morintari wrote:
Ok,
I’m sorry I asked how to pronounce it and I got a response which I thought it was right.

Just paste his name into this. (Don’t worry, it accepts Romaji; I checked).

I’m not sure what a lapfox is, but that shirt’s pretty stylin’! Nice work!

Let’s hope you don’t get any C&D’s from Nintendo’s pack of ambulance chasers 😉

It has a somewhat steep learning curve, but I definitely recommend using gritVB and a standard paint program for graphics.

When you get it all set up, graphics changes are as simple as editing an image (I suggest using .PNGs) in a paint program (lots of free ones to choose from) and running “make” (or whatever build utility you use).

It’s basically a “compiler” (or maybe decompiler…) for images. It takes an image file, reduces it to the VB’s four grey scales (if needed), chops it into chars, and outputs the chars and bgmap(s) as either C, assembly, or raw binary.

I haven’t used it all that much, but I can help you figure it out. Of course, dasi’s the one who patched the original grit to make it, so he probably knows more about it than I do.

BTW, I’m still not sure what you mean by a “screen wrap effect.” Surely you want levels that are longer than one screen width, right? The VB can stick up to 8 bgmaps together as one, long horizontal (or vertical) strip. That’s 4096 pixels wide! (Of course, that’s not really needed for a scrolling level, but it helps).

FuriousJorge wrote:
Soooo, I am trying to create parallax scrolling for the background, but due to my poor programming skills I am having difficulty programming an image to scroll across the screen. I am also having difficulty figuring out how to create screen wrapping. Does anyone have any tips? I would greatly appreciate it! 🙂

Parallax scrolling is just scrolling two (or more) images at different speeds. Do you know how to scroll one image yet? That might be a good place to start 😉

The wiki and the available demo code are both good sources of info.

It might be handy to get a github account so you can share your code and other people can help you work on it (assuming you want people to help ;-)).

This does sound like a pretty fun game—to both play and program. I really want to help you get this project off the ground. I’ve already got some ideas for features that might add depth (no pun intended) to the game mechanic. PM me if you want to hear them.

Are you talking about using rechargeable cells in both the “mystery toy” (I’m guessing a Furby ;-)) and the camera, or just the camera? In either case, if the device is designed for primary (alkaline) cells, which operate at 1.5V (nominal) and you try to run it with rechargeable cells (either NiCd or NiMH) which operate at 1.2V (nom.) then it can affect the performance.

In the case of a motorized toy, the lower voltage could indeed affect the speed of the motor(s), the volume of sounds/speech, etc. In a digital camera (a notoriously “high drain” device), since it uses battery voltage as an indicator of battery capacity, it would show “low battery” even for freshly charged cells. However, since most rechargeables have a flatter discharge curve than alkaline primaries, it may well operate just as long or longer on the former than on the latter. It depends on the device. They do have a higher self-discharge, though (except for “Eneloop” and similar).

BTW, most of the time, damage to the battery terminals results in either no discernible change or complete failure of the device to operate. It rarely causes problems between these extremes, and only on the simplest devices (like flashlights, FM radios, etc.). Also, to my knowledge, rechargeable cells don’t usually leak corrosive materials when drained like alkaline/carbon-zinc batteries. I think they usually only leak Hydrogen gas from a safety valve when overcharged/overheated (at which point they’re useless).

Talk about overkill… a $20 ATMEGA board to do simple shift-register to USB conversion?! It could be done with a $1-$2 8-pin ATtiny and zero extra components (well, maybe a ceramic cap or two). I know it’s because all of his controller converters are based on the one board, but in this case, standardization is not the way I would go… In fact, I just got an AT90USB162 board from eBay for ~$14 (shipped) that would do this easily. Sure, the firmware would have to be written, but it would be very simple, and could possibly even be ported from Raphnet’s (freely available) code.

Anyway, your questions are all answered on the product page (if you use a little logic).

No apology needed, Morintari. I didn’t realize you hadn’t yet familiarized yourself with the site’s facilities.

