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EricBall

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  1. I've been using emulators since early MAME days. However, I've also recognized there isn't much difference between preservation and piracy. But I figured there isn't much risk of prosecution when emulating games which could no longer be purchased. So I have to wonder what the developers of Yuzu, a Nintendo Switch emulator, were thinking. Nintendo is well known for being litigious and the Switch is still being sold and it's not a stretch to state that the emulator itself is resulting in lost hardware sales and lost software sales by encouraging piracy. I'm actually surprised it took Nintendo this long to react. I also find the statement by the Yuzu team that "they never intended Yuzu to be used for piracy" laughable. While they might have stated that publicly, they certainly used commercial software to validate and demonstrate the emulator. There's a good chance they had to jump through various hoops to allow commercial games to work. So the obvious consequences occurred - Nintendo sued and the Yuzu team closed up shop; turning everything over to Nintendo and agreeing to pay $2.4M. Also, it is my understanding that Yuzu users were encouraged (maybe required) to financially support the development team. I wonder if Nintendo is now in possession of that information and if they might actually go after end users....
  2. I made it through the holiday without playing EFT, although I was tempted many times. But I reminded myself that EFT is a time sink with a very high "one more raid" incentive. In addition, progression in EFT is strongly related to playtime. So even if I was able to restrict myself to an hour a day, that would mean I would mostly be replaying the same content I have already played three times.
  3. I recently took the time to learn more about the graphics processors of the Sega Genesys & SNES and realized that my previous "retro 720p GPU" had a little too much Atari 7800 in it's design. Really, if someone wanted to create an HD 2D GPU they really should start with the SNES (or the GBA or NDS) PPU as these really represent the ultimate in 2D GPU design. However, IMHO there will be three main challenges which the designer will need to address: 720p has a 74.23MHz pixel clock (versus 5.37MHz on the SNES) which will limit the number of tile layers & sprites per line and bits per pixel depending upon VRAM width & access speed. Basically the PPU has to be able to fetch all of the data for each pixel of each tile & sprite from VRAM in less than 13.5ns. The SNES used a 32x2? tilemap with 8x8 tiles. At 720p 8x8 tiles would be a 160x90 tilemap, 16x16 a 80x45 tilemap and 32x32 a 40x23 tilemap (closest to SNES). So the question is what size tile is appropriate (although this could be selectable via different graphics modes). In addition, larger tiles & sprites need more colors to make best use of those pixels. (But note #1) While not as significant as #1 & #2, one minor challenge is the screen width is not a power of two. If the width is a power of two then each X & Y positions are separate bits in the address byte. So either the address calculation needs to use adders or there will be wasted space in the tilemaps for vertically scrolling games. One enhancement to the SNES I would suggest is to have four address pointers for each tilemap (main, right, down & down+right). This would greatly simplify scrolling games as the level could be loaded into VRAM screen by screen.
  4. I'm a little late to the party, but I recently updated my Atari 7800 Programming website with a complete explanation of the 7800 graphics modes including P#C# to bitmapping (in the sub-pages) https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/graphics-modes/palette-sprite-bits
  5. After nearly 700 days of ownership and over 1450 hours of playtime I have decided to stop playing Escape From Tarkov. Hopefully the withdrawal symptoms won't be too severe. This is not because EFT isn't a good game - otherwise I wouldn't have played it as much as I did. It's more a combination of two factors: 1. This wipe I was able to accomplish some landmark tasks - reaching PMC level 40 and completed the "The Punisher - Part 6" quest. 2. There are probably other things I should be spending 2+ hours per day doing. This wipe (my third) saw definite improvement in my game over the last wipe. However, I suspect the amount of time I was playing was a significant factor in how much I was able to accomplish. Thus, while I likely would be able to achieve more next wipe, I suspect I wouldn't reach the same landmarks that much faster. And, due to the nature of the game, the next landmarks (i.e. PMC level 42) aren't easily accomplished. So guess I've reached the point where I can honestly say "been there, done that, got the pix to prove it".
