Messages

1

Nintendo Gaming / RE:NDS screens gave me a near black-out: was advised by EB Games staff to do away with it!

« on: May 02, 2005, 02:23:20 AM »

How weird, I just had the same thing happen earlier this evening and was really confused since I'd never had it happen before.  I was in the middle of writing a paper on my computer and all of a sudden I started seeing flashing lines on my vision that obstructed my view.  It got so bad I couldn't even read what I was typing.  Then I got hit with a massive headache and couldn't think straight.  The vision thing eventually cleared up but the headache stuck until I realized I hadn't eaten in like 24 hours, so I went and got a sandwich.  As soon as I smelled food, the headache cleared up.

On the website for migraines, it says hunger is a possible cause, and the symptoms of the Classic Migraine match mine perfectly.  Thanks guys, who needs a doctor when you have the PGC forums?

Anyway, looking at the website, it doesn't seem like the DS was the cause and I've certainly never had problems with epilepsy before, and I play games anywhere, even playing in the car doesn't make me sick.  Of course, you should still see a doctor if it keeps happening.  Fainting isn't usually serious, but if it happens repeatedly it can be a sign of something bigger.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: ds mutiboot wirelessy loaded ( hack )

« on: April 23, 2005, 04:35:41 AM »

The latest is that the DS's firmware has been hacked so you now only need to use the PassMe or wifi-passthrough method once to patch the firmware, and then you can run homebrew code without any extra hardware.  No commercial code though.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:lego star wars GBA... any love?

« on: April 10, 2005, 10:21:55 PM »

That's a bad thing?  I wouldn't mind seeing a full-size Millenium Falcon model...

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Nintendo Gaming / RE: DS: Online on April 11th?

« on: April 10, 2005, 10:02:17 PM »

 Gee, such a surprise...

What pisses me off most is he's making ad $$$ off of every pageview.  What a jerk.

In other news, *real* progress has been made on communicating with the DS via a hacked wireless card in a PC.  I'm not sure if this means that tunnelling the DS is still a possibility, but it's certainly a good sign!  Here are some videos demonstrating it:

Video 1
Video 2

Edit: credit goes to Tim Schuerewegen for the awesome hack job

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:DS: Online on April 11th?

« on: April 07, 2005, 07:51:59 PM »

UncleBob:

Just to clarify, how exactly did they patch Pokemon R/S?  You mention that linking with the demo unit works, and then later you say you could also send in your cart for replacement.  Are those just two options to acheive the same thing?  It's interesting that they could patch it without replacing the cart, since commercial GBA carts aren't usually rewritable (that I know of), and the GBA firmware definitely isn't.

I agree that including the updated firmware on new releases would be a good idea.  That way, Nintendo saves $$$ (no need to produce tons of extra cards or pay to ship millions of units back to Nintendo) and the only drawback is it'll take up extra space on the card, but I doubt it'll be big enough to make much difference.  Of course, all this assumes that they've made the firmware updateable to begin with...

Shecky:

I suppose having a "wireless option pak" would be interesting, but I don't think it's going to be necessary.  If they need extra wireless functionality that isn't already included in the firmware, they can just add it in the DS game.  Instead of putting the matchmaking service on a separate GBA pak, why not just include it in every game that uses online features?  As for storing personal info (block list, friends list, etc), that's usually handled on the server-side anyway, so no need to store that info client-side as well.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:DS: Online on April 11th?

« on: April 06, 2005, 05:45:34 PM »

Chances are it'd be a setup similar to Warp Pipe or Xlink; i.e., you run an app on your computer that serves as the connection between your DS and some central server through which you've registered your screen name.  Of course, I will be *very* surprised (and impressed, I suppose) if they actually do produce a working piece of software on the 11th.  If not, I'm curious what their excuse is going to be when the time comes.

Additionally, it's poor style to not release any info on whatever "discovery" they may have made.  If they *have* managed to come up with something that works, then it no doubt is built on the information collected by the several people who have generously made the results of their research known.  I assume they're not releasing info because they want to make money off of it, which is pretty disrespectful to the DS community.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:DS: Online on April 11th?

« on: April 03, 2005, 10:33:35 PM »

It may be possible to upgrade it, but that doesn't mean Nintendo actually expects to use it.  Upgrading firmware can be pretty risky, since if something goes wrong in the process (battery dies, cartridge pops out, upgrade code has an obscure bug) it's very possible to end up with a dual-screen brick.  Do you have any links to back this up?

FYI, I've also heard that rumor but haven't seen anything to convince me that it's anything more than just a rumor.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:DS: Online on April 11th?

« on: April 03, 2005, 08:50:33 PM »

I don't know for sure whether SM64 uses Nintendo's protocol (which people have been calling NiFi) or if it uses the standard wireless protocol, but if I remember correctly it also uses NiFi.  You're right that the two protocols are fairly similar, NiFi is a very stripped-down version of the standard, but the fact is that most wireless cards were not designed to communicate with anything but the standard, and although the packets can be *received* most of the time, there's no good way to *send* packets in the form the DS expects.  People have had moderate success with fooling the DS into authenticating with their computers (authentication is the first step in wireless communication) using hacked drivers for some wireless cards, but they're still a long way from being able to actually tunnel games over the internet.

Once Nintendo sets up their online service, this will all become moot except for people wanting to transmit homebrew code and pirated copies of multi-boot games (tsk tsk), since I'm sure all games that are feasible to play online will be online.  Online pictochat would be fun, but I bet we start getting simple online chat clients packaged into every game anyway.  Basically what I'm saying is at the moment tunneling NiFi looks like a lost cause, so we should all just sit tight and wait for the real thing.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Analog stick history?

