I'm looking for something like Wordpress or Bludit that plays nice with restrictive Content Security Policy rules.
That is :

• No unsafe-inlining
• No eval
• No links to other websites (other than my own)

Unfortunately, no alternatives i found (except maybe Jekyll) play nice with restrictive CSP rules.
I was using a patched out Nibbleblog for CSP, except that one day it broke X_X.
Plus, it was still not playing very nice before it broke.

I thought Bludit would fare better but it grew much more complex than its older brother Nibbleblog and as a result,
i can't easily patch it for unsafe-inlining.
And i had to patch uikit because it was using eval x_x

Ghost also didn't play very nice with CSP but i wonder if that has changed... I should try it again.
As for Wordpress.... LOL, let's not even talk about it again, it's the worst example as far CSP goes.

I had considered Jekyll but i was never able to install it properly with Gem. And there's no ppa or debian repo for a more recent version...

What alternative do i have ?

A year ago, the Dolphin team had announced that they even support 960i as an internal resolution, though they mentioned that
only a few homebrew supports it.
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2016/02/02/dolphin-progress-report-january-2016/

It went almost unnoticed until someone on reddit asked the question if this was actually true, since
it was known that the highest resolution possible on the GC/Wii is 576p on a PAL console.
960i would be 480p (640x480p) but with double the vertical resolution (640x960).

from r/emulation

Anyway,  one developer called Extrems (who also worked on Not64) told JMC47 that yes, 960i is possible
but without mentioning which homebrew actually makes use of that resolution.

Then pĥire chimed in and said that triggering this mode is simple :
Use the 480p, and then "increase the vertical blank timing for each field by half a line".

A similar trick is actually used by official games (VC emulation) for 240p on the Wii :
it uses the 480i mode and they remove half-line offset.

But so far, no one has demonstrated the use of that mode.... not even a simple demo.
According to phire, such a mode would have a resolution of 720x960.
He even goes as far as saying that 720p (1164x720) is theoretically possible on the Wii,
although only at a refresh rate of 24hz. (12 frames per second)

Maybe @Streetwalrus has an idea, since he's interested in Gamecube stuff.
It would be very cool to be able to make use of 720x960 or even the theorical 720p low-refresh rate video mode !
Imagine high-def Visual Novel on it !
Your thoughts .

TAKE THAT ANDREW ANGLIN !

I did not expect that :
https://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Dropping-Unity

Even though i did not use Unity in a long time, it's still surprising they dropped Unity 8 after working on it for more than 5 years.
Ultimately, they finally realized Convergence was dead duck. (Microsoft learned it the hard way)

They also announced that Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will use Gnome (god no), rather than Unity 8 or even Unity 7.
Presumably, this would also mean that they give up on Mir.
I fail to see Gnome supporting Mir, given that it provides no real advantages compared to Wayland and they have limited resources.

So much efforts for nothing.

That's why we need a basic income guys : so that nobody works on useless s***.

Yu-Gi-Oh was at first only a Manga.
Only in the late nineties did they agree to expand the series to make real cards, anime and of course, video games.
I won't cover all the Yu-Gi-Oh games mind you, only some of them.

The first Yu-Gi-Oh game ever released was Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule: Breed and Battle for the PS1.
I never played the game but it looks like a tactical rpg game. (with some virtual pet elements, according to some ppl)
The odd thing is that the monsters look nothing like the real cards or even the anime.
It's quite an oddity for me.

Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters
Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters for the Game Boy is the first game that tries to implement the rules of Yu-Gi-Oh.

It's also one of the later GB games that support the Super Game Boy borders. (as you can see)
Of course, the game had to be quite downsized : no monster effects, magic spells are very simplified etc...

The overall game itself also plays very slowly and can be at times very unforgiving, like here for example :


I was playing against Bakura and he summoned Blue-Eyes White Dragon like it was a normal monster. O_O
However, there's a trick to get rid of it : If your monster field is full, the game requires you to place a monster anyway.
In this case, the cpu always ends up putting the monster over the Blue-eyes dragon. (lol)
So that's how i was able to beat him.



However... the game requires you to beat each duelists 5 times. No thanks.
Considering the Gameboy's limitations, it's not a bad first attempt.
Managing the deck is also not too hard, despite the language barrier.
I absolutely love the graphics, the characters are nicely drawn.
But the game itself does not look so hot.

Yu-Gi-Oh : Dark Duel Stories

Here's what is probably the first Yu-Gi-Oh translated in several languages : English, German and French.
This one uses the same engine as the first one, with some differences.
For example, you need here to explicitly end the turn whereas on the previous game,
you needed to do so by setting each monster's position each turn.


However, this game is even more difficult than the first one was.
The first one had limitations that could be used to work around that but this one will not fool you around.


Even though it's in color, i don't like how they re-colored the monsters or everything else for that matter.
They picked the brightest colors they could, it seems.
I dislike this one even more so than the first one.

Yu-Gi-Oh ;: Forbidden Memories

Most people are familiar with this one, even though it was released quite late in the PS1's lifespan.
Interestingly enough, the Japanese version was released 3~4 years before the US/PAL release.

It's infamous for being brutally difficult, with CPU opponents often having better cards than you could wish to have.
(Looking at you, Henshin !!!)
The game also differs from the TCG rules (and the anime) by allowing you to combine monsters to create new monsters.
However, doing so means that you are closer to being decked out...
It also restricts you to placing one card each turn so forget about using magic spells, you'll get mauled by the enemy.

It's better than the old Game Boy games but not by much...

After this, several (tons) GBA games were released. One of them is even based on the GX Anime series !
Sadly, i played none of them extensively. Maybe i will do a review of some of them in the future.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos: Yugi the Destiny

Power of Chaos was released in discount shops such as Gifi at the low price of 10$.
However, this game is perhaps the biggest travesty i have ever witnessed.
Simply put : there's only one opponent, no animations, no story, NOTHING !
It's more boring than the Gameboy games i swear !

AVOID

Yu-Gi-Oh : Nightmare Troubadour

Nightmare Troubadour is quite an improvement over Forbidden Memories, let alone the GBA games.
Managing your deck with the stylus is much easier and the graphics were also vastly improved.


It doesn't have an amazing storyline (even though it's based on the old Anime series) but it still makes things a bit more interesting.
It becomes quite boring after you defeated Gozaburo and Noah though.

At the time, i was complaining about the lack of support for Wi-fi. (it was released shortly before Mario Kart NDS)
However, this does not matter now as servers are now dead.

Interesting note : the game has some kind of a primitive "love" system.
The more duel and trade cards with him, the more he/she likes you.
Hell, you can even befriend with Pegasus !


At the time, this was a great addition to the NDS's library. (especially at launch)
It did not aged very well in my opinion though, especially compared to newer installments.

After Nightmare Troubadour, tons and tons of Yu-Gi-Oh games were released for the NDS (and the PSP).
They weren't received well by the press, especially since most of them were rehashes of Nightmare troubadour.
After the last 5D's game was released in 2011, we got no Yu-Gi-Oh games until Legacy of the Duelists came out.
I heard that it's a pretty good game but sadly, i haz no monez.

Yu-Gi-Oh : Duel Links

Duel Links is perhaps the biggest leap to Yu-Gi-Oh games since Nightmare Troubadour.
The online-aspect of the game, even though it's quite minimal, makes it hard to go back to the old games.

Compared to card game, some changes were made :
- The Magic/Trap and Monsters were reduced to 3.
- Each character has a special ability that can alter the game. (Bandit Keith for example can swap one card for another random card)

This might sound like they crippled the game but in the real game, you rarely have more than 3 monsters on the field anyway.
Plus, it's makes it easier to make a comeback victory.

