Virtually all console producers follow this route ( I know of none
that dont ), it allows a level of quality control completely unavailable on
the pc, one of the reasons that games on the pc dont do so well ( other than
quake ), the amount of testing that a game goes through is immense ( trust
me I know ) before approval, how many times has an end user believed his pc
to be broken due to dodgy software, Nintendo dont want users to think their
machines are dodgy due to inadaquately tested software.
	 The real reason for this policy however is money, The development of
a top console is extremely expensive, and they actually sell them at very
low prices when thats taken into consideration, think how much a small lcd
tv is to buy, add in the relevent computational electronics and you'd be
hard pressed to match the gba price, never mind the many millions that were
spent developing/marketing it. In many cases machines have been sold as loss
leaders, similar to the mobile phone market, with companys using software
sales to make up the deficit, and eventually lead them into profit.

> Unfortunately, all source code is still in my head.

Sounds like most of my projects :-)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Thats almost exactly how i feel. LOL

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: The Blue Hippo
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2001 12:51 AM
   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Nintendo's 4th Reich


   Well, here in the United States, they claim to have a "Seperation Between
Church and State"  As a Southern Baptist I sometimes find this troublesome. 
Anyway, just the simple fact Nintendo sued such a company is one of the things
that made me a fan of SEGA.  Of course now we have super powers trying to take
over the videogame market such as Sony (which probably has already succeeded)
and Microsoft.  And SEGA went "Console Agnostic" So I'm basically going to
support the Nintendo consoles now. :)

   Anyway, no need into getting into a console war.  They all have their plus and
minuses.

   Anyway, Peace y'all

   Jason

   [cropped by mod. PLEASE fix your e-mail client]

   ==
   J.T. - The Blue Hippo

> BUT, if you REALLY want to get it publish, do what I'm doing, make
> an
> impressive demo, write up a beefy lookin' design doc and plonk it on
> the
> table of some developer/publisher. If they like what they see,
> they'll
> publish it. (Just make sure you have copyright and stuff sorted out
> beforehand... and make sure you dont give them any hard copies
> before a
> contract has been signed)... or, if you show it to a publisher and
> they want
> you to develop it... they can actually ask Nintendo to give you
> developing
> rights.

> But I'd say at very best you'd get hired into a development company
> for
> showing your competence... and hey, that aint all bad. :)
>
> Then just work your way up to game designer.

this is exactly the best way to go about it.  rather that complain that
the big N is mean and blah blah blah, put your nose to the grindstone and
make a bad ass demo.  an artist friend of mine and I made a certain demo
for a certain competition earlier this year, and we both recently scored
jobs at a GBA development studio.  it's not easy, but it is possible.  If
you've already shown that you know what you are doing, and are willing to
do it without compensation, then there is little reason why you would not
get hired at a dev studio and start making money for your work.

aaron
________________________________________________________________
GET INTERNET ACCESS FROM JUNO!
Juno offers FREE or PREMIUM Internet access for less!
Join Juno today!  For your FREE software, visit:
http://dl.www.juno.com/get/web/.

Compression for save data will be a bad idea, what if you can't compress it
enough to fit in? your basically screwed and won't be able to save.

All you have to do is save bit by bit.

Lets say I have a game were you can get a maximum of 500 coins, 30 lives,
and choose from 4 characters. And you want to save all that data.
To save coins 0 - 500,  501 combinations, you need 9bits. To save a number
0-30, 31 combinations,  you need 5 bits. And to save the character you need
1-4, 4 combinations, 2 bits. Total of 9+5+2= 16bits.

