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xiaNaix

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Posts posted by xiaNaix

  1. Posted

    A message from the Libretro devs to anybody interested in these FPGA-based game/retro game consoles...

     

    http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spvhu2

     

     

     

    FPGA is a smoke and mirrors field right now; everybody reinvents the wheel, nobody shares information on anything because everybody is just looking to peddle 'product' or to form some kind of business around it without giving consumers and the world at large anything back in the process, anybody can claim they invented something from scratch when it's just cobbled together from various copyleft sources, etc. Needless to say, both the tooling and the actual landscape itself is very anti-open. The aim of most of these boxes is to just cash in on a fashionable retro gaming market, and it needs a desperate shakeup.

    Without saying much further, we are working on certain stuff that you will probably see announced later. Whatever we will do, one of our promises is that in much the same way we tried to fight against the attempts to commercialize emulation with RetroArch on mobile and the desktop and to keep everything fair, we will try to leave a positive effect on the FPGA landscape; even the level playing field, so that most of these proprietary boxes will lose their appeal. We put RetroArch on the Play Store for free, without ads, without any 'monetization SDKs', because it was the right thing to do. We are still to this day saying no to various monetization SDK providers who are flooding up our inbox who just want to 'leverage' our userbase, but our userbase is not there to be monetized and its privacy abused.

    With RetroArch and libretro, the fact that it's open source means a win for hobbyist developers, it means a win for the community at large, since the public gets something back without having to pay so much as a dime. While the rest of the world seems these days to just aim for basic profit maximizing and couldn't care less about giving back to the public, we do believe it's important that RetroArch and libretro as a platform remains an open (as in libre) project much in the spirit of Linux and similar projects like that. We don't believe in creating TIVOized boxes which restrict your freedom and are just there merely to serve as a box for some service and which don't have any other decent secondary purpose otherwise.

    Please keep an eye out on any future announcements when we are getting ready to reveal more about this. In any case, we just wanted you to know this before you go throwing all your money at some random kickstarter made by 'random company who used an AI to pick a new corporate logo for themselves'. Without naming any names and without singling anybody out, most of these guys are relying on basic FPGA smoke and mirrors to disguise the fact that it's simply the same thing millions of other people have already peddled. We will keep things open and transparent meanwhile when we are getting ready to announce stuff. The future of Libretro/RetroArch will not be TIVO'ized :)
    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    On their site/forum they say their console can handle the N64 just fine. But won't because of legal and patent reasons. What to make of that?

     

    <sarcasm> I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the two systems not 100% in current emulators like RetroArch (N64 and Saturn) are the same two Retroblox can't handle. </sarcasm>

    • Like 3

  4. Posted

    One quick blurb I feel compelled to point out is that he says the console shell on display at SoCal was just a mockup, and not the actual production prototype. Which, to me, says that there's no value in seeing someone supposedly feeding a Tekken disc into it and playing it off there, and that proves nothing.

     

    They stated numerous times before the show that the prototype would be there and be playable. The amount of double talk and backtracking being done shows that these guys are nothing but liards, charlatans and frauds.

    • Like 4

  5. Posted · Edited by xiaNaix

    However, we can't conclude anything from this. We know it does scan the disc to see what's in there (tekken 3 pops up after some time on 'Now Playing') so it may as well run from the disc (if it has that capability indeed) when you play the high-level conceptual "game" entry and it knows that disc is inserted. Honestly, I don't even see what's so amazing about running a PSX game from a disc drive through software which has already proven it's connected to said disc drive by virtue of responding when it's inserted, considering PSX emulators have been able to do that since always. Even the least charitable interpretation of what these guys are doing should include the possibility that they've gone through no more trouble than is required to connect a USB disc reader and use an emulator core capable of reading it.

     

    Hit the nail on the head there.

    • Like 2

  6. Posted

    No, you can clearly see that Tekken was listed as a "continue playing" which I guess means it was savestated. When you launch that 'tile' it'd have to tell you to insert the matching disc (which it couldn't efficiently positively confirm, thus permitting the possibility of later dysfunction). This isn't how I would have done the UI.. I'd prompt you to load the state (if there was one) when you launch the game, and the "now playing" (not yet playing) "tab" that they launch tekken from definitely doesn't offer that option. So I can fault them for poor choices in UI design, but this evidence isn't automatically damning.

     

    Wrong! In the Retro Hi-Def video Tekken 3 is listed in the "favorites" section before he even inserts the disc. The person behind the camera asks "These are games backed up onto the system?" and the representative from Retroblox replies "Yeah, we previously backed these guys up."

    • Like 1

  8. Posted

    Article from Kotaku

     

    With a video that includes a PS1 disc loaded into the console and then playing it.

     

     

    The only problem with that is you can clearly see that Tekken was already installed on the system before they inserted the disc when he scrolls down in the menus. They even acknowledge that the games listed there are ones they've already backed up. lol

  10. Posted · Edited by xiaNaix

     

    You were inferring that since Gamester81 didn't tear down the machine on camera, the presentation is fake. Nobody does that. MK was clobbered because he'd already lied about his product 55 times. He was the exception.