The game has a PvP arena where you can fight friends or random opponents.
I would lie if i said that all duels run smoothly but most of the time, they do. (even with a crappy wifi connection)
The game also contains a chat but it contains a filter for swear words.
(my guess is that Apple imposed it to Konami and Konami brought that "feature" to the Android version as well)

Most of the time is not spent in the PvP arena though, even though you could.
Instead, you farm for cards and gems by fighting CPU opponents. They respawn every 4 hours or when you fill all the missions objective.
(in order to go to the next stage)

What keeps you entertained are the numerous events this game has.
Sometimes, it's the boring ones like the additional Bonus but sometimes, it's a bit more involved like the Pegasus, Bakura or the KC Cup.

It's not a perfect game (events mostly look like the same right now and once you reach a high stage, there's not much to do)
but it's mildly entertaining for most people.
It has micro-transitions but it's only to respawn enemies faster or buy more cards via the shop.

I would suggest you give it a try (unless you boycott Konami due to the Kojima fallout)

As you may know, i'm kind of addicted to Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links...
So much that it slowed down my next game
However, this gave me some new ideas, especially this new event in particular.

This event is simple :
Gather dices by defeating the roaming duelists and use them to fight Bakura.
The better your fight was (damage, glossy card, deck out...), the more points you get.
Like a kickstarter camapign, you can get rewards depending on your number of points.
The final reward is an exclusive icon, only given to those who reach 4 millions points.
You can also unlock Bakura with 200,000 pts.



The event started from March 23, 2017 and will end in April 3 GMT+0 5:00 AM.

I spent every day trying to gather the required dices and thinking i will never reach 4 millions points.
Only today was i able to reach that goal.

Bakura is difficult because he has a skill that can end the game in 6 turns
if you have not removed a monster (Necrofear) from the graveyard.
Failure to do so and Bakura automatically wins.
Thankfully, this can easily be negated with some spell cards. (such as Banished)

I basically farmed him by using Rex Raptor and his (very) useful ability Jurassic World.
No, this will not force you to watch all the Jurassic Park movies : it boots dinosaurs ATK by 300.
Since monsters do not go beyond 1800 DEF and Dinosaurs usually have 1600 ATK => 1900 ATK.
So yeah, he was the man for the job. But looking back, i could have use Kaiba instead...
Oh well.

After 5:00 AM, Konami will force log out all players.
However, this does not happen when you are fighting someone, it will still let you play the game.
I'm interested to know if Konami will (or even can) log out players already in fight with Bakura.

I'm gay for Bakura, i even bought his t-shirts.
I'm not completely white but that can be "fixed" by living inside of a cave for a year.
Toughts guys

EDIT: I filmed the last hours under Bakura and here's my video :
https://www.youtube.com/embed/5UThLdE0vmE?fs=1&start=

I'm warning you :
it's very long, only in french (though the game is set to English and in-game chat is in English)  and it's mostly me rambling about the event.
If you have 33 minutes to waste, definitively a must watch.
Bakura's dead, never forget.

Some quotes (either spoken or written) i can't remove out of my head

Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links

Bandit Keith
"I draw, PUNK !"
"How dare you make a monkey outta me ?"

Yami Bakura
"From my haaand (with a strong british accent), i activate my spell card !"
"I activate a spell, Ectoplasmer !" followed by "Ectoplasmer, FIRE !"

Weevil (also known as Insector Haga)
"You must be very clever to out-clever me !"

And probably my favorite...
Rex Raptor
"I'M SINKING LIKE A TAR PIT !"

Metal Gear Solid : Peace Walker

"You hear that ? Gun shots !"
"The enemy is attacking us, going to alert status !" followed by :
"Understood, dispatching reinforcements. Proceed with extreme caution."

Post your quotes, gays.

Lately, i was hooked to Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links.
It started off pretty cool but unfortunately, i have to play the game on my FORD Fire tablet, which is infamous
for discharging really fast and charging very slow.

Anyway, i installed Android on my Raspberry Pi 3 and the game works pretty smoothly, surprisingly.
However... it did not take long before i noticed that the game could not be played with a mouse !
Even using a keymapper with this game does not work, it seems like they developed some kind of input detection
that rejects clicks like from a mouse for example. Was this intentional ?

I wanted to report the issue to Konami and found this email under the game's page :
[email protected]

I sent them an email describing the issue and how to reproduce it.
Shortly after sending the email, i got a letter from Konami which was in Japanese but translated in English.
The English version said this :

QuoteDear KONAMI customer

Thank you for contacting customer services.

Please be made aware that we are a customer services
department that deals exclusively with the concerns of
customers within the Japanese market.
Unfortunately due to our language restrictions, we will be
unable to answer any inquiries in any language apart from
Japanese.

So unless you speak japanese, you cannot ask for support.
I was told that Konami had terrible support and it seems that this backs up their claims.
And that email is listed on the game's english page !

You cannot even report it to Google, because it is not a violation of service to provide a useless or non-working email address.

f***

As you may know, video games over composite gets blurred a lot.
Of course, some video games took advantage of this to add new colors (look at some CGA DOS games over composite).

The problem is that i can't find a specific filter to mimic that effect, other than the blur function but it does not mimic
the rainbow effects associated with composite.

Any ideas how i can achieve this ?
I'm working on a Colecovision game and some of my images in-game are very grainy.
I'm curious to see how Composite output renders them.

Because it's made by evil mexicans, grr !

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/836849788452757505

Hopefully, trump will ban the switch at launch like he did with mudslims.
(will see, rip the mudslims)

On the Assembler games forums, a user called 10ahu uncovered a new game he was working on at Bits Studios for the N64 called Riqa.
Seemingly inspired by Tomb Raider, this 3D action-adventure game lets you play the female lead Riqa.



The game went into development hell, made very slow progress. and according to 10ahu,
it required to much work in order for Riqa to be considered complete.
The fact the N64 was reaching its end of life was the last straw for Bits Studios and the game got canned.
They later moved the team behind it to two other projects.
According to the press release in 2000, Nintendo was going to be the publisher.

You can watch a video of the game running here :
https://www.youtube.com/embed/x6RxfQLvgy8

I was wondering when the game was canceled and it turned out it was canceled shortly after it was announced at E3 2000, in July 2000 :
http://www.ign.com/articles/2000/08/01/new-dolphin-bits
Nintendo told IGN they canceled the game for N64 and the team moved on to other projects.

Sadly, his coworkers only allowed him to release a video about it.  (not yet that is)
I hope they can realize what an amazing piece of history that game is and do it like Volition did with their
canceled Saints Rows PSP game !

Source :
http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/riqa-n64.65326/
http://www.retrocollect.com/News/unreleased-nintendo-64-game-riqa-discovered.html
http://www.nesworld.com/n64-unr-riqa.php

Hello guys,
as you may know, i have released a new game called Evil Australians.
However, the collisions routines for checking collisions against the map is slow !
Here it is :
unsigned char Collisions_MAP(short col_x, short col_y, unsigned short width_player, unsigned short height_player, short scroll_x, unsigned short size_map, unsigned short tile_width_map)
{
unsigned short i, a = 0, y = 0;
signed short temp_x = 0, temp_y = 0;

for (i=0;i<size_map;i++)
{
a++;
if (a > (tile_width_map-1))
{
y++;
a = 0;
}

if (collision_map[a+(y*tile_width_map)] == 1)
{
temp_x = (a * SIZE_TILE)-scroll_x;
temp_y = y * SIZE_TILE;
if ( (col_x + width_player > temp_x) && (col_x < temp_x + SIZE_TILE) )
{
if ( (col_y + height_player > temp_y ) && (col_y < temp_y + SIZE_TILE) )
{
return 1;
}
}
}
}
return 0;
}

And here's what a map looks like (width is 40 tiles, height is 15 tiles)
const char map [600] =
{
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,
1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,
1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,
1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,
1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,1,
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,
1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,
1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,1,1,1,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,0,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1
};

As you can see, it's slow because it checks for all posibilites.
I tried to speed it up like so :
unsigned char Collisions_MAP(short col_x, short col_y, unsigned short width_player, unsigned short height_player, short scroll_x, unsigned short size_map, unsigned short tile_width_map)
{
unsigned short i, a, y;
signed short temp_x = 0, temp_y = 0;
y = (col_y/15)-1;
a = 0;

for (i=y;i<size_map;i++)
{
a++;
if (a > (tile_width_map-1))
{
y++;
a = 0;
}

if (collision_map[a+(y*tile_width_map)] == 1)
{
temp_x = (a * SIZE_TILE)-scroll_x;
temp_y = y * SIZE_TILE;
if ( (col_x + width_player > temp_x) && (col_x < temp_x + SIZE_TILE) )
{
if ( (col_y + height_player > temp_y ) && (col_y < temp_y + SIZE_TILE) )
{
return 1;
}
}
}
}
return 0;
}

However, it now involves a division so it might run slower on ARM cpus, like the 3DO...
Perhaps my way of doing things is wrong though.
How i can improve this routine ?
How do you do your tilemap collisions ?