So basically we want to make an unsigned int from our coins, lives and
charater data, so something simply like this would do

unsigned int createsavedata(unsigned int coins, unsigned int lives, unsigned
int character)
{
unsigned int data = coins;
data|= lives<<9;
data|=coins<<14;
return data;
}

then we can save that to the sram
and to read it all back we just grap the 16bits and

void readsavedata(unsigned int savedata, unsigned int* lives, unsigned int*
coins, unsigned int *char)
{
*coins = savedata & 0x01ff;
*lives = (savedata>>9) & 0x001f;
*char = (savedata>>14);
}

This is for an extermely simple case of course, buts thats the kinda of idea

Please disregard my earlier post!  I actually received my linker in the mail
TODAY, just after I sent my previous email.  I think that the mail to the US
really is pretty screwed up.  Craig from CDWorld was surprised to hear that
I still hadn't received my package, and then later on today, it arrived.
I'm sorry I doubted them!
Bob

Well, here in the United States, they claim to have a "Seperation Between Church
and State"  As a Southern Baptist I sometimes find this troublesome.  Anyway,
just the simple fact Nintendo sued such a company is one of the things that made
me a fan of SEGA.  Of course now we have super powers trying to take over the
videogame market such as Sony (which probably has already succeeded) and
Microsoft.  And SEGA went "Console Agnostic" So I'm basically going to support
the Nintendo consoles now. :)

Anyway, no need into getting into a console war.  They all have their plus and
minuses.

Anyway, Peace y'all

Jason

[cropped by mod. PLEASE fix your e-mail client]

==
J.T. - The Blue Hippo

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1


Or you could use divineo.co.uk , ordered a lot from them, always next day.
And when i had to return something they couldnt have been more helpful.

- --
Tom "Tomahawk" Badran
Imperial College Dept of Computing
- ---------------------------------------------
PGP Public key available from:
certserver.pgp.com
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Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org

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To the best of my knowledge on this, Nintendo cant do squat about you
developing for the platform. The can point and wave a nasty looking
finger... but that's about it.

Making your own carts and selling the games they CAN do something about,
because the GBA cart design is patented (To the best of my knowledge) and
you also have to have that Nintendo logo in the ROM for it to boot, which is
copyrighted (Lets not get into a war about 'Cant copyright electronic
storage' shit).

BUT, if you REALLY want to get it publish, do what I'm doing, make an
impressive demo, write up a beefy lookin' design doc and plonk it on the
table of some developer/publisher. If they like what they see, they'll
publish it. (Just make sure you have copyright and stuff sorted out
beforehand... and make sure you dont give them any hard copies before a
contract has been signed)... or, if you show it to a publisher and they want
you to develop it... they can actually ask Nintendo to give you developing
rights.

I've been out of the GBA community for a while, so this might have changed,
but this was true as of about 3 or so months ago.

But I doubt Jetpack would go very far, mainly because it's only a port
(Correct?) of another game, and probably wont blow the socks off any
publishers.

Still, anything's worth a try. :)

But I'd say at very best you'd get hired into a development company for
showing your competence... and hey, that aint all bad. :)

Then just work your way up to game designer.

BTW: Does anyone know if anyone at trade shows/expos/developer conferences
have any problems with you using writable carts? AGDC (Australian Game
Developers Conference) is in a week and my company has a demo it wants to
show off. :)

------------------------------
ZombieHunter... chock full of... uh... Zombie goodness.
And we know you love webcomics. ;)
http://www.zombiehunter.net


_________________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com

I know this is kind of a newbie set of questions, but I've been digging
around the FAQs, docs, archives, and I can't find the answers.

I downloaded the GCC from http://gccgba.gbacode.net (I am running Win2000)
It came with crt0.S and lnkscript in the /extra folder

Now, I am trying to understand how things work and how I should do things.
If I just compile a c file with a simple makefile (no special flags), it is
asking me for crtbegin.o, which is referred to by lnkscript.  So I assume
that lnkscript is automatically used when GCC links because it's in the
/extra folder.  Is that correct?

Next question, where can I get the correct copy of crtbegin.o?  It's not in
my distribution, I tried DL-ing the c and c++ versions just in case and it
was in neither.

What does crtbegin.o do? What was it compiled from?

