JB0

I'm gonna skip most of the post as I was being a dumbass last night. As I understand it, Atari programmers generate the vsyncs and keep track of 37 scanlines either by sending 37 wsyncs or using the Atari's internal timer. The latter lets you do some logic before the blanking period ends. The software doesn't need to be "informed" of anything, as it's driving the TV and rasterization itself. How to do all this is all pretty well documented, and I'd found that it was described pretty decently in a couple pages of text. Yes. I gather the timer was the preferred mechanism, for what it's worth. It's just an added piece of complexity. Though like many things on the VCS, it can be used to make effects that the hardware "can't" do. Interesting. Guess Australia has a different philosophy from the ESRB. Too bad they hate guns. Heh. It's possible they WILL revoke the game's rating. Just gotta wait for the beaurocracy to get moving and see what happens. One thing I DID notice rummaging through that site is the australian ratings board has on several occasions complained that the 18+ rating of their other media ratings devisions isn't available to their software division, essentially forcing them to outlaw any software that is deemed inappropriate for persons over 15. Seems tehir legislature needs to update the law.

I remember seeing this in the Mars base episode ("Bye Bye Mars?"). I think it's more likely a case of lazy animators. Probably. But wheels wouldn't be a bad idea for smooth terrain. It's both. It IS an alternate version of the events of Space War 1, but it's not the "real" version of them.

i couldn't agree more. sure it takes incredible technology to build a robot that looks that much like a human being, but why would you want to? 5 year-old girl, school teacher, what's next? nurse? kogal? 315423[/snapback] The end target is probably cheap receptionists. Much like automated telephone menus.

Yes. Though the complexity is a bit more than it looks, since they're working with a scanline-based renderer. But the textbox is a seperate background layer overlaid on top of the primary instead of being drawn on the same layer, so it's less than it could be(if they were, say, hacking the NES installment in the series). PS1 only. ... Well, maybe the N64 too. PS2 uses a custom chip that I don't recall being based on anything that was ever stated. XBox is a Pentium3 derivative. GameCube's a PowerPC derivative. Dreamcast was an SH-4, if I recall. The Ataris and the NES are 6502-based, SNES is 65816(16-bit version of the 6502), the Genesis is 68000-based. my (albiet limited) familiarity with compiler technology, and some direct experience hacking data files and looking at hacks that have been done by others, I would assess that making significant and extensive changes to a binary executable such as adding a whole minigame and splicing it into existing code compiled from a natural language is orders of magnitudes more difficult than hacking data files. But my point is(or was) that translators DON'T just hack data files. If this assessment isn't one you give much credit to, despite the fact that it's related to what I sorta do for a living, then either you've already come to your own conclusion on how difficult inserting gameplay elements from scratch into a game like GTA is (not old console games that are much more simple and written in assembly to start with and thus not prone to what compiler optimizations can do to code), or I guess there's something I just don't know. And the latter is a very possible thing. I didn't say it wasn't hard. Just not impossible. And for what it's worth, there's evidence that some of the later 16-bit era console games may HAVE been coded in a high-level language(it's known fact that the XBand modem's code was written in one), though the PS1 was the first console where it was a widespread practice. *shrugs* Seemed relevant. And as far as complexity goes, I'd argue the older hardware is MORE complex from a coding point of view. It takes a lot more fancy tricks to get a given effect on the older hardware than newer systems. You may see an SNES game shift video modes 3 times over the course of a single frame(actual game in mind: HyperZone) but on a PC it can all be done in the same graphics mode. Hell, the 2600 didn't even have provisions for telling the software when a VBlank period began. They had to run a timer from the instant the system was turned on to keep the game in sync with the screen AND draw each scanline as it was generated by the TV(no framebuffer). You're saying it's easier to work within the confines of 128 bytes of RAM, on a system that can only draw a single scanline at a time, has no provision for informing software when a vblank period starts, has been described by one programmer as requiring you to discard every good programming practice known to man, with software that uses more undocumented hacks than actual system features, in a situation where you have to count exactly how many instructions you're adding because there's only a dozen or 2 free instructions per frame(the reason no one hacked trackball support into 2600 Centipede was that there literally weren't enough spare clock cycles to read one) is easier than code that's messy, but has no other restrictions? They're DIFFRENT challenges, sure. But not neessarily lesser ones. Yes, adding speech to Berzerk is impressive. But the impressive part is the programming efficiency and prowess with crummy hardware, not in the actual part of hacking we're discussing the difficulty of-- how to decipher the meaning of the code you're looking at, figuring out where to insert new functionality, and doing it properly so it doesn't break anything. How is that part not relevant to this? If it were a programmed from scratch version of Berzerk, I'd see why the hardware restrictions were the relevant part. I'd debate the "simple" part. Ah-ha. That would be another way of looking at it. An old console's hardware might be poorly understood, but they're still relatively simple and limited in complexity, and understanding them is more of an excercise of finding documentation, experimentation, and observation. In fact, the raw code sometimes is an aid to figuring how such hardware works. More of an aid than usually non-existant documentation, anyways. But I suppose if you simply feel that the difficulty of what your friends do in classic console hacking, as impressive as it all is, is truly representative of the difficulty and possibility level of other forms of hacking-- that because it is close to the epitome of what would constitute difficult hacking, all other types of hacking, no matter how involved and complex and how different in nature, are thus possible and even probable, then there's not much I can offer that would persuade you otherwise. It was originally cited merely as an example of adding new code to existing code. From there I was just saying that it's harder than you make it out to be. *shrug* I guess I'm still waiting for someone to hack me new gameplay and content into an executable of a title that was made in the last 10 years. Didn't find an example, but I DID find this: http://www.refused-classification.com/Games_DN3D.htm Apparently Duke Nukem 3D had a similar issue in Austrailia as GTA is having now. Only Australia's (government-operated) ratings board decided the old rating was stil good. Oooohhhh... they have a whole page of GTA. As of yet, no action has been taken against San Andreas, but they are considering revoking it's rating.

