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Dr. Dos posted:With the Wii Shop closing I'm at least confident enough that pirates have got poo poo archived and things won't be lost to the void, but I'm wondering if Wii homebrew every got to the point where you can run Wiiware directly from SD/USB or do you still need to install it to the limited internal memory and constantly swap what's installed if you have that full? The last time I messed with it (which was probably a good 2 years ago) this was no longer an issue, you just had to do the initial install to the internal memory; once it was there and working you could use the Wii UI to move it to the SD card and it'd work launched from the SD card submenu.
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Sep 29, 2017 17:26
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Whatever you do, don't expect any purchases there to mean anything other than installation on that Wii (unless you have a Wii U to later import to, or are doing this through a vWii). The store's actually in all honesty a pain in the rear end because it's still a relic using points which you can't obtain "round" numbers of; SNES games are 800 points and buying points is in units of 1000, generally, so you'd have to buy exactly 5 SNES games (not 4 or 6) to cleanly "0" your points balance with a purchase of 2x2000 points.
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Sep 29, 2017 19:44
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Playing the latest Danganronpa put me in a very weird nostalgia for something that has almost nothing to do with the series (maybe the original PSP versions)? Which is that I kind of like when a console reads a disc and you can hear (and even slightly feel) it working. I don't know why but I'm more tolerant of load times if there's that accompanying "yes I'm really really working hard to get this data for you" vibe. Probably from playing old adventure games as a kid off 5.25" floppies on an 8086 and having screen transitions be loud and powerful-feeling enough to scare a Dreamcast. I get that same vibe from PS1, Dreamcast and PSP UMD games (probably would from some other systems like the PS2 as well, but those systems are the ones I played most), as well as Laserdiscs which always felt like some mad scientist experiment whose centrifugal force was this close to catastrophically failing and killing everyone watching the movie. Reminds me a bit of a "How Did This Get Made?" podcast live show where one of the hosts spent a few minutes nostalgic for the 80's phone experience (the weight of the receiver, the thick spiral cord, the "ka-chunk" when you hung it up or picked it up).
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Sep 29, 2017 20:03
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I would blow Dane Cook posted:What are the longevity issues that are going to cause retro consoles to die over time? Obviously there are dying/leaking capacitors and batteries, but what else? Well there are two categories of issues where longevity is concerned. The first kind is stuff that is fairly trivial to repair at least to handy-ish people. This would include things like replacing SRAM batteries in carts. The second kind is stuff which generally needs specialized/proprietary parts, if it can even be reasonably repaired at all. The stuff that's always most failure-prone (and this isn't just retro consoles but anything electronic) is anything involving moving parts, most commonly optical drives. They are built to last a certain, high-as-hell number of hours of use, but that countdown's gotta hit 0 sometime (and probably did long ago), so anything like that is definitely on borrowed time now. This is consumer-grade equipment, but even industrial-grade machinery still requires maintenance and replacement parts; that I'm aware of, no one has built a magical printer that can just go forever with the same belt in it (and if they have it's probably ludicrously expensive). Even if it wasn't used, the mechanisms can stiffen up for various environmental reasons and create problems for it working reliably; this might not be outright failures but could be things like loads taking longer than normal which can impact game behavior if it's outside of the system's expected tolerances, so things like stuttering cutscenes, or worse, softlocks because the game was built to expect all data to be loaded at a specific point and doesn't manage to do it. The most difficult console to get in working order right now is probably the Atari Jaguar CD, which was a flaky piece of poo poo even when it was new, and very few were sold since it was a lovely expensive add-on for a lovely expensive console. Probably not too far behind is the Virtual Boy, a lot of its optical mechanisms just weren't built to last 20-ish years, and it didn't sell in massive numbers either (but did better than the Jaguar CD did at least). Other known iffy systems are the Famicom Disk System, both because it has an internal belt which can fail, and because magnetic storage media does just degrade over time, and the bulk of those disks were written over 20 years ago. I remember flyboi in this thread managed to hack his FDS unit to allow it to write data as well, and "refreshed" his collection of disks that way. Somewhat related is CD's themselves, since at the end of the day