We’ll add a communications class to the VUEngine soon, which allows multiplayer matches. It won’t matter what talks on the other end of the cable, be it two or more VB’s connected locally, or a PC program on the other end that communicates with other VBs over the internet. At least that’s how I picture it, Jorge will do the actual implementation of the class.

I REALLY hope we can get online multiplayer to work! It would be amazing to run an online service where you can play any future multiplayer VB games against each other. We’ll need to negotiate some standards to make that possible. Besides the VUEngine implementation, there should also be one in libgccvb. I think thunderstruck already worked on getting that done.

PVB sync would be nice, so that cartridges can linked to PVB accounts, highscores can be synced, etc. Then there could be a frontend integrated right in PVB.

It would also be really cool to offer a “spectator mode”, where people can watch online matches of others, right on their VBs.

Great, thank you Robert!

[KR155E]

If this is authentic, this is a really exciting find, Robert! Not only it’s the first known mention of North American releases of these games, but also even a press release on one of those. Also, “War Simulation”? Could that be Star Seed?

But, ugh, the auction has been deleted before I could save the images and description. It also had images of a Space Squash press release and of the cover. The description mentioned this being from CES 1995. I could only find a tiny thumbnail of the cover through Google image search.

Did anyone save all that?

Also, I am wondering what you guys think about the item. The cover looked pretty authentic to me, the spelling in the press release is horrible, though. 🙂 This article seems to back its authenticity: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/articles/?s013096001

• This reply was modified 8 years, 10 months ago by KR155E.

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Elrinth wrote:
if there is any simple way to:
1. build & compile
2. test in emulator

Yep, VBDE (http://vbde.planetvb.com/). 🙂

thunderstruck wrote:

Heh, I didn’t take it that way. I’m just thinking about doing more open source stuff for a while now. I just takes some time to get everything into a proper state.

That’s really cool, looking forward to it! That will help a lot with collaborating.

thunderstruck wrote:

That’s the one thing I’m not expert in. I was actually meaning that if you happen to need the source code of any of my projects, happen to have a problem I can assist on or need support in some other way I will be happy to help.

I realized my response may have sounded a bit uppish. That’s not how it was meant and I apologize if it came over like that! ❤

Anyway, I am grateful for your offer and I am sure we’ll happily get back to it! Amongst other things, but especially on the sound front, there’s a lot we can learn from your work. 🙂

I heard rumors about that. Just tell me if you need help (other then my money).

Thanks for the offer, Thunder! We’re actually pretty much done with everything, just need to clarify the legal aspects in terms of taxes. If you (or anyone else) happens to be an expert in German tax law in regards to crowdfunding, please contact me. 😉

This looks awesome, gonna send an email.

Hi and welcome to the community! Your offer regarding artwork sounds intriguing. Can we check out samples of your work somewhere?

That’s a great summary by thunderstruck, I just want to add a few more points.

8. Writing: if you’re good at writing, then you could help out homebrewers with game story, dialogues, manual text and such.

9. Translations: some homebrews are multilanguage and usually depend on volunteer translators to add more languages.

10. Spread the word, find new fans: you’re already doing a great job in this regard, Candice! By taking your VB (and VG) to expos and letting people try Hyper Fighting as an exceptional sample of VB homebrew, you’re doing a great service to the scene.

11. Money: if you’re not able to help in any of the above ways, monetary donations always help. For the right amount of money, some homebrewers are able and willing to work less on “real” jobs in favor of programming for the VB. Just remember what M.K. and Mr. Anon pulled of when Ben decided to fund a new VB game… In that vein, Jorgeche and me are currently preparing a crowdfunding campaign on Patreon. We hope to raise enough monthly donations to be able to work less on our day jobs and instead spend that time on working on the VUEngine and making Virtual Boy games. It would be incredible if we could find enough support to turn our passion into a part time of even full time job and being able to release regular new CIB Virtual Boy games. :vb:

Hmm, I wonder if the factories that once produced VB carts still have the equipment around. Probably not. But how cool would it be to obtain the original molds and use them to produce homebrew CIBs?!

Great comparison!

DocAetzn also had such a pre-production controller, which also came with a pre-prod stand. Some images in here: http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?post_id=28432

I just checked my controllers, btw, and both are made in China.

@RunnerPack: that’s some good points. Find an updated file attached.

1. Yes, there can be any types of hashes there. I added CRC32 to the example.

3. I omitted the currency part because it can be derived from the release region.

4. I agree with both points. The export should contain only raw data where possible, while the application does the formatting.

I implemented a simple API in the new PVB version which outputs some info for a ROM identified by a given MD5 hash. Example URL:

http://www.planetvb.com/rom-info/5b11d402f7e322c71a7d4fa6503631fa/

It currently outputs JSON, but I could of course do any other format. Output for the above URL attached, it contains some info about the ROM as well as all regional releases. Would that work for you?

I like the idea! I could implement an API that spits out all required information and images for a commercial or homebrew game. How would we identify a ROM, by its checksum?

It would be great to be able to use the actual VB Controller when testing code on the emulator! I’d take a couple.

[KR155E]

I already set up a server and some channels a little while ago but did not yet get around to properly configure everything and thus did not share an invite link yet. You’re right, though. With the recent connection problems, this is a good time to get started. Come on in! 🙂

https://discord.gg/QRcq7QC

• This reply was modified 9 years ago by KR155E.

These are great, StereoBoy, minimal and very readable! I like the bottom middle one best. I think you should add a black outline to the controller in the front like you did to the ones in the top row images, so the two controllers can be better distinguished from each other.

Great news!

So this is the place where dreams are turned into reality. Magical! 😀

Shokwav wrote:
Are you looking for a volunteer programmer for any odd work? I have several years experience in assembly & low-level. Made a few demos for the N64 & NES.

That’d be amazing, thanks for the offer! There’s quite a few critical parts in the engine, some deep nested loops, which could benefit from being rewritten in assembler. The job would require to look into some of these loops, decide if they can be better optimized than what the compiler is doing, and do the porting if the answer is “yes”.

Here’s a list:
1) Affine transformation function (VUEngine/source/base/libgccvb/Affine.c)
2) CharSet write (VUEngine/source/graphics/2d/Textures/Char/CharSet.c)
3) BgmapTexture write (VUEngine/source/graphics/2d/Textures/Bgmap/BgmapTexture.c)
4) Sprites render (VUEngine/source/graphics/2d/Sprites/Bgmap/BgmapSprite.c, VUEngine/source/graphics/2d/Sprites/Bgmap/MBgmapSprite.c, VUEngine/source/graphics/2d/Sprites/Object/ObjectSprite.c – That last one is particularly ugly)
5) Container’s applyEnvirtonmentTo* methods (VUEngine/source/stage/entities/Container.c)

It would be cool if you could check whether the for loops that have a single __VIRTUAL_CALL inside them could be further optimized.

Latest source: https://bitbucket.org/jorgeche/vuengine/src

Out of interest, since I closely followed the N64 homebrew scene for many years, which demos did you make for N64?