They follow the SDFMacross timeline. The DYRL timeline was abandonded and made into a "movie within a movie" in Macross7. Like the people in Macross7 had DYRL as a movie within their universe. This was dreamed up when M7 came out, 9 years after DYRL came out in theaters. My personal opinion is (and I am always right), Kawamori saw how weak M7 was going to turn out, maybe because he hired transvestite writers or something, but it was a way to tie something that was already considered great to something that needed some serious help. Or from a more realistic point of view... Kawamori realized he had two fundamentaly diffrent and wholely incompatible versions of Space War 1, and that if he wanted a coherent continuity he had to sit down and pick one as the "real" version of events. He went with the longer and more detailed version, as it provided a sturdier foundation for future works. But rather than abandoning DYRL totally, he decided to cast it as a movie created within the Macross continuity. Also note that by coninuity, DYRL was not filmed on the Macross 7. It was released several years before the Mac7 was even launched. 315250[/snapback] Yeah thats right, because it was made in 84, by real people... 9 years BEFORE they decided to glue it to the M7 sissy parade. 315258[/snapback] Yes, it was. And then Kawamori tried to retire the license, but Big West wouldn't let it die. So he came back to do more entries in the series. But he needed a firm foundation for the new entries. That foundation couldn't be provided by two competing versions of events. Macross Seven may have been the show that announced DYRL was a movie within the Macross universe, but the change was important for Plus and Zero, along with the other non-animation productions.

Is that what the problem is? Boo. Seconded. BOO INVISION! Regularity is debatable. There's some games that people've been poking at for a few years. Like this one. Most extensive (visible) change I can think of in a translation hack so far consisted of a completely new text display routine, because the original game used vertical text. Actually, it is. ROM hackers don't just yank the japanese and replace it with english. ... Well, they used to, but that was when the "scene" was in its infancy. Now they expand the ROM to make room for a decent translation, hack in new compression schemes, variable width font routines, etc. You don't. Actually, it's because a large part of the "scene" is in there to take good (or not-so-good, in some cases) games that never got an english release and make them english, not make new games. There's really very little homebrew activity on the classic japanese consoles. It's all on 1st-era systems and the modern platforms. But on the 1st-era side, people have hacked trackball support, speech synthesis routines, and music into 2600 games. That should count for something, particularly given the insane constraints of the 2600. Haha. No. I've seen them rip entire routines out and replace them with entirely new routines. I've seen them run through and change the location of entire blocks of data. I've yet to see a disk check skip, particularly as there's really no way to be booting a console game WITHOUT a disk. *shrugs* I still say sifting through raw assembly on a system with poorly-understood hardware is harder than sifting through raw assembly on a well-understood system.