To add to KR155E’s info: a quick method for sending a PM to someone whose post you’re reading is to use the drop-down box to the upper-left containing their user-name. Just choose the “PM” option and a PM to them should pop up.

You can also get to a user’s profile (to use the “PM” button) by clicking their name in, for example, the “Recently Replied Topics” side-bar. This works practically anywhere a user-name is displayed on the site (as long as it’s a link).

Those are some very interesting ideas, morintari! I don’t even like fighting games that much, and I’m still intrigued at the thought of playing such a game 😀 (Actually… programming it sounds kinda fun, too ;-))

I’m curious… Is there a reason you felt this shouldn’t have been a PM (private message) to VirtualChris or, at the very least, posted in the existing Insect Combat thread?

Don’t get me wrong… it’s nice that you want to contribute to VB homebrew development, but let’s not needlessly clutter the forums KR155E is nice enough to provide at no cost. A good “rule-of-thumb” might be that, if the subject of your thread begins with a user’s name, it’s probably best to use a PM, instead.

Thanks

DaVince wrote:
Thank you for the link, RunnerPack. That is more or less exactly what I was thinking: make the PC run the game, create a screen to render and send it to the VB. That way you could even create the most modern looking games and display it on a VB. Which would be funny but also pretty awesome!

You’re welcome. Yes, I had that idea even before I heard about Alberto and his project. I attempted to make a cable to try out the demo, but I think I used a different pinout (the LPT port has scads of practically identical pins) that I got from one of DogP’s link-port projects.

the Wii running through the pc and then the VB displaying the graphics

Wait, this is even crazier. What involvement at all does the Wii have, here? Might as well dump the Wii and have the PC run the game and output it to the VB (as described above)…

I think he means emulate the Wii on the PC (TMK, the only way to get stereoscopic output) and send the video through Alberto’s system to the VB. It could probably be done with a “veGL” video output plugin for Dolphin (but only for older versions, because 3.0 no longer has the plugin interface).

DaVince wrote:
I do wonder what that GL system is RunnerPack mentioned, though…

http://www.planetvb.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=245

Click the link, click “Information” at the top, then click the first link. It’s all explained (in Spanglish ;-)). There are a few posts in the forum about getting this working, too. Just search on PVB for “veGL”.

PS: Good job on the punctuation, Morintari! :thumpup:

If you can figure out how to make the Wii display a stereoscopic image (meaning any game, not just a specific homebrew app that does it) it would be fairly simple to display the resulting images on the VB’s displays (given that you have enough money for the required hardware). The reverse has been done (displaying VB video on a TV/VGA monitor) and there is even an OpenGL-like system for rendering images on a PC and sending them to a VB through its link port. The problem is, there’s no global stereoscopic mode on the Wii (or any other system, AFAIK – the 3DS being one possible exception).

TL;DR: It’s economically infeasible, and pretty much pointless.

PS: punctuation was invented for a reason.

fobbio wrote:
Here’s what I get out of the compiler.

v810-gcc -Wall -mv810 -xc -o Board.o Board.C
/usr/local/v810/lib/crt0.o: In function `loop_intclear':
/usr/local/v810/lib/crt0.o(.text+0x190): undefined reference to `main'
/usr/local/v810/lib/crt0.o(.text+0x194): undefined reference to `main'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make: *** [Tetris.o] Error 1

Are these errors in concert with the current state of the GCC NVC 2.95 Precompiled or is it just me. Btw I put the updated crt0.o in the specified directory.

Hard to say who’s at fault without seeing “Tetris.c”. Maybe you should just zip up your whole project and attach it.

BTW, when working with “unixish” software like gcc, it’s best to stick with file names/paths with no spaces and consisting only of lowercase letters and underscores. Just something to keep in mind…

Also, this line:

v810-objcopy -S -O binary $(TARGET).o $(TARGET).vb

Belongs under the “$(TARGET).vb: $(TARGET).o” rule (But I don’t think that’s causing your current problem).

1. Did you try the “tighten a little bit first” method? Maybe you could use a regular screw in the hole you drilled to give it a little tweak, and then try your pliers, glue, etc.