  6. Hmm... not ROT13 encoded and not reversed - that's about the limit of what code breaking I'm prepared to do.
  7. One of the main mechanics of Escape From Tarkov is progression. Primarily players complete quests in order to level up the NPC traders in order to obtain access to better gear. However, there are numerous other ways for players to progress in EFT, typically giving them advantages over players who have not progressed. While progression is a significant part of what makes EFT more interesting to play, it also has some significant downsides: Players who have progressed more have advantages over those who have not - which typically makes the game much harder for players with less playtime or have joined the game late. Players eventually reach the end of each progression (and complete all of the quests). So the developer must create more end-game content to keep these players engaged and periodically reset the progression of all players. The question I asked myself is whether it is possible to create a viable game similar to EFT but without progression. The biggest change would need to be to the traders as "levelling up" traders wouldn't exist. Instead traders would have three tiers of equipment: The lowest tier of equipment, basically the same equipment used by the AI Scavs, can be purchased using "Trader cash" which is typically obtained by selling items to traders. The middle tier of equipment is obtained from the traders in exchange for items either obtained in raid or purchased from other players via the flea market. It should also be possible to find this tier of equipment in raid. The top tier of equipment is given as rewards for completing daily & weekly tasks for the traders. (Note: these items would not be considered to be "Found in Raid" and thus couldn't be sold on the flea market.) Other progressions, i.e. PMC skills and the Hideout, could simply be dropped from the game. Some other changes I would make: No secure container - all items brought into raid are at risk of being lost. (Armbands would be considered to be clothing items and not at risk, but melee weapons would be.) However there might still be value in having "special equipment slots" and allowing keys and other task items to be put in those slots. No player Scavs. Player scavs represent a method for players with the available time to make money risk free. Instead players with assets below a certain threshold would be allowed to purchase (via real money) a "Trader cash" grubstake. (Which would be what new players start with.) The flea market uses a separate "Player cash" currency from "Trader cash" as traders can buy non-"Found in Raid" items. Thus players will be incentivized to list items found in raid on the flea market so they can buy (from the flea market) items they need for barters. This may also help "balance" the "value" of items as players will sell items to traders or the flea market depending upon flea market prices. No storage containers. The idea is to make the game equal for new players. Containers allow players with more play time an opportunity to store more items than new players, and thus "put off" the decision on what to sell. May also need to placing items inside bags & rigs in the stash for similar reasons. No higher priced editions, although there could be an opportunity for players to purchase cosmetic items for real money. The big advantage to players is new players or players who play infrequently won't be at an immediate disadvantage. Obviously players will gain experience through play so will have an inherent advantage over players with less experience. But this is the case for most non-computer games. New players can also join at any time as there are no progression resets. The challenge for developers will be keeping those more experienced players interested and providing enough variety in gameplay. However, in general it will be easier for developers to add new content on an on-going basis as it doesn't need to "work into" the existing quest/trader progression.
  8. As per https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/introducing-raspberry-pi-5/ "PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals" (although you can set a config option for PCIe 3.0). No idea how they are managed within the SoC.
  9. Cost - cheaper is always preferable Power efficiency - I dislike active cooling
  10. The Raspberry Pi 5 was announced today, complete with websites and influencers giving reviews based upon pre-release hardware. Personally I'm unimpressed. For me the raison d'etre of the Raspberry Pi has been more about price than performance. The original Raspberry Pi was little more than an SoC devkit built around a chip they could get cheap from Broadcom. People used it because it was cheap and it had just enough processing power to make it useful for a lot of microcontroller tasks which were beyond what could be done with an Ardino. I have three Raspberry Pis (in order of purchase): A Raspberry Pi Zero W - originally bought to play back MPEG-2 OTA recordings (with license key to unlock the MPEG-2 hardware decoder), then repurposed for arcade & console emulation (which it was a little underpowered for), then back to playing back DVD rips. A Raspberry Pi 3A - the heart of my vertical barcade, once I determined the Zero wasn't quite fast enough for the job. A Raspberry Pi Pico - a true microcontroller, it measures the resistance of the thermistor in my water cooled computer and sends the calculated temperature over USB serial to a FanControl plugin to control the speed of the radiator cooling fans. In each of these cases the RPi had sufficient processing power to handle the task while being also not costing a lot. And while I am certain there were other SBCs which might have been just as capable and possibly even cheaper, the RPis are generally well supported by the community; often with plug & play images. But the primary features of the RPi5 just don't excite me. Faster USB, SD & networking - that wasn't a pain point for me. PCIe - even bigger nope. Faster CPU & RAM - again, typically not an issue. (OTOH, I had considered getting an RPi4 for horizontal arcade emulation.) When I look at the RPi5 I see several downsides: needs active cooling, needs a bigger power adapter, and is more expensive.
