At 02:11 AM 1/18/00 -0800, you wrote:
As far as I'm concerned, people should have a right to write games for a
machine if they want. The first amendment and free speech need to be
Quality control may have been Nintendo's original intention in adding
lockouts, but it's money today's companies are interested in. Sony makes
money on every playstation CD sold. They don't want to see anyone being
able to publish homebrew games on CDRs. Why do you think the Yaroze system
has no CD-ROM routines? It's like Sony was saying "stay in the minor
leagues, then maybe we'll bring you into the majors, but only on our terms."
After a platform reaches the end of its lifecycle it would be nice if they
would loosen the constraints because at that stage it's only beneficial to
enable homebrew programmers to open up the system.
This is something Microsoft seems to be finding out lately.
The PC platform falls under different rules vs. consoles. Not to mention
that all the consoles come from overseas. The DOJ would have a hard time
fighting Sony, although they might attack SCEA. Ever since the original
Apple, computers have been all about providing programming
environments. Consoles, on the other hand, have been mostly closed systems
with a few exceptions of hybrid systems like the Bally, Adam, XEGS etc...
The Console software biz is therefore driven by formal commercial software
publishers who have the bucks and the wherewithall to pay these licensing
fees and manufacturing costs. The notion of a grass roots shareware
company making a game and then taking off with it like what happened to iD
just can't happen on a console. The price of admission is
exclusionary. Development stations are expensive. No electronic
distribution methods available.
Compared to modern systems there is a lot of freedom in 2600 coding. There
isn't anything legally holding people back, the system is fairly well
documented now, and electronic distribution is available because of the
Supercharger, although the majority of developers prefer to still
manufacture carts in small quantities. And yet the cost of making carts is
still cheap compared to making even Jaguar or Lynx carts, let alone the
notion of a homebrew N64 cartridge.
As for what gets posted on the list, that's up to Glenn I think. If he
I've already approved Picklock, and after following this thread, I can't
see why we should exclude it.
on how to build a 48K RAM cart. It's actually easier to build than the 32K
one.
How hard is it to build larger carts like what the 7800 had in its final days?
Yes, I believe so. I think you can write large flat-model (up to 48K) or
bankswitched (up to 128K) 2600 games and put them on a 7800 cart no problem.
No encryption problems if you don't turn on the Maria chip.
Who will be the one to do the first proof of concept on this?
I know the 6502 runs at VCS speed when in VCS mode on the 7800, but when
the 2600 game is on the 7800 cart board, can you really access the extra
address and read/write lines too? If so, that would really open up all
sorts of cool things, basically giving you the ability to write
Supercharger-like games without all the hardware and software
hoop-jumping. Also, the 6502C has the halt line and hardware
interrupts. Could these be used for anything productive when in 2600
mode? And wasn't it determined that you can't access the extra internal
7800 RAM while in 2600 mode?
Glenn Saunders - Producer - Cyberpunks Entertainment
Personal homepage: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/1698
Cyberpunks Entertainment: http://cyberpunks.uni.cc
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