2. You could also try carefully heating the screw just a touch with a soldering iron (assuming you have one) which will do three things: 1) slightly expand the screw and, thus, the hole it’s in, 2) slightly (I hope!) melt the plastic, and 3) turn that penetrating oil into a nice bit of smoke 😛 (Actually, you might not want to heat it that much, which makes it a good indicator of possible overheating; if you smell burning oil, back off!).

Also, if you find a screw extractor that small, let me know where you found it. I’ve been wanting one for quite a while.

Keep us updated.

VirtualJockey wrote:
All Japanese consoles have no bar codes.

A more efficient way to say that would be: “No Japanese consoles have bar codes.” 😉

Back on topic…

Dokstarr wrote:
Okay.

I picked up a bunch of carts and another system off of craigslist. Looks like it is the actual VB and not the Wario Demo cart.

I tested out the carts is the new VB and they work – didn’t work on the older one.

Any idea on what would be a good idea to look into for fixing the VB in the stand? Should I just try to swap out of the systems. The new one I got looks to be in better condition (at least the foam flap anyways).

Did you try the display VB with your new controller? I agree with others that it sounds like a controller issue. The controller could be broken and still manage the “getting to the title screen once” thing.

If it is the controller, it wouldn’t be that hard to fix (especially given that it seems to partially work; it might just need a cleaning) and fairly cheap to just replace.

fobbio,

Great to see a new dev’r on the scene! :thumpup:

Most of those errors stem from certain versions of the VB headers containing macro definitions that span multiple lines (using the “\” line-continuation character). For whatever reason, that was dropped from the pre-processor in newer GCC versions.

Just go through the headers and delete the backslashes and newlines to get the macro definitions on one line each.

That might be all you need, but, if not, at least you will be able to see the real errors 😉

I hope that helps.

The mednafen 0.9 WIP has excellent VB support, and it also supports horizontal interlaced mode. The relevant setting is “vb.3dmode hli”. Be sure to read the notes at the top of the VB documentation page about setting the scaling numbers and using full-screen mode.

[RunnerPack]

KR155E wrote:
…

I tried copying both the JPG and MPO to my computer and attaching them from there. Unfortunately, I can’t open the MPO from the 3DS.

…

You can open an .MPO files with “Stereo Photo Maker“, view them using many stereo techniques, and save in many different stereo/file formats (i.e. cross-eye vs. anaglyph and JPEG vs. PNG, etc.).

You can even losslessly batch extract the JPEGs from multiple .MPOs. I attached the JPEGs from your puppy picture. Now you just need some PHP code to do the conversion/splitting on the server. Fortunately, the format is pretty simple.

EDIT: This snippet of PHP code might be relevant.

• This reply was modified 15 years, 1 month ago by RunnerPack.
• This reply was modified 15 years, 1 month ago by RunnerPack.

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VirtualJockey wrote:

I thought that no company made the PCBs with the pinout, and you needed to sacrifice a cart for the part. Was I mistaken?

The reason for cart destruction has nothing to do with PCBs. It’s just that the only way to get connectors that fit in a standard VB cartridge shell is by removing them from an existing game. There are, apparently, “off-the-shelf” connectors that mate with the VB’s cartridge connector, but I gather they are hard to find, moderately expensive, and don’t really fit a standard cartridge PCB or shell. As an aside, if someone with a source of such connectors is reading this, I would participate in a group purchase of these if the final price was right. But that’s a discussion for another thread…

FYI, the word “pinout” refers to a list or chart of the pins of a connector or device and the corresponding signals those pins carry. When discussing a PCB, one usually refers to the “outline” of a part – the arrangement of copper “pads” to which a part is soldered.

Tighe wrote:
Thanks so much for this font! It really came in handy when I was making the control panel overlay for my Arcade Virtual Boy:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?p=1643234#post1643234

Any time, Tighe. I’m glad I could play some small part in such an absolutely brilliant project! IMHO, it’s at least ten times as collectible as any official Virtual Boy merchandise 😀

My favorite parts are the Galactic Pinball flipper buttons and the specification and dedication plates on the back. I’ve got to get some of those clear label sheets!