Homebrew Marketplace for Harmony Cart?

[Inky]

Just throwing out some ideas. The point you brought up did occur to me, that's why I also suggested extra forum access or some sort of special online situation that cannot be copied.As I said,just throwing things out there as almost all the suggestions brought up have a way of being circumvented, in some cases pretty easily.

I wonder if I have any oxycodone left....

[Albert]

I do appreciate the suggestions.

 

..Al

[Inky]

I do appreciate the suggestions.

 

..Al

'sall good in tha hood.

[Andromeda Stardust]

As Albert said, include something tangible and you're right back to buying carts. The "Shameware" concept by ID'ing each ROM might work though as a deterrent to piracy. Even if a game gets pirated, I think most members here would act in good faith and pony up a bit for the download. $20-25 per ROM, if AA used the pricing scheme the big game companies use by charging the same price as physical games, would be excessive. Paying retail price for a download sucks IMO. I still believe $5 would be the sweet spot.

I wonder if I have any oxycodone left....

 

I had a few left over from the surgery. Good stuff, esp combined with OTC sleep aids like Diphenhydramine (Benadryl).

PS - Don't do drugs, kiddos...

 

Edited January 10, 2015 by stardust4ever

[tep392]

This is a very small community and most of us have jobs and disposable income. The number of people who are so cheap or unethical that they would steal homebrews has to be very small. To me this is much ado about nothing. That's my 2 cents.

[Dan Iacovelli]

as al said 5.00 doesn't cover the royality fee,the cost of hosting a file sharing service and the website itself.

I think making it part of subscription service much like how you pay more for more channels on your cable tv or sattelite channels.

would be better add it to the year or two year subscriptions for 20 or 30 more and offer a d/l limit.

[+batari]

Screw DRM.

 

I don't want my game disappearing from someone's collection years later when their DRM flash cart breaks, nor do I want them to jump through hoops to transfer the game anywhere. I recognize the reasons that make DRM pervasive in modern software, but it's a compromise I don't have to make in my hobby.

 

I am not opposed to a digital revenue stream, though. The dream solution would be to have AA be the "google play" or "app store" for retro homebrews of all platforms. The key here is the game curation needs to be good, with searching and suggestions based on various criteria, like new arrivals, most popular, demakes, 2 player, ...

...

 

In case I didn't mention it, screw DRM.

The App Store model is not unlike putting your name on a binary. AFAIK, you can't give apps to your friends or disseminate them because the apps are signed, so you would need to also share your Apple ID and password with them (or crack them.) So if you post an app you downloaded, it will contain a signature that can be traced back to you. I personally don't mind this as it's pretty unobtrusive. If it just prevents easy dissemination of content but does not limit your ability to enjoy it in perpetuity, then I'm fine with it.

 

Something like the App Store model could work here. Instead of a user name and password, each Harmony can generate its own unique 32-bit key. The homebrews could then be signed with this key that you submit to AA on your account, which is the key for all homebrews you download. Sure this could be cracked, but this would be orders of magnitude harder than cracking a 2600 binary with your name inside, because it will be internal to your Harmony.

 

If it's a concern that the Harmony may break and you'd lose your content or if you own multiple Harmony carts, either you could change your key on AA to that of another Harmony and redownload everything, and/or it would be possible to set up multiple Harmony carts with the same key, kind of like how the App Store does it.

 

The binaries you download would be yours to keep. You can store them, archive them, whatever. Technically, you could share with friends but you would have to clone their Harmony with your key. Disseminating your binaries with your key in the zip file would be pointless. It could of course be traced back to you, but cloning your Harmony might require your actual SD card and not just a key you send someone.

 

Having signed binaries like this would probably the prerogative of individual homebrew authors. If anyone doesn't like the idea, I'm sure they could have their binaries available unsigned.

 

Sure, this can all be cracked. Plus, I don't know if Al will ultimately do anything like this at all... if he does I'm offering to help though. It's also worth adding that this is a little different. Al is merely offering a cheaper way to get the games you want, and you can always pay more for physical media if you really want it. You can't pay more and buy Angry Birds on physical media, AFAIK.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

So what you are suggesting is a measure which only prevents using ROMs on a Harmony. Using emulators or burning your own ROMs wouldn't be restricted. Correct?

 

I am not sure if signing ROMs with a matching Harmony key doesn't go too far. IMO that's close to DRM. Also Harmony would be in a monopole position then. And while I absolutely love the Harmony, I don't want development and competition to stop there.

 

BTW: I have no clue how you would add information to the ROM for Harmony which cannot be removed easily, but have some ideas about making ROMs unique which could be used here and also allow backtracking a leaked ROM. But this should probably be discussed internally.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Thomas Jentzsch

[Andromeda Stardust]

Batari, since neither the original Harmony nor the Encore have any hardware keys (unless there is some undocumented feature we don't know about) any DRM scheme invented would not work with existing hardware. I see ROM support used primarily by two groups of users. Those that use emulation and those too cheap to buy carts for their hardware. Locking out Stella users would be unfair to people who use emulation, and likewise enabling DRM for Stella would lock out Harmony users who play on real hardware.

