You have to keep in mind that no company wants their game system open, and they all try to implement security and DRM to prevent the homebrew community from getting access to the system. We most likely won’t see any homebrew for the 3DS in a long time anyway, but that’s par for the course with a new console.
What the article is referring to is the Terms of Service for the 3DS. Apparently there is some clause that says if you modify your 3DS Nintendo can and may brick your console and render it unplayable. Really I think they’re just saying this so that people can’t use flashcarts on their system and then sue Nintendo when the latest official firmware is released and causes harm to their system. To the average consumer, this is really not a big deal at all.
Cyberdyne wrote:
I’ve been away for quite some time and didn’t know about this project. But now I am back! 🙂
I have a FlashBoy+ but I would also buy a VBoot. It looks great so far.
e5frog wrote:
Unless you live alone there are always family matters, but what’s the hurry anyway? Last big project I worked on took about five years – that’s the timespan you have when just having a few hours per week to spend.
I think the biggest problem when working on something like this out in the open is that all the negative comments hit a lot harder than the positive comments lift – so you tend loose interest after a while and start to think that nobody really wants it…
There are always people that have comments, “you can’t route like that”, “why not use this and that”, “it looks bad”, “you’ll save $0.01 with this part instead” and so on…
But do we see them working on one – nope, if you suffer from perfectionism nothing ever gets done because it’s too much work to do it exactly right. So the people that have less of this and are more of “let’s do it”-people get it done and working (most of the time) even if it’s not according to every little rule the “know-betters” have learned on work, in school or at summer camp once 1989. 😉
Maybe you should skip it if it’s not fun anymore, do something more stimulating at least for a while. Getting a partner can help, you can take turns working on it. Trying to get something done that isn’t fun can really take you down.
Anyway, hope you do it – I will buy one if I can afford one, it would be very handy being to start the VB and choose any game instead of first having to hook it up to the PC and flash the cart. FlashBoy/FlashBoy Plus is the best thing out there now though and I’m glad to have one.
So what’s left to do? I’m sure there are people here willing to help if you divide it up in little parts.
If you make a list, what more have you planned to do? The hardware is done as far as a real prototype that needs some software to run, right?
You make some really good points, e5Frog, thanks.
If I keep going there is one aspect that I will probably need help with. I need someone or several people who is/are capable of developing VB homebrew using the current tools. I need to design a quick and dirty menu system that the VB will boot into. I need someone who knows how to use the save RAM in a game, and who knows a fair bit about the CPU, interrupts and the expansion area ROM. I was planning on doing this all myself, but the hardware and embedded software has proved to be a really big challenge by itself, so it may be necessary to bring someone in.
I’m really disappointed with the 3DS so far. It’s clear Nintendo rushed this thing out the door. The construction is shoddy, the battery life is almost nonexistant, the screen has a very specific “sweet spot” that you have to view in order to see the 3D without ghosting and straining your eyes. Also, they have publicly said that they want all games to be playable 100% in 2D so the 3D effects will not have any impact on gameplay, they will just be pretty to look at.
Plus the launch lineup is terrible and until the remakes of Zelda and Star Fox 64 come out I have zero excitement for any of the games. I’ve tried Pilot Wings, Street Fighter and a few others and they were only impressive for about 5 minutes. Pilot Wings is pretty worthless if you look at it as a game and not just a 3D tech demo.
Plus the online store wasn’t out at the console launch which is very bad form. Why release a device before its not ready and before there are any attractive games for the system? The sales for the 3DS are apparently underwhelming and I would not be surprised in the least if the 3DS goes the way of the Virtual Boy. At this point in time 3D is just a buzzword that stands for “more expensive and not worth it.” Consumers just don’t want 3D. They don’t want it at home on their TV, they don’t want to pay extra at the theater, and they don’t want an ugly brick of a gaming system that has to be held a foot from your face.
Well for one thing, I would certainly release all documents I have created thus far if I do decide to stop working on it. I don’t know what I’m going to do at this point, I really think it would be awesome to finish it but at the same time, it’s going to be a huge time suck and I have some family stuff I need to deal with.
Based on the reactions I’ve gotten from this site I don’t think most people would find much need for this over a flashboy, but maybe I’m perceiving wrong. Another poster already said how they would completely change the design and I’ve been getting that the whole way through. With a thing like this, there’s really no way to please everyone.
I’d love a flashboy for this. There was one on eBay a few days ago but I missed out on it 🙁
I make those carts, and will be doing continuously while there’s demand.
And with the success of the FBoy+ and the tons of hours I still need to put into the VBSD project, it’s looking more and more like it’s not worth it to keep working on the project. 🙁
At this point I don’t know if it’s worth all the work I will still have to put into the project. This place is practically dead these days anyway and with the 3DS out and the Flashboy Plus (which didn’t exist when I started the project) I don’t really see much of a reason for this product to exist anymore.
