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EricBall

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Blog Entries posted by EricBall

  1. EricBall
    Many moons ago I bought Civilization Revolution for the PS3 and have been playing it quite a bit ever since. But always single player, i.e. versus the AI. I've gotten fairly good, where I win the majority of the time against the highest difficulty level. But I've avoided the online multiplayer for a couple of reasons - can't save (so have to dedicate time), and there are quite a few very good players out there.
     
    Well, this weekend I played my first online game and got spanked. Yes, at the beginning it looked promising; but though I was expanding nicely I was falling behind in tech. So I started to question why I was playing Civ. Yes, I probably could get better at multiplayer - but it would take a lot of time, time I wasn't willing to invest.
     
    I realized I was playing CivRev because it satisfied two criteria: 1. it was wife acceptable and 2. it wasn't a game my son was interested in. So although I have other games I could play, my son also plays them and I don't want to get ahead of him. (He tends to watch and I don't want to spoil any surprises.)
     
    SO I'm looking for suggestions for PS3 or Wii games to play. Criteria:
    1. In general, most M rated games (especially FPS) are out as they aren't wife acceptable.
    2. Offline single player - I simply don't have the time to invest for an online game.
    3. Not something a 10 year old would be interested in playing.
  2. EricBall

    PS3 review - Blur

    By EricBall,

    So after performing some housekeeping on my PS3 (didja know that you can assign downloaded games an "Album", and then select "Group by Album" - so now my purchased games are in a separate folder) I downloaded the multiplayer demo of Blur.
     
    First, big kudos to Activision for releasing a multiplayer demo which actually allows you to play as if you bought the game (up to level 10 at least). That's right - no timing out on the last lap or limited play time. You can really get a good feel for what this game is all about.
     
    And the game is Mario Kart, but with realistic graphics and licensed cars. And although I downloaded the GT5 demo, I have little interest in realistic racing. So for me Blur is cool 'cause it's an arcade racer and I don't need to do much more than hold down the accelerator for most of the race. Sim racers may still be able to beat me around the track by finding the perfect line, but they can't outrace my homing missile.
     
    Yep, there are weapons to be used. And they even have Mario Kart equivalents. Shunt (homing missile) = Red Shell (but can be fired backwards to block an attacking Shunt; Shock = Blue Shell, except it just puts a bunch of damage areas in front of the lead cars; Mine = Fake Item, which can also be fired forward; Nitro = Mushroom which can also be used as a mega brake; Bolt = Green Shell and just as tough to aim with, although you get three. There's also Shield and Repair items and Barge which pushes nearby cars away and can be used to block Shunts. Finally, as an added bonus, you can carry three weapons at once. (In fact, my only complaint so far is the most recently picked up weapon isn't automatically selected.)
     
    Racing (even if finish last) gets you fans, fans get you to the next level, and levels unlock new cars, mods (special abilities) and tracks. So even if you aren't the greatest racers, you can still get ahead. The online process is also fairly painless. Once you're assigned to a group (note: I've never had success being the host) each race takes 5-10 minutes. And once the leader finishes, a countdown begins to the race ending. Then awards are assigned and the next track is voted on and the race starts after another countdown.
     
    Will I buy it? Maybe... But I'm having fun playing the demo!
  3. EricBall

    E3 musings

    By EricBall,

    At E3 each of the big three consoles hit the stage to excite the press and public with their latest gadgets.
     
    Microsoft was first up and they showed off Kinect (nee Natal), where the 360 uses a camera to turn your body into the controller, along with various games (mostly sports stuff) and a staged Star Wars lightsabre battle. The other big announcement was a smaller, quieter, lower cost, Xbox 360 with built in WiFi.
     
    Nintendo went second with Shiguru Miyamoto showing off the new Zelda for Wii where you have to move the Wiimote / nun-chuck to control your sword & sheild respectively. It looks cool, but might get frustrating since there isn't the same level of feedback you get when using the Wiimote to control an on-screen pointer. They also announced some other interesting games, including a GoldenEye remake. But the big announcement was the 3DS - a new DS with a no-glasses-required 3D screen in the lid, dual exterior cameras (for 3D pix) and an analog slide-stick. It will also play 3D movies.
     
    Finally Sony made their announcements. The first was 3D games for the PS3 (3D HDTV & glasses) required and second was the PlayStation Move, Sony's camera + controller Kinect/Wiimote alternative.
     
