Hackszine.com: Gaming Archives

Archive: Gaming

Page 1 of 3 1 2 3 >>

April 18, 2008

Tresling - arm wrestling game controller

Meet Tresling, a newfangled competitive sport which combines the physical challenge of arm wrestling with the mental intensity of Tetris. This video has been making the rounds. It's so over the top, I can't help but appreciate it:

The site is scant on details, but as far as I know, this represents the first arm-wrestling human computer interface. The NES brought us guns and running pads. The Wiimote a tennis racket, fishing pole, and boxing glove. If you can get past the initial craziness of Tresling, it's actually an interesting hack in that it's a completely new category of game play made possible by a clever homebrew controller.

Tresling: Arm Wrestling + Tetris

April 3, 2008

Practical fluid mechanics

Mick West from Cowboy Programming posted a two part series to his blog titled Practical Fluid Dynamics. Originally written for Game Developer Magazine, it covers a number of clever (and down-to-earth) techniques for simulating the movement of fluids in games and other software environments where real-time speed and visual authenticity matter most.

Special attention is paid to the simulation of particulate matter being carried around within a fluid volume—think effects like smoke, fire, and bubbles. I know I've seen a number of people using particle systems to do this sort of thing, but the methods Mick describes are all based on a grid model where you represent the system with a velocity field and a density field. Unlike a particle system, these fields represent a continuous fluid surface, allowing you to measure the density and velocity of the fluid at any location on the surface by interpolating the values from the nearest cells in the field array.

Practical Fluid Mechanics

March 27, 2008

Shredz64: Guitar Hero for C64

Toni Westbrook authored a new C64 game called Shredz64, bringing the best game of all time to the best computing platform of all time:

You can use the real Guitar Hero controller using the PSX64 PS2-to-DB9 converter which Toni also created. This takes the game controller input and maps it to the appropriate up, down, left, right and potentiometer lines for the Commodore.

Shredz64 uses the internal SID audio processor to play any of your favorite SID tunes. In addition to the built-in songs, you can import new SID files and even create new levels by editing note tracks (using the game controller, naturally).

I'm speechless.

Shredz64

March 14, 2008

Wii homebrew now works from internal SD Card

It looks like the 0.1alpha3 release of the Wii Twilight Hack now works with the internal SD slot. No USBGecko or other additional hardware needed.

There are 5 versions of the chainloader for the different regions and releases of the Wii console. Follow the instructions to unzip the right one to the correct directory on your SD Card, and then it's as simple as copying your homebrew .elf file to the SD card's root directory and starting up Zelda.

Twilight Hack 0.1alpha3- [via] Link

March 11, 2008

N64 emulation: better than the real thing

Racketboy has a great article showing off some of the capabilities of the modern N64 emulator. If your machine is fast enough, most of the available emulators will really give you a noticeable resolution boost and better looking anti-aliased models. Using the Rice Video plugin with the Project64 emulator, you can even swap out the textures for some games with user-created texture packs.

I still use the real hardware (is the N64 considered "retro" now?), so before seeing this, I hadn't even considered emulation for this platform. That all changed when I saw the Mario64 mod shown above. The selection of available emulators is impressive, and there are open source emulators available for just about every platform. I'm currently playing a game under Mupen64 on my iMac and it's pretty flawless. My only wish is that all computers came, by default, with a nice joystick like they did back in the 80s.

Enhance N64 Graphics With Emulation Plugins & Texture Packs - Link
Project64 Emulator - Link
Rice Video Plugin - Link
Mupen64 Emulator (cross-platform, open source) - Link

March 6, 2008

Microsoft Excel 3D engine

Peter Rakos wrote an article for Gamasutra today which demonstrates how to hack yourself a simple 3D engine by subverting an Excel worksheet. It's not going to win any FPS awards, but the fact that you can even get Excel to draw raw shapes blows my mind.

In his demo, the worksheet is used to calculate values for all the polygon vertices and a very small macro loop draws the resulting mesh to the screen.

After downloading the source XLS, run the demo by hitting alt-F8 (option-F8 in Mac Excel). You'll find the code under the "Tools->Macro->Macros" menu.