Finally, what is the story with crt0.s?  It seems to set things up and
branch to your C code, so is it required in all GCC projects?

Thanks!!

Rebecca

cdworld.co.uk is reliable, i got my flash kit a couple of days after my
cheque cleared last week. I'm guessing your order just got confused or
something, why not go to his house (his address is on the website) and
collect your order in person? As for the cds that come with with kit, they
contain freeware games/demos only.

personnally I would buy from this guy again.

Decay.

>Does anyone know of a RELIABLE source from which to buy a Flash Linker in
>the UK?
>
>I ask as I ordered one from a bunch of con-artists who go by the name of
>"cdworld.co.uk" almost a fortnight ago. Despite their promises of 24hour
>delivery and several emails enquiring as to what's going on NOTHING has
>arrived yet (not even the courtesy of a reply to an email).
>
>I THOROUGHLY recommend you not doing business with these people!!!!
>
>Ho hum, off to see trading standards tomorrow....
>
>
>  TTFN - Pete.
>


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Well if you ever get something working please let me know.
Thanks,

Matt

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Robert Knepp
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 8:07 PM
   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Rogue-like games on gba


   > Hey, do you guys have a demo of what your talking about here?
   > Id like to try it.
   >
   > Matt

   Unfortunately, all source code is still in my head. I do however have a
   growing list of docs with useful algorithms and concepts mostly relating to
   RL, and how to implement them on the GBA...

   Robert Knepp

Rob,
1) Although it probably goes against the concept of the game which
you are tying to implement.. you could limit the storage required by
having 'Levels' or nonreturnable stages. Although in this case I
suggest you have a 'moving window' of stages. Ie basically locking
certan areas (and thus not requiring you to save information about
them) after they have been useless for a while. An example might be
collapsing the entrance to a mine which you haven't used for a while
and are not going to again. If you are subtle about when and what you
lock, then you might get away with it.

2) But anyway, the storage on a cart isn't that small especially if
you're going to divide it up into bit flags. Surely you'll run out of
space in the ROM for the game code/info first?

3) I remember seing somewhere that one of the BIOS calls was a
huffman decompression call. (Can't remember where, this it was in a
description of what one of the emulators was emulating.) If you put
research into this area, then you'd probably get better compression
using Huffman than RLE.

Hope that stirs up some comment!
Owain

> Unfortunately, all source code is still in my head. I do however
have a
> growing list of docs with useful algorithms and concepts mostly
relating to
> RL, and how to implement them on the GBA...
>
> Robert Knepp

> all in all. if you set everything up right and restrict yourself here
> and there it'd require a REALLY huge game or dynamically
> created game to
> create any problems.

Anyone care to explain the rogue genre to Jonas?

:)

Kriss

"compressed" savegames is not a good idea IMHO (as you would prefer a
static number of saveslots or have to take care of memory card
restrictions, ps2,dc,psone,etc... if i don't remember wrong you aren't
allowed to compress savegames on ps2 and dc if the size of the file
could exceed a preallocated space, however not being able to use all
saveslots should not be a problem)

anyhow being "smart" is quite easy. reduce yourself to using bitflags as
much as possible (gives you 8:1 extra info if you can use that)
and counters that does alot of stuff and so on.

our game (headhunter, on ps2 and dc) doesn't take THAT much space as we
keep down on most stuff. (only setting flags at necessary places.etc)
and we could've crammed out more if we wanted to spend a bit more time
on it.

all in all. if you set everything up right and restrict yourself here
and there it'd require a REALLY huge game or dynamically created game to
create any problems.

/ jonas lund

-----Ursprungligt meddelande-----
Från: Robert Knepp [mailto:robert.knepp@...]
Skickat: den 30 oktober 2001 20:02
Till: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
Ämne: Re: [gbadev] Re: Rogue-like games on gba


My RL is going to be heavy on 'quests' and has a plot... although these
do
not need to be followed, and therefore is going to have alot of
information
saved for backup (ex. quests A, B, and D complete... quest C failed,
player
stats and inventory, the player has visited this unique area, and
travelled
through the 12 levels (which must be saved somewhere) of the large
dungeon,
and left 2000 gold laying on the 4th level of the dungeon, etc.. etc..
etc..)