Here's a new game i worked on for the Ludum Dare Retro : Evil Australians.


Evil Australians is a video game developed by me, gameblabla.
It's a platforming arena game made from scratch with the help of my own library, Gameblabla's Wrapper.
The game has several missions and in each mission, you are stuck in an arena where
you must defeat all the remaining enemies.
To defeat the enemies, you have a rapid-fire gun that can shoot several bullets at the same time.


3DO version

Story
John, living in Australia, is an avid video game collector.
However, he learns from the news that the Australian government is soon going to ban video games.
John became furious :
he grabs his weapons and swears vengeance on the government.

However 7 years ago,
the government collected his own DNA as part of a secret project.
This secret project allowed the government to steal DNAs from all the aussies.
The Government learned of John's plan and they used his DNA to build an entire clone army of himself.

John is now facing an entire army of himself,
will he make it alive and finally kill the law ?

Controls (PC)
Use a Gamepad or the following keyboard keys :
X : Jump
C : Shoot
Cursor keys : Move

Download
Itch.io

Dreamcast
3DO
Old PCs on Windows 95/NT4
Modern PCs
N64

One of the nice things about Gentoo Linux is the fact that you can build optimized packages for your own machine,
potentially increasing performance.
However, Gentoo is kind of a pain in the ass to set up so i wondered how i could improve the perfs on my Ubuntu machine.
Here are the benchmark results with hardinfo :
Linux 4.10 rc2
Stock glibc
Blowfish
2.49
CryptoHash
567.87
Fibonacci
2.24
N-Queens
0.53
FPU FFT
1.36
Raytracing
13.86

I wondered if compiling and optimising glibc for my own PC would not improve performance ?
I looked up online and i was told it would not increase anything since it looks at the ELF table and blablabla....
I attempted it anyway, here are the options i used :
-march=native -mtune=native -O3 -s
I just modified the debian scripts (rules in particular) to compile glibc, nothing special.

After i installed my new glibc and rebooted, i ran the same benchmark again and here are the results :
Optimised Glibc (-march=native -mtune=native -O3)
Blowfish
2.10
CrytoHash
780.04
Fibonacci
2.16
N-Queens
0.50
FPU FFT
1.31
Raytracing
13.76

So optimising glibc actually improved the performance a bit, despite what most other people claimed.
FPU benchmark are not vastly improved but everything else is, especially Blowfish and CryptoHash.
I also tried compiling my own linux kernel with more aggressive optimisations (-O3 -march=native -mtune=native)
and the benefits were very, very small...

Recompiling glibc for your own PC has its benefits so...

For a long time, i was wondering how the heck can you do 3D on the 3DO...
Looking at the documentation, everything seemed to imply that the CEL Engine inside the 3DO was 2D hardware, rather than 3D...
I saw absolutely no references to it supporting polygons in hardware.
At first, i thought that all 3D games were software-rendered but the documentation seems to imply framebuffer access is very slow
so it can't be that.

Then i saw this video on the Sega Saturn (turn on subtitles, he's taiwanese) :


This video talks on why the Saturn is incapable of 3D transparencies :
At some point, he explains that the reason why the Saturn is using quadrilaterals rather than triangles for 3D was due to its sprite architecture.
He also explained that the 3D polygons are in fact, distorted sprites.

The 3DO is also using quadrilaterals and its CEL engine is also capable to distorting sprites (scaling, transparency...) just like the Sega Saturn.
Reminder : A CEL is basically some kind of a sprite that can be distorted/modified.
They also supports paletted textures and unlike the Sega Saturn, full transparency.

So 3D games on the 3DO are most likely using distorted CELs in order to create the illusion of 3D.
When you look at other consoles of the era, you can now finally understand why the PS1 was a revolution :
it was the only piece of hardware that was capable of rendering polygons with dedicated hardware without weird tricks,
other than using affine texturing and lacking perspective-correction of course.

So 3DO and Saturn were using distorted sprites/CELs and the Sega 32X was just a dumb framebuffer with two powerful CPUs...
Amiga CD32, FM Towns Marty, PC-FX, Virtual Boy : all of them had no 3D hardware and had to be entirely CPU-rendered.
The only other console with special 3D hardware was the Atari Jaguar :
its "Tom" chip had some instructions for 3D graphics but it's just more powerful than a SuperFX chip...

I'm not entirely sure though... but since it seems that the 3DO is mostly 2D hardware at heart,
it is the only way to achieve 3D graphics at acceptable speed.

2016 has passed and it left everyone speechless...but here i will just focus on gaming.
What was the worst year for gaming ?

I'm not too sure actually but i would say that 2014 as one of the worst year, as well as 2003 and 2009.
It would be too easy to bring up 1983 as the worst year as that year is infamous...
Plus i'm way too young and i did not even existed yet so...

2014 for me was one of the worst because the new PS4 & Xbone titles were very underwhelming :
i remember being disappointed with the games being released that year, especially Watch Dogs.
Amusingly enough, it was the best year for Wii U owners as pretty much all the good games were released that year
but nobody owns one so who cares.

What's the tip on the iceberg though is the fact that Gamergate was born that year...
I'm honestly missing the days when gaming had no drama...
Definitively a bad year for gaming.

2003 was also a bad year for me because there was little new titles that year... It just was underwhelming year,
especially after the death of the N64, Dreamcast and the delayed launch of the GC, especially in Europe...

2009 was also really bad because the depression really hit me... i had to sell all of my physical DS games.
It was also another underwhelming year for gaming... I don't really remember any titles from that time period.

What's the worst year(s) in gaming for you ?

Here's a simple image viewer for the TI Nspire CX & (maybe) Monochrome nspires.



It supports PNG, BMP, and JPEG files. (Baseline & Progressive)
It's pretty fast, fairly small and has a codebase that is easier to read than mViewerCX, which is absolutely monstrous...
However it struggles with big images files and there are some corruptions for BMP files.
So if you want to load huge image files on your nspire, stick with mViewerCX.

For big images, switch to cropping mode with the DEL key and it will benefit from a smoother framerate, much better than mViewerCX.
However, you can't zoom in/out in "cropping" mode, unlike the default "scaling" mode.
It also uses my explorer browser, which is much simpler to use unlike the one in mViewerCX which is horrible to use, seriously.

I originally made this so i can watch my pr0nographic images on my calc and because i did not enjoy using mViewerCX
with its slow framerate and awful interface.

Source code is here :
https://github.com/gameblabla/simpleimageviewer

[spoiler]
Here's an OS version for ControlX 4.3.6 (Deprecated, slower than ndless version) :
https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=1820.msg50693#msg50693
[/spoiler]

Video of it running :


Btw, this uses a modified version of n2DLib and OK_JPG as well as LodePNG.

So yesterday, i finally got my Raspberry Pi 3 and the first thing i did was to install the Devuan rootfs file on it.
But like @Streetwalrus said, i was going to be disappointed because it simply doesn't have VC4 or the proprietary drivers, only framebuffer support.
I have no idea how to compile VC4's driver for X11 so needless to say, i started to look at other options.
First, i tried the Tumbleweed and Leap OpenSUSE images and they don't work... they just won't boot.
OpenSUSE said the images were experimental so they probably do not work.