« on: April 03, 2005, 05:34:47 PM »

Analog joysticks were nothing new and certainly nothing revolutionary, even in the days of Atari.  It's just a couple of potentiometers hooked up to Analog-to-Digital converters.  They've been used in various control systems for ages.  The N64's innovation was to make them small enough to be operated by thumb and cheap enough to be included in the basic controller, thereby making the transition from 2D to 3D that much easier for gamers who grew up with the D-pad.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:DS: Online on April 11th?

« on: April 03, 2005, 05:08:24 PM »

Without any further details on this project, I'm calling BS.

SM64 might be possible, but I'm fairly certain that tunnelling Pictochat is impossible with just a piece of software.  Why?  Pictochat uses Nintendo's proprietary wireless protocol, which no wireless cards outside of NCL are programmed to understand.  This has been a major problem for the guys over at gbadev.org, who have been trying to achieve the same thing since the DS's release.  Why not just reprogram the wireless cards to understand the protocol?  Well actually, this is what they've been trying to do, but since every card is different, and many don't even have publicly available source code for the drivers, limiting any success to one particular brand of wireless card.  Additionally, most cards aren't even capable of sending the kinds of signals the DS is expecting.  So you see, tunnelling is far from being just a simple software problem.

I suspect that if he actually *does* have a working setup, it's tied to a specific make of wireless card, or some other home-brewed device.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Mario Kart Online comfirmed! or comfirmed?

« on: April 03, 2005, 04:59:49 PM »

Just my opinion, but Mario Kart without online wouldn't be worth a purchase for me.  Mario Kart is all about the multiplayer party fun (my friends have spent days playing MK64, and I bought MK:SC and MK: DD both at release so I could play them with my friends.  I even hooked up 3 Gamecubes to a LAN and invited over 7 other people just so I could try out DD's LAN play.  So far, no one I know has bought a DS besides me, so if MK DS had no online I'd be stuck with just 1p GP and time trials... which bore the heck out of me.

On the topic of whether it should be on-line or on-time, my opinion is that delays are less harmful than reduced functionality.  Everyone has the ability to wait longer, but no one can go in and add new features after a game has been released.  From Nintendo's perspective, the people who care about multiplayer gaming are more likely to pick up a copy if it has online gaming, and the people who don't give a crap about it will probably still buy it.  Also, since this is the first iteration of Mario Kart to have support for online play, it could potentially be a strong system-seller.  A small few may decide to give up on the DS because of the delay, but this will be more than made up by people who are drawn in by the promise of online play.  So, it's a win-win situation for Nintendo.

Paladin, my advice to you is to either suck it up and wait for Nintendo to release the game when they've finished it, or look elsewhere for your kart-racing fix.  There's certainly no shortage, and I know you can't have played all of them.  Meanwhile, whining about it accomplishes nothing other than irritating the other members of this forum. (granted, you're entitled to your opinion, but I think at this point you've made your opinion clear.)

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Katamari Damacy for DS

« on: March 25, 2005, 10:41:23 PM »

I bet it'll be the same way you control the morph ball in Metroid Prime: Hunters.  Just stroke in the direction you want the ball to go.

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TalkBack / RE:DS Revelations in Nintendo Power

« on: March 25, 2005, 06:49:36 PM »

I can testify to the fun-ness of SBK.  For those who haven't played it, it's like SSX with items, or maybe Mario Kart with snowboards and tricks.  The original game and its sequel had a very quirky Japanese feel (as illustrated by Shinobin, the Ninja snowboarder, characters with noses as long as their legs, and an item that drops pans on everyone's heads...) but was nonetheless a solid multiplayer party game.

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TalkBack / RE:First Homebrew DS Game Created

« on: February 13, 2005, 11:37:38 PM »

The current setup for running homebrew code on the DS is no threat to piracy, as it required considerable knowledge of digital electronics and some skill in soldering.  In fact, I only know of six people who actually have working pass-through units (although there are plans to start mass-producing one of the more attractively-sized ones).  If I understand the process correctly, they work by telling the DS to run from the GBA port, where a flash card stores the executable code.  Portions of the Metroid Prime demo have been run in this way, but no full commercial games (that I know of).

Other efforts to get homebrew code running on the DS have focused on sending programs from a computer using a wireless adapter and the multiboot functionality (one-cart multiplayer) on the DS.  Unfortunately, this appears to be too difficult since PC wireless cards generally don't support all the functions that the DSes use to communicate with each other.  However, there is no encryption on the wireless transmissions so there's still hope.

As for emulators, I know there is at least one out there called HyperDS, as can be seen on this site  It's currently not available to the public, but it looks like some good progress has been made.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:Non-Game Software You'd Like to See for the NDS

« on: November 14, 2004, 09:33:46 PM »

Even better than a DS printer would be the ability to upload your picture to a website somewhere, then you can either get friends to look at it with a DS or a web browser, and you can print it out using your computer's printer.

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Nintendo Gaming / RE:DS Game Idea: POKeMON MMO?

« on: November 14, 2004, 09:29:19 PM »

Judging by Nintendo's past and continuing shunning of central-server-based online multiplayer games, I doubt we'll see an MMO Pokemon game anytime soon.  The DS is designed mostly with the idea of peer-to-peer multiplayer networking, and though I'm sure it's possible for some developer to make a decent MMORPG for it, I really doubt Nintendo is going to be the one.