FPGA Based Videogame System

[M-S]

On 7/30/2022 at 8:27 PM, adamchevy said:

Piracy-A term for an uncivilized age.

Preservation- A term for a more civilized age.

Preservation is for games that have never been re-released, piracy is not wanting to pay for something that is readily available everywhere

[adamchevy]

4 hours ago, M-S said:

Preservation is for games that have never been re-released, piracy is not wanting to pay for something that is readily available everywhere

Piracy is always a difficult topic and has many sides. Preservation however is quite different altogether.

[spoonman]

1 hour ago, M-S said:

Preservation is for games that have never been re-released, piracy is not wanting to pay for something that is readily available everywhere

If it wasn't for piracy, many.. MANY games, would have been lost to time. Most game companies can't even keep track of their own game history. It was common for them to throw away their source code, and re-write over tapes, and floppy media. 

 

 

Just having some fun...

[roots.genoa]

7 hours ago, spoonman said:

If it wasn't for piracy, many.. MANY games, would have been lost to time. Most game companies can't even keep track of their own game history. It was common for them to throw away their source code, and re-write over tapes, and floppy media.

This is absolutely true, but that doesn't mean that anyone downloading a ROM is doing preservation work. ?

[spoonman]

2 hours ago, roots.genoa said:

This is absolutely true, but that doesn't mean that anyone downloading a ROM is doing preservation work. ?

That's debatable, but yes, it was largely the scene uploaders, who provided for everyone else. I used to dump/release/package/crack/upload, back in the late eighties, early nineties. Many of those releases are still floating around in archives today. The MAME team truly does god's work. Some of those boards were extremely rare, and were literally dying as they were dumping the roms. I believe there is a high road when it comes to all of this stuff. I used to treat the downloading of games in the 80's and early 90's like demos. "Try before you buy". When possible, I always bought every single game that I thought was worth playing. I know not everyone does that though. 

[roots.genoa]

In my case it's more of a question of self discipline. If I have access to a lot of games at the same time (including through a compilation or a mini console), I tend to play nothing, or at best try each game a few minutes (the best fake article article about this: https://hard-drive.net/proud-raspberry-pi-owner-has-played-five-minutes-of-every-video-game/)... ? When I buy a game, especially if it's not very cheap, I make the effort to play and try to beat it. I beat almost every GB/GBA I bought since I got my Pocket, and I even beat games I already owned that were too hard for me at the time (they still are, but I use savestates now ?).

 

So I wasn't really longing for the openFPGA (I'm more interested in the adapters for the NGPC and the PC Engine) but I admit it's a nice bonus, especially for games that can't be bought for a reasonable price. Thankfully there are a lot of cartmods for most rare GB/GBA games, but some can still be hard to find based on where you live in particular (for instance Fire Pro Wrestling 2 is not especially rare or expensive but was not released in Europe so it cost a lot to import it from the US). But even when I download a game because of that, I admit it's piracy and don't try to twist the law to pretend I have the right to do it or something. ? (I'm not implying that's what you do)

 

And obviously, openFPGA should be very convenient for arcade games and specific hardware like the PDP-1. Finally, like I said before I'll use it to play homebrew games or games I own but can't beat without savestates.

[M-S]

12 hours ago, spoonman said:

If it wasn't for piracy, many.. MANY games, would have been lost to time. Most game companies can't even keep track of their own game history. It was common for them to throw away their source code, and re-write over tapes, and floppy media. 

If you are able to buy the game nowadays it means the company obviously preserved it, LOL.

[blzmarcel]

56 minutes ago, M-S said:

If you are able to buy the game nowadays it means the company obviously preserved it, LOL.

Actually there have been a lot of cases where they just used ROMs obtained from the Internet (that are usually 1:1 copies of the original ROM data) and use a nicely packaged emulator. A much better indicator of the preservation of the original code might be a good "remastered" version.

[orange808]

There a lot of shareware games that were free to download, yet we still have difficulty archiving them. Having the public download stuff for free did not archive them properly.

 

I also appreciate packages that contain the actual roms. It gives gamers an opportunity to purchase the games legitimately.

[spoonman]

9 hours ago, M-S said:

If you are able to buy the game nowadays it means the company obviously preserved it, LOL.

The games that are being made available by companies rarely release the more obscure, hard to find games, and instead release the same games over and over again (while expecting you to pay multiple times). Not to mention they often make changes to the original games. Sometimes people don't even realize it, but they feel that something is off about it. Sometimes companies replace the music too, like with Sonic 3 on Sonic Origins, for example.
 

 

 

There has also been quite a few games which have been found on devkits, and by other means, which would have been lost forever. Nintendo also likes it when people dump games with iNES.