    Personally, I found the Nintendo presentation blew the other two away. The 3DS is simply amazing (I can see one in my future) and the Zelda demo was very impressive (and I can't wait to buy it). OTOH, although I have a PS3, neither of the big announcements had any appeal, especially since both are rather expensive accessories ($x,0000 for a 3D TV and $100 per PS Move controller set.) Kinect is much more interesting (although still $100 for the camera), but I don't have an Xbox 360, nor am I planning on buying one (even if the slim is cheaper).
     
    Finally, watching the Zelda demo got me to thinking. Both the Sony PS Move and the Microsoft Kinect are aimed at 1:1 motion capture - so your onscreen avatar moves in synchronization with your moves. But I suspect Zelda treats motion much more like a button press - so if your swing is _mostly_ horizontal Link swings his sword horizontally. But the action is preset. This gives much more room for error and for the software to Do What I Mean, so your actions won't have to be as precise. It will also make any lack of synchronization much less obvious.
     
    Of course, all this new hardware isn't anything without the games. And the games which interest me (Zelda) may not appeal to you.
  4. EricBall

    Cray-1

    By EricBall,

    Even though I didn't get into computers until several years after the Cray-1 first came to market, it was still a legendary computer.
     
    Just the look and shape of it was awe inspiring; looking like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey (or any other SF film). No simple box, but a C shaped tower with a "love seat". Then you learned that "love seat" was the refrigeration system - it was cooled with Freon - how cool was that? A computer that got so hot it needed a cooling system. (Which actually wasn't that uncommon for large systems of the time. But when your point of reference is a fanless home computer....)
     
    The actual design of the Cray-1 is interesting. Seymour Cray took the knowledge he gained working on the CDC supercomputers and built something very advanced.
     
    One major design change he made was adding a huge number of registers for temporary storage, including vectors. Up to that point vector processors processed data stored in main memory. Seymour realized memory was too slow so a significant performance improvement could be gained by having a large number of registers and performing all operations on those registers. This is the same "load/store architecture" most RISC processors use. The Cray-1 had over 5 kilobytes of register storage!
     
    The Cray-1 also had 12 independent functional units. Each was pipelined so they could process multiple instructions without delays. The vector and floating point units also had the ability to automatically forward the result to another functional unit, called chaining. With judicious use of this with vector processing the Cray-1 could hit 250MFLOPS under ideal conditions. (Although I'm not certain how, since it only had 3 floating point functional units and ran at 80MHz, thus 240MFLOPS.)
     
    Yep, the Cray-1 had a 80MHz system clock; which doesn't sound that fast today. However, the Apple 2, available at the same time had a 1MHz system clock and the original IBM PC, which came 5 years later, had a 4.77MHz clock. So for the time 80MHz was insanely fast. Also consider the Cray-1 was made from LSI chips: 1Kbit SRAM for main memory (max 8Mbyte+1Mbyte ECC), 16x4 bit 6ns registers, and fast & slow NAND chips.
     
    But while a microprocessor is typically less than an inch square, the Cray-1 "processor" was spread over 340 square feet circuit board (512 6x8 PCBs). So the design of the Cray-1 had to account for propagation delays, and ensure the delays were equalized as much as possible. (Either by cutting wires to precise lengths or adding extra capacitance to PCB traces.) The curve of the physical frame was also to minimize distance.
     
    In order to be as fast as possible, the Cray-1 was made using ECL (emitter coupled logic) circuits. ECL circuits are very fast, but require a lot of power because they never "turn off". This led to the built-in cooling system, which always sounded so impressive.
     
    Part of me wonders how small and how fast a Cray-1 made with modern technologies would be. There are certainly Cray emulators out there. But they probably only worry about duplicating the ISA, and are not clock accurate. Unfortunately, even if schematics were available it wouldn't be possible to simply "port" the design to modern technologies as much of the Cray-1's design was overcoming physical limitations. But it's fun to dream.
  5. EricBall

    Bloombox is not green!

    By EricBall,

    I was listening to the 60 Minutes podcast and they were doing a segment on the Bloombox, which is based on a fuel cell. The thing which annoys me is they call this "green energy". Umm, folks . . . you're generating electricity by consuming gaseous hydrocarbons (typically natural gas), which isn't green IMHO unless you are capturing bio-methane. And even then you're replacing the power grid with some sort of hydrocarbon delivery system. They also talk about avoiding grid losses, but half of my gas bill is "delivery charges"! Pushing gas down a pipeline ain't free folks!
     