the important data is only protected from data-destroying oxygen via two thin clear plastic discs and some glue holding it all together. The plastic itself is fine (assuming it's not abused, of course) but the earliest pressed CD's (of the music variety) have been failing pretty regularly for a while, even a minor enough imperfection in the glue causing it to fail and let in oxygen means that disc is hosed. Fortunately game CD's were several years after CD's initial introduction, so there's hope that improvements in how they were manufactured may hold things off, but that being said it's not uncommon for people with large collections of CD's or even the much later DVD's to have at least one or two discs which "rotted", because said disc happened to come out of a batch that barely "passed" QA and while it worked for several years, the glue failed eventually. Even the early Nintendo systems (Famicom and Super Famicom) tend to have somewhat loose and unreliable cartridge slots; it's not uncommon for a Super Famicom to need the ensure the cart is very slightly tilted forward or backwards (like by slipping a folded piece of paper behind it) and if nudged even slightly will lock up the game. I'm pretty sure at launch the SNES at least was far far more tolerant of this, not like when Game Center CX played Mario World in like 2005 and slightly brushing a piece of paper against the cartridge accidentally hard crashed the game. This isn't outright "it doesn't work at all" but does mean greater care is required than it used to. That said, what problems we do know about with these systems seems to be solvable for the most part. I guess the only other thing to be weary of is the controllers, especially since by their nature they get used with a lot of pressure put on them, and a lot of official controllers are difficult and expensive to source out good condition authentic replacements for, especially ones with known issues like the N64 and its notoriously failure-prone analog stick (and Gamecube controllers can also be difficult due to the Smash community). There's probably a bunch of stuff we don't know yet, either. These are problems that we're seeing 20-30 years into the console launches, we'll probably see new ones 50-100 years in. univbee fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 14:02
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LODGE NORTH posted:I'm not well versed in things about this, but I've been in this thread once or twice before. You're thinking of the XRGB devices, most notably the XRGB Mini (also known as the Framemeister). Its main purpose is to take unstable old console analog signals (accepting composite, S-Video, component and SCART input) and output it quickly (to minimize lag) to a stable, digital HDMI signal (older XRGB units output to VGA). The SNES Classic is essentially an emulator box and natively outputs to HDMI, so it makes no use of an upscaler.
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Sep 30, 2017 22:23
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A good breakdown here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOObbaqOaUQ
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Oct 1, 2017 12:58
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Minidust posted:On a similar note, what consoles are best suited to a VGA connection on a 1080p screen? I'm assuming Xbox 360 is really the only one. The relative lack of lag is really noticeable vs HDMI, at least on my TV (plasma from 2009) If you have a set mind about vga connectivity, older xrgb models connect that way instead of HDMI. The XRGB3 at least also does VGA IN and will process it.
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Oct 1, 2017 19:27
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Uncle at Nintendo posted:Holy poo poo that's not even close! It sounds like they used the Genesis ROM by accident! How does not every soundtrack sound completely different?? A bit of a guess, MIDI and similar digital music systems can often have a lot of device-specific fuckery in terms of the coding used to implement effects, and this can convert really strangely sometimes if you're using the wrong device. I know I had some MIDI files intended to be used with expanded instrument sets (like Yamaha GM and Roland GS stuff) and some files would do funky stuff to mimic sound effects; these would turn into pianos and saxophones on devices that didn't know what it was. You got the same thing in the later DOS days when many MIDI devices had a more standardized "General MIDI" instrument order while older games had composed their MIDI tracks around the proprietary "Roland MT-32" instrument order. Like this scene in Ultima VII's intro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpYaZXHyp8g&t=42s on newer MIDI devices the "sound effect" of The Guardian's face morphing through the screen was instead saxophones hitting sour notes. My guess is that song does something a tad weird coding-wise that the emulator coder failed to account for, I half-expect if you fished up some older versions of ZSNES/SNES9x, especially on DOS, you'd probably find something similar going on there, and someone who's coded and/or worked with emulator sound systems might know more about what the mistake is. Now we just have to wait for Nintendo to fix it and release a downloadable patch and...oh.
