to comment, so I just leave that to others. I'm only point out that they're seeing no problem with admitting that they only bothered to read KS rules just three weeks before starting the campaing, while that was going to be their only source of funding, the thing to make it all possible, so reading everything about it would have been done as early as it was considered for the first time. Basically that shows the depth of the research done, and how much all the talks about patents, licenses, regulation fees, lawyers, and other stuff worth.
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