    This is not to say a fuel cell can't be used to generate power, or that it won't have value in some situations. But listening to the segment I couldn't believe the hype and spin which were being presented as fact. (OTOH, it's a good thing it wasn't broadcast with last week's segment on con artists and Ponzi schemes. Bloombox has taken a lot of VC money, and the few boxes they have sold weren't cheap either.)
  6. EricBall

    Home network monitoring

    By EricBall,

    My wife plays Cafe World and other games on Facebook. She's noticed that her MacBook gets hot while she's playing. I suspect it's just because Flash is a hog, but it occurs to me that I really have no idea what it's doing. And although my home network is safely hidden behind a NAT router, that doesn't protect me if something which is running from inside Flash (which has security holes) or other "trusted" environments.
     
    What I'd like to do is put a sniffer on a hub connected between my cable modem and the NAT router to watch the traffic coming out of my network. Eventually I could scale this up to a full IDS (Intrusion Detection System) which would do some analysis and flag any suspicious traffic for later investigation. But first I'd like to get a basic idea of what is going on, and thus what the IDS will need to deal with.
     
    Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find a plug&play LiveCD which does what I want. There's a few network tools LiveCDs out there, but they assume you a) want to do more than capture packets b) understand all of the tools they provide. So I think I'm going to go with plan B, which is to install Wireshark under Windows, capture a bunch of data, then analyze it myself.
  7. EricBall

    MythTV plotting

    By EricBall,

    Well, I just bought two ATI HDTV Wonders on eBay, so I guess it's gone beyond plotting.
     
    I've read as much as I can without taking the plunge. In theory it should be fairly simple.
    1. Acquire PC to use as a back-end server. This server contains the capture cards and the hard drives to store the recordings. Since I'm dealing with ATSC the CPU specs don't matter.
    2. Acquire compatible capture card(s). Sure, there may be cheaper cards out there which you might be able to get working, but it's reasonable to assume if no-one has done it, it can't be done.
    3. Download and burn the install ISO. I'm going to play with LinHES as it seems to be minimalist (so probably better for my needs). However Mythbuntu seems to have a more active community (and is on the current release of MythTV.
    4. Install & test. In theory LinHES is also a LiveCD which will allow any computer to be used as a front end. If so, that would allow me to use another computer during the test.
    5. Get PS3 interface working.
     
    4a. Filesystem configuration:
    hda1 is the /boot partition, ext2 formatted
    hda2 is the / partition, Reiser3 formatted
    hda3 is the swap partition
    hda5 is the /usr partition, Reiser3 formatted
    hda6 is the /var, ReiserFS formatted
    hdb1 is the /mythtv partition, JFS formatted
  8. EricBall

    new project curse

    By EricBall,

    I have too many unfinished projects. I think of a project and I can think of nothing else. It rattles inside my head, making it difficult to think of anything else. But as I actually start the project the noise quiets down and life returns to normal. But then I get another idea and I can never quite get back to finishing off the project.
     
    Currently rattling around in my head is an idea for an MPEG Transport Stream separator. This relates back to my idea of using my PS3 as a MythTV front end. (That project is stalled for a few reasons, including my unfinished outdoor antenna project.) I have some sample ATSC captures which the PS3 won't play back without "transcoding", which I'd like to avoid. The files are basically raw MPEG Transport Streams, and I suspect the reason my PS3 won't play them is because they 1 - are slightly corrupted and don't begin nicely and 2 - contain multiple channels.
     
    However, the transport stream is a fairly simple container format. The audio & video streams are chopped up into 184 byte chunks, then a 4 byte header is added. (Except for the start & end of frames which have a timestamp or padding added respectively.) The whole mess is then multiplexed together with some metadata packets. So unlike other container formats, my program only has to deal with packets and parsing some of the metadata. Everything else can be passed through unchanged.
     
    The audio and video streams for each channel in the transport stream are identified by the Program Map Table and the PMTs are identified by the Program Access Table. So, to extract a single channel I need to find and parse the PAT and the PMT then copy over all of the packets for just those audio and video streams along with the PMT and a PAT which only contains that channel.
     
    Surprisingly, I haven't found a tool which does this. However, there are other tools which do various repairs on transport streams. So I don't know if I need to implement something like that.
  9. EricBall

    PS3 as ATSC PVR?