According to a NetHack-loving friend, the saved game files for that game
are
around 150K, and can become larger.  I'm partial to ADOM (which is more
like
my RL than NetHack but has alot less quests than mine), and only being
half-way through the game, the save files are some 500K, and grow by
10K-15K
each time I save (obviously saving dungeon layouts and what not).

How much space is available for 'saved' games on a standard GBA cart?
I've
been thinking alot about my new RL (currently being dev'ed on the PC,
but
ultimately going to be placed on the GBA) and 'in general' the size of a
saved game is relatively large (in comparison to the actual game
itself).  I
know this info is probably found in some unofficial doc, but I thought
I'd
ask here to speed things up.... and perhaps get some useful pointers...

I've already determined that if the size is small, I'm going to end up
having to start storing stuff at the bit-level when saving.. which is
going
to be a pain... but if that's the way it must be, then so be it...

Thanks In Advance!
Robert Knepp

[cropped by mod]

I also ordered from these guys and it has been almost a month, still no sign
of it.  I email them and they said it was because of customs and the
increased mail security, but that I would get it eventually.   I guess that
was a lie.
$210 down the tube.  This is not a very promising start to my GBA
programming activity.
Bob

> Hey, do you guys have a demo of what your talking about here?
> Id like to try it.
>
> Matt

Unfortunately, all source code is still in my head. I do however have a
growing list of docs with useful algorithms and concepts mostly relating to
RL, and how to implement them on the GBA...

Robert Knepp

http://www.christianlink.com/media/wisdom/.
Good versus Evil ... mmmmmm ... fight against fanatism .. mmmmm .. ok ... I see
Exucse me for that .. but in France we made a separation between religion and
power (politics) and life in general ... I am shocked by this sort ... of things
...

And more particularly saying 'the 4th reich' .. I mean when I see that link, I
wonder who can give a lesson, and this is not the place to have this sort of
discussion (using so much violent words, and so big references ..)


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

They have a website at http://www.christianlink.com/media/wisdom/.
The book I mentioned in my other post to this thread also talks about
the case: "Game Over Press Start to Continue" by David Sheff.

--- In gbadev@y..., "Webmaster" <webmaster@d...> wrote:
> Hey, where can I get some info on the Wisdom Tree case?
> Thats cool.

Hey, do you guys have a demo of what your talking about here?
Id like to try it.

Matt
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Dan Cotter
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 5:47 AM
   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Re: Rogue-like games on gba


   You only have 32KB of SRAM. But remeber that this is enough for like
   260,000+ flags. So instead of saving "taken coin from level 9 at position
   13,3" you just set one bit somewhere that the rom knows means the same
   thing. Of course this can be futher compressed for example if door3 cant be
   opened before door2 which cant be opened before door1 there is no need for 3
   flags. you can just have 00 - no doors 01, first door open, 10 - door 1 and
   2 open, 11 all doors opened etc.

   > RLE would be a viable way of reducing the size of the save files. I will
   > post my thinking in my depth later on.

   Huffman is also good if you have alot of repeated stuff.




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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

> From: Peter Pachla [mailto:peter.pachla@...]
>
> Does anyone know of a RELIABLE source from which to buy a
> Flash Linker in the UK?

www.divineo.co.uk are very good. Had two flash linkers off them so far
without any problems. They reply to emails and seem honest and reliable.
Slightly more expensive though, but then you get what you pay for.

Weavus

How could N sue for writing ARM code.  They dont own the arm codes or
processors.

That is all you are doing on the agb anyways; using arm codes to move data
around...


