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SHOW YOUR WORKING: MAKING POWERLINE ETHERNET FASTER

Sun 25 February 2024



Having wired networking is nice! The current iterations of Wi-Fi are admittedly
very fast, but I feel a bit iffy trusting that the signal will always work at a
good latency, when there's rogue slabs of concrete and surprise microwave
sources to deal with.

My house has fiber internet which terminates at the wireless router I keep under
my TV. To enable mission-critical house activities (e.g. streaming from my
studio to Twitch/Diode Zone, using Steam Link from the couch), I have some
Powerline Ethernet adapters which link the router to my studio PC upstairs. And
for the past several years, they have been indistinguishable from magic; somehow
they turn 1970s home electrical wiring into Cat 5e!

Until the rubber finally met the road; I tried to watch a Blu-Ray on my Home
Theatre PC, streamed from my Studio PC, and it had big buffering pauses every 60
seconds. An early speed test I did showed the link speed for streaming the
Blu-Ray was only 24 Mbps! But for some reason, downloading things from the
studio PC was absolutely fine! At this point I realised I knew very little about
how the magic boxes worked, or how I would go about isolating the problem.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2024/02/25 - show your working, electricity, networking


MACROMEDIA SCIENCE THEATRE! MUSEUM OF CLAMPS + SPACESHIP WARLOCK + MORE BESIDES!

Fri 02 February 2024



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2024/02/02 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING COSMOLOGY OF KYOTO, PART 2!

Sun 28 January 2024



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2024/01/28 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING COSMOLOGY OF KYOTO, PART 1!

Tue 23 January 2024



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Posted 2024/01/23 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING TEAM XTREME: OPERATION WEATHER DISASTER, PART 2!

Fri 05 January 2024



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2024/01/05 - video, reversing, twitch


INCA? I HARDLY KNOW HER! #DOSEMBER

Fri 29 December 2023



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2023/12/29 - video, reversing, twitch


SIMULATION OF A MOIST HABITAT - #DOSEMBER

Tue 19 December 2023



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Posted 2023/12/19 - video, reversing, twitch


WE'RE JUST NORMAL MEN! WE'RE JUST INNOCENT MEN! #DOSEMBER

Sun 17 December 2023



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Posted 2023/12/17 - video, reversing, twitch


LET'S PLAY A FRENCH MANSION-INHERITING SIMULATOR! #DOSEMBER

Fri 08 December 2023



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Posted 2023/12/08 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING TEAM XTREME: OPERATION WEATHER DISASTER, PART 1!

Wed 29 November 2023



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Posted 2023/11/29 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING THE DARK EYE, FINAL PART! THEN WE START TEAM XTREME!

Wed 22 November 2023



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2023/11/22 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING THE DARK EYE, PART 3!

Sun 19 November 2023



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Posted 2023/11/19 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING THE DARK EYE, PART 2!

Wed 08 November 2023



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Posted 2023/11/08 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING THE DARK EYE, PART 1!

Tue 24 October 2023



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Posted 2023/10/24 - video, reversing, twitch


MACROMEDIA SCIENCE THEATRE! MOSTLY A BUST, MAYBE SKIP THIS ONE!

Fri 20 October 2023



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Posted 2023/10/20 - video, reversing, twitch


MACROMEDIA SCIENCE THEATRE! DEVIL'S CANYON AND VIRTUAL COP! PART 1

Sun 13 August 2023



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Posted 2023/08/13 - video, reversing, twitch


MACROMEDIA SCIENCE THEATRE! XANTHUS! MYSTERIOUS EGYPT! WALLOBEE JACK!

Tue 18 July 2023



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Posted 2023/07/18 - video, reversing, twitch


MACROMEDIA SCIENCE THEATRE! MANIAC SPORTS! THE GREAT GREEN MOUSE DISASTER!

Tue 11 July 2023



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Posted 2023/07/11 - video, reversing, twitch


MACROMEDIA SCIENCE THEATRE! SLOGGING TOWARDS HAMSTERLAND: THE TIME MACHINE!

