Paprium: The Official Thread Mk 2

[zredgemz]

I am used to it, doesn't make me like it or the fact that people encourage it either.

[XeroShinobi]

I know a lot of people were pissed off that someone was making that kind of money off of code that wasn't expressly written with the intention of making profit. Again, I don't personally care, but it's certainly interesting. If the code is completely open-source without any restrictions, then there is nothing anyone can do about it. Nintendo themselves could potentially get involved, but Patreon acts as a shield. CEMU is technically free of charge. Early access to revisions are offered to Patreon supporters, mind you, so perhaps Nintendo's lawyers could nail the project that way.

[Gadispalembang]

Emulation playing part in preservation is most obvious when it involves relatively volatile
storage mediums. I know all my Amiga computers would be nothing more than glorified
doorstops if it weren't for the pirating scene of the 90's. Majority of Amiga game roms are
rips/cracks from the 90's by a bunch of really bored Europeans.

[zredgemz]

Emulation playing part in preservation is most obvious when it involves relatively volatile
storage mediums. I know all my Amiga computers would be nothing more than glorified
doorstops if it weren't for the pirating scene of the 90's. Majority of Amiga game roms are
rips/cracks from the 90's by a bunch of really bored Europeans.

True.

[Gogogadget]

I wonder how many of my old Amiga discs still work, i'm going to go with less than 5%

As long as Chaos Engine still works i'm fine

[XeroShinobi]

Virtually any arcade-exclusive release is also an excellent example.

At the end of the day, it is a necessity for the long-term survival of all games. Emulation itself doesn't hurt developers. Early piracy does, although not to the extent a lot of them claim. The MPAA has been whining over the collapse of the film industry at the hands of piracy forever, yet box office numbers continue to skyrocket for popular films.

It turns out that when wealthy people cry about piracy killing their industries it is more often than not extraneous butthurt stemming from the jimmy-rustling thoughts of people enjoying something they didn't pay for. Yes, it is possible to make a moral argument condemning it. That doesn't make the argument that it kills industry valid, however.

[Gadispalembang]

Someone back on nintendoage tried to sell me some NTSC Amiga
game diskettes. Untested, it was basically a scam begging to happen.
It would be nice if they worked and if I knew how to rip and crack
them since NTSC roms of Amiga games are difficult to find.

On top of that, anther bored European decided to write his own
code to allow those modern USB diskette drives to recognize the
Amiga format disks. Again, technically pirating and it's all for the
good of mankind. I could not enjoy exclusives like Apidya, Disposable
Hero and Ruff 'n' Tumble without piracy.

[Gogogadget]

My first experience with damaged Amiga discs not working properly was in the 90s... another ten years on and I finally played Shadow of the Beast! Lucky me.

Also Apidya & Disposable Hero are such great games. Outside of Japan, Europe is surprisingly good at the whole space shooter thing.

[zredgemz]

If i had a floppy drive, i could check my older dos game disk's but i would hope they are still good.

[XeroShinobi]

If i had a floppy drive, i could check my older dos game disk's but i would hope they are still good.

The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of most, if not all of them, being junk. If they're not junk now, they will be soon. Magnetic disks suck ass.

If any of them do work and they're tough to download, I'd suggest backing them up ASAP.

[Mask of Destiny]

Chip?

See this picture of a Pier Solar PCB. The square chip in the center is a CPLD and is acting as the mapper, the big rectangular chip on the top is flash, the rectangle on the left is a voltage regulator and I'm guessing the small chip to the right is the EEPROM for saves. I suppose if you want to get pedantic, the CPLD itself is off the shelf and not custom, but it is implementing custom logic (CPLD is similar in purpose to an FPGA, but implemented in a fairly different way and with different tradeoffs). Now this chip isn't doing anything terribly fancy; it just maps chunks of the 8MB of flash into the 4MB address space and handles communication with the EEPROM.

What benefit would you get from wasting all that time. Besides playing Paprium what would this do for emulator's?

Seems like that kind of logic applies to any issue that impacts a single game and yet emulator authors deal with that kind of thing all the time.

I hate to even say this but why would anyone with integrity even do this and hurt a company?

I think the extent that this will hurt Watermelon is very debatable. Realistically, not many people are going to buy a relatively expensive physical cartridge for an old console just to play a game, not when there are so many amazing games to choose from. What seals the deal are the emotional factors beyond just being able to play it. Personally, I think Fonzie should just embrace emulation like BigEvilCorp is doing with Tanglewood. You can buy a cart, a digital PC version (uses emulation internally) or just a ROM to use in the emulator of your choice.

As for the reasons why to go to the effort, there are several: preservation, for the challenge, to allow people to play the game on the device of their choice and more.

[TulioAdriano]

If Paprium is released on PS4, Xbox One or PC i'll buy it.

Preferably PC, but i'll go with any platform. I don't currently have a Megadrive and my TV goes apeshit with 240p (sadly)

That's why I opened my company. So that I can make 16 bit games that can be also played by everyone. I do it for the love of games, and I think everyone should be able to play them with minimum effort. I'm big for playing games on original consoles, on CRT TVs and using composite signal, but that's not a reality for everyone. Especially when things like having a life comes into play. Who's to say you still have your old consoles, and even if you did, that you live in a house with enough room to set it up? That you have a TV that can reproduce well the output of a Mega Drive, or even one that accepts its connection? Maybe your media center is just a PC and a large monitor. You get my point right? I make games because I love them, and because I want people to play them. One thing that hurt me the most during Pier Solar time was to read about people who wouldn't "unseal" their packages. I want them to be played, I want you to have fun with what took me years to create. So yeah, my games will come on retro and modern consoles, because everyone should be able to play them.

See this picture of a Pier Solar PCB.

That seems to be the PCB that has the boot issue with non TMSS carts.

[Guntz]

Good thing I bought my Reprint cart right when orders opened... Back in January 2011. One of these days I need to sit down and finish it. Sorry Tulio.

[Mask of Destiny]

That seems to be the PCB that has the boot issue with non TMSS carts.

Presumably the ones with the giant blob of black epoxy over the mapper and flash are the other revision?

[avlon]

That's why I opened my company. So that I can make 16 bit games that can be also played by everyone. I do it for the love of games, and I think everyone should be able to play them with minimum effort. I'm big for playing games on original consoles, on CRT TVs and using composite signal, but that's not a reality for everyone. Especially when things like having a life comes into play. Who's to say you still have your old consoles, and even if you did, that you live in a house with enough room to set it up? That you have a TV that can reproduce well the output of a Mega Drive, or even one that accepts its connection? Maybe your media center is just a PC and a large monitor. You get my point right? I make games because I love them, and because I want people to play them. One thing that hurt me the most during Pier Solar time was to read about people who wouldn't "unseal" their packages. I want them to be played, I want you to have fun with what took me years to create. So yeah, my games will come on retro and modern consoles, because everyone should be able to play them.



That seems to be the PCB that has the boot issue with non TMSS carts.

Sadly, I'm one of those people that still has their cart sealed, but that's only because I bought Pier Solar on PSN and ended up finishing it right before my cartridge arrived. On the bright side, it's one of those few times where I've double dipped, or even purchased a digital game.

If it ever disappears from PSN for some reason, at least I have that physical copy to revisit. Thanks for all the hard work. Looking forward to future projects for you and your team.