----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Latta" <crowdpleazr@...>
To: <gbadev@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 5:12 PM
Subject: Re: [gbadev] Nintendo's 4th Reich


> Just a note, look into the DMCA.  Under that law, it can be considered
> reverse engineering, and you can be sued for it, and not only is there
> plenty of precedent for it, but don't think for a second that the big N
> would bat an eyelash at the cost of suing someone.  The current
> politcal/legal environment is not friendly to those that wish to do things
> with someone else's hardware if that someone doesn't want them to.

I would like the add that if you really want to publish your own game you
can.  The carts a available via lik-sang talk to alex (ONLY IF YOU ARE
SERIOUS).  They will sell you the carts for $20 @ an order of 200 carts.
They ALL MUST be programmed before they leave the factory.  They will not
sell blanks.  That leaves lots of room for profit.  BUT, you had better have
a good game and contacts to move the games because its going to cost you.

Wal-mart will muy local product BTW.  My uncle got a deal for 10,000
troutline dispencers.  Not bad.  All by himself..


> Datel in the UK produced and sold several unlicensed games for the GBC and
I
> think they are making some for the GBA as well, so you might be able to
get
> a deal with them.
>
> shen

There are legal precedents that protect Nintendo and there are legal
precedents that do not. On some occasions Nintendo has stopped
independent third-party development, usually through a variety of
tactics such as litigious harassment, agreements with retail chains
not to sell unlicensed games if you want *any* Nintendo merchandise,
etc. On other occasions, Nintendo has failed (a few examples have
already been mentioned in this thread). They can't legally prevent
someone from reverse-engineering their system and making a game for
it (not in the United States, anyway). But there are plenty of other,
tried and proven methods they can use to prevent it. Any company
that's serious about selling lots of Nintendo games becomes a
licensee, and it seems that most development houses that are serious
about creating Nintendo games work with a licensed publisher.
Nintendo makes it too much of a hassle to circumvent the system.

IANAL, but my understanding of "reverse engineering" as it applies to
the DMCA is that it is illegal when used in the context of defeating
copyright-protection devices. This means it's illegal to reverse-
engineer the anti-duplication scheme on that new CD you just bought,
but it's not illegal to reverse-engineer the GBA so you can create a
game for it. After all, you're not violating anyone's copyright by
creating a new work.

As to the cost of manufacturing being cheaper as a Nintendo licensee:
this is false. To "guarantee quality" Nintendo will have all your
carts made for you, selling you the end product for more than it
would have cost you to make on your own. Nintendo operates as a
middle-man. The reason you pay so much for a home-brew cart is
because they're coming from small-time operations who can't afford to
run, say, 100,000 carts for a small unit price. The big-time
licensees who pump out truckloads of carts historically have *not
liked* the fact that they have to pay Nintendo extra manufacturing
costs. I think some of these gripes even went to court.

A *really* good book on the history of Nintendo is "Game Over Press
Start to Continue" by David Sheff. It ends off somewhere in the mid-
90s, and is at times a bit biased against Nintendo, but it's got some
great insight into how the company works, and talks extensively on
this very subject. I highly recommend it. See:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966961706/102-1904340-9317701

Everyone who makes games for Nintendo systems, be it the bedroom
coder or the big-name licensee, seems to have a love-hate
relationship with them, myself included. Ah, well. Enough
editorializing, I've got GBA coding to do. ;)

You only have 32KB of SRAM. But remeber that this is enough for like
260,000+ flags. So instead of saving "taken coin from level 9 at position
13,3" you just set one bit somewhere that the rom knows means the same
thing. Of course this can be futher compressed for example if door3 cant be
opened before door2 which cant be opened before door1 there is no need for 3
flags. you can just have 00 - no doors 01, first door open, 10 - door 1 and
2 open, 11 all doors opened etc.

> RLE would be a viable way of reducing the size of the save files. I will
> post my thinking in my depth later on.

