I was at the Sprint launch party Wednesday night for the Sprint overdrive. It allows you to connect up to 5 devices at a time over Wi-Fi and connects you up to a 3G or 4G network. The 4G network is already available in 28 centres across the US, with no usage caps, so for as long as that lasts it’ll be exciting. So now we have a solution to the problem of how you play Internet-based PSP games at school, at home, and while camping (maybe with a solar powered charging system?).
The interface is clean and simple with 3 hours of active communication time or 36 hours of standby. It autoswitches back and forth as needed. Recharging is via a MicroUSB connector, so 3rd party charging al always an option. The display is clear and backlist, so at the press of a button you can check the status of the device: network, signal strength, battery life, SSID for the access point, and if you like even the network password.
It is available now, and is $99 at Best Buy or $149 with a $50 mail in rebate at Sprint stores.
Well the wait has been a long one for people who want a flash cart for the Sega MegaDrive/Sega Genesis system, but NeoFlash has really outdone themselves this time. I got one of the first MD Flash Carts to ship, and I was pleased with how well it performed and how easy it was to use.
The packaging was what I’ve come to expect from NeoFlash — if you know what it is you’ll know what you’re getting. In the package there was the blue adapter, the flash cart itself, and a USB programming cable. The adapter is for the MegaDrive/Genesis/Sega CD/Sega 32X and then their core technology as 512 MB flash cart for the NDS/NDS Lite/GBA. The genius with this design, is that the cart module needs to be built once, and then can be reused for flash carts for NES or SNES, Genesis or any number of other potential systems. You know my work, and I am very active with the ColecoVision, but no word yet if they will go that route. Not included in the initial shipment is the Windows based upload manager software on the CD mention on the packaging. A quick check on the forums offered me a download of the latest version of the interface software, and a recommendation to check back for updates as they refine the software.
So for a homebrew programmer and enthuasist like me, it is a dream come true. I can load up multiple versions of my various homebrew projects. The only real problem that some people might find is that you need to reformate a given flash cart for a specific system. That is, you can’t have SNES and GBA homebrew on the same cart at once. We are working on the Genesis today, so really you format it for that, and there is not issue.
The software was easy enough to use, and it let me know right away when I’d successfully cabled up the cart to be reprogrammed. Before I got this, all of my Sega Genesis work was tested exclusively in emulators, so being able to use the original controllers and real hardware was quite satisfying.
I think that 512 MB is plenty of space for Sega homebrew projects, but for the ultimate collection you can swap out the small flash cart for one of the many larger ones that are announced or available. Definately a great way to leverage the economies of scale that this product offers.
Overall, I recommend this product. It was clear and easy to use. The boot menu on the Sega worked cleanly. And homebrew on the Sega will never be the same.
well, I found it strange to play the whole game without talking to anyone, so I’ve added trainers to each training station and got Daniel Chan to write up some dialog for them to guide you through the training to the final battle.
Version 0.61:
- added trainers who guide you through the whole Mage Master experience.
- fixed underpowered spells from increasing your opponent’s health. It now says
attack was ineffective.
- moved game save to START so that those O saving loops go away
- use O to exit from battle preparation screens.
- all new mage upgrades now happen at green or white training centres
- rearranged the order of the training centres to have a more natural flow around the road, and switched the game save format. The order is now: white, yellow, red, blue, black (tournament) and green. Please consider restarting your game, I load, but don’t gurantee the integrety of your old games.
Well, it is coming along well. I still have lots of work to do on the cut scene player, but the game play is starting to feel pretty solid. I think that the title screen is looking great.
I have the particle effects working pretty well for Battle Arena now. I’ve cleaned up the fighting code enough that a duel seems to resolve correctly. So the next step is to work on a map mode so that you can level up your pantheon of mages.
Finally I have an update to share with you. I’ve been working on collision for Adam Street, and it’s coming along nicely, but it still isn’t running fast enough for my needs. So while I optimize that, I have been working on a few different projects. One of the most promising is currently titled HardHat’s Battle Arena.
In this game you will be able to pit your skills against other (AI) players. Although if my son wants to play against me at some point, I may consider a two player mode. And you just battle to defeat the other player. It is based on MD2 characters, and so far it seems pretty promising. Here are some screenshots of some of my tests. It’s pretty plain so far, but I’ll be adding a particle engine and some more details to the terrain (maybe a tree and a fence). The frame rate at this point is in the 100 to 120 (imaginary) fps, so I have enough to do some nice particle effects without too much slowdown I think.
I attended the industry insider presentation by President and CEO of Activision, Mike Griffith. He talked about a number of things, but mostly he focused his talk on the phenomenon call Guitar Hero. I know Guitar Hero well, having made a PSP homebrew game based on freetar, called Gunnar Hero (which I should add Frets on Fire support to). At any rate, I listened carefully to what he had to say, and to his insights into what is driving gaming.
On that note, the presentation started off with a video of a guy on a bicycle, playing Guitar Hero in the real world, including bonuses and road markings.
Once Mike Griffith reached the stage, he made some bold claims about what Guitar Hero is doing to the gaming industry and how it is affecting things. In fact he spent a lot of his talk discussing the effects of Guitar Hero and of course boasting about how popular Guitar Hero really is. He pointed out things like how Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock is the first ever game to sell over $1 billion worth of copies, and how over 50% of Guitar Hero players are female (breaking the typical profile of the classic gamer).
He talked about how the Guitar Hero guitar controller and the Wii remote are changing the way people play games compared to the paddle, joystick or gamepad of previous game systems.
He couldn’t say enough about Guitar Hero. Not only does the Guitar Hero game make people play games more, but it is attributed to increase the sales of actual guitars and other musical instruments. Recently a survey showed that 3 out of 4 players say that they are more likely to learn to play a real instrument and two out of three musicians are more likely to practice as a result of playing Guitar Hero. In fact, last year there was a 27% increase in the sales of real guitars last year. Kind of intriguing since analysts speculated a year or two ago that it would decrease interest in real instruments.
Meyitzo asked me to post some videos. Here is a performance by some staff from Neversoft who are working on a new Guitar Hero: Metallica with song. It works with four players (guitar, bass, drums and singer):
It even shows in the music industry. Songs featured in Guitar Hero have experienced growth in the rate of downloads. Songs experienced between 15% and 843% rise in music downloads of those songs.
He then went on to discuss three key pillars of growth in video games, that aren’t being experienced in other entertainment fields. Specifically he stated that over the last 5 years consumption of movie tickets, music purchases, network TV and filmed media are flat or decreasing. Video games, on the other hand have grown to 12% of all leisure time.
He mentioned that he sees three basic things growing the field: story telling, community and interactivity. He gave story telling examples of Call of Duty which he claims delivers a cinematic level of story telling. For community, he talked about the 600,000 members of the Guitar Hero: World Tour portal as well as the 141,000 songs recorded and mixed in the GH:WT software which have resulted in 21 million downloads of new user contributed tracks. Finally he talked about the interactivity offered with input devices such as the Wii remote in games like Activision’s Dancing with the Stars and GH controller guitar and drums controller.
Here are his closing remarks, preceded by a video montage of recent releases from Activision:
Well, since August I’ve been continuing work on a few projects. The most interesting one is AdamStreet. Meyitzo has lots of work in progress shots that I’ve added to the Adam Street wiki so look around there. I don’t have any spoilers on there right now, but the screenshots and rough versions of the characters should be interesting enough. But for the first time in a year, I took some in-game screen shots, using the new game engine which is based on Resontate instead of being based on FishFight (which is used by Gunnar Hero). It is in C instead of C++, since I was being annoyed with C++ at work when I started Resonate. I think Resonate turned out fairly well, and it has the most advanced techniques for my games so far.
On the modelling side, Meyitzo has been continuing to model the locales, and DimensionT has started to work on the characters. I hope to have more updates as it progresses.
Now even bossier than 0.55. I missed some model files in the zip of version 0.55, so we get version 0.57. All of the greatness of 0.55 plus the added menace of a boss that you can see.