Microsoft Excel: Revolutionary 3D Game Engine - Link
Peter's Example 3D Excel files - Link

February 26, 2008

Wii Linux

This is awesome news from the GameCube Linux Wiki:

24 Feb 2008: Long time, no see Although we haven't posted any news in the last 2 years, we have silently continued our work keeping the kernel patches up to date. With the latest 2.6.24 release we have added support for the USB Gecko adapter as a console and terminal, so you can now logon into your gc-linux distro using minicom or HyperTerminal (TM). And last but not least, we have finally run natively Linux on the Nintendo Wii through Team Tweezers' twilight-hack. We have released a small usbgecko-enabled Proof of Concept mini-distro to prove it. Did I say have fun? :)

On a side note, I'm trying to put some instructions together for getting a dev environment set up with libogc and devkitPro. I'm not going to be able to test without a Wii, but this looks like a good place to start. Shout out in the comments if you know of any good Wii dev howtos that have sprouted up.

GameCube Linux Wiki - [via] Link

February 21, 2008

SIXAXIS hacks

Hackszine reader IraqiGeek writes:

I made an application that uses libusb-Win32 and PPJoy to map the Sony Sixaxis into a windows joystick with the accelerometers working and mapped.
Unfortunately, the gyro on my sixaxis seems to be faulty. So, while the code is already there to read the gyro data, it can't be used for anything.

The installation process is not exactly the shortest, but I've made a step-by-step how-to describing it.

I did a little digging and there are a couple of other noteworthy SIXAXIS hacks. In addition to IraqiGeek's driver, there is another Windows SIXAXIS driver that people are using with some success. I also was able to find a third Windows driver which contains full source, in case you want to do something more interesting than play games.

Speaking of more interesting, there also exists an open source library for Linux. If you check out the above video, you can see that a gumstix embedded computer is using the SIXAXIS input to control a number of servos.

The six R/C servos are connected to a Gumstix board with built-in Bluetooth module. Inertial measurements from the SIXAXIS are received directly through a PF_BLUETOOTH socket (not through the joystick API, due to HID descriptor issues). Heuristics explicitly discriminate between two types of motion (rotation or translation).

The author was even able to use this setup to control a small helicopter. Pretty cool stuff, I must say.

Anyone know if the SIXAXIS sensor data can be easily polled with an Arduino? Maybe this could be a be a cheap option for a 6DOF IMU.

Using the PlayStation 3 controller in Bluetooth mode with Linux - Link
SixAxis source driver for Windows - Link
Use your SIXAXIS on Windows (ps3sixaxis_en.exe)- Link
WinSIXAXIS (IraqiGeek's libusb/PPJoy driver) - Link

February 19, 2008

One-handed Wii controller

Ryan Culy designed a single-handed, combination Wiimote and Nunchuck (motechuck?), making Nunchuck-enabled Wii games accessible to a friend who is missing a hand. It's a solid concept and a nice looking custom acrylic execution. Benheck named this one his Hack Pick of the Wii-k:

The basic idea is that you strap the nunchuck to one arm and press the analog stick against your leg to use it. The C and Z buttons are ported out and attached to the side of the main Wii-mote, thus making it the main controller but with nunchuck support. I picked this project because it has a good purpose and I've had lots of requests for something similar, and unfortunately haven't gotten around to doing it myself. So this proves it can be done, way to go Ryan!

Wii Controller for Single-Handed Use - [via] Link

February 11, 2008

Wii Twilight Hack

A demo of the first Wii ELF loader is now available for download, thanks to bushing, Segher, and tmbinc. It takes advantage of the Twilight Princess savegame overflow from a couple of weeks ago, but now there's something more substantial for people to try out on their own hardware.

Had my Wii not been stolen, I'd report back with more info, but from what I understand, this isn't working correctly with at least one US Zelda revision.

You can track the latest Wii homebrew progress at the WiiBrew Wiki. From the looks of the video, these guys are probably very close to a bootstrap file that will load in an arbitrary homebrew application.

Wii Twilight Hack - Link
WiiBrew Wiki - Link
Wii Linux Wiki - Link

February 10, 2008

Extracting GTA3 art assets for use in your own game

One of the most frustrating things about homebrew game development is that there's almost an insurmountable amount of work that needs to be done just to get something decent to display on a screen. You can roll your own complete graphics and physics engines and still have nothing to show for it if there are no art assets to load.

QuantumG's solution to the problem was to focus on developing the game engine using the model data from GTA3. Knowing that the art is already functional in another game allows you to focus on your code, and it's more fun when you can see the immediate results of your work.

The blog entry walks you through his experience with extracting and using the mesh, texture, city, and character data and making use of it with the OGRE graphics engine. If you've ever played around with making a game before, but got discouraged for lack of art assets, this is really worth a read.

Using GTA3 art assets in OGRE - Link
OGRE 3D graphics engine - Link

February 5, 2008

Wii Drum Kit

The Wii Drum Kit is another great example of a tangible user interface made possible with the Wiimote. The latest version adds support for the Nunchuck, so you can use both hands to play your virtual drum kit. This one is a Windows application, and source is available at the This is Not a Label blog.