  11. I'd argue they shouldn't be. Tower Toppler, for example, uses artifacts to great effect.
  12. I'm a little late to the party, but I recently updated my Atari 7800 Programming website with a complete explanation of the 7800 graphics modes including P#C# to bitmapping (in the sub-pages) https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/graphics-modes/palette-sprite-bits https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/graphics-modes/palette-sprite-bits/320a https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/graphics-modes/palette-sprite-bits/320b https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/graphics-modes/palette-sprite-bits/320c https://sites.google.com/site/atari7800wiki/graphics-modes/palette-sprite-bits/320d
  13. @mono I've made a major update to the Sprite & Pixel section, including color to bit tables for every mode. Please let me know if there are any errors or suggestions.
  14. You've inspired me to redo the Palette & Sprite bits page to hopefully make it easier to understand & use
  15. Excellent write up. Yes, RAM is extremely precious on the VCS. However, having to work within constraints often produces better results. The one "trick" I've used in my games is to have a simple 1 byte PRNG which is cycled every frame. There's an amazing number of things it can be used for, especially if it's only read intermittently (i.e. when the player does something). Whether it be for enemy movement or sprite & color cycling.
  16. @mono thanks for the postitive feedback. I wasn't aware that the site was offline. Google did some updates to sites back in 2021 and I guess I never republished the site.
  17. "Turn asteroids into space habitats! Just use self-replicating robots." Says the blurb - and I immediately stop reading. Because, unlike the author, I've actually given the concept of self-replicating robots some thought and have concluded they are distinctly non-trivial and not something humanity is likely to create in my lifetime. In my case I was considering von-Neuman probes - inter-steller spacecraft which use the resources of the destination solar system to create replicas which are then sent out to other nearby solar systems. The problem with self-replicating spacecraft (or robots) is they have to be capable of a huge number of industrial processes as everything which makes up the spacecraft, including the machinery etc used for the processes, must be manufactured by the spacecraft from the raw materials it can obtainThis means the spacecraft not only needs to be able to fabricate integrated circuits, but it needs to be able to manufacture the machinery used to fabricate the integrated circuits, and able to manufacture the machinery used to refine raw ores, etc. etc. Once you start to think about what would be required, the idea of a self-replicating robot becomes laughable. An inter-planetary spacecraft, certainly because size isn't as much of a factor. One question is whether it would be possible to obtain or synthesize all of the necessary materials by mining asteroids and the inter-planetary medium to avoid the need to enter and exit planetary gravity wells & atmosphere.
  18. I have to say I love the form factor of the SF2000. It fits in my hands perfectly. I've been playing Pokemon Emerald with no issues. One annoyance is the apparent volume of the rear firing mono speaker differs depending upon my hand position. The D-Pad also seems a little glitchy, occasionally registering down for left and vice-versa.
  19. After seeing it on a YouTube video, I've ordered an SF2000. Physically it looks like an SNES controller with a built-in screen. It includes emulators and full rom sets (!) for NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, and Genesis. Unfortunately the SoC doesn't seem to have the power for SNES and GBA, but at less than C$30 (shipped) I'm not going to complain too much. And who knows, maybe the hacking scene will figure out how to improve performance. But it got me to thinking about the "perfect portable retro system". able to emulate all 2D consoles & handhelds six action buttons for Genesis (along with D-Pad, analog stick & shoulder buttons) start, select & menu buttons headphone jack and/or bluetooth headset (skip the A/V out) hi-res 4:3 LCD 640x480 minimum, ideally 1024x768 or higher SoC with built in scaling & window+border Decent menu with config options (e.g. button mapping, pixel/screen scaling) Display is tricky for any multi-emulator because of the different resolutions and display and pixel aspect ratios of the original system. Having a higher resolution gives more options.
