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Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Mon May 04, 2009 11:34 pm
by Andrigaar
seraphssavior wrote:I think that you're all forgetting that the patch needs to be tested on an emulator, instead of wasting hundreds of CD-R's in order to test it each time.
Stop complaining, stop mentioning prices...let people play the game how they choose, and let the team do what they please in regards to emulation vs. console playing.
Don't forget a CFW'd PSP. They play PSX games natively more or less once you crap them out of popstation. Skip the compression of the image and it's not as big of a deal to test them. Though, since I haven't actually read the documentation on it, it's probably a Sony proprietary emulator.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 3:29 am
by Piratero
seraphssavior wrote:I think that you're all forgetting that the patch needs to be tested on an emulator, instead of wasting hundreds of CD-R's in order to test it each time.
Stop complaining, stop mentioning prices...let people play the game how they choose, and let the team do what they please in regards to emulation vs. console playing.
You're right. It should be tested under emulators. None of have said anything about eliminating emulators as a whole.
Regardless of what I or anyone else says, the people working on the patch will do as they please.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 10:23 am
by Kojima_Devotee
What a nice report to have a lunch break to. Thank you, as always, Slowbeef. Take your time, team; We've been waiting about 10 years for the game and 5 for the hack. For us, another few months is an easy proposition.

Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 10:32 am
by stuntpeople
This is epic! Very much looking forward to the patch.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 3:32 pm
by Marc
Is anyone here fluent in Russian or knows someone who is?
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Tue May 05, 2009 5:33 pm
by LazyDave
Marc wrote:Is anyone here fluent in Russian or knows someone who is?
I know someone who is pretty fluent.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 6:24 am
by Solfieri
One more bug to beta? Go Comrade Slowbeef!!!! For Great Justice!
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 11:52 am
by qwerty
what is memorycardRex? couldn't find any info...
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 12:37 pm
by nrl_quaker
hi there. 1st of all thanks for your great job!
Marc wrote:Is anyone here fluent in Russian or knows someone who is?
Russian is my 1st language. so if you want smth to help I will =)
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 3:14 pm
by qwerty
is mips a pain in the ass? slowbeef, did it take long to learn the mips specifications and commands?
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 3:38 pm
by slowbeef
qwerty wrote:is mips a pain in the ass? slowbeef, did it take long to learn the mips specifications and commands?
I actually learned MIPS in college for Computer Architecture. That was like 10 years ago. While I never did anything with it, when I re-encountered it for this hack, I was a bit familiar.
ASM programming is very hard. I think MIPS is actually a little easier than some of the stuff I've seen in SNES ROM hacks, etc., but it's honestly a nightmare to do small stuff. The MIPS 3000 specifications really only came into play once (when I was trying to load a WORD, I learned you can only do that for "aligned" bytes, so the text part of the hack means I couldn't actually use that command.)
It's like old basic programming, really.
10 PRINT "HELLO"
20 GOTO 50
30 PRINT "WORLD"
Remember that? Now imagine something like that where all you have are numbered variables. And you can't subtract, you can only add negative numbers. And all the numbers are hexadecimal, so 5+6=B. Also, there's a jump delay so the instruction after a jump gets executed, so in my above example, it would actually print "WORLD" before going to instruction 50, even though the GOTO clearly comes first.
You never really "get used to it" but you get to a point where "it is what is, and I'm comfortable enough thinking this 'simply' about it"
If you have no computer science experience, I imagine MIPS being very hard, because there's some computer architecture principles you need to be aware of, especially with regards to bytes, words, half-words and how computers do negative numbers and things like that.
It kinda reminds me of when I tried to learn Japanese, actually. It's so far removed from what you're used to, it's kinda like programming or doing math in a whole new way. I mean, at this point when I see "8 + 8", I have a brief little moment where I go "decimal, right?" and say 16. (i.e. part of me wants to remember it could be hex and the answer could be 10.)
It's hard, but here's the thing.
Back in July when I did the Let's Play, I considered assembly so hard that it would be ridiculous of me to even suggest I could actually do the ROM hack. But I decided to knuckle down and try it, and hey, here we are.
What I'm getting at is people will tell you it's the mother of all programming challenges, and while I will say it's one of the hardest programming things I've done, it's not impossible and there are still scarier things I can think of, like going back to LISP programming, or doing heuristics, or God-forbid PROLOG.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 4:38 pm
by akor1108
Haitus momentarily suspended to tell you Slowbeef that you are amazing and sexy when you talk computer-lingo.
I think that's why Solid Snake is friends with Otacon. Snake may not realize it, but he gets a hard-on when Otacon talks computer lingo. I'm certain that's got to be it! And the fact that Otacon can build and program whatever the flip he wants cuz he's just that f*ckin' smart.
As for all the rest of the team, good job, I love you too Artemio and Marc for not giving up on this project.
This game must be so good for you all to not give up, so I am fine with waiting. And... um...
BELIEVE
If you believe
Someone will fail,
Then more likely they might
Shatter,
Weaken,
And wail…
But if you believe
In the person who ails,
Then they have
The power
To dream
And prevail…
As long as you believe
That faith will heal,
Patch it,
Clean it,
And seal…
So is the belief
In what doesn’t seem real…
Through faith
You’ll see it
And feel…
I had to do this. this poem represents the whole project and how people never gave up and kept believing that thing's will turn for the better. As long as you believe and keep on trying, good always wins over the bad!