Wed 28 June 2023



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Posted 2023/06/28 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! RESTORING BOB WINKLE SOLVES LIFE'S GREATEST MYSTERIES, PART 1!

Tue 20 June 2023



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Posted 2023/06/20 - video, reversing, twitch


MACROMEDIA SCIENCE THEATRE! BOB WINKLE SOLVES LIFE'S GREATEST MYSTERIES!

Tue 13 June 2023



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Posted 2023/06/13 - video, reversing, twitch


SHOW YOUR WORKING: FORCING LINUX TO PRINT AT ACTUAL SIZE

Fri 19 May 2023



One day I decided I've had enough of computers and wanted to do literally
anything else. Specifically, in that moment I wanted to print out some sewing
patterns. Here is a 100mm test square I printed on my printer. Except it's only
94mm. 94mm!!!

Not going to lie, searching the internet for useful information has become real
bleak lately. There's plenty of advice floating around to "Open the PDF in
Acrobat and select "Actual size" when printing", but no advice about the Linux
equivalent. To be honest the coward's way out would be to dig out the
sacrificial Windows laptop, find a print driver and use Acrobat Reader, but I
figured other people might like to know how to fix it, so here you go!



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2023/05/19 - show your working, printing, linux, cups


FIXING SCUMMVM! ADDING DIRECTOR 5! SMARTY!

Sat 06 May 2023



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2023/05/06 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING WRATH OF THE GODS, PART Γ!

Mon 13 March 2023



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Posted 2023/03/13 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING WRATH OF THE GODS, PART Β!

Fri 17 February 2023



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Posted 2023/02/17 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING WRATH OF THE GODS

Sat 11 February 2023



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Posted 2023/02/11 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! PANICKING BEFORE 2.7.0 GETS RELEASED! TESTING GADGET: INVENTION,
TRAVEL AND ADVENTURE

Wed 25 January 2023



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2023/01/25 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING DEVO PRESENTS: ADVENTURES OF THE SMART PATROL

Thu 17 November 2022



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2022/11/17 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR (DEBUGGER), SESSION 5

Thu 15 September 2022



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Posted 2022/09/15 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR (DEBUGGER), SESSION 4

Sun 11 September 2022



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Posted 2022/09/11 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR (EASTERN MIND), SESSION 3

Thu 25 August 2022



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Posted 2022/08/25 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR (MEET MEDIABAND, EASTERN MIND), SESSION 2

Mon 08 August 2022



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Posted 2022/08/08 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! TESTING EASTERN MIND: THE LOST SOULS OF TONG NOU

Tue 02 August 2022



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Posted 2022/08/02 - video, reversing, twitch


FIXING SCUMMVM! MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR, SESSION 1 - PART 1

Tue 26 July 2022



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Posted 2022/07/26 - video, reversing, twitch


INTRO TO ROM HACKING: GHOST HOUSE

Tue 09 June 2020





A long time between updates! I've been distracted by working on ScummVM's
Macromedia Director engine, but it's mostly bugfixing and I couldn't find a good
focal point. So on a whim I made this! The previous video took maybe a week,
this was a good test of writing/filming/editing in two days.

In this video Scott takes apart "Ghost House" by Sega, and figures out how to
remove the obnoxious screen flashing effects by reverse engineering the Z80
code. This contains a full step-by-step explanation of how to use the MAME
debugger for hacking ROMs, even if you don't …



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2020/06/09 - video, reversing, sega, master system, games, "educational"
"content"


LET'S REVERSE: ADVENTURES OF LOMAX GRAPHICS

Wed 25 September 2019





I guess I'm a YouTuber now. Wonder how long I can fight this newfound urge to
tase a dead rat.

In this video Scott takes apart "Adventures of Lomax" by Psygnosis and reverse
engineers the graphics data. This didn't require taking apart the code, and
contains a step-by-step explanation of the black-box analysis process. A good
introduction for anyone getting started in reversing games!