The Wiimote + Nunchuck combination seems like the perfect interface for an air drum. Different gestures are used to trigger a specific drum, so the high hat is a flick to the side, the snare is a forward hit, etc. There's no kick pedal, of course, but the fist stamping motion that's used is a reasonable alternative.

Wii Drum Kit - Link
Control Your Applications With a Wiimote - Link

January 28, 2008

Buffer overflow discovered in Wii Zelda

A couple Wii hackers have found a way to glitch Zelda into running unsigned code. From the forum discussion at TehSkeen:

Yes, that's right - an exploit for the Nintendo Wii has been discovered and it allows you to run custom code. The method is pretty simple. Copy over a save file for Zelda, load it and the code runs. Don't get too excited yet. They have only been able to run 4 lines of code, but this is in a days work.

Right now I'm still having trouble reading through the forums due to all the attention this has been getting. I suspect it'll be a little while before the dust settles and we find out the nitty gritty of repeating the hack and making it actually do something useful.

With any luck, this will lead to a small bootstrap loader that will allow homebrew Wii development to take off, similar to the glory days of the Dreamcast.

Zelda Exploit: Run Unsigned Code w/o Modchip - Link
Zelda homebrew exploit - Link

January 23, 2008

Accelerometer motion analysis

There's an article over on the WiiLi Wiki that goes into great detail describing how to translate 3D accelerometer measurements into an estimation of the position, rotation, and velocity of a device like the Wiimote. By making a few assumptions—people's arms have a limited range of motion, most Wii play doesn't take place in moving vehicles, etc.—it's quite surprising what you can get away with with just the accelerometer data.

The amusingly named (but rarely used) term for the rate of change of acceleration is jerk. The jerk term for the remote shows up in the time derivative of the force recorded by the sensor, along with the rotation term that contains the angular velocity of the remote. We can extract both rotation and linear acceleration if we assume a few things:
We know the "up" direction before the motion starts.

Throughout the motion, the jerk on the remote perpendicular to the current direction of gravity is small.

Then we can assume the time derivative of the force component which is perpendicular to our current estimate of the up direction is caused by the user rotating the controller only. This allows us to update our estimate of the up direction for the next time step. In each time step, we can also get the linear acceleration of the remote by subtracting our estimate of from the current force sensor report. In effect we are integrating up a coupled set of ordinary differential equations. (Note, need to review the math here. Beware.)

The main problem with this technique is error accumulation in our estimate of "up." Since it is unlikely the user can keep the controller in constant linear motion without injuring themselves, the TV, or their opponent, we can look for times when the total reported force is close to g = 1.0 to recenter . You have to be careful when doing this because it is possible and probably common for the Wiimote to report an acceleration close to g = 1.0 while it is accelerating. When this happens your acceleration vector does not actually point "up" and you will recenter to an incorrect R. This can happen anytime you are accelerating both downward and in the horizontal plane.

I keep thinking that there should be some class of flying vehicle that, when operated under fairly restrained conditions, might be able to get by with just accelerometer measurements to obtain reasonably accurate state information. You could integrate the acceleration data through very limited motions that are within some margin of error, recalibrate, and repeat. This is probably a pipe dream, but I really want a solution for a $50 6DOF IMU. :/

Accelerometer motion analysis - Link

January 12, 2008

Micropolis: Sim City open sourced

Don Hopkins has released a GPLed version of the original Sim City, cleaned up and renamed to the original title, Micropolis:

The "MicropolisCore" project includes the latest Micropolis (SimCity) source code, cleaned up and recast into C++ classes, integrated into Python, using the wonderful SWIG interface generator tool. It also includes a Cairo based TileEngine, and a cellular automata machine CellEngine, which are independent but can be plugged together, so the tile engine can display cellular automata cells as well as SimCity tiles, or any other application's tiles.
The key thing here is to peek inside the mind of the original Maxis programmers when they built it. Remember, this was back in the day when games had to fit inside of 640k so some "creative" programming techniques were employed. SimCity has been long a model used for urban planning and while it's just a game, there are a lot of business rules, ecosystem modeling, social dependencies, and other cool stuff going on in this codebase. It may not be pretty code but it's content sure is interesting to see.

The source will compile for X86/Linux systems, and I'm betting we'll see ports to other platforms at some point. If you're on a Mac and just want to play the game, just run a copy of Ubuntu in an emulator like QEMU and install the binary there.

SimCity Source Code Released to the Wild - [via] Link
Micropolis Downloads - Link