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Oct 1, 2017 21:35
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Yeah seriously dude either pay people to transport it for you or at least bribe some friends/family with beer and pizza. Trinitrons are insanely heavy, to the point where one goon even mentioned they were on a shortlist at his moving company for things they'd charge a premium to move (the other stuff was like grand pianos and fortified gun safes), you don't want to do a loving thing with them if you have some chronic issue that's bad enough you're seeing a specialist about it.
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Oct 3, 2017 16:33
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MazelTovCocktail posted:Plus side is I assume it's not a huge tip risk for kids? Oh my sweet summer child. It's slightly different in that a small child probably won't have the strength required to shift the TV. That said they are extremely front-heavy so if they managed to slide it forward, even a tiny bit off the edge of where it is will send it crashing down. It's deceptive and one of the things making them really hard to carry, and shifting them to reach the back area is also really risky, I think it was reasonably common back in the CRT days for people to break their feet this way. Definitely make sure the TV is a ways away from the front edge of the sheft it's on and don't put a blanket or tablecloth underneath it. And make drat sure what you're putting it on is intended for a CRT or at the very least get assurance that it can support the weird. It's probably pretty safe if it's directly on the floor, at least.
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Oct 3, 2017 16:46
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Fan re-translations are generally bad news. J2E's FF4 translation is an infamous example, the guy who runs Legends of Localization and has done several game translations professionally has a good breakdown on his site, he suspects everyone who had a hand in making it weren't all on the same page as far as what the project was meant to be and it's chock-full of amateur translation/localization issues. At least for Final Fantasy, every game except VII and VIII with questionable translations on their first go, had much better new translations done for the newer versions of the games, although some lack the quirky charm of the first translations, and have their own issues themselves that may rub some people the wrong way. Final Fantasy Tactics is another, the PSP and mobile versions have a far better translation than the PS1 version. One of the big problems with the NES and SNES is that there are some serious logistical complications to actually getting a higher volume of text in (which is frequently a major cause of stiff/limited translations). This goes beyond expanding the ROM, and into things like dealing with short item/spell names, or that a specific section may have a hard limit programmed in for how many text boxes there can be. A while back I attempted to wedge the GBA FF6 script into the US ROM of FF3 but I couldn't do it; it's a massive loving difference in terms of the sheer weight of the text and even adding an entire megabyte to the ROM wasn't enough to fit it all in, a fuckload of reworking would be necessary to do it. The newer version releases for FF were effectively reprogrammed and retooled (going to a different aspect ratio) and could be built to allow for various languages and their quirks a lot more readily. univbee fucked around with this message at 03:01 on Oct 4, 2017 |
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Oct 4, 2017 02:58
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Mak0rz posted:There's one for Terranigma too. The text in that game is loving miles apart. Legends of Localization author mentions this happening with one of the games he translated too. Basically he was told the game was going to have a fixed-width font with a fixed per-line character limit, bent himself over backwards to make the text work with that (including manual line breaks), but then at some point they got variable width fonts working but no one told him (it may have been too late anyway) so the game has a lot of empty space to the right for everything. Variable width pretty much automatically requires either a reprogramming of the game, or some foresight on a Japanese dev's part because variable width is explicitly "wrong" with Japanese; proper Japanese writing expects each character to fit in a square where they're all equally-sized. It's to the point where Japanese workbooks/notebooks, the kind you'd write proper amounts of text in, are similar to graph paper.  This is drilled in with Japanese schooling to the point where even quick "chicken scratch" notes will follow this pretty closely just due to muscle memory. And it's a bit of a case of the people manipulating the game code to work with the translation may not have the closest contact with the people actually doing the translation. You even see this with people making dubs for movies and TV, the "audio" dubbers might not know what's happening as far as on-screen graphical changes and weird things can happen because they're not the same team.
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Oct 4, 2017 14:59
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Huh. I knew Jaguar carts had handles, but not there were multiple handle variants.
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Oct 4, 2017 15:51
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Well, this is a different take on doing things retro. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPcYW9dTAUw
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Oct 5, 2017 00:01
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 I hope this will fit on the 8 gig Switch carts. 