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2019/09/25 - video, reversing, graphics, games, "educational" "content"


DDD 2018: REVERSE ENGINEERING IS GOOD AND ALSO FOR EVERYONE

Sat 20 April 2019





Last year I gave my first talk at DDD Perth 2018! It was about reverse
engineering, how I think everyone interested should be encouraged to try it, and
some useful tips for people starting out. Here is the slide deck.

Apologies that the audio is a bit muffled; the microphone had a recording issue,
so instead enjoy some lo-fi camcorder goodness. Thanks again to DDD for having
me, and for going the extra mile to accomodate first-time presenters. Extra
special thanks to David for salvaging these black box recordings (on a long
weekend, no less!).



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2019/04/20 - talk, ddd, reversing, please don't make me watch this


USING YOUR CAR AS A GIANT JOYSTICK FOR $20

Mon 18 December 2017





DISCLAIMER: Cars can be dangerous. The electrical and mechanical systems of a
car are not designed for this use case, and you run the risk of damaging them.
This project worked fine for this particular vehicle, but could damage critical
systems such as steering and braking in a different model. Do not attempt this
with a vehicle that isn't yours, or a vehicle that would leave you with no
contingency if it were to break. The author will not be held accountable for any
damage caused from following these instructions.

This project is about how to rig the controls of nearly any recent car (in my
case a 2007 edition Mazda 3) to act as a giant game controller. In a nutshell;
input from the car will be scraped as CANbus messages from a cheap OBD-II
adapter, then converted to standard joystick and keyboard events, which will be
used to drive a video game projected onto a screen in front of the windshield.
No physical modifications to the car are required; the only one I made was to
pull the fuses for the headlights so as not to blind the projector screen.

The full source code used for the above demo is available at GitHub. With luck,
anyone with entry-level Python experience should be able to adapt this for their
car. I think this is a nice practical introduction to car hacking and reverse
engineering, without the need to spend a lot on exotic debugging hardware.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2017/12/18 - elm327, canbus, debugging, car hacking, electronics,
hardware, doom, wasting your limited time here on earth trying to play mirror's
edge with a car


SHOW YOUR WORKING: FIXING A PILE OF BUGS IN MAME

Sun 03 December 2017



Show Your Working is a brand new segment where I write up things I have
attempted to fix in open source software. Sometimes it's interesting to debug a
problem yourself from first principles, even if the codebase is huge and you
don't know anything going in. I will try and explain my thought process as I
venture out into the weeds armed only with a butter knife.


THE SOFTWARE

If you haven't heard of it, MAME is an emulation project with the aim of
supporting basically every arcade machine ever made. To do this, thousands of
circuit boards and custom chips have been probed, analysed, decapped with acid,
and ultimately written out as code. By adding board ROMs (whole dumps of the
memory chips containing the copyrighted program data), MAME can emulate a system
by connecting together drivers for all of the chipsets as per the layout of the
original board. Recently, the sister project MESS has been merged back into the
MAME main codebase, adding ~2200 consoles and home computer systems to the
lineup. It is an incredible feat of volunteer-driven engineering.

Unlike other emulators, MAME places accuracy and preservation above all else.
All CPU code is interpreted (with some IL speedups via the UML architecture) and
runs time-shared in a single thread. Instead of tightly coupling the hardware
code with the framework for performance, MAME has an infinitely-rewirable
generic module architecture, to encourage reuse of chip drivers across
platforms. Imagine MAME as a big box of all the different types of chips, plus
some templates that explain what chips to take from the box and how to wire them
together to make a system.

Also I was not exaggerating when I said every arcade machine ever made. The MAME
source tree has slightly north of 6900 .cpp files, and a princely 2.9 million
lines of code (4 million if you count headers!). This is a Big Codebase.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2017/12/03 - debugging, show your working, mame, konami, x86, ibm,
gluttony, bless those who preserve our creepy arcade past


SHOW YOUR WORKING: PATCHING A BUG IN A 25 YEAR OLD SIERRA GAME

Sat 23 September 2017



Show Your Working is a brand new segment where I write up things I have
attempted to fix in open source software. Sometimes it's interesting to debug a
problem yourself from first principles, even if the codebase is huge and you
don't know anything going in. I will try and explain my thought process as I
venture out into the weeds armed only with a butter knife.