Yeah, but I wonder how "human" you would think it is once you get up close to it?. My kids have a Fur Real Friends cat that is robotic, and moves etc. It's pretty impressive, unless you're within 5 feet of it, and then it's just plain creepy when it moves it's head, and you hear the gears churning when the motors kick in etc. 315265[/snapback] They admit it's blatantly obvious on the conscious level. But people tend to treat it more like another person than they do a robot, because the subconscious isn't smart enough to peg it as a fake. I suspect they're using a bit quiter parts than the robot cat, though.

I haven't seen it. Pr'ly wait until it hits the dollar movies. But I'd be happier if it WAS a blatant MacPlus ripoff. Complete with CG'ed CG popstar.

It's pretty damn sad that everywhere I've seen this article it immediatly turns to "WOOHOO! WE CAN SCREW 'BOTS NOW!" Which we can't. The thing's not that functional, even if it WAS designed to be anatomically correct instead of just appearing realistic. The BIG accomplishment is that it registers subconsciously as a human, due to the little touches like breathing and blinking.

They follow the SDFMacross timeline. The DYRL timeline was abandonded and made into a "movie within a movie" in Macross7. Like the people in Macross7 had DYRL as a movie within their universe. This was dreamed up when M7 came out, 9 years after DYRL came out in theaters. My personal opinion is (and I am always right), Kawamori saw how weak M7 was going to turn out, maybe because he hired transvestite writers or something, but it was a way to tie something that was already considered great to something that needed some serious help. Or from a more realistic point of view... Kawamori realized he had two fundamentaly diffrent and wholely incompatible versions of Space War 1, and that if he wanted a coherent continuity he had to sit down and pick one as the "real" version of events. He went with the longer and more detailed version, as it provided a sturdier foundation for future works. But rather than abandoning DYRL totally, he decided to cast it as a movie created within the Macross continuity. Also note that by coninuity, DYRL was not filmed on the Macross 7. It was released several years before the Mac7 was even launched.

Were those actually holes? Or just blood soaking through from inside the jacket? Not to derail the conspiracy theories.Still my favourite death, though. 314653[/snapback] I think they actually drew holes, but only to make sure you know that he got shot... it'd be weird if it was just blood stains. http://site.voila.fr/kami.no.namida/bscap054.jpg 314941[/snapback] those holes are kindda small if he was hit by a zentraedi mecha's weapon directly? or are they more likely shrapnel wounds? 315077[/snapback] I thought it was implied they were shrapnel wounds. Particularly as the location of the wounds means they'd've had to shoot through a good chunk of plane fuselage to hit him.

Hey, at least all my quotes are in quotes. 315046[/snapback] Patch the board to support more tags and mine will be too.

The quote ninja will never be slowed down. ... Well, as soon as Invision fixes the 10 quote tag limit... Ah gotcha. Translations, as difficult as they are, are still a world of difference from adding new gameplay mechanics, scenes, and interactive content written from scratch. Sounds to me that one "simply" needs to decipher the file format, much like how many folks have hacked into various texture formats in other games, then reencode new translated data. It's not easy, but it's still a far cry from inserting minigames that weren't there, as no new routines need to be implemented and inserted. Actually, new routines often ARE implemented and inserted, such as variable-width fonts. And deciphering the "file format" can involve an awful lot of work. Hacking into data files is a whole lot more doable than altering an executable's instructions in a significant manner because data files tend to have some semblance of structure and format. By spotting repetition and patterns, you can start to have an idea on how the data's organized. Unless it's compressed. That mucks everything up. Also note that when working with a ROM image, there's no clear delineation between data and code, and they can in fact be intermingled. Code in a binary executable looks like gibberish in a hex editor and non-sensical when disassembled, and the volume to parse through is unwieldy in today's games and application. As does the data in your typical console game. Assembly is extremely difficult to decipher unless you have good references of what you're looking at. Like the actual source code. And a ROM image is nothing but uncommented assembly code. *cackles* Last Crusade? You chose... wisely. Well, I do agree that Rockstar probably wasn't trying to subvert the system. And I don't feel like the rating was changed simply to blame Rockstar, although they do end up footing the bill. It's unfortunate for Rockstar, yeah... but hey... psst. Don't put porn on the disc if the box says there ain't none. At least things'll be more clear cut on this sort of thing from here on out. They were clear-cut before. They were just in the other direction. And as Mike pointed out, God of War contains content in the actual game that's more graphic than anything GTA has, but got an M anyways. So it appears disabled clothes sex is more offensive than enabled nekkid sex. *shrugs* Heh, thanks for going at length with me on this JB0. Swell of ya. My pleasure.

I'm up at all times of night. Besides, it wasn't even 10 here when you posted that. ... I lie. Time stamps are off by an hour(DAMN YOU DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME!). Either way , though... I'm very much a night person.

Hah!

I thought Quake 1 was always in 3d. And programming 3d movement in what was already a 3d graphical engine is pretty straightfoward, even from scratch. So long as you have access to the code, scripts, and SDK that lets you made modifications on where to place the camera and player entity, of course. Point. Not sure what I was supposed to see on that page, but if you're talking about adding functionality to old, simple, 2d sprite based games which are programmed in assembly to start with, sure, it's possible. But doing the same with a very complex game programmed in a natural language and compiled to a binary is a little bit removed. I can't recall one single binary executable hack that adds notable additional functionality which wasn't already in the binary in some form, by way of extra code, for a title of moderate complexity on the PC for the last 5-10 years. *shrug* Mostly translations. For software with severe space restrictions, poorly-understood hardware, and often arcane, bizarre, and blatantly evil compression schemes that have to be reverese-engineered before they can even get the script out. While I'm not actually involved in any of the projects, I do talk to people that are. Anything by Enix is, traditionally, a bitch and a half to hack, as they implement random, arbitrary, and complex compression schemes seemingly on a whim. They may have plenty of ROM space left over, and use a compression scheme that doesn't actually reduce the script size much, but they do it anyways. On the other hand, the first PS1 translation was embarassingly easy, as all the text was stored in uncompressed images, so it was more a photoshop job than a proper hack. ANYWAYS... I don't know offhand, but the ESRB interview alludes to this having occured, although no games have ever had their entire rating changed, because the content in question was only enough to change the content descriptor, not the rating category. Ah well... I don't know how replacing one rating with another makes the old one invalid and worthless, in so far as letting the customer know what's in the box if they at least understand the general implications of the older rating. That's was its primary job, right? IMO, and I realize this is debated, the new rating isn't actually telling the customer what's in the box, as much as what could potentially be on the screen. To me it's like rating Mario Paint AO because it has flesh tones in the color pallete. It's also something of an over-reaction, again IMO. I don't see the "new content" warranting a change in rating. The game industry doesn't pile on every uncompleted feature and leave trash on the disk just because they can. That's just bad development no matter where you come from. More than likely, they leave in debugging tools and unpolished functionality primarily for their own amusement, as easter eggs, for debugging, or if they believe development will continue at some later time, like you've suggested. Given they're usually permanently disabled at the end, easter eggs seems unlikely(most elaborate I can think of now is the PS FF and Xenogears "debug rooms" that require GameShark codes to unlock, though more primitive debug code exists still active in older games such as Sonic the Hedgehog). And generally, development doesn't continue later, at least not for console software. I think you're referring to my hypothesized AO release, which I figured would be a simultaneous release. Speaking of Sonic, Sonic 2 had chunks of inaccessable map because they were running behind on the development cycle, and had to scrap some intended features to get back on track. Some of those map areas were later unlocked and expanded upon with the Sonic and Knuckles cartridge. Others are still present in the ROM, but are parts of levels that were discarded, and are thus inaccessable through normal play. Sonic 3 has some similar areas, but it's debatable if those were leftovers, or intentional hooks for Sonic and Knuckles, given the much closer release dates between the two(early and late 94 as opposed to late 92 and late 94). Perhaps more importantly, Sonic 2 had known glitches that would occasionally get you stuck in walls, forcing you to wait until the level timer expired and you died. The solution was to put a page in the manual informing you that Dr. Robotnik had "set traps" to exploit Sonic's speed. So what I'm trying saying here is that cleaning up code is just as common a thing as leaving something in. Rockstar's mistake was that they didn't choose to clean up something that might affect the rating, and it's not a foregone conclusion that just because Rockstar made a sex minigame, given the industry's practice, it thus would have ended up on the disc. I was just saying that the industry often(but not always) leaves things in, so it wasn't evidence of malicious intent. They chose poorly. *imagines Rockstar employees rapidly aging, shrivelling up, and mummifying* Then why was the ESRB created, and for what purpose are its ratings, if not for the customer to understand what's in the box they're buying? Serious question, I really don't know. As I said, it was all politics. They were trying to shut up the people throwing hissy fits about the sex and violence in video games, and stave off government censorship. If I recall, Mortal Kombat and Night Trap brought things to the boiling point Because it seems that you're suggesting the ESRB primarily exists to serve some purpose outside of actually letting folks know what's in a game, While it IS quite effective in that regard(in fact, the Federal Trade Comission did a review back in 2k2 that basically boiled down to "The MPAA and RIAA could learn a lot from the IDSA"), that's not REALLY why it was created. A few companies, such as Sega, had already come out with their own ratings systems at that point, and part of the reason the ESRB ratings are as they are today is because the IDSA didn't want to be seen as "playing favorites" by picking one ratings system over another, though their categories line up exactly with Sega's(GA=KA/E, MA13=T, MA17=M). Interestingly(buit totally off-topic), Sega's rating system was stricter than the ISDA's(perhaps because Night Trap had left them skittish), and games featuring MA-17 content under Sega's rules got Ts under the ESRB. and that this end isn't or shouldn't be its ultimate goal, and thus its ratings shouldn't be slavishly tied to the principle of keeping customers informed-- but to some other ideal of setting rules and stamping boxes and then being forever done with it, based on the rules and policies of a given time-- that these ratings should then be immutable regardless of what comes to light about what a customer is actually taking home, who put it there, whether it's accessible, and how available the means to do so are, so long as the developer didn't mean for it to be seen. I STILL maintain that the M rating was more accurate than the AO rating, as the "hot coffee" game is not actually "in the game," despite its presence on the disk. I view it as closer to blaming Rockstar for 3rd-party mods than to holding Rockstar accountable for subversion of the system. The discussion of the rules at a given time is only because certain people keep blaming Rockstar for subverting the rules as they exist now. But the rules as they exist now weren't subverted, as they weren't the rules of 2 weeks ago, much less a year ago, and it seems unfair to blame Rockstar for breaking rules that didn't exist when they were "broken." I guess we just simply disagree in principle on how things should be rated, even if I'm not yet firm on what GTA's rating should actually be. Guess so.

I'm vaguely surprised no one yelled "FORM BLAZING SWORD!"

Given it was Roy, he may've just ducked out on principle. (admittedly, it'd be hard to miss that you had 3 bloody holes in your back while you were changing clothes, though)

The third Voltron was adapter from "Albegas" and never made it to air because Lion Voltron was so wildly popular. Same reason Vehicle Voltron/Daiurugger 15 was all but abandoned.

*Bangs head on table* I know, let's just make a game where the guy and girl are having sex with their clothes on. They did. It's called Hot Coffee. Bad comparison. Quake has it's own publicly documented scripting language, SDK, compiler, and built from the beginning to be easily moddable. I could more easily write a flight sim in Quake than I can even begin to tack on a mini-game of any sort into something like GTA. Meh. I just assumed Quake 1's setup was somewhat limited in what it allowed. IE: 2D motion plz kthx. Inserting actual lines of code-- additional instructions to what was already compiled in the binary-- is much harder than you suggest. It is possible however to intercept calls and that sort of thing, or hack into DLL's, but the work is not trivial either. And yet people do it on a somewhat regular basis. See http://donut.parodius.com/ From your description, it sounds like the original mod simply toggled a few more additional bits, and perhaps changed the file pointers and filenames in the compiled binary to load nude models and/or textures instead of the clothed ones-- no new lines of code would even be needed. Found the readme: http://grandtheftauto.filefront.com/file/H...offee_Mod;44662 (warning, contains minigame screenshots). As I don't have the game, I don't know how accessable the files that had to be replaced are. This is a moderately trivial hack, at least compared to adding extra code or crafting a minigame out of thin air and getting it to still work within the original game. It's pretty apparent that the Hot Coffee modders didn't do much more than find the right places to poke and poke them, and make a few name or index changes in a hex editor. All of Rockstar's talk about modders having to decompile, recompile, and insert complex code is rubbish to obfuscate the issue. I'm not arguing Rockstar wasn't full of it. Just saying it was mroe than flipping a few bits. Actually, more accurately, the AO rating penalizes Rockstar for not having the foresight to consider that it might not be a good idea to leave objectionable material that could change a rating on the gold master. Again, under the ESRB rules in effect at the time, it HAD NO EFFECT ON THE RATING. It's not some giant undertaking to remove incomplete code. We software engineers do this on a very regular basis, and it's pretty routine. *shrugs* The game industry has a diffrent take on the matter. I don't know what the ESRB's stance on hidden content was prior to this incident, The rules only governed content actually IN the game, as opposed to on the disk. but games have been re-rated in the past. Which ones? As far as I know, they didn't even change things when KA was replaced with E. So there were games out there with a totally invalid rating. Now I'm curious as to what the ESRB would have rated GTA had Rockstar disclosed the hidden content to them. They'd've probably given them odd looks because there weren't any rules for disabled features or discarded gameplay concepts. At any rate, the ESRB doesn't see itself as simply setting rules that publishers have to meet in order to achieve a certain rating for marketability. If that were true, then expecting an old title to meet criteria for a rating set today would be absurd. However, the ESRB also feels responsible for making customers aware of the actual content in a box that might be accessed. Under this principle, their perogative to re-rate a game based on what comes to light about the content on disc makes a little more sense. That's their official stance as of the re-rating of GTA:SA, which was primarily a political move intended to save face as people started screaming(on national TV) that they were impotent, ineffectual, incompetent, and a whole slew of other untrue accusations. Like I said, it's not why they were created, nor why companies pay the fees to get their software rated(of I recall, it's a couple hundred dollars per review).

I was going to do that! Damn you to New Mexico.

I'm still hoping it has standard RCA jacks on teh back for component video. They probably are. Doesn't mean I don't want to see it happen.

My opinion is that it has some interesting concepts, but they're never fully explored. And it goes all to hell in the last few episodes. IMO, everything after Operation Stargazer needs to be scrapped entirely, and much of the rest could use an overhaul. With the addition of more background and character development. It COULD have been a great series, but as-is, it's simply mediocre.

A. it's only the first mock-up package. B. Maybe they use standard AV ports? (I can dream, can't I?) I'm sure it'll come with some form of AV cables. As for the VGA HD fuss... I'd bet money that Gamespot misunderstood something. Now, onto more important questions. Like when are they gonna do HDMI/DVI out. Digital signals, kthx.

EA politely pointed out to him that if you hack the blur out, you get Barbie and Ken. He says the blur's existence proves that even Barbie and Ken anughty bits are inappropriate. ... Strangely, he did NOT proceed to launch a suit against Mattel, who not only makes Barbie and Ken dolls capable of nudity, but ENCOURAGES said state of existence through sales of alternate clothing.