  20. Hmm... while that's not a bad processor, it's a AM4 processor so if you want to upgrade to a Zen 4 processor you'll need to upgrade your motherboard as well.
  21. This Slashdot thread got me to thinking about the PCs I have purchased over the years. 1989 12MHz 80286 - bought it on my first work term in university and used while in university. 1993 66MHz 80486DX2 with VLB motherboard - bought after I graduated and started working for IBM 1998 MediaGX Ambra Ispirati - this was a real dog of a computer which I wouldn't have bought except we received a $1000 gift certificate with our mortgage 2001 Athlon XP with nForce 420 motherboard - the Athlon series was the first time where AMD CPUs were significantly better than the Intel offerings of the time; nForce also included very good integrated graphics (and sound IIRC) 2010 Dell Inspiron 545 Q8300 2.5GHz Core 2 Quad - while I tried to stay off the upgrade treadmill as long as I could, I eventually an upgrade was required because the Athlon wasn't stable anymore. However, I also decided at the time a prebuilt would fit my non-gaming needs 2012 Acer Aspire One netbook - be bought this one because we had a house fire so needed something cheap to get back online. I have to say I really love this form factor - a 10" screen is just big enough for a typable keyboard. Still have this one and use it occasionally when I want something super portable. 2014 Late 2013 27” iMac 3.5GHz i7 w/ GTX 780M - after years of Windows I joined my wife on the Mac bandwagon. This is currently my "secondary" computer - which gets used for work-time play and when my son is using the current computer. Love the screen! Unfortunately the Mac ease-of-use mantra has gone downhill over the years IMHO. 2020 AMD Ryzen 5 3600 w/ GTX 1650 Super - while the GTX 780M in the iMac was powerful at the time (especially for an iMac) it was basically a gaming laptop with a really nice screen. So at the start of COVID I decided to actually assemble the PC I had been dreaming about for the previous 6 months. (And a good thing too - it wasn't long after that GPU prices got stupid.) This year I upgraded to an RTX 3080 and watercooling for noise reasons. (Might still upgrade the CPU if I can justify the cost.) Hmm... so in first place is the Athlon XP which lasted ~9 years. Second place is the iMac which was my primary system for 6 years, although it hasn't been fully retired. In addition I still use my wife's Early 2011 13" MacBook Pro when I need a non-work laptop. (She replaced it with a Chromebook and then with an Acer Spin 15.) Also notable is (unlike some of the respondents) each of my new computers has been a "forklift upgrade" - i.e. everything replaced. In fact, I hadn't upgraded the CPU or GPU prior to my current computer.
  22. I'm giving away my BeOS software collection for the cost of shipping from Markham Ontario BeOS release 3 retail box (in fair shape), User's Guide to BeOS release 3 BeOS release 3 Intel Pentium & PowerPC install CDs, diskette & install guide BeOS release 3.2 for Intel Pentium Demo CD rev 2 BeOS release 4.5 Demo CD (and CDR copy w/ boot diskette) BeOS 5 Personal Edition CDR DM me you're address if you're interested
  23. I'm giving away my OS/2 software collection for the cost of shipping from Markham Ontario OS/2 Warp retail box (in rough shape), User's Guide to OS/2 Warp and other retail manuals Original CDs: OS/2 Warp v3, BonusPak for OS/2 version 3, Home Connectivity v2 and v3, Developer Connection for OS/2 volume 5 1994 disc 1, Hobbes Ready-to-Run November 1994, Hobbes Archived March 1995 DM me you're address if you're interested
  24. I bought this card new and upgraded the RAM to 1MB, but it has been sitting in my basement for decades and it's doubtful I will ever own a computer with ISA slots again. So I'm hoping that someone else can give it a proper home. It can be yours for $100 Canadian + shipping. I will also include 24 3.5" disks with v1.21 (original), v2.06L, v3.53 and v4.11 software & patches. DM me if you are interested and let me know why you want this piece of history.
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