    By EricBall,

    Of course, now that I've ordered a new computer the "dead" one stops crashing and actually transcodes overnight. So now I have a spare computer to find a use for.
     
    I have two SD TiVos - a dual tuner connected to the HDTV for analog and digital cable, and an old Sony S1 in the bedroom for analog cable. I also have an antenna connected to the HDTV for getting OTA (over the air) channels in HD. I'd love to add an HD TiVo but I can't quite justify it for recording network television; and I can't justify the rental cost of a cableco HD PVR when I get HD OTA for free. But would it be possible to use my old computer as a cheaper solution?
     
    An ATSC PVR does two things - first it stores the bitstream to disk and second it decodes that bitstream for display. The first step just requires the right hardware and a large hard disk. The second step is CPU or GPU intensive. So my old computer should be able to handle the first step without any problems, I just need to buy the ATSC capture hardware; but the second step is quite beyond the capabilities of the system. However, if the display were handled by another system, like my PS3 which is already attached to the HDTV, then I'd be laughing. (The old system is also noisy, so I don't want it next to the HDTV anyway.
     
    That brings in two more challenges - first is getting the video to the PS3 so it can display it and second is getting the video in a format the PS3 will display. The PS3 can function as a DLNA client, displaying video streamed by a DLNA server. There are several DLNA server applications for PCs, including PS3 Media Server which will automatically transcode video into a format the PS3 can use. Unfortunately, transcoding is even more CPU intensive than simply decoding. So unless the PS3 can display something very close to ATSC this idea still won't work.
     
    Fortunately, (based upon a simple test) it looks like it can. One problem is the PS3 Media Server interface is dang ugly - it's a very simple folder tree structure. So then the question is whether I can find some free software which will behave as a kind of minimalist PVR (ideally controllable via a web interface).
  10. EricBall

    just buy a Dell?

    By EricBall,

    My home computer is close to dead - random reboots and errors which point to a hardware failure. It's at least 7 years old, so I guess it's time for an upgrade. Sigh.
     
    I've spec'd out a Dell replacement for C$878+tax etc. My question is whether there's any real point in looking at other makes etc. Unlike the old machine, I'm not interested in researching each component and assembling it myself. I have consoles for playing games so I don't need the ultimate in performance. I just want good value for money.
     
    I guess my thinking is HP et al are sold via channels like Future Shop, who are going to take a slice of the profit. But Dell can take some of that cost and give me a better price.
     
    I'd look at Macs too if I didn't have a bunch of Windows only software. Macs are great if you can stay inside the box of available software. Unfortunately, I tend to wander off that trail.
  11. EricBall

    Beatles Rock Band

    By EricBall,

    Two years ago when Rock Band was released, we gave it some serious consideration for a family Christmas gift. But we ended up giving the whole plastic instrument craze a pass until this year where we used some gift money and took advantage of the post-Christmas sales to buy Beatles Rock Band. The big advantage is we "know" most of the songs.
     
    And we're having a blast. C is getting better banging on the skins, and I play bass while K handles the vocals (although we might swap). We've worked our way through the story mode (on easy for the most part) already, so now we'll probably explore and see what else the game has to offer. We might buy some DLC (like the Sgt. Pepper album) and maybe even one of the other games (since we have the instruments).
  12. EricBall