     

    I wasn't knocking Gamester81, I was referring to their presentation. They showed up at the convention with their prototype and all we've seen from that unveiling are games clearly running pre-installed on the system. They've never shown a cartridge or CD being read to the device.

  12. Posted

    Regardless of their emulation, the fact that your games are being "encrypted and signed to the individual user of the system so that they are exclusively useable on that one account." by God knows what method turns me off. Does this mean they are tied to the card, the console, or some Retrobox user account ID? And, more importantly, how is this checked? Online? Sounds to me like the whole system is just a trojan horse for their OUYA-style online shop. No thanks.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted

    But their emulators "function at a much lower level than the ones you can simply download for your PC, Phone or RetroPie / RetroArch / LibRetro box." Nevermind the fact that these apparently master coders weren't able to get N64 and Sega Saturn working. Must just be a coincidence that these are the exact same two systems without 100% working emulators. :D

    • Like 3

  15. Posted

    The Retro Freak can run some multicarts and "homebrew" carts too. So far I don't hear anything in the double talk that these guys are posting that sounds like it's anything new, other than their "proprietary RBXOS and Richter UI environment." They are clearly going out of their way to not get into technical details on how the hardware functions. I would hope those answers will be forthcoming before they start taking people's money for a lot of smoke and mirrors but I doubt it.

  16. Posted · Edited by xiaNaix

    hmmmm...

     

    Giving the benefit of the doubt, can some explain in less technical terms what their choice of CPU and GPU can and cannot do?

    The same as any netbook or Kodi box that uses the same hardware. The upcoming $70 USD Asus Tinker Box also has the same specs.

    • Like 2

  17. Posted · Edited by xiaNaix

    Is "low level" emulation even possible on an ARM box? I mean, HiGAN needs a 3Ghz CPU to run on x86...

     

    If you look past the attempt at technical gobbledygook what I take away from their comments is a preemptive excuse for when people realize they are just using currently available emulators. Note how they mention having received permission from emu authors but basically had to re-write everything due to "hybrid emulation technology." Uh huh. Then they brag about how the "people doing the emulation work include several of our team members who are not contributors to the open source community but work on low level hardware for console manufacturers professionally." In other words, we had permission but our project will be completely closed source so you'll never be able to prove what code we're using or not using.

     

    I'm betting the "hybrid emulation technology" is nothing more than an FPGA to read the cartridge (or CD) and then pass the data to the emulator.

     

    As for the video linked above apparently showing a game running from CD, there is no proof whatsoever. For all we know that game was already backed up onto the system like every other rom they clearly have loaded on there.

     

    Sorry, but I'm just not seeing anything new here at all.

     

    I know the authors of Libretro are watching this project closely so I hope for their own sake they truly do have 100% original emulation code.

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    From their forums.

     

     

    Also – to squash any rumors about using open source emulators. Hybrid Emulation requires emulators to function at a much lower level than the ones you can simply download for your PC or RetroPie / RetroArch rig. RetroBlox’s proprietary LibRBX, RBXOS, and Richter UI environment are built from the ground up in Linux so that we can access bus-level architecture and I/O from cartridge interfaces and controllers directly via high level emulation on the RK3288. This would not be able to be accomplished on android or if we used “stolen” emulators.

     

    While we have been granted permission from a number of top emulator developers to use their open source-licensed emulators with this project as of almost a year ago, the reality is that most of them are not suitable to run under Hybrid Emulation out of the box and required full re-writes. The people doing the emulation work include several of our team members who are not contributors to the open source community but work on low level hardware for console manufacturers professionally.

     

    These guys are so full of shit. lol

    • Like 4

  19. Posted · Edited by xiaNaix

     

     

     

     

    um.. what? I don't think we're talking about the same thing because your argument doesn't follow.

     

    You can get any number of ARM-based Kodi boxes that will run Linux, many of them using the exact same RK3288 chip, for around $100-$150 USD. That's generally considered a high-end box for these companies. They market (and price) them advertising that Linux is better better for Kodi than Android. Some models can be had for well under $100 USD, with the same specs as Retroblox. It's just as easy to install and run RetroArch on these boxes as anything else. They seem to have their own fronted but I'm sure these guys didn't code emulators for all those systems they claim to be running. I suspect they'll be a shitstorm as usual once it's released and the code is analyzed.

    • Like 1

  21. Posted

     

    Those cheap Alibaba boxes don't run in Linux. If they're being honest with that then this could be interesting. Linux gives very little lag. It just seems to be a platform a lot of businesses avoid because when you're selling software an open platform works against you.

     

    Not to say I'm letting my guard down. All this time they're hyping their device they never released their specs but apparently it's all printed on a sheet at their booth? It doesn't make sense.

     

    Sure they do. They caught on to the Linux thing a while ago to push their more expensive Kodi boxes.

  22. Posted · Edited by xiaNaix

    From their Facebook and Instragram pages. Judging the specs, this is just one of those cheap ARM boxes you can order from Alibaba with adapters for the various controller types. Thanks but no thanks.

    post-23402-0-51966900-1486323340_thumb.jpg

    • Like 3
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