THE SOFTWARE

ScummVM is a heroic effort to make a cross-platform engine for hundreds of
classic adventure games, making them natively playable on modern systems. Since
2010, ScummVM contains an interpreter originally from the FreeSCI project, and
by now does a pretty good job playing games based on the Sierra Creative
Interpreter. If you haven't heard of ScummVM, I can't recommend it enough.

It's gotten to the point where ScummVM provides a much better experience than
emulating the games in DOS/Windows. Still, given that the engine is reverse
engineered without the original code, there's all manner of edge cases and
quirks that have to be emulated in order for the games to work correctly, as
we'll find out!



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2017/09/23 - debugging, show your working, scummvm, sierra, sci, unfair
deaths, the 90s had a lot of drugs okay


SHOW YOUR WORKING: TURNING OFF PULSEAUDIO "FLAT VOLUMES"

Sun 23 July 2017



Show Your Working is a brand new segment where I write up things I have
attempted to fix in open source software. Sometimes it's interesting to debug a
problem yourself from first principles, even if the codebase is huge and you
don't know anything going in. I will try and explain my thought process as I
venture out into the weeds armed only with a butter knife.


THE SOFTWARE

PulseAudio is the software audio mixer for most desktop Linux distributions.
Let's not mince words; PulseAudio has an awful reputation, mostly earned from
the botched rollout by Ubuntu and other distributions back in 2008. Long-time
Linux users remember these as the dark years where games were unplayable, and
everything was punctuated by a loud crackling from the constant buffer
underruns. The most egregious problems were caused by the aforementioned shonky
buffering, plus a reliance on timing-related ALSA features which had never been
used/tested properly for many sound drivers. It didn't help that barely any
applications had direct support for the PulseAudio API; there were compatibility
shims for ALSA/OSS applications, but they were a crapshoot at best.

But that was a decade ago! We've moved from version 0.9 to version 11.1, a
metric ass-ton of effort has gone into making the mixer first rate, most Linux
sound libraries are fully Pulse compatible, etc. etc. Surely everything is
perfect now, right?



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2017/07/23 - debugging, show your working, pulseaudio, flat volumes,
broken audio, lennart knows best


BALLS TO LEARNING HOW TO ANIMATE, LET'S FILM SOME PARKOUR!

Sat 27 August 2016



Hallå! Welcome to my first game devlog.

I figured I'd start out talking about graphics, as they are a large source of
anxiety for first-time developers. And not without reason! Everyone is a judgy
bastard when it comes to how your low-budget game is presented. Oh sure, it's
become easier for a solo developer to mask the familiar, rancid stench of
programmer art with the equivalent of some pine-scented air freshener, but in
practice this is a huge creative tradeoff. It really pays off to have a unique
and consistent visual style in your work, even if you're not a proper artist.

Which I'm not. Lord no. What little visual talent I have is spread thinly
between drafting/technical drawing (a survival skill picked up working as an
engineer) and sandwich-grade graphic design. Oh and I can maybe do a scratchy
pencil test of a background at 1/8th the speed of a regular artist. Drawing
actual characters and animating them? That's just not going to happen.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2016/08/27 - gamedev, parkour, animation, rotoscoping, drawing, inkscape,
gifs, screenshot saturday, infinite chessboard of doom


DEAD KORG MICROKEY, PART 2: NOOBFACE MCHAMFISTS DESOLDERS HIS FIRST SMD

Fri 17 June 2016



Oh God. Oh God. I've been putting this one off, but the stuff has arrived. I
can't back down now!

A brief résumé of what happened in Part 1: this great little KORG microKEY MIDI
controller stopped powering up for reasons unknown. By wiring it up to a J-Link
debug probe, we found that the