Huffman is also good if you have alot of repeated stuff.

Hey, where can I get some info on the Wisdom Tree case?
Thats cool.

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Dan Cotter
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Wednesday, October 31, 2001 5:10 AM
   Subject: Re: [gbadev] Nintendo's 4th Reich


   > I'm not familiar with Asian laws, so I can't speak for them, but I tell
   you that in the U.S. if they take you to court, any moron for a judge would
   rule in your favor ruling that Nintendo's practices are unfair.  In fact
   there was a famouse battle against SEGA once in which the courts ruled that
   requiring a proprietary logo be placed in the code is unfair.  Galoob fought
   against Nintendo and won.  Wisdom tree fought against Nintendo and won.
   (Heck what was really bad about this case is that Wisdom Tree is a CHRISTIAN
   company that produces CHRISTIAN games!  Sueing a Christian company because
   they didn't worship Nintendo by feeding them money is just flat out wrong!)
   I could probably think of a few others, but I want to continue onto my next
   points.

   Thats not quite right, Nintendo dropped the case fearing bad publicity after
   they realised their games were going no-where anyway.

   > >I am the author of Jetpack, and was looking into making it for the <BR>
   > >GBA. But after reading about Nintendo's exclusion of new developers, <BR>
   > >and dealing with their rude support people personally, I don't have <BR>
   > >any desire to work with Nintendo. Unfortunately you apparently have <BR>
   > >to be in bed with them to create anything for their system.<BR>
   > >I would like nothing more than to encourage a competitor to the GBA. <BR>
   > >Are there any in the works? <BR>

   No offense but who would actually want to buy jetpack? Isn't there enough
   problems with games not making any more? Oh well I guess nintendo wouldn't
   care because you pay them to get for bunch of carts in the first place.

   > >I think it's ridiculous that they can do this, and just as ridiculous
   <BR>
   > >that they get a cut from every game made for their platform. This is <BR>
   > >like intel getting a percentage for every program written for their <BR>
   > >chip - and worse, saying who can write what. This looks to me like a <BR>
   > >complete stranglehold on freedom of speech.

   Freedom of speech is relating to the government censorship and has nothing
   to do with this situation (unless it was a US government console!).
   I think Nintendo have every right to charge developers to publish games on
   their console. After all, these developers are going to make money off of
   nintendos work. The low hardware prices arn't going to cover the cost of
   designing the hardware as well as actually manufacturing it. Unlike with a
   CPU which is much simpler and sells a hell of alot more units.

As your game is quite well known, I don't think it would be that hard to get
your game professionally published. I haven a contact whos has a contact that
might be able to help. I helped port Genetic Species from Amiga to PC, and Im in
close terms with that company, and they have a publisher now. I might be able to
recommend something to them. But I would make a good demo first.
And I would love to beta test.  I have a FLASH LINKER so i can test it on the
GBA too.

Matt
www.gameboyland.com
www.dreamcast.ca

   ----- Original Message -----
   From: norm328@...
   To: gbadev@yahoogroups.com
   Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 11:07 PM
   Subject: [gbadev] Nintendo's 4th Reich


   I am the author of Jetpack, and was looking into making it for the
   GBA.  But after reading about Nintendo's exclusion of new developers,
   and dealing with their rude support people personally, I don't have
   any desire to work with Nintendo.  Unfortunately you apparently have
   to be in bed with them to create anything for their system.
   I would like nothing more than to encourage a competitor to the GBA.
   Are there any in the works?

   If Nintendo has such a monopoly on this market as they appear to, how
   is it legal for them to decree who can make games for their system?
   Isn't this unfair abuse of monopoly power?  Why isn't anyone
   complaining like they do about Microsoft?

   I think it's ridiculous that they can do this, and just as ridiculous
   that they get a cut from every game made for their platform.  This is
   like intel getting a percentage for every program written for their
   chip - and worse, saying who can write what.  This looks to me like a
   complete stranglehold on freedom of speech.  Am I wrong?  How is this
   legal?