Only the option left i have is SUSE Entreprise Server, which is known to work but i can't download it on my slow connection so this won't do it. (for now)

So i lowered my expectations and stared to look for armv7hf images instead.
The only oses i found were Void Linux and Ubuntu Mate.

Does Void Linux have VC4 support ? 'cause like devuan, it's too small to be true...
Ubuntu Mate, i'm downloading it right now but man is it huge. I'm not sure if it will fit on my 8GB sdcard.
Plus it's kind of CPU hungry and it's locked wth systemd, so i can't strip it down as much as i would like to.

Gentoo can be compiled for Arm64 with VC4 but i have not found a rootfs file out there.
If anyone can share his gentoo installation then please, i would like to have it.
I really don't have time (or the connection) to compile it.

I also really, REALLY, don't want to use Raspbian as it is only optimized for armel and thus, it cripples the performance of my RPI3.

What options do i have ?

I thought i might tell you what little i remember of my dream i had yesterday but here it is :

It's very cloudy and we're in a prairie. There's a small hill with a fairly small house on it.
I'm hiding behind bushes a bit far off that hill with an AK-47 and i see a man standing right there, waiting for someone.
The only thing i knew is that this man was known as the "L'homme de la rivière" or in english, the man of the river.
(He looks like an Hermit btw)
Despite being called like that, i was unable to see a river where he lives.

Then i see another man coming toward him. The man of the river seems to be happy to see him :
"Ah, it's you !", he said.
The unknown man really looks like Snake and he even has a similar voice, well except that he mainly talks in french here.
(i will just translate what they say though)
He looks like the snake from the 70s (Peace Walker) so i assume we're from that period.
"Good to see you, are you the man of the river ?", questions Snake.
"Yup, that's right", answers the man of the river.

They continue to talk each other but i couldn't remember what they said but i think Snake is looking for someone
and he thinks only he can know where that guy is.
But then i see what appears to be a tank not far from us, it was coming from behind the hill. (but it was not on the hill, just on the sides)

The tank looks a lot like the Tanks from the Tiananmen Square, this pict :

The only difference is that the end of the cannon was orange, it had an orange tip.
Why, i don't know but perhaps what comes after will make sense to you.

Since they were not able to see it for some reasons (they continued to talk), i get out of the bushes
and i warn Snake.
"Watch out, there's a Chinese Tank !", i shout.

They seem to be surprised by the Tank and they were able to see it.
"Get down !", shouts Snake.

Then for some reason, they hurry to a truck (a pickup actually) that i was not able to see before but it was not far off from them.
Snake took the driver's seat while the river's man took the passenger seat.
I quickly hurry to get inside of that truck as the tank is coming toward us. (i think it hurled some chinese insults at us i'm not sure)

We get the hell of that there and quickly, we get inside of a forest with indeed, a river alongside the road.
But that tank was fast, lol. That tank was running at 60km/h i think because it was able to catch us.
It was a straight line until we took a right turn, and the tank had no issues coming toward us.
"That tank is fast !", i remark.

Nobody answers because i could see Snake quite angry while driving and he was too focused on getting the hell out of here.

Then it becomes white and now, i'm at a gigantic school wth large open spaces.
Its ringings and we're all going to class. We were like 12-13 people and we went upstairs.
There was no chair, only a bed for the teacher to sit on.
Everybody else was sitting on the floor.
Oddly enough, my brothers were also present.

The teacher is telling us to open a book about the story of the man of the river.
Yes, we're talking about that guy again lol, i was just as surprised.
Since not everyone had a book, we had to share them.

We're at page 50 or something and that page was odd :
I could see a poney looking like Applejack and Haruhi Suzumiya singing a song about the man of the river together.
The song was on 2 entire pages.
The teacher asked one of my brother to read it.
Well except that instead of reading it, he was singing it.
The odd thing is that he was mimicking Applejack pretty well. (even though sometimes i could hear his manly's voice)
Then as we're on the second page, my other brother starts to sing in your typical anime girl voice.
They were all singing together the song (i couldn't remember the lyrics lol sorry) but the teacher was pretty unhappy.
"You were not supposed to sing it !", she says.

We leave class and she comes toward me :
"I'm impressed by your results, you know perfectly the story of the man of the river".
I don't remember doing anything in class but for some reason , i told her it was thanks to a video game called "River man" for the Playstation 1.
(the cover from what i was able to remember is a zoom-in cover of the peace walker one except it was written "River man" instead)
I told her it was part of the Metal Gear Solid series and that's how i was able to know the story, even though it was not a good replica.
She didn't seem to be interested in what i was talking about.
I told her we would see her later and we parted aways.

As soon as i'm getting out the school, the bus i was supposed to take was about to go.
"WAIT !", i shout.
Too late, as the driver got the hell of here as fast as he can.

"Merde (Damnit) !", i said.
I waited several seconds before another bus appeared and i was able to take it.

That's as far i was able to remember of my dream.
I think i recalled me playing "River man" and playing that mission with Snake where he's taking on the same chinese tank we saw earlier but that's it.

My dream is now posted for eternity, let me know what do you think of it.

Also, the tank did not even fire one shot, perhaps that's why it had an orange tip.

HE'S DEAD JIM


I have resurrected DellardOS, a lightweight devuan distribution.

It is a fairly lightweight linux distro and it runs very fast on Pentium Pro/II hardware.
It is using JWM as the main window manager and has a focus on minimalism.

It is provided with 4 browsers, a basic music player, SpaceFM with udevil, a basic image viewer, Sylpheed
as well as plenty of settings to tune DellardOS.

When launched from the menu, browsers are also protected with Firejail, which should make it much harder
against hackers to break out of the browser in case of a vulnerability.

So as you may already know, Pebble is now dead.
What a better way to celebrate this than to make a pr0nographic game for Pebble ?




The game's full name is "Abstinence or Die : a forbidden love", shortened to "Forbidden Love".

Harmonia ("N") and Hilbert meet each other after defeating ghetis.
Harmonia thanks him for the help but he suddenly became naughty and decided to go the hard way...

Programmed in C, the game is compatible with all Pebbles except the Round models. (including the unreleased pebble time 2)
You can play it inside of an emulator (by installing the sdk, there's ppa for ubuntu and mac) or using GadgetBridge on a real watch.

You can download the original, uncensored version here :
[spoiler]
https://github.com/gameblabla/forbidden_love/raw/master/forbidden_love.pbw

And the source code :
https://github.com/gameblabla/forbidden_love
[/spoiler]

I have also posted a censored version on the appstore :
https://apps.getpebble.com/applications/5850eef977324bb64b0004fb


changed it to "pr0n" so search engines wont list us as nsfw stuff

Pebble, known for its Pebble smartwatches, had announced Wednesday they got bought by Fitbit (a competitor).
They will stop developing new hardware and they will no longer cover warranties.
While Pebble smartwatches will continue to work for the time being,
it's not guaranteed they will in the future should Google or Apple release a new update.

Pebble was most likely the first company to introduce the concept of smartwatches to the public (widely).
Previous attempts like the first two Sony Smartwatches were timid and did not gain a lot of traction.
(They were also sold in very limited quantities)

The fact it was simple, did not require a phone to work, its retro-style graphics and was a dev friendly platform,
made it popular among some aficionados.

Sadly, Pebble's low sales (100,00-200,000 units) compared to its competitors,
limited availability in local stores, the lack of usefulness thus in putting in question its existence,
combined with the fact smartwatches became a fad like hoverboards (sales this year decreased by 55%),
means that sooner or later, Pebble was condemned to go under.

After the annoncement, Pebble canceled their sucessors and released the last update "Update 17"
to Pebble devices.

Probably Pebble's finest device is the Pebble Time, which comes with a E-ink color screen
and has some interesting retro-style game. (kind of like the Pico-8 actually)

What do you think of Pebble's devices ?
Do you think they were crap and deserved their death ? or you happened to enjoy them?

Does anyone know hackforums.net ?
It's a board where some hackers/crackers/script kiddies... talk about hacking, computers and security in general.