Definitely do not try to heat up your entire VB in an oven or anything like that. There is a reason why the xbox 360 “towel trick” does not work, or only works temporarily. You definitely need to wait until you can open up the system.
Try adjusting the IPD knob to the two extremes and test with a game in to see if you can get anything to display. It’s almost certainly a bad case of the glitchy displays.
bahooney wrote:
That is so sexy. That’s the main qualm I have with the Virtual Boy, because my posture is terrible enough as it is, and this completely fixes it. I’m extremely envious of your craftiness.
Thanks, but I can’t take the credit for the idea. There are other posters on here who have done this before with equipment they had laying around. I didn’t happen to have a spring arm around the house so I figured out the cheapest way I could do it and it ended up working pretty well. It’s kind of funny though, as soon as I finished this, the VB that you see in the pictures got the glitchy screen problem.
Oh, no! That’s terrible! :[ Yeah, the Virtual Boy I ordered off of eBay last month got damaged during shipping, so the left eye gets really wonky during Mario’s Tennis, but just gets horizontal lines in Wario Land. Weird. The seller swore up and down that he didn’t ship me a broken product, so thanks, UPS. ini
The seller probably didn’t lie to you, the glitchy display problem is due to a loose ribbon cable so sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. The seller probably played it for a few minutes and deemed it good, even though the problem was still there. My guess is probably over half of the VB’s have developed the glitchy display problem. I was thinking about offering a cheap repair service but I don’t know if I have the time.
bahooney wrote:
That is so sexy. That’s the main qualm I have with the Virtual Boy, because my posture is terrible enough as it is, and this completely fixes it. I’m extremely envious of your craftiness.
Thanks, but I can’t take the credit for the idea. There are other posters on here who have done this before with equipment they had laying around. I didn’t happen to have a spring arm around the house so I figured out the cheapest way I could do it and it ended up working pretty well. It’s kind of funny though, as soon as I finished this, the VB that you see in the pictures got the glitchy screen problem.
Auto Tune is disgusting, and it probably would make his vocals sound like crap because he’s more “saying” the words than singing pitches. If you like auto tune I’ve got a great video for ya! Search Rebecca Black on youtube. 😀
VirtualJockey wrote:
Got news for all you one-eyed gamers out there, just buy a regular DS.
Nintendo shouldn’t take any stance, just maybe have a logo on the front that says “3D-Only”, or a warning on the front cover that says “3D effects required to play this game”.
No offense, but how about we remove buttons from it too and have only a D-pad, for all those one-handed gamers?
While I understand that people with serious handicaps should have the option to enjoy what every able bodied person can, a person that can only see with one eye shouldn’t be interested in buying anything 3D.
I don’t buy that this is to help handicapped people, this is just insurance for the big-N in case the 3D part of the 3DS is a sales flop.
Pretty awesome! I love the clips of falling around in stores and such, I’m sure the managers were real happy with him. One thing bothers me though, did he say the VB is a 24-bit system in there?
I can imagine Vertical Force, Red Alarm and Wario Land wouldn’t be all that easy to play in 3D, (and the Mario demo concept, if that game were ever made).
My point is that I don’t care if some developers decide to make games playable in both 2D/3D, but for Nintendo to limit them to only that option is kind of defeating the purpose of having a 3D handheld console.
DogP wrote:
I always used mine w/ the old nVidia 3D driver (which they got rid of 5 or 6 years ago), and they worked pretty well. Of course there was some ghosting, but the flicker wasn’t too bad for mine because I had my monitor run at 100-120Hz refresh. I think that actually caused more ghosting (transition speed of the LCD shutter), but the less flicker was worth it.
I actually have a iZ3D polarized LCD monitor, but the ghosting on that is worse than the shutter glasses on my CRT IMO. By far the best is my 3D dual projector setup w/ polarized lenses.
DogP
If I had to go with 3D tech on my PC I would definitely prefer an Nvidia card with a 120Hz monitor and the Nvidia 3D setup.
For PS3 and 360 I have a 3D DLP TV (65″) with active shutter glasses and there is zero flicker and very little ghosting. It’s the best home-3D tech I’ve seen yet. I do like the idea of a dual-projector system though – no shutter glasses, just polarized.
“hoping” to work on the DC2 doesn’t imply that a DC2 is in the works. Of course he hopes to work on a DC2, so do I! Everything I’ve heard about DC2 has been conjecture or speculation, there is no hard evidence it even exists. But as a DC fanboy I think it would be awesome if they did that, I just don’t see it happening.