 

 

[Steven Pendleton]

I have been unable to get anything other than a QR code that I can't scan because I have nothing to scan it with, so I gave up and stopped caring. Everdrive works just fine and I might as well leave the Everdrive in there as a dust cover anyway, especially since collecting dust is all this thing does for now.

[roots.genoa]

8 minutes ago, Steven Pendleton said:

I have been unable to get anything other than a QR code that I can't scan because I have nothing to scan it with, so I gave up and stopped caring. Everdrive works just fine and I might as well leave the Everdrive in there as a dust cover anyway, especially since collecting dust is all this thing does for now.

Did you forget the bios file?

[Steven Pendleton]

42 minutes ago, roots.genoa said:

Did you forget the bios file?

Nope, it's there. Not sure why it doesn't work.

[adamchevy]

Lately I’ve been finding that I’d rather preserve games on my own than pay eBay prices. After using game pass on my Xbox the last couple years it made me really want that service for all of my games. The Mister has helped to make that become a reality. Ofcourse I occasionally need to help out Nintendo with their preservation efforts by archiving all GBA games for example. I’ll send them the bill later.

[Reaperman]

2 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Nope, it's there. Not sure why it doesn't work.

Silly question, but did you pull down the zip?

 

I hate github, and always have to fiddle around to find the files.

 

When I follow the links in this thread, I was expecting a download, but it seemed to indicate only a readme file was there, so I just assumed these first built-in cores were indeed built-in, and reading the readme I chucked in the bios. (readme doesn't actually mention the rest of it) ...And I got a qr code which I assume just links to the site printed below (which wasn't terribly useful for this instance), until I went back to github, and clicked around a bunch more--eventually landing on the releases down the right side.  Not that those won't be in a completely different spot next time I go to github.

Edited August 4, 2022 by Reaperman

[Steven Pendleton]

5 minutes ago, Reaperman said:

Silly question, but did you pull down the zip?

 

I hate github, and always have to fiddle around to find the files.

 

When I follow the links in this thread, I was expecting a download, but it seemed to indicate only a readme file was there, so I just assumed these first built-in cores were indeed built-in, and reading the readme I chucked in the bios. (readme doesn't actually mention the rest of it) ...And I got a qr code which I assume just links to the site printed below (which wasn't terribly useful for this instance), until I went back to github, and clicked around a bunch more--eventually landing on the releases down the right side.  Not that those won't be in a completely different spot next time I go to github.

Yes, I have all of the files, and they seem to be where they are supposed to be. That's why I gave up.

[NE146]

I don't know.. everything worked off the bat for me, and most everyone else who's tried it. That said, yeah if you already have the everdrives, those are still arguably the better way to go for the moment, especially with the Pocket's display filters for GB available. 

 

You should try to figure out what it is you're doing wrong though. The Neo Geo core is pretty fun to mess with, various issues aside

 

 

 

[roots.genoa]

8 hours ago, Steven Pendleton said:

Nope, it's there. Not sure why it doesn't work.

I think someone had the same problem. He just removed everything, copied it again, and it worked.

[Atariboy]

It's probably not this, but is there any chance that you accidentally locked the SD card after copying the jailbreak files onto it?

 

I've accidently moved that slider a couple of times on the micro SD adapter in my Mega Sg, locked the SD card, and gotten a "cannot mount SD card" error on the Mega Sg when I go to play a new rom that I just added. The adapter for some reason has a really tight fit on my PC that takes a good bit of force to remove, with the result that I occasionally inadvertently move that switch when removing it from my computer.

 

If you're trying to jailbreak from a file on a locked SD card, I could see that similarly stopping the Pocket from recognizing the SD card and reading the contents on it.

Edited August 5, 2022 by Atariboy

[Steven Pendleton]

I deleted everything, redownloaded everything, put it back where it was, and now it works. Weird, but okay.

[Punisher5.0]

The Pocket got a few more cores recently:

 

Game Gear 

Master System 

SG-1000

 

AES also got an update

[SegaSnatcher]

Been awhile since I sent out an invite to my FPGAming Discord server here.   We now have an openFPGA channel for development and openFPGA core discussions. 

https://discord.gg/uxz9BcUm

[AtariNerd]

When I'm not logged in, the base of each post says that I'm banned from this topic and therefore can't read it.

 

Edit: Ah, I see it's been noted in the appropriate spot.

[spoonman]

Any guesses as to which openFPGA core we'll see pop up next? I'll go with, either the Atari Lynx, or the ColecoVision. I'd be very happy with either. (Or both) 😁

 

Also, an updated openFPGA flyer (v3). Hopefully this will be so full of game cores someday that the logos will need to be micro-sized. Hehe

 

[roots.genoa]

I'm already surprised the ColecoVision didn't arrive 'bundled' with the SG-1000, so I doubt it will be released alone anyway.