It needs to mentioned but the website itself is an impenetrable fortress.
Even if you do not use a proxy, your ip was most likely used at some point by the previous owners and banned.
Hackforums do not lift bans on ip addresses and even entire countries are banned from using hackforums.
Visitors also cannot read topics... they must register for that.
I eventually found a way to enter the website without leaking my ip tho.

Hackforums has a small section about "E-Whoring" in the "Beginner" section.
And there's also a hacking section where some people can make some requests to design a website or even hack/deface one.
But the "E-whoring" section got me curious and i wanted to see how it looks like.

E-Whoring is the practice of someone passing off as a girl and trying to extort money from men.
They do so by using a "fake" cam with pre-recorded videos,(most likely stolen by ratting computers or simply by manipulating girls online)
and using chat software.
The chat software they use are Skype, Kik and (rarely) Snapchat.
As for the "fake" cam, they either use Flash files or they can use something like v4l2loopback to create a virtual cam
and do whatever they want with it.

Here's how the "E-whoring" section looks like :
http://img110.xooimage.com/files/8/c/d/pict-510459f.png

As you can see, some members are trying to sell "packs" which contain videos, pictures... of girls.
The "packs" can then be used to set up fake websites with ads/surveys, e-whoring on chats... you get the idea.
Some of them even post their earnings on Paypal and provide tips on how to e-whore.

You know what's funny ?
The rules clearly state they forbid talking about extortion of money and violating the Paypal TOS.
But how can they talk about earning money when e-whoring without extorting money ? Exactly...
They just don't want them to talk about it openly.

I googled image-searched some "packs" and i was already able to find some fake websites.

So if you ever wondered how this works then now you know.
Of course, it's not the only website that does that and i'm only scratching the surface.
There are topics where you can buy e-books to earn "easy" money and more...

Also, most members will not deal with you unless you are l33t or have a high rep.
And to become l33t, you need to upgrade your account by paying 18$ in BTC...
Yes, Bitcoins.

(and now someone is probably trying to doxx me or codewalrus)

When you look at Android websites, they often talk about new devices coming out but once they're out,
it's no longer being mentioned ever again.

Feeling sorry for my old devices, i started to put custom ROMs on them.
Thanks a lot to the XDA community for keeping those devices alive !
They really brings some life to otherwise useless junk.

Today, i'm taking a look at the LG Optimus L3 E400.
Read my blog post about it for the full review

Do you happen to own such a device ?
Next time, i will look at the Xperia X8 and talk why it's no longer usable these days.

I just discovered this operating system thanks to Phoronix, who reported it was still alive and kicking.
@Juju, that's your stuff, bring the condoms and some anime geurls !

ToaruOS is a unix-like operating system with its own kernel and mostly it's own userspace.
Right now, it supports only the framebuffer, the AC97, ext2, the RTL9138 and i think that's it.
Despite being in a very alpha form, it looks surprisingly good.



The login screen looks like a minimalist version of lightdm.

The UI looks a bit like MATE (or GNOME 2) and while it looks quite nice,
there's not much you can do with it.
The Application list is stored in a file called "menu.desktop" in /etc, look.
cairo-demo,cairo-demo,Cairo Demo
clock,clock-win,Clock
applications-painting,draw,Draw!
julia,julia,Julia Fractals
gears,gears,Gears
teapot,teapot,GL Teapot

The OS also seems to be obsessed with things like window rotations and window transparency.
I'm not sure why but those are things you don't commonly see in traditional oses.


As far as applications are concerned, we have :

• A software OpenGL renderer via Mesa
• A decent terminal
• A port of libSDL 1.2, with sound support. Quake and Doom were ported thanks to it !
• Lua, Python...
• Cairo, which is also used by the compositor.
• A video player was also released but i had not tested that yet.
• An old version of Snes9x

And that's pretty much to it. There's not even a file manager available, for god's sake.
As it is now, it's more primitive than KolibriOS but on the other hand, it's also much easier to develop for it.
But it's light years ahead of operating systems like HelenOS, because at least you can develop some graphical games/apps.
Kevin Lange plans to port Netsurf so we can some at least a decent browser for it as well as GTK and Glib so he could port some desktop apps to it.

I can't imagine myself using this operating system and being stuck on a remote island without crying...

I ported Helicopters, one of my games, just to show you how easy you can port games to it.


Maybe in the future i will talk about KolibriOS or SyllableOS...
But what do you think of ToaruOS ? There's a live cd available here :
http://toaruos.org/live.iso

It works with QEMU (-vga std -m 512 -enable-kvm -soundhw ac97 -net user -net nic,model=rtl8139) and VirtualBox.
Also the user and the password is local

Has anyone here got Admob to work on Android ?
Well, since they released the new version in 2014, i didn't.
Does anyone uses Abmob here ?

My game is an SDL2 app and it has its own Activity, SDLActivity.Java.
Here's my Admob code :
...
        if(Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= 12) {
            mJoystickHandler = new SDLJoystickHandler_API12();
        }
        else {
            mJoystickHandler = new SDLJoystickHandler();
        }

        mLayout = new AbsoluteLayout(this);
        mLayout.addView(mSurface);

// Create a banner ad. The ad size and ad unit ID must be set before calling loadAd.
mAdView = new AdView(this);
mAdView.setAdSize(AdSize.BANNER);
mAdView.setAdUnitId("adunitid");

// Create an ad request.
AdRequest.Builder adRequestBuilder = new AdRequest.Builder();

// Optionally populate the ad request builder.
adRequestBuilder.addTestDevice(AdRequest.DEVICE_ID_EMULATOR);

// Add the AdView to the view hierarchy.
mLayout.addView(mAdView);

// Start loading the ad.
mAdView.loadAd(adRequestBuilder.build());

setContentView(mLayout);


I also added the following in their respective places :
..
public class SDLActivity extends Activity {
    private static final String TAG = "SDL";
    private AdView mAdView;

import com.google.android.gms.ads.AdRequest;
import com.google.android.gms.ads.AdView;
import com.google.android.gms.ads.MobileAds;
import com.google.android.gms.ads.*;


Sadly, the ad in question does not appear.
(not even an error saying it is misconfigured or anything)

How do you put ads on Android ?
Does anyone here even do it ?

A year ago, i bought this decent device for pretty cheap. (50€)
Unfortunely, i later discovered that, unless you use the annoying KingoRoot, you can't have root.
On top of that, KingoRoot is not permanent so you will have to download it and wait each freaking time you reboot your device.
TowelRoot, FramaRoot... all of them didn't work either.
Lastly, i found absolutely no documentation for the device. (other than some benchmarks websites)

Just now, i was finally able to root my device permantly without some chinese apps that don't last a reboot.
I'll explain how i did it, as it might help you if you also happen to own some unknown device.

First of all, i discovered some useful commands to adb.
adb shell reboot bootloader
adb shell reboot recovery

On my device, it is the only way to access the bootloader : no buttons combinaison work here.
But the default bootloader doesn't allow you to flash any zip packages unfortunely...
So it was clear that i needed to find a CWM recovery file for my device.

I started looking at what kind of SoC it was using.
I eventually found out it was using a SnapDragon MSM8916.
So i started looking for devices that were using the same SoC but had a recovery available.

I found that the Lenovo A6000 was a similar device with the same SoC and operating system but with a bigger screen...
Here is the link that i found : http://www.gizmoadvices.com/install-cwm-recovery-root-lenovo-a6000/

Still, after downloading it, i launched this command :
flashboot boot myfirmwareimage.img
It booted but since it was designed for a bigger screen resolution, it looked horrible...
I tried looking for more alternatives but so far, none of them even worked.

I did with what i had and tried to flash the root package that was provided in the tutorial.
It seemed to have worked so i tried to reboot it but my device would get stuck...
No problem tho, i simply removed my battery and put it back.

After a slow startup, i found out SuperSU was correctly installed and my root apps were working perfectly.
The provided SuperSU Apk was old tho so i installed the newer one and after a reboot (and updating the su binary),
it worked just fine.

