pinmagic schrieb:

Maybe 7 or 8 years ago (?), before prices skyrocketed, a guy posted a listing on ebay with a VB and “Mario’s Dream Tennis.” I wrote to say the proper title was Mario’s Tennis, and he responded that “this one says Mario’s Dream Tennis.” For some reason, I didn’t follow up and bid. Not sure what I was thinking. Can’t even recall if I checked the closing price.

That was most likely just a regular Mario’s Tennis cart with a Blockbuster sticker that had the working title on it. I had one once. Found a photo here: https://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=6993&post_id=39477#forumpost39477

Wow mate, that is an ingenious design! So, if I got that right, you have _three_ PCBs in there, counting in the bottom and top sides of the cart which are basically one-sided PCBs? So you won’t even need any molds but can get the case done by the board house, then hold it all together with that 3D printed frame.

Besides the brilliant construction, I obviously love the e-ink display and embedded buttons which make this an “almost-multi cart”. ;-D

Gotte run, but will post some news about this later today.

https://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4520&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&type=&mode=0&start=0

Looks nice, but your font is 6×6 pixels per character, while tiles on the Virtual Boy are 8×8 pixels, so it is not really useable unfortunately. At least there would be a lot of whitespace around the characters (or blackspace, rather :vb:).

Funny thing, over 10 years ago, the owner of the Jack Bros and Panic Bomber prototypes called me on my phone to ask me about the rarity of those. No idea where he got my number from. IIRC, we later also talked through PM and I bought a VUE-Debugger video output board from him through ebay.

BTW, there also was a prototype of Virtual Bowling, of which DogP had pictures on his site. He borrowed it from its owner alongside Faceball and a VUE-Debugger. It was just the final version with the debug menu enabled, though.

To clarify on the “FB+” and boxes topic:

Back when I was making them, the first 100 or so units of FlashBoy Plus came CIB and in official cartridge shells. Like the original FlashBoy, but in an updated box.

After Richard started handling everything by himself, the box got ditched and cart shells were 3D printed, in various forms. From that point, the product was called “FlashBoy+” instead of “FlashBoy Plus”.

I was still sitting on a big batch of box prints at that point, so I split these and sent them to some members of the community who sold them off to FB+ buyers who also wanted a box. speedyink posted the forum link above. I believe all boxes were sold off a while ago.

The original announcement post has some high quality images of the FlashBoy Plus box, BTW: https://www.planetvb.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=307

There’s an error in the video: UncleTusk and David Tucker are not the same person. Tusk has never done any homebrew and David hasn’t been active in many years.

Other than that: Sweet! Thank you for the nice review! Do you know yet which game you will cover next? I am looking forward to it.

RetroDan wrote:

What codebase will be used, or will there be bases for multiple languages? I’d love to be able to use my native C++ instead of dealing with the kludgefest that is straight C.

The VSCode extension is tailored for VUEngine, which uses C++ like syntax. But you can configure it to work with any other library instead, like libgccvb.

A VSCode-based successor to VBDE is currently in the works. It will be available for Windows, Linux and Mac. So if you can wait a few more weeks (or possibly months), we’ll have you covered. 🙂

The web server crashed every night at 3 am German time for the past few days. I think I have finally found and fixed the issue.

VmprHntrD schrieb:
You’re going to be waiting awhile, and you know if you combed through all his comments around so far you’d have those answers.

1) In theory yes, it would have the room including that game
2) Yes
3) No padding needed

Where’s the info coming from that padding is not needed? AFAIK this cart basically has Kevin’s Cart Programmer build-in, which does not support automatic padding yet in the latest firmware.

Thumbs up, cr1901!

Set up a page, I will later add your releases: https://www.planetvb.com/modules/tech/?sec=tools&pid=prog-vb

I just tried the flasher on Windows 10 with a FlashBoy Plus. I kept getting error messages:

“Error: hidapi error: Der E/A-Vorgang wurde wegen eines Threadendes oder einer Anwendungsanforderung abgebrochen.”

(Google Translate: “Error: hidapi error: I / O operation was aborted due to thread end or application request.”)

After I switched from USB 2 to USB 3, it worked just fine!

Great work, cr1901, thank you! That thing will be a nice addition to VBDE 2.0. In fact, we plan to release Linux and Mac versions as well, so a cross platform flasher was like a missing link. Being able to flash via the command line, without requiring further input, is a welcome bonus. 🙂

Any idea why Windows Defender SmartScreen complains about the app being unknown, and prevents it from being started on the first run?

(Issues created on GitHub)

Attachments:

1. 

   prog-vb-windows-defender.png
   

Good idea, HorvatM! So, according to the usercenter, 50 users own V. Bowling, 52 own V. Lab. Lists attached.

Attachments:

1. owners-vbowling.csv
2. owners-vlab.csv

Cool stuff! Thank you!

Levine91 wrote:
If I’m wrong, my apologies but there is an Mexico Club Nintendo magazine from July 95 on eBay that doesn’t seem to be scanned to the site.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/VIRTUAL-BOY/254053737844?hash=item3b26c86574:g:c9oAAOSw1WtboYAF:rk:2:pf:0

I’ve got scans of dozens and dozens of magazines, including this one, which I never got around to add to the site. (@___@;)

Hey,

if you end up making a tutorial series I would love to help. I had this idea of recording a stream in which I try to get something to work with your engine for a while.

Cheers

Looking at the votes so far, we’ll definitely have to create these tutorials next year. We’re pleasantly surprised to see that so many people are interested in learning how the engine works!

Good idea to collaborate on this somehow, let’s talk on Discord when you’re around!

I am super interested in seeing a Point N Click adventure game like Ambrosines Monster Manor. It’s what I’ve wanted since the first time I played a Virtual Boy.

You’re the only one so far to request a graphics adventure game, so it doesn’t look like this will make it onto the TODO list for next year. But on the other hand, an engine for this type of game should be fairly easy to build. Might be something to consider as the “simple sample game” we want to build in our upcoming tutorial series.

The graphics in Monster Manor look like they were rendered from scenes built in a 3D modeling program? I wonder if it would be possible to get the original files from the developers and do stereoscopic renderings…

Awesome, ElmerPCFX! I am glad these patches are finally out! I guess we now have a foot in the door for Linux (and possibly OSX) versions of VBDE. 🙂

Wait, the dumped ROM is over 16 MB? It’s heavily overdumped then, the ROM should be 2 MB if it’s Bound High.

2 MB would also be the right size to flash to the FlashBoy.

Try this tool to shrink the ROM: https://www.planetvb.com/modules/tech/?sec=tools&pid=shrinkvb

Do the dumped ROMs work on an emulator?

Woohoo, it’s happening! 🙂