    Hartley Transform

    By EricBall,

    If you do any kind of signal processing, you've probably heard of an "FFT" or Fast Fourier Transform. An FFT is an algorithm (and there are several) which calculates a Discrete Fourier Transform in less operations, typically O(N*log2(N)), where N is the number of samples. The Fourier Transform changes a time based function into a frequency based function. (The reverse is also possible.) The Discrete Fourier Transform is the same thing except it handles time and frequency samples rather than a continuous function.However, the Fourier Transfer (and therefore the DFT and FFT) work with complex numbers; which means twice as much storage and three times as many calculations than if real numbers were used. (Some of this can be reduced, but it adds complexity to the algorithm.) One alternative is the Hartley Transform and the Discrete Hartley (nee Bracewell) Transform which uses only real numbers.The DHT is very simple: Y[m] = SUM n=0..N-1 X[n] * cas(n*m*2pi/N) / sqrt(N)where N is the number of samples, cas(z) = cos(z) + sin(z), m = 0..N-1, and cas(a) is in radiansThe DHT is also it's own inverse (especially if expressed with the 1/sqrt(N) scaling factor), which is very nice as you can take the output and run it back through the same routine to get back to the original input. It's also trivial to get the Fourier sequence given the Hartley sequence:F[x] = ( H[x] + H[N-x] ) / 2 + ( H[x] - H[N-x] ) / 2iAnd just like the FFT, it's possible to calculate the DHT in O(N*log2(N)) operations. (Where N=2^P) This is from United States patent number 4,646,256, by Ronald N. Bracewell, assigned to Stanford University, and released to the public domain.
    swap each element with the bitwise reversed address elementi.e. for N=16 element #5 (%0101) gets swapped with element #10 (%1010).for stage 1 to log2N width = 2 ^ stage span = width / 2 for i = 0 to span-1 cas = cos( i/width * 2pi ) + sin( i/width * 2pi ) for j = 0 to N-1 step width left = sample[i+j] right = sample[i+j+span] * cas sample[i+j] = left + right sample[i+j+span] = left - right next j next inext stage And that's it! (Well, it's missing the scaling factor.) It should be noted stage = 1 and stage = 2 are trivial since cas == 1. And those who read the patent will discover that my algorithm looks nothing like the patent. This is partially because the patent is for an "implementation", and also because my algorithm minimizes the number of sin/cos functions.This works for N=4 but fails on N=8. I'm re-reading the patent and I think I see where I went wrong.
  13. EricBall

    Video is BIG part 2

    By EricBall,

    I've enhanced my workflow, so I'll share it for others who may want to do something similar.Step 1 - using a simple video capture program and an analog capture card, I capture the video at 720x480 (YUV2 compressed with HuffYUV), and 48KHz 16bit audio to NTFS formated disk.Step 2 - use AVCutty to detect scene changes. I created a custom scene index to simplify the next step.Step 3 - compress the scenes to DV format using ffmpeg -ss hh:mm:ss.00 -t hh:mm:ss.00 -i capture.avi -target ntsc-dv "clip-yyyy-mm-dd hh;mm;ss.dv"Step 4 - copy to NTFS formated external disk using /v parameter (actually a 27GiB partition).Step 5 - connect external drive to Mac, and import DV files to HFS+ formated external disk (actually a second partition on the same drive).
  14. EricBall

    GCN Wario Ware, Inc

    By EricBall,

    Another rental. It will be interesting to see how Wii impacts GCN title availability and pricing.
     
    Anyway, Wario Ware is billed as another party game title (like the Mario Party series). Except it's stuffed full of “micro-games” and the multi-player game has no inter-player interaction.
     
    So what about these microgames? Although I had fun at first, they quickly lost their charm. The problem is each microgame lasts less than in a minute. In that minute you have to figure out the objective & controls (based on little more than a one word instruction) and then hit the right button (the A button or the 4 direction) at the right time. Once you've played each microgame a couple of times (or read the instructions in album mode) then almost all of the games become trivial or a test of timing or reaction time.
     
    I also got a little frustrated with the format of the single player mode. It's set up as groups of 20+ games with a common theme, ending with a “Boss” game. The problem is you only have 4 “lives” to play through the 20+ normal games to reach the boss game and unlock the next group of games. (Sure I could play everything in album mode, but it's meant to play a single game multiple times.) So I found I had to play each group of games more than once just to reach the boss game, then play through them again a couple more times before I could beat the boss game.
     
    Okay, what's good? Some of the minigames are cute. Some of them, especially those which use only the A button in creative ways, are even fun. A lot of them are based on various Nintendo games or simply evoke memories of the old style gaming.
     
    Would I rent it again? Probably not. Though if I got one as part of a package deal I wouldn't sell it.
  15. EricBall
    Why is it people think that because the 2600 is "simple" (at least in terms of what level of graphics it can produce) that it will be easy to emulate?
     
    The reason it isn't is because the 6507 and the TIA are "tightly coupled" - each can do things which have an immediate impact on the other. The 7800 and NES are loosely coupled unless interrupts are used. But In the 2600 the 6507 & TIA could almost be regarded as a single entity.
     
    Anyway, occasionally people suggest creating a 2600 emulator for the Propeller. In their mind they assign a cog (processor) to each function - CPU, graphics, sound, input, etc. I typically scoff at them, citing the difficulty in emulating the 2600 - if for no other reason than the clock relationship between the 6507 and the TIA.
     