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Oct 5, 2017 19:04
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Dr. Dos posted:https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/3687/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter looks like FF5's GBA script has been backported to the SNES version. gently caress yes.
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Oct 7, 2017 00:37
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TVs Ian posted:What I really want to see is Symphony of the Night's script applied to the Saturn version, but as far as I can tell, it never happened. I'd imagine tampering with a Saturn game's infrastructure is a fast path to pain and madness. All (or almost all?) the Saturn version's features got carried into the secret PSP version of SotN (it's a hidden unlockable in Dracula Chronicles X). Although this one features a new English script and dialogue. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLIQCrVUrZU&t=61s
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Oct 7, 2017 02:08
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To clarify, I don't think it's literally impossible, but you'd have to do some serious work on it. It's literally impossible if you just use that FFVI editor program, which is fairly versatile but it's definitely possible to do even more if you are very good at SNES assembly, and I think these kinds of projects generally need that degree of work really. I'm poking around and there may be partial successes like this one, not actually sure though: http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2247/
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Oct 7, 2017 02:55
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What exactly happens when you try it? Does something show up on-screen? You're formatting the SD card to FAT32 right? Have you tried another SD card?
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Oct 7, 2017 16:18
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Huh, neither did I. Anothing thing I might as well mention is that the cart seems pretty strict about your ROM's being in true PAL (in your case) format. I'm in an NTSC zone and if I load a PAL ROM I think it actually tries to output a PAL signal (which nothing I have supports) so I get an "invalid signal" message but can hear the game. You might have to patch NTSC-only games so they will work for you.
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Oct 7, 2017 16:25
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What size card are you using? FAT32 support is a bit iffy on cards larger than 32 gigs. It may be worth finding a fit-for-purpose SD card format utility to see if that improves things.
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Oct 7, 2017 16:47
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Elliotw2 posted:If you have a model 1 Mega Drive it's possibly the easiest mod in the world to actually do. Now this video is just fun. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wNIAnmzgk8
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Oct 7, 2017 23:24
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A Mickey Mouse game I'm pretty sure. Castle of Illusion maybe?
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Oct 8, 2017 00:00
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Tree Dude posted:Looks like the SMW link might be working now too! I did notice in a video I watched demoing it that the music didn't change while riding Yoshi though and that might be a deal breaker for me. This would be...not impossible, but definitely extremely complicated with an MSU-1. It basically behaves like CD Audio used to, with a single fully recorded stereo audio track, and it's not very good at things like sound effects (due to seek times) and rapid music changes. At best someone would have to compose and properly time the "Yoshi percussion" part to go with the CD Audio but it'd be enormously hard to make it all so it doesn't go all out of wack when the music loops.
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Oct 11, 2017 23:40
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Instant Sunrise posted:I haven't really played around with any MSU1 patches, but does it simulate the seek times of a 1x CD-ROM drive that a real SNES-CD would have used? It's definitely not THAT bad, boy I remember those days all too well and games like LOOM did NOT work well on those. But I'm fairly sure, from what I remember playing around with it (full disclosure, it's been a very long time) there is a hitch with initializing and starting music playback, but this usually being when a level just starts and the screen is black isn't noticeable. I'm almost 100% sure you wouldn't be able to program it in such a way that, say, you composed two audio tracks, one for "on Yoshi" and one for "off Yoshi" where it will instantly and seamless switch between the two at the correct playback location based on your "riding Yoshi" status.
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Oct 12, 2017 00:12
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Clever but what games did that? They weren't doing it with redbook audio right? Or are you speaking hypothetically here?
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Oct 12, 2017 00:41
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 18:24 |
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Mak0rz posted:Also IIRC it's one of those unusual cases where the Japanese version is actually easier than the English version. Which is probably fine because I can't get goddamn anywhere in Castlevania III because it's brutal, but I haven't seriously tried to play through Akumajou Densetsu to find out whether it's too easy or something (I strongly suspect not, though). In the US version, the further you go in the game, the more damage you take from individual hits. The Japanese version doesn't have this. The different characters also take different amounts of damage but I'm not sure if this is in Japanese version or not.
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Oct 13, 2017 14:19
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