Haitus officially restarted! :O
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Wed May 06, 2009 7:38 pm
by slowbeef
akor1108 wrote:I think that's why Solid Snake is friends with Otacon. Snake may not realize it, but he gets a hard-on when Otacon talks computer lingo.
I think I missed that cutscene.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 8:45 am
by urbangangsta101
...don't you mean he gets a Solid Snake..?
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 9:35 am
by slowbeef
So, Policenauts, huh? What a crazy game. (Almost done with a new graphical change Marc requested.)
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 2:38 pm
by Andrigaar
urbangangsta101 wrote:...don't you mean he gets a Solid Snake..?
The true meaning of "Snake Eater" comes out to play.
slowbeef wrote:So, Policenauts, huh? What a crazy game. (Almost done with a new graphical change Marc requested.)
Graphical change? I missed that being mentioned.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 3:28 pm
by slowbeef
Andrigaar wrote:Graphical change? I missed that being mentioned.
It wasn't. We did another round of playtesting and picked up a few bugs, but nothing major.
The only thing that came up was a graphical change Marc wanted that's taking up a bunch of my cycles, so after that I'm hitting up the bugs again. Hoping to get shit finished up this weekend, then who knows.
We're talking internally about where we stand, etc. I personally don't feel comfortable calling it a beta until all features (read: graphical changes) are in. I also have to fix the bugs from this round of testing once that's in. There's also parts of the script Marc wants to go over and make final drafts of. We're working with Artemio to ensure it's easy to patch, and that it works okay in a PSP, since he's got one.
So it's a little harder to organize where we are. We'll probably have a clearer view of things after this weekend, when I get some time to really dig into this stuff.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 5:10 pm
by Piratero
slowbeef wrote:Andrigaar wrote:Graphical change? I missed that being mentioned.
It wasn't. We did another round of playtesting and picked up a few bugs, but nothing major.
The only thing that came up was a graphical change Marc wanted that's taking up a bunch of my cycles, so after that I'm hitting up the bugs again. Hoping to get shit finished up this weekend, then who knows.
We're talking internally about where we stand, etc. I personally don't feel comfortable calling it a beta until all features (read: graphical changes) are in. I also have to fix the bugs from this round of testing once that's in. There's also parts of the script Marc wants to go over and make final drafts of. We're working with Artemio to ensure it's easy to patch, and that it works okay in a PSP, since he's got one.
So it's a little harder to organize where we are. We'll probably have a clearer view of things after this weekend, when I get some time to really dig into this stuff.
Graphical changes? What kind? I don't know if this has been previously discussed.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 5:41 pm
by Marc
Piratero wrote:Graphical changes? What kind? I don't know if this has been previously discussed.
It was a computer screen that had some Engrish.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 5:42 pm
by Artemio
Marc wrote:Piratero wrote:Graphical changes? What kind? I don't know if this has been previously discussed.
It was a computer screen that had some Engrish.
besides those several other graphical changes of the like have been done, as well as translating graphics when needed.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 6:23 pm
by qwerty
yeah assembly is really hard. have you ever written a simple program in c for example and then tried to dissassembled it? it's like producing chaos. i know assembly for the AVR microcontroller and now i'm learning 8086. What you said about MIPS seemed really complicated and hard to grasp (jump delays and shit). What i am afraid more about learning a new microprocessor is that you have to learn about flags and all that. Like for example to do a simple comparison in avr can eat you a lot of time because there isn't a command like if x bigger OR EQUAL than something do that. you have to see from the comparison which flags were enabled and then search for a suitable branch instruction out of maany. ridiculous. I am really interested in the assembly (and in other languages if included). Please make a good documentation after all the work is done! Thanks a lot
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 6:26 pm
by qwerty
interested in assembly (and other languages if included in the program) IN THE PATCH.... correction from previous post
Anybody know how to upload/download saves from a PS2 mem card??
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 7:05 pm
by Piratero
qwerty wrote:interested in assembly (and other languages if included in the program) IN THE PATCH.... correction from previous post
Anybody know how to upload/download saves from a PS2 mem card??
I don't know if its possible, but maybe if you have a softmod installed (or modchip), there might be a program out there that'll read save files from a USB flash stick and upload them to your memory card.
If they're PlayStation saves, the best way in my opinion is to use CAETLA 0.35.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 7:41 pm
by slowbeef
I've been trying to figure out how to phrase this without sounding too ... well, I'll leave it at this.
Policenauts had a lot of Japanese and Engrish in the graphics. Now it doesn't. I would say there are about 60 image-based things we had to change to English, not counting the opening and ending credits which were quite simply massive.
I can say confidently that as of this build I'm making during typing this very post!!! the Policenauts English Mod has absolutely no Japanese or Engrish in it whatsoever.
Re: Current Status (4/26/09): 1 Bug Till Beta
Posted: Thu May 07, 2009 7:57 pm
by Marc
You guys should thank slowbeef for having the patience to fix all of those too. For real.