    But earlier this week I started thinking - why not give it a shot. Put together a 6502 emulator with an eye to making it usable in a 2600 project. It might be fast enough or feature complete enough, but it will be an interesting exercise to see if it's even possible.
  16. EricBall

    Video is BIG

    By EricBall,

    A decade or so ago I bought a Hi8 camcorder. With it my wife and I have shot the usual assortment of home movies. Now my wife wants to use iMovie to change those tapes into DVDs. (Probably not a bad idea - before those tapes start dying.). These days we use the movie capability of my wife's Canon S3 instead of the camcorder. Of course, getting from point A to B isn't a simple process. The first step is to use the capture card in my old PC to make an AVI using HuffYUV lossless compression. This gets saved to a internal drive with 60GB free. Even with this much space it can only hold 90 minutes. Although HuffYUV is great for capturing video, iMovie is fairly picky on what video formats it will import. So the next step is to use ffmpeg to convert the AVI to DV and write it to a 60GB NTFS partition on an external USB drive. This is a time consuming process and converting the 90 minutes capture takes over 3.5 hours. Because DV is compressed the drive will hold 4.5 hours. Then she can connect the external drive to her MacBook and import the DV file into iMovie, which copies it to a second 60GB partition on the external drive - this one HFS formatted. (Although I'm going to repartition the drive since the NTFS partition only needs to hold 90 minutes.) Keeping everything on the external drive means she's not filling up her MacBook (and the TimeMachine backup) with video. The size of these files is mind boggling to someone who started on 64k computers and 20MB hard drives. I first had the external drive formatted FAT32, but then the DV files were limited to 4GB or a little over 18 minutes. Older versions of iMovie were limited to 2GB or 9 minutes per clip.
  17. EricBall

    iPod Nano 5G

    By EricBall,

    Today Apple announced the 5th generation Nano, including features not available on any other iPod models: video camera & microphone, speaker, and FM receiver. (I think the other features are 90% software, i.e. the pedometer uses the existing accelerometer.) Okay, so the iPhone has the camera and microphone, but the iPod Touch and Classic don't. (And both the Touch & iPhone have a speaker)My question is why the Nano got the goodies instead of the Touch. Maybe it's the price point. Apple wants to bring down the price of the Touch to drive AppStore sales. (Although I find it funny. Apple trumpets they've sold 20M Touches, and Wikipedia says they've sold a similar number of iPhones; for a total of 40M. But (again, from Wikipedia) Sony has sold 56M PSPs and Nintendo has sold over 100M DSs. So the Touch/iPhone has a good slice of the portable gaming market but they are still third.)Where was I. Oh right, price. So the price of the Touch dips under that magic US$200 line, putting it awfully close to the Nano. Why buy a Nano instead of a Touch (given that size isn't an issue)? Rather than drop the price of the Nano, Apple gives it some unique features. Also, the smaller Nano screen also won't show how bad the camera is.I also predict the Classic will be phased out, maybe as soon as next year. The sticking point is physical size of the hard drive. But I bet if Apple asks Toshiba, they can some up with a thin single platter hard drive for the iTouch.I really hope Apple updates the 4G Nano firmware to support some of the new features.
  18. EricBall

    Slippery slope

    By EricBall,

    My son recently bought himself Pokemon Platinum so I retired the SNES & Gameboys which were only used to play Pokemon Blue. But those weren't the only SNES & Gameboy games we had. So I downloaded the entire GoodSNES collection via BitTorrent (dang that was easy, although I don't see the need for all of the bad dumps, hacks etc.) and put an SNES emulator on the Wii along with the ROMs for just the SNES titles I owned. I'll probably do the same for the Gameboy titles. And I'd like to get myself a DS flashcart so I can play them there too.
     
    But I've put myself on a slipperly slope. Although I've only copied over the ROMs for which I own actual carts, I suspect I could get those same titles through the Wii's Virtual Arcade. So although the original carts are no longer available in a form which would provide revenue to the copyright holders, buying them via Virtual Arcade would.
     
    Free is a hard temptation to ignore.
     