> I'm not familiar with Asian laws, so I can't speak for them, but I tell
you that in the U.S. if they take you to court, any moron for a judge would
rule in your favor ruling that Nintendo's practices are unfair.  In fact
there was a famouse battle against SEGA once in which the courts ruled that
requiring a proprietary logo be placed in the code is unfair.  Galoob fought
against Nintendo and won.  Wisdom tree fought against Nintendo and won.
(Heck what was really bad about this case is that Wisdom Tree is a CHRISTIAN
company that produces CHRISTIAN games!  Sueing a Christian company because
they didn't worship Nintendo by feeding them money is just flat out wrong!)
I could probably think of a few others, but I want to continue onto my next
points.

Thats not quite right, Nintendo dropped the case fearing bad publicity after
they realised their games were going no-where anyway.

> >I am the author of Jetpack, and was looking into making it for the <BR>
> >GBA. But after reading about Nintendo's exclusion of new developers, <BR>
> >and dealing with their rude support people personally, I don't have <BR>
> >any desire to work with Nintendo. Unfortunately you apparently have <BR>
> >to be in bed with them to create anything for their system.<BR>
> >I would like nothing more than to encourage a competitor to the GBA. <BR>
> >Are there any in the works? <BR>

No offense but who would actually want to buy jetpack? Isn't there enough
problems with games not making any more? Oh well I guess nintendo wouldn't
care because you pay them to get for bunch of carts in the first place.

> >I think it's ridiculous that they can do this, and just as ridiculous
<BR>
> >that they get a cut from every game made for their platform. This is <BR>
> >like intel getting a percentage for every program written for their <BR>
> >chip - and worse, saying who can write what. This looks to me like a <BR>
> >complete stranglehold on freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is relating to the government censorship and has nothing
to do with this situation (unless it was a US government console!).
I think Nintendo have every right to charge developers to publish games on
their console. After all, these developers are going to make money off of
nintendos work. The low hardware prices arn't going to cover the cost of
designing the hardware as well as actually manufacturing it. Unlike with a
CPU which is much simpler and sells a hell of alot more units.

Could you give me a link to the DMCA?  I'd like to read it.  It strikes my
curiosity.

[cropped by mod. fix your e-mail client please]

==
J.T. - The Blue Hippo

I never had to reverse engineer nothin' to code for the Gameboy Color.  Instead,
I just wait for somebody to do it for me! HAHAHA  And then use their research to
write code.

--- "Steve Latta" <crowdpleazr@...>
> wrote:
><html><body>
><tt>
>If you think that just anyone can get an Xbox, PS2, or Gamecube dev kit,
you<BR>
>are kidding yourself.  Basically, they don't need to make the platform
open,<BR>
>and if you want to learn how to use it, then you have to play by their<BR>
>rules.  They do not have a monopoly on games, so it isn't even leveraging<BR>
>monopoly power.  And if you figure out how to write games for it, and<BR>
>publish them, then you are reverse engineering, which was shadily legal<BR>
>before, but is outright not legal under the DMCA.<BR>
><BR>
>Hoenstly, develop for the side market, and then use that to get a job<BR>
>somewhere making GBA games.  I dare you to find as much info on the PS2 or<BR>
>Xbox out there in the free world as there exists for GBA.<BR>
><BR>
>----- Original Message -----<BR>
>From: "Pierre-Emmanuel CHAUT" <pe_chaut@...><BR>
>To: <gbadev@yahoogroups.com><BR>
>Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2001 1:50 PM<BR>
>Subject: Re: [gbadev] Nintendo's 4th Reich<BR>
><BR>
><BR>
>> Trust me .. if you just call them with a project .. they won't treat you<BR>
>as written on the website :-)<BR>
>> Nintendo : Just call them !<BR>
><BR>
></tt>

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==
J.T. - The Blue Hippo