So yeah, even if nobody was even mentionning the device, i had managed to have permanent root on it.
I just wish i knew that for my 2 earlier software-hardware bricked tablets...

Do you happen to own some not well known Android smartphones ?
Let me know in the comments down below.

As of you may know, Debian already switched to systemd a long time ago.
Since Ubuntu is based on it, they had no say on the matter and they were forced to accept the changes.
Most people think it is impossible to run Ubuntu without systemd.

There's actually a way to remove most of the systemd on Ubuntu. (except for libsystemd0)
Here's how to do it (basically) :
Install Upstart-sysv
sudo apt-get install upstart-sysv
Lightdm will not work without systemd, despite it claiming to not depend on it.
SDDM also requires systemd so we can't use it.
You can install another one like lxdm, wdm or xdm. I recommend lxdm.
sudo apt-get install lxdm
After it is installed, reboot, choose Advanced in the grub and pick the Upstart one. (or the default one if this doesn't work)
Now you can definitively purge systemd for good :
sudo apt-get remove systemd --purge

BOOM, it's gone now.

And that my friend, is how i got my ubuntu 16.04 Pc fully working with a custom lxqt installation, working sound through alsa
and without the diseases known as pulseaudio, dbus and systemd.

So i was messing around with Google a bit and i thought :
"Why not compare and see what people likes & hate ?"
And so i did.
Here are some examples :

Multinationals

Google
Love : 184 000 000
Hate : 33 300 000

Microsoft
Love : 30 200 000
Hate : 14 800 000

Monsanto
Love : 21 000 000
Hate : 529 000

Mcdonalds
Love : 22 000 000
Hate : 1 700 000

People/some other crap

Moms
Love : 152 000 000
Hate : 26 900 000

Dads
Love : 26 100 000
Hate : 11 900 000

Your mom
Love : 19 800 000
Hate : 49 000 000

Your dad
Love : 51 300 000
Hate : 5 800 000

Men
Love : 207 000 000
Hate : 42 100 000

Women
Love : 210 000 000
Hate : 42 200 000

Sex
Love : 99 800 000
Hate : 24 100 000

Homosexuals
Love : 1 030 000
Hate : 674 000

Animals

Walruses
Love : 12 500 000
Hate : 541 000

Cats
Love : 49 200 000
Hate : 19 300 000

THIS IS RIGGED !!!! The elections are rigged

Games

Sega dreamcast
Love : 1 540 000
Hate : 524 000

OUYA
Love : 724 000
Hate : 257 000

Big rigs : over the road
Love : 6 550 000
Hate : 1 900 000

Sonic 06
Love : 25 900 000
Hate : 5 460 000

Superman 64
Love : 2 090 000
Hate : 556 000

Shaq fu
Love : 282 000
Hate : 64 000

Bubsy 3D
Love : 61 200
Hate : 72 700

Daikatana
Love : 80 800
Hate : 41 100

Doom
Love : 28 700 000
Hate : 10 500 000

Video games
Love : 63 900 000
Hate : 17 900 000

Countries

Japan
Love : 73 900 000
Hate : 32 400 000

Russia
Love : 39 500 000
Hate : 2 730 000

US
Love : 556 000 000
Hate : 44 400 000

And finally... politicians.

Hilary
Love : 39 800 000
Hate : 55 800 000

Trump
Love : 253 000 000
Hate : 86 500 000

Obama
Love : 53 800 000
Hate : 57 800 000

So according to Google, Trump will win this election and people hate their moms more than their dads.
Also, more people love monsanto than the ones who hate it.
imma gonna kill mahself

So after i saw countless 3DS homebrew titles and wondering how i could play them without the use of a 3DS emulator,
this is the result of it.
Most 3DS homebrew games use sf2d so i decided to basically emulate the sf2d's functions and sent them to their SDL2 equivalent.
After 2 days of work, Memory3DS, a simple 3DS homebrew game, was working properly with my library.



To the original source code, i only had to fix a bug and comment out some unemulated functions to get it to work.
Everything else was 100% 3DS-specific and i got it to work with my library.
My library also provides support for touch-screen and input support as well as some other functions. (like osGetTime())

The main reason why i did this library was to be able to play some 3DS homebrew games on my PC but
you can also use it for development purposes and use it to make your own 3DS title without resorting to an emulator.(or the real deal)

github repo is here :
https://github.com/gameblabla/sf2d_wrapper

To compile the Memory3DS game, go to same/modified_port and type make -f Makefile.SDL2.
Make sure you have SDL2, SDL2_gfx, SDL2_mixer and SDL2_image though.
There's also support for the SDL 1.2 series but due to lack of support for blending, rotation and scaling,
it is less compliant than the SDL2 version.

KillMinds is a puzzle game i worked on based on SupraKillMinds by Jack Nolddor for the Sega Genesis, itself based on Quartet.
Basically, you have to fill the 4 spots with a piece of a square given to you.
A single full color square will get you 300 points : anything will get you 30 points.
You can also chain multiple full color squares and have your score being multiplied !

The game is available for Android on the Google Play market, and Sailfish OS.
The Firefox OS is finished and currently waiting to be approved by Mozilla. (in 40 working days ! yay...)



The game is also available for Ti Nspire CX, 3DO (as part of the Gameblabla's Crappy Compilation) and the NUON.
I plan ports for Tizen and Ubuntu Mobile.

I also want to let you know that the mobile version has some improvements compared to the nspire version.
Let me know what you think !

Epilepy warning, this program quickly alternates colors !

I was looking at an old article about e-ink displays and whetever they were better for eyes than LCDs.
The doctor said the reason for eye strain is because we are not blnking enough and we are looking at our screen for too long.
He suggested the rule 20/20 : Every 20 minutes, look elsewhere (your cat for example) for 20 seconds.
Since i care about my health, i have decided to make a little program that would follow this rule, with some differences.
After 15 minutes, the screen will randomly blink, forcing you to stop looking at the screen.

Source is here and it requires SDL2 for graphics :
https://github.com/gameblabla/eyes_doctor_lcd

Compile the program with the makefile (or using a GUI manually) and put the resulting executable at startup.
The code should be pretty portable and can even be in theory ported to the TI-Nspire.

What the program does :
It will show you a red screen every minute for 2 seconds, meaning you should blink.
Every 15 minutes, the screen will randomly alternate colors, forcing you to look away from screen for about 20 seconds.
Repeat.

For my own use, it works pretty well so i'm sure it will be useful to some of you here.

Everyone knows scaling algorithms such as linear, cubic or lanczos or even specific ones like hqx or xBRZ.
But i thought i would talk about some of the lesser known scaling algorithms i think are pretty interesting.

Let's start with Waifu2x first.
Waifu2x is an upscaling algorithm for anime-style art that was developped at a chinese university in Hong Kong, inspired by SRCNN.
(That's probably the only good thing China has done, read on)
It also supports noise cancellation but a picture with little to no noise gives me the best result.
The goal of the algorithm is to give sharper details to the art, compared to traditional algorithms.
Perhaps the best thing to explain it is to show it.


Left is cubic upscaling, Right is Waifu2x

As you can see, the Waifu2x processed image has much less blur and has sharper edges than the cubic one.
It is overall much prettier to look at than the cubic processed one.

Another test, here's the reference image. (it comes from School Days)


What i have done next is to upscale it using the cubic algorithm to 1920x1080.
Then, i tried to upscale it twice (since waifu2x only upscales two times) with waifu2x.

Here's the result (You need Firefox or Webkit to view the APNG picture)
https://gameblabla.nl/img/waifu2x_result.png

This time though, it is not as significant as the previous one, probably due to many details in the background.
But the edges around the boy are still much sharper than the cubic one, once again and the overall picture is less blurry.

I tried with other anime pictures and i got pretty good results, so far i am very happy.
Maybe i should try to upscale an old anime to 2k using waifu2x ?
Sadly, i do not have the processing power or space for that.

Moving on to...

Seam Carving
This algorithm has a completely different purpose.
It was made in 2005 by a team in MERL with the goal of making an upscaler/downscaler that would keep most of details
in the picture when changing aspect ratios.