    And no matter how I try to justify it, I'm not setting a good example for my son.
  19. EricBall

    Propeller updates

    By EricBall,

    So I posted my OnePinTVText driver. That's right, a text display on a TV using only 1 pin. Actually, there's no reason it can't do any other monochrome display with an 8x8 font. Anyone for a nice game of chess? Not much feedback yet. Sniff. I'd like to try to get it to work with the internal RC ~12MHz clock, but my first try didn't work. So I'll put that idea on the back burner for the moment.
     
    My next project is to add SD support to my Z-machine interpretter so it can play the Infocom games. The first step is to wire up an SD socket. Unfortunately, no-one makes a pre-built adapter that I can just plug into my Demoboard. (There's one which is usable, but it still requires jumper wires.) So I started with a old 5.25 floppy edge connector (which apparently works). Unfortunately, the wires in the ribbon cable aren't stiff enough to push into the breadboard. So I've wirewrapped them to some wirewrap pins I have. I don't have any jumper wires so I built some with more wirewrapped pins.
     
    Of course, it doesn't work. Sigh.... I need to spend some quality time with my ohmmeter and see if I can figure out any obvious problems before I ask for help.
  20. EricBall
    Yesterday I tidied up the corner of the basement where I store all my computer (and other tech) junk. I have no idea how I ended up with a dozen (or more) IEC power cords. I should keep enough of the best looking ones for the working PCs and monitors I currently have and toss the rest. Or figure out how to make them into a modern art exhibit and sell 'em to some gallery.
     
    I also have a whack of serial cables which I'm trying to justify keeping. I don't think I have an external modem hiding anywhere - not that I have a big reason to use a modem anymore. I think I used them at one point to LapLink to an old PC to pull stuff off the harddrive. These days I'd just attach the harddrive to a USB adapter. So I guess I'll toss them as well - or add them to the modern art exhibit.
     
    However, sometimes that old junk is usefull. Apparently an old 5.25 floppy drive cable can be used as an SD card socket.
  21. EricBall

    CivRev

    By EricBall,

    I have been playing Civilization since version 1 although I haven't played version IV or any of the version III expansions. Nor did I play on deity level. So I guess I'm not a hard-core Civ player.
     
    But that's a good thing, 'cause Civilization Revolutions isn't for the hard-core Civ players. Unlike the rest of the Civ seies which added complexity with each version increase, Civ Rev tries to make the game more fun by removing complexity. This isn't to say the game is easy (although experienced Civ players shouldn't have much trouble) but I bet you won't be missing what was removed.
     
    So, what has been removed? Terrain improvements to start with. No more micro-managing your settlers or engineers to irrigate, mine, road etc. Instead, terrain improvements are tied to building a city improvement. For example, building an iron mine automatically gets you the equivalent of a mine in any mountain squares. Roads are simply bought and provide only one step movement between cities.
     
    You can still micro-manage what squares your city population works or use the resource type presets. Cities also only require food for growth, not size - so no starvation. (Although settlers still consume population.). No pollution either. A lot of negative effects have been dropped.
     
    The size of the world is small, especially compared to the largest maps in the previous Civs. Oceans are much smaller, but this makes galleys (triremes) capable of exploring more than the coastline of the island you start on - especially since they come with a crew which can explore inland. However, ships can't attack land targets directly, but they can support land attacks - adding half of their attack strength.
     
    The tech tree has been stripped down to about half the size as other versions. But the important technologies like gunpowder and combustion are still there. Being the first civ to complete a tech often gives a nice bonus - like one of the unit you can now build.
     
    On the flip side there are some additions from the earlier versions or Civ. The big one is the concept of culture. Temples and cathedrals now add to your culture rather than making happy citizens. The more culture you have, the farther your borders extend from your cities. (Other civs can't enter your borders without declaring war.) And if your culture is high enough you can cause cities to join your empire. (The converse is also true - you can lose a city due to insufficient culture.)
     
    My biggest complaint with Civ Rev is diplomacy. You can buy and sell techs with the other civs, but more often the other leaders will be demanding techs, gold or great people; then declaring war when you say no or offer them something less. So even if you're trying for one of the peaceful victory conditions, you'll probably still be at war much of the time. Doublely annoying, you're rarely given the opportunity to make your own demands.
     
    So, in conclusion, Civilization Revolutions isn't as complex as Civ on the PC. However, it is still the Civ we know and love and is fun to play. Plus, it looks very pretty on a 52" 1080p HDTV.
  22. EricBall

    Z3.C - debugged

    By EricBall,

    z3c.zip
    It works! I found the bug in the parsing routine (dumb error on my part). I'm going to call this chapter complete.
     
