Nuon Game System Talk & Discussion

[doctorclu]

On 3/11/2023 at 1:48 PM, cubanismo said:

@doctorclu, scrolling through some of your older posts, I'm curious if you have tips & tricks to share for getting past the boss stages in Merlin Racing adventure mode. I breezed through the first few levels pretty quickly, but can't get past the first boss race. He dusts me by like half a lap every time. Now that you have your Nuon back out, are you still able to make it to the later stages of this one?

Hmmm... see if I can knock the rust off.

 

Looks like I beat Dr. Freo, Rosia, Piasa, and was working on robot dude at the 4th boss.

 

Here is the winning video for the first one:

 

So about Dr. Freo:

 

1) drive as much in a straight line as possible, nearly clipping the side walls as you go.

2) drive between the side walls and the exploding pine cones (or whatever) Dr. Freo leaves behind him.

3) Your best friends in the secret weapons are naturally the accelerate (blue <<) and the guided missile.

4) Once you pass Dr. Freo you no longer have to worry about the pine cones and make a bee line for the finish line.

[PeterG]

On 3/11/2023 at 3:08 PM, mb13081 said:

You have to go to options, go to vector objects and look at a couple and then go back to options, go to audio test and play a different song, then go and play the game. It's still going to crash after a couple of levels though because there's a bug with the audio. If you want, open nuance.cfg and change AudioInterrupts to Disabled and you can play through the whole game but no sound, but it won't crash. You still have to go to vector objects first though.

Cool thank you. I am going to try this and report back.

[+cubanismo]

On 3/11/2023 at 2:25 PM, doctorclu said:

So about Dr. Freo:

 

1) drive as much in a straight line as possible, nearly clipping the side walls as you go.

2) drive between the side walls and the exploding pine cones (or whatever) Dr. Freo leaves behind him.

3) Your best friends in the secret weapons are naturally the accelerate (blue <<) and the guided missile.

4) Once you pass Dr. Freo you no longer have to worry about the pine cones and make a bee line for the finish line.

Thanks. It took several tries, but I used this advice, persisted, and I'm up to 10 keys now, working on the second boss race (Rosia I believe). The last two or three tracks were much more challenging than the ones before, but the tracks are getting a lot cooler too. I initially sort of wrote this game off based on the first few tracks, but the later ones have much better designs and artwork. I can easily see myself going back to play Downtown and Jupiter Xzoo5 over and over again. Good arcade-style racing fun!

[PeterG]

On 3/11/2023 at 3:08 PM, mb13081 said:

You have to go to options, go to vector objects and look at a couple and then go back to options, go to audio test and play a different song, then go and play the game. It's still going to crash after a couple of levels though because there's a bug with the audio. If you want, open nuance.cfg and change AudioInterrupts to Disabled and you can play through the whole game but no sound, but it won't crash. You still have to go to vector objects first though.

So just for the record, I tried as suggested but the game crashes everytime I try to select another song. It hangs and I have to forcefully close Nuance. So I guess I'll have to wait for that one a little bit longer...

[mb13081]

It does crash like half the time when you try to select a different song, but sometimes it works and you should be able to play the game.

[+CyranoJ]

Is there anyone in 240v land with a Toshiba SD2300?

To power it up, can you use a 110v/50hz step-down (works with most electronics) or does it require the full 110v/60hz Pure Sine Wave?

 

Thanks!

[nicolaspersijn]

I’ve got an SD2300 that’s been working in Germany fine with a 300W stepdown for years. That’s 220v land tho…

Edited March 18, 2023 by nicolaspersijn

[+CyranoJ]

13 hours ago, nicolaspersijn said:

I’ve got an SD2300 that’s been working in Germany fine with a 300W stepdown for years. That’s 220v land tho…

 

Does your step-down do 110v/50hz or 110v/60Hz though?

 

Also, please can you confirm if the SD2300 can read DVD-R?  (I know it can't run homebrew nuon)

[nicolaspersijn]

I’ll have to check my stepdown for the hz but I can confirm that the SD2300 plays backups like a champ

[Hastor]

Yeah SD2300 (I'm in the US) works great for backups, and now the homebrew can be played from DVD so it doesn't matter much aside from any homebrew that hasn't been made available on DVD (would love to know if there is some).

[+cubanismo]

3 minutes ago, Hastor said:

Yeah SD2300 (I'm in the US) works great for backups, and now the homebrew can be played from DVD so it doesn't matter much aside from any homebrew that hasn't been made available on DVD (would love to know if there is some).

Yeah, only benefit of N501 at this point is you can test stuff on CD-RW when developing, as Nuance isn't quite there yet for testing non-trivial stuff. My workflow is still get it running on Nuance to the extent I can, then burn a CD-RW and test on hardware. If all you're doing is playing finished homebrews though (Or you have a bunch of DVD-Rs to waste), sd2300 works fine.

[Hastor]

I read somewhere, feel like maybe Nuon dome but can't find it, that the Samsung runs at half the resolution and therefore some games have higher framerates. I have both and need to compare side by side but just moved and unpacking will be a while. My understanding was, using modern game option terms, Toshiba = graphics mode, Samsung = performance mode.

Would love to confirm if this is accurate.

[+cubanismo]

1 hour ago, Hastor said:

I read somewhere, feel like maybe Nuon dome but can't find it, that the Samsung runs at half the resolution and therefore some games have higher framerates.