ImageMagick has an implementation of Seam Carving so i thought trying it out.
Our reference image is still the same :


I will reduce to 75% of its horizontal size. (out of 100%)


Here's what it would like when downscaled with Lanczos


You can see how it tries to keep important details like the main character without changing the proportions too much.
It results in a funny and non-consistent look though, especially for humans.
Let's try it with Obama instead :

Original:


Seam carved to 70% of its horizontal size :


Our president looks much thinner, he almost looks like a kid now !

Now let's try to downscale using this algorihm with our School Days picture :


Everything we knew about the picture before is now lost, it looks like something right from a nightmare...
Overall, it is best suited for paysages and aspect ratio changes.

Scalable Function Graphics
If you are looking for the best upscaling algorithm for image recovery, this is the one.
Designed for photos, the results are simply stunning :
The picture is much less blurry than any other algorithms while managing to be fairly accurate to
the original picture.
Have a look :


Photofunction, the only software based around it, can upscale such an image using the SFG algorithm.
However this comes at a cost : on a AMD FX chip, upscaling a 64x32 picture can take up to 12 hours !
It is thus not very practical but it does not take advantage of graphics cards, which could help.
It is also crap for aurora beams. (where a simple algorithm such as cubic fairs better)

It makes me wish someone else would reimplement it using CUDA or OpenCL because the results are great.
Sadly, due to overheating, i can't demonstrate it to you.
But you can download Photofunction here (requires Java 8.0) :
https://gameblabla.nl/files/photofunction.zip

I'm working on Gameblabla's Crappy Compilation, a compilation of 4 games combined together in one disc !
This is for the 3DO video game console btw.

I intend to release this on a real cd, with a case and a manual.
It will work on all 3DO consoles, except the early Goldstars because they have a wonky laser.
I only plan to make 5 copies though.
As for the CD itself, it will not be pressed (sadly) but it will be Gold-platted.

The four games are :
Unlucky Pony


Hinote the delivery man


Helicopters


KillMinds


If you have a 3DO emulator (and the bios), you can download the compilation here :
https://gameblabla.nl/files/gameblablacompil_3do.7z

Have you seen this game in the wild ?

Or how about this one :

Or even this one :


If so, then GRAB IT NOW !

This game was released by City Interactive in March 2012 and it is ultra-RARE !
Online, only 3 PS3 US copies were sold since the release.
That's insane, not even Class of Heroes 2G PS3 is this bad !

I made a blog post about it here that explains it in depth :
https://blog.gameblabla.nl/combat-wings-the-great-battles-of-wwii-where-the-hell-are-you/

Note that the Japanese version by Cyber Front, while quite expensive, is much more common than the US and PAL versions.


Does anyone here have copy ? Do you know even someone who owns it ?

After DJ and I released Opossum Massage Simulator for TI-84 CSE, PC and TI-Nspire,
i tried to port it to even more platforms.
At first, i tried porting it to the 3DO but i ran into some issues.
Then i tried the 32X but ran into some issues as well due to memory shortage and more.
Then i came back to developing games for the N64 and i finally got something working.



Here's Opossum Massage Simulator for the Nintendo 64 !
It is very similar to the PC port except :
- It has no saves (for now)
- It has more songs than the PC version

Download
https://gameblabla.nl/files/opossum_n64.zip

So...  after an unfortunate incident with my computer, i lost some files.
Or so i thought.
What really happenned is the fact all the files and even folders are there but are all hidden.
When i type this on the terminal, it returns this...
hatsune@hatsune:~$ ls
ls: cannot open directory .: Wrong medium type

My file manager shows me nothing, as if there was no files.

However, i can still go to folders as if they were there.
hatsune@hatsune:~$ cd Documents
hatsune@hatsune:~/Documents$

But(t) i'm not done yet !
The files are still there, look !
hatsune@hatsune:~/Documents/DEV/Gameblabla/Website_v2$ find index.htm
index.htm

And they are not corrupted anything !

However, when i try ls again, i get this :
hatsune@hatsune:~/Documents/DEV/Gameblabla/Website_v2$ ls
ls: cannot open directory .: Wrong medium type
My file manager shows me no files.

Photorec unfortunely only gives me eCryptfs files. (because i have encrypted my home directory)

So i thought... Maybe i can brute force filenames ?
I could write a bash script that could try to find all the files in a given directory and try to find the hidden filename in a loop like so.*
a.htm
aa.htm
aaa.htm
..
ab.htm

and so on.
Or maybe there is an utility for my case ?
fsck does not work unfortunely.

What should i do ?

Before embracing C, i used to make my games with Rpg Maker/Game Maker and (sometimes) Lua.
I used to be very creative and was a huge fan of Sonic.
Sadly, i lost a good chunk of them since then with the downfall of Megaupload, yoyogames sandbox gone...
I still have some of them though !
In this thread, i will post all my old games i can find.


I will begin with my very last Game Maker game, Sonic Run 4.
The Sonic Run series is a series of games made by Comet Games Company.
He did Sonic Run 2, which used to be on yoyogames (now gone).
And then there's the infamous Sonic Run 3, which was submitted to the Sonic Amateur Games Expo 2011.
It was noted for its lack of content and overall poor quality.


I made an unofficial sequel, Sonic Run 4, which follows more or less the games.

Sonic meets Pana the hedgehog and fell in love with her.
However, Pana asks him to gather over 9000 corpses of animals to win her heart.
Without any hesitation, Sonic goes on a rampage.

I made a playthrough of my own game here :

You can download it here

The game, when the first demos were released in early 2012, were not well received.
Most people were turned off by the game's plot and gameplay, they did not get the joke.
As a result, it stayed unfinished. (just like the other games in the series, except for Sonic Run 2)

I was hesitating putting it in the PC section since the Vtech Laser is a computer but whatever...


I was working on this for a while, it's a Flappy Bird clone for an old computer called the Vtech Laser 200.

A bit of history here
The Vtech Laser 200 is basically a low-cost computer first released in 1983 and it had a small empathis on education and programming.
It tanked at the time because :

• It wasn't very capable. The maximum resolution is 128x64 with 4 colors and no sprites or scrolling.
• There was already better computers such as the Oric and the ZX Spectrum which cost the same and were better.

After 2 years, it was discontinued. (along with a hell lot of other computers but that's another story)

I don't actually own this computer but the reason why it interested me is because bfg recently picked up one here (in french) :


He was wondering if we could make games on it. I wondered that too and accepted the challenge.
Turned out the C compiler z88dk already supported the computer so i worked on the game and a week later, its finished.

Grab it here and enjoy.
(You need the ROMS though and a VZ200 emulator, not easy i know. I will release a video of it soon)

The source code is on github

I personnaly can't wait to hear your death threats

Hello guys,
never thought i would do that but when it comes to C++, i kind of suck.
Basically, i'm working on porting a Plus/4 & C16 emulator (yapeSDL) and it's programmed in C++.
It compiles fine with GCC 4.8 but it fails to build with GCC 5.3...
Why ? According to GCC :

main.cpp:61:30: error: invalid new-expression of abstract class type 'TED'
static TED    *ted8360 = new TED;
                              ^
In file included from main.cpp:24:0:
tedmem.h:30:7: note:   because the following virtual functions are pure within 'TED':
class TED:
       ^


I have posted the source code here :
https://github.com/gameblabla/yapeSDL_nspire

I looked at upstream but it seems like they have not fixed it.

Any ideas ?
Because i have yet to grapse the concept of classes... 

I'm not sure if this is where i should post this... hopefully i'm not wrong :p

Today, i got myself a Pink Vtech V.Smile Pro. (also called V.Flash)
So far, nobody was able (or wanted) to run even something as trivial as a "hello world".

This is what i was able to gather about it :
The V.Smile Pro has an ARM926EJ-S processor clocked at 150Mhz (Same as the TI Nspire !)
and it has 16MB of SDRAM.