 

Besides, DRM sucks. Backing up keys sucks. I think the shameware ROMs with embedded user info and a checksum on the bank with the embedded data is enough. DRM-free, and the users is free to play te ROM on any device with any flashcart or emulator.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

I don't think Fred wants to lock out Emulators. He only wants to limit play on Harmony, because the sales of carts took a pretty deep dive after Harmony got released. It seems that many people who would have bought a cart now just download the free available ROMs.

 

Now there are multiple approaches to solve this problem.

 

Fred offers(!) an option which would block those downloaded ROMs from being played on Harmony. So everyone who still wants to play on real hardware, would have to buy a cart or download a special ROM.

 

One alternative is to offer a ROM only download without any protection. This is voluntarily for everyone who owns a Harmony, doesn't need a full fledged cart, but still wants to support the homebrewers.

 

Or maybe simply adding a donation page or button would help too. So everyone who isn't interested into the cart could donate some money for a specific game. This money would then be split between the homebrewer (royalties) and Al (to run this site). Whenever someone releases a ROM to public, a link to this donation option would be added.

Edited January 11, 2015 by Thomas Jentzsch

[+batari]

Batari, since neither the original Harmony nor the Encore have any hardware keys (unless there is some undocumented feature we don't know about) any DRM scheme invented would not work with existing hardware. I see ROM support used primarily by two groups of users. Those that use emulation and those too cheap to buy carts for their hardware. Locking out Stella users would be unfair to people who use emulation, and likewise enabling DRM for Stella would lock out Harmony users who play on real hardware.

 

Besides, DRM sucks. Backing up keys sucks. I think the shameware ROMs with embedded user info and a checksum on the bank with the embedded data is enough. DRM-free, and the users is free to play te ROM on any device with any flashcart or emulator.

If you buy a cartridge, you don't immediately wonder why you can't play the cartridge on an emulator. This is just an option that allows you to save money on a game that plays on real hardware. You admitted yourself that names and a checksum can easily be defeated. This can be seen as basically more advanced shameware, that is harder to defeat.

 

There is sort of an undocumented feature. Every user's Harmony carts can generate a hardware key that is both unique and repeatable. No matter what you do with your Harmony and SD card, it will still be there. At the very least, this key could be used merely to uniquely identify a particular user when setting up an account and to sign the homebrews, simply because entering a username and password with a CX40 joystick would be a pain.

 

My original thought was that the game could refuse to run on a Harmony with a different key. A less secure option could be that the game does run, but a screen comes up that asks for the key if a mismatch is found, and you enter with the joystick. Such an option could be ported to an emulator (with much less security, of course, but still far more than a name and checksum.)

 

But really, this isn't about playing on an emulator, is it? Most binaries are eventually released. I see this sort of scheme as merely a way to play the game before it gets officially released if you can't wait. All I really want to do is discourage dissemination and especially unauthorized reproductions before the official release.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I have downloaded many WIP ROMs to play on my Harmony, and all of those (well the ones I enjoyed) which saw a cart release got my purchase in the AA store. Truth be told I've gotten just as much if not more enjoyment from playing Homebrew carts as I have original games. I honestly have no idea how many homebrew games most forum members buy (possibly only a few) but I think I have at least 30 so far. I may be the exception; I have no idea, but even ROMs on the Harmony don't feel quite the same to me as physical carts.

 

The reason why I support the use of ROM downloads is to open up the emulation market. I would guesstimate there are more people retrogaming on PCs as opposed to hardware collectors, even though most people who own hardware probably prefer real hardware to emulation.

 

And flash carts are another tool for the budget-minded retro enthusiast who does not have the space or finances to collect every game. If I ever reach a point where I need to downsize my collection, I have flash carts for most of my consoles and it would be a relatively painless process to sell off the games I don't actively play or care about. I would definitely keep my homebrew collection though.

Edited January 11, 2015 by stardust4ever

[Greg2600]

I think the # of people who would use emulators with Atari systems AND actually care enough to follow homebrew progress here or on similar forums, is pretty low. If batari wants to go through the effort to protect new cart releases, that's fine by me. Could be me, but as I've said before, most of the Atari-system homebrew are freely released roms day one anyway. It's Intellivision and Colecovision which are not.

[HammR25]

I'd consider giving money for 7800 downloads. I typically don't buy carts because I want to make sure other people can get them who don't own a CC2.

[Andromeda Stardust]

I'd consider giving money for 7800 downloads. I typically don't buy carts because I want to make sure other people can get them who don't own a CC2.

That will be a non-isue once Albert gets those newly manufactured shells ironed out. Hopefully soon...

[Albert]

That will be a non-isue once Albert gets those newly manufactured shells ironed out. Hopefully soon...

 

Mmmmmmm new shells....