This is incorrect. The N501's VLM runs at half the resolution of the sd2300. All the games run at the same resolution regardless of model.

[andymanone]

On 12/28/2022 at 11:44 PM, Songbird said:

Not a stupid question at all! We don't have the pre-order page open yet. That will come in January however, and we'll be sure to post on Twitter, here, and the Songbird email newsletter. 

 

Yeeaahh!!  

 

Both Aries64 controllers for the NUON arrived today 😍!!!

Thanks, Carl! They look great 😎!
 

I will test them first thing tomorrow or weekend😊!

Cheers,

andY

Edited March 23, 2023 by andymanone

[andymanone]

.

Edited March 23, 2023 by andymanone
Double post

[Cobra!]

On 3/23/2023 at 7:52 PM, andymanone said:

Yeeaahh!!  

 

Both Aries64 controllers for the NUON arrived today 😍!!!

Thanks, Carl! They look great 😎!
 

I will test them first thing tomorrow or weekend😊!

Cheers,

andY

I got mine as well, they work great! It feels so good to finally play Nuon games properly!

 

Also, I seem to recall people mentioning you can buy repros of Tempest 3000? I can't seem to find it anywhere, am I misremembering?

Edited April 9, 2023 by Cobra!

[doctorclu]

Fun discovery tonight, some of you probably already knew this...

 

 

• Yaroze Wrapper Tool If we converted the Yaroze library with this tool from DragonShadow, we could have the whole alphabet letter Yatzee! 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Net_Yaroze_games

 

       I realized Breakdown was not on the Yaroze list but a game already converted for the Nuon, and that is when I realized there is a Yaroze community on Discord...

Net Yaroze chat server:
http://netyaroze.com/chat

 

      Lots of people still making games and demos.   How much can be wrapped with the Yaroze wrapper tool (which I understand does some but not all of the work).   Well... be interesting to find out.

[doctorclu]

Hi all, was digging through and repacking after my move two years ago, and I came across this disc at last:

 

 

 

 

 

I was able to get some files together from it.   Currently at the 10 mb upload limit as I am having trouble resubscribing to Atariage for some odd reason...

 

So here is what I was able to put together:

 

VM Lab Photo 1.zipVM Lab Photo 2.zip

 

Then I realized the VM Lab photo section was 414 mb.   Just a lot of photos of the early and dev days of Nuon as a company.

I think there is a company picnic somewhere in there.   Kinda cool.

 

VM Labs misc files 01.zipVM Labs misc files 02.zipVM Labs misc files 03.zip

 

And the misc files are pretty fun too.

 

Maybe I can get this up on the internet archive at some point.

 

[+cubanismo]

This is awesome. Was just noting the other day it'd be great to have this disk archived as an ISO or just a zip file somewhere. Thanks for sharing!

[doctorclu]

7 minutes ago, cubanismo said:

This is awesome. Was just noting the other day it'd be great to have this disk archived as an ISO or just a zip file somewhere. Thanks for sharing!

Never posted something to Internet Archive so I'll look into it.

 

[joeyaage]

On 3/19/2023 at 12:34 PM, CyranoJ said:

 

Does your step-down do 110v/50hz or 110v/60Hz though?

 

Also, please can you confirm if the SD2300 can read DVD-R?  (I know it can't run homebrew nuon)

I have a working Toshiba SD2300 in the UK and use a Maplin step down transformer 240v/50Hz down to 110v/50Hz. I checked the schematics myself and the Toshiba works at 50Hz or 60Hz as long as voltage is 110v. The SD2300 happily reads DVD-R and can now play signed homebrew...

 

[Cobra!]

On 3/19/2023 at 10:26 PM, cubanismo said:

This is incorrect. The N501's VLM runs at half the resolution of the sd2300. All the games run at the same resolution regardless of model.

I remember reading that as well. Why is that? Is the N501 somehow not as powerful?

[+sixersfan105]

9 hours ago, Cobra! said:

I remember reading that as well. Why is that? Is the N501 somehow not as powerful?

I had actually read somewhere that Samsung execs had health concerns surrounding the VLM and consumers' use of it, and they felt more comfortable with it at a lower resolution. 

[Cobra!]

Huh, is that it? Are the specs the same?

[+sixersfan105]

1 hour ago, Cobra! said:

Huh, is that it? Are the specs the same?

Whoops, my bad - total brain fart. The story is that TOSHIBA execs were wary of the VLM, which is why they only included a measly 8 VLM effects. By comparison, the other early NUON player, the Samsung N2000, included 100 different VLM effects. Both the N2000 and SD-2300 run the VLM at 360x240 and have identical "under the hood" specs. The Samsung N501 improves on the number of VLM effects, upping it to 152 plus improved beat detection, but for some unknown reason, the resolution here is halved to 180x120. I have not read any theories as to why, but perhaps to increase the number of effects and improve the beat detection, the Aries 2 processor (same as that of the N2000 and SD-2300) couldn't keep up at the previous 360x240 resolution? Just spitballing here. The N501's "sister" players, the N504 and N505, both of which were made for the European market, have the original 360 x 240 resolution on the VLM like the original two Nuon players to hit the market (N2000 and SD-2300) but with the N501's 152 VLM effects and improved beat detection BUT the N504 and N505 sport the upgraded Aries 3 processor, so maybe I'm onto something with my theory...