    The next chapter is to create z3.spin based on this code. I/O will probably be based on a serial terminal interface. And it will run catseye.z3, which is small enough to fit in HUB RAM (hopefully), so no SD I/O. The objective is to do as little as possible other than porting the code from C to SPIN.
  23. EricBall

    Z3 continues

    By EricBall,

    Z3.C is functional, but I'm still bug hunting. It now gets to the first input in HitchHiker's, but doesn't grok the input. MiniZork starts, but misfires printing out the detailed location info. (Which probably means a bug is in the object/property/attribute code somewhere.)
     
    What I really want is a PC trace from a known good interpretter, which I could then use to narrow down my bug hunt. Unfortunately, none of the Z-Machine interpretters I've found has this option. I could look at their source code, but I'm not sure that would be any easier. It would be one thing to look at something specific (like how to handle Jump if Equal with more than 2 operands), but working through every opcode would be much harder.
     
    But I think I'm close. One idea I had last night is to compare what opcodes HitchHiker's and MiniZork use before the first input. Anything which isn't used can't be the problem.
  24. EricBall

    Z3

    By EricBall,

    Zork! HitchHikers! Ahh, the memories of glowing green text and the frustration a text adventure can bring.
     
    Interestingly, Infocom had the forsight to create their games as a program for a virtual computer. That way they didn't have to create separate versions of each for each home computer. The same game file could run on multiple home computers using the existing interpretters. And when a new home computer reached the market, the whole library of games would be available by just writing one interpretter.
     
    My plan is to create a Z3 interpretter for the Propeller. (Although I'm skipping the features only used by two Z3 games.) No small feat given the Prop only has 32K of onboard RAM (plus 2K dedicated to each processor) while the Z3 story files can reach 128K. Obviously some kind of virtual memory will be required. The plan is to use standard SD cards to store the Z3 story files. When first started, the interpretter will copy the Z3 file to a SAV file and swap pages between the SD card and RAM. I'm hoping I will have 16K available for the story file and 64 pages is a large enough working set that the swapping won't bog down the game too much.
     
    But, the first step is to write the Z3 interpretter in C on my PC. Although there are Z-Machine interpretters out there, many of them are designed to handle all 8 versions of the Z-Machine; while I'm more interested in keeping the size requirements as small as possible. So I'm limitting myself to just version 3 (Z3). This includes more than half the Infocom catalog, including Zork & HitchHikers. I also want to avoid any license issues. (Not that I have a problem with the GPL per-se, but the Propeller Object Exchange is based on the MIT/X.11 license which doesn't have a copyleft clause. So if I use code which is GPL'd, then I won't be able to relicense it and put it on ObjEx.)
     
    And although I'd love to just start writting in SPIN, the PC is a much better debugging environment. I also won't have to deal with the whole SD/virtual memory issue.
  25. EricBall

    Wanna be a pinhead

    By EricBall,

    Who wouldn't want to have their own pinball machine? You too can be a pinhead, all you need is the space and the cash.
     
    I have the space . . . in theory. I have an unfinished basement but it has accumulated a lot of stuff & junk over the past decade of residence so there's not a lot of empty floor space. Getting stuff down to the basement is also a challenge as the stairs make a 180 degree turn halfway down. But ultimately no show stoppers.
     
    The cash is kinda sorta there too. The royalties from Skeleton+ have accumulated a tidy sum over the years - extra income just looking for something to be spent on. Pins can range from several thousand dollars for a NiB Stern or a mint "classic" to $500 or less for a fixer-upper or older electro-mechanical.
     
    One thing which experience has shown me is although I can fix things, that doesn't mean I will fix things. So my preference is for something which is 100% working. (And remember, anything which is labeled "easy fix" isn't or the seller would have fixed it.) Unfortunately, that cuts out a lot of pins available in the under $1000 range, particularly if I also avoid the EMs. (More because they tend to be fairly simple and therefore not worth the $$ IMHO.) Of course, I could get a NiB Stern but that's way beyond my "mad money" price range.
     
    The problem is, even if I stick to my "off the books mad money", I'm still spending hundreds of dollars on an entertainment item. I already have a PS3, Wii and other consoles to "spend" my limitted entertainment time on. Would a pin be worth the $$, or would it end up gathering dust after the newness wears off?
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