The CD drive supports CAV and is able to read CD-R/CD-RW up to 4x speed.
It can play Audio CDs and unlike most video game consoles, it has a headphone plug.
It has no copy protection or encryption but games have to be contained in a Vdisk housing or else the console will not play them.

As for the games, CDoty was able to boot from CD using only the following files (using Jumping Bean as a base) :

Quote+0ID_93120_003
|---0DUMMY50.DAT
+0SYSTEM
|---BOOT.BIN (Removed FA.VFF, because it's included in BOOT.BIN at offset 0xC014)
+MAIN
|---MAIN.VFF (Removed all MJP files)
|---T11.VFF

Each game seems to have a realtime kernel operating system on it.
The OS in question is apparently µMORE v4.0 ARM9T yet i can't find any mention of a ARM9T version...

It seems like there is no easy way to run executables on this thing.

I found that someone ported FreeRTOS to an ARM 929EJ-S board.
I built a GCC toolchain (similar to the ndless one) and after compiling it, i got a working binary on qemu.
Who knows, maybe it will work on the real thing...

Anyone interested in hacking this ?
Lots of V.Smile Pro in the wild are gathering dust and they don't cost a lot, so it would be a shame.
That, and i personally want to see c games running on this thing... :p

VDisc analysis
V.Flash Explorations (Cdoty)
Canard PC's review (with some interesting technical details)

So yesterday, i was looking for a N64 Controller at Cash Converters.
They unfortunely did not have one but then i found this...



Pokemon Gold for GBA ? WAT

Seems like a hack of Pokemon Red/Green to me but i could be wrong.
I didn't bought it because i no longer have my GBA.

Anyone has any ideas of what it could be ?

Before introducing some of my ports to GCW0,
a small introduction to the GCW0.

Introduction

The GCW0 is a video game handheld made by Justin & the community, originally announced through their Kickstarter.
It has a focus on retro-games with its low resolution of 320x240, (same resolution than the Nspire & Prime, actually)
has a firmware (except the wifi) that is free software and open-source.
It's equiped with a Ingenic JZ4770 1 GHz MIPS processor (same as Neo-Geo X) and it's GPU is a Vivante GC860 with free drivers available.
The OpenDingux firmware was developped by a bunch of voluntaries too.
Up to one point, even the Kickstarter communication was handled by the community, until they stopped doing that.

The little handheld had some problems due to some units not being sent to backers. (similar to what hapenned to the OUYA)
Most are getting their gcw0 now and it has recently become available again through ThinkGeek and others.
No numbers were given but it must have sold at least 2000 units worldwide.

Software comes in OPK file (similar to APKs) and can be found through either the OpenDingux forum or their official repository.
The website too (gcw-zero.com) is also maintained by the community. (mainly zear & surkow)

And now, here are the ports i did on GCW0. (without actually owing one yet, thanks to qemu)

Cannonball (Outrun)
This was my second port, my first one was the Pokemon Mini port by me and David Knight.
It runs slow because it uses a depth of 32 , which is slow on this device.
Cannonball is a recreation of Outrun with several additions like a 60FPS mode,
widescreen support among other things.

Super Mario War
Then i did a port of Super Mario War.
It works well and makes use of the IPU, it being a 640x480 resolution game.
IPU can be activated without any code and brings a good speedup as opposed to Software Scaling.
(Essentially, the IPU behaves as if it was doing GPU scaling)
It's still WIP because the controls in the menu were not optimised yet but it works well.

Ganbare Natsuki-San
I filled a request and ported this game to the handheld.
It's a game similar to Bonic Commando with a focus on Puzzles.
Cool game by Alpha Secret Base that also got a release on Xbox 360.

Gameblabla's Oswan
And then i made this thing.
It originally was an attempt to improve Alekmaul's Oswan emulator but
since then, it turned into its own thing.

Potator
Then i improved potator.
This thing runs fullspeed on a overclock Nspire so needless to say it works great on it.

Mednafen
I'm currently working on this.
Mednafen is a cool multi-emulator thingy that has lots of cores, almost all of them focused on accuracy.
Of course, most of them (especially VB, PSX and PCFX) are slow except that cool pce_fast core.

EDIT by DJ: Topic split from https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=670.msg22107#msg22107

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on September 16, 2015, 01:24:29 AM
Also I didn't know you made games for the 3DO. I think there are only 20 official games available for it but I didn't know that console had any homebrew programmers. EDIT Actually it's the Virtual Boy that only had 20 games. The 3DO seems to have many more, except that I heard that only one or two exclusives were good.

Well, i did 3DO homebrew games since 2013, i even ported a CHIP8 emulator to it.
3DO has many games : Sure, not all of them are good but there are some good games on it.
The 3DO, unlike the Sega Saturn and PSX, has no copy protection and it's protection for unlicensed games
has since been cracked. (it was a 256-bits RSA key)

A list  :
Return Fire (my favorite), Road Rash (best road rash), Lucienne's Quest, Samurai Showdown (so good SNK cancelled future ports of Fatal Fury for 3DO),  Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Starfighter, Wolfenstein 3D, Bust-A-Move etc...
That's far than "one or two exclusives were good" in my opinion.

(Hopefully my post was not too off-topic)

I always make sure to link to the latest version, don't worry.
A secondary goal to the project is to then port them to n2DLib, for speed.
I already did so for PokéMini, Oswan, Potator, PocketSNES and PicoDrive.

Emulators/Interpreters:
PicoDrive
Megadrive/Genesis emulator by notaz, ported to nspire by me.
PocketSNES
SNES emulator based on PocketSNES. Very fast
ScummVM
Point&Click Interpreter
Another World
Another World bytecode interpreter
PokéMini
PokéMon Mini emulator. Runs fullspeed.
Gameblabla's Oswan
Wonderswan emulator, forked from Oswan.
Potator
Watara Supervision emulator. Fullspeed when overclocked to 224Mhz.
SMS_Plus
Master System/Game Gear emulator. Runs almost fullspeed with no frameskip, no overclocking
Pom1
Apple I emulator.
Temper
NEC PC-Engine emulator.
Cannonball
Game engine for Outrun.

Games:
Alterego
Puzzle game
Helicopt3rs
A Swing Copters clone i originally did for 3DO.
Where's Derpy
Reprogramming of a flash game originally made by pepperpunk.
Super Methane Brothers
Game similar to Bubble Bobble.
Shisen-Seki
Game that plays similar to Mahjong.
Opossum Massage Simulator
Stupid game that was originally created by DJ Omnimaga, this is my own take on it
KillMinds
Puzzle game.
Wolfenstein 3D
Port of Wolfenstein 3D. Precessor to Doom.
Homing Fever
Survival game, game by Artur Rojek.

Tools:
RoQPlayer
Video Player that plays RoQ files.

=========================================================
Due to overall low activity on Omnimaga (i need feedback u no),
i have decided to post my thread here as well.
Let's start with the last 3 projects i have ported :

ScummVM

This time, the port was handled by rwill (he did nQuake) so kudos to him.
i only fixed Dragon History's support and compiled it.
ScummVM allows you to play some point-and-click games, such as Monkey Island.
Two versions are provided, a big and small version.
The big version is more compatible but takes more memory.
You can download it here

Another World (raw)

I have ported raw, a bytecode interpreter of Another World by Piotr Padkowski.
You need the MS-DOS port for this game.
The screen protection has not been cracked, if you lost your wheel, see here.
You can download it in the attachments below.

Super Methane Brothers

Super Methane Brothers is an Amiga game by Apache Software Ltd.
It was later recreated by rombust and i ported it to the TI Nspire.
You can download it in the attachments below

You can now download the game here :
http://codewalr.us/contests/2015-4x3/gameblabla-3x4simon.zip

Remember, this is a game for Android.
It was tested and works on Android 2.3.3-4.4.

==================================================
3x4 Simon is a BennuGD game for Android by me, gameblabla.
It plays like Simon except it uses the whole 3x4 resolution.
Nothing else to say really, the game is finished.

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

Hopefully i'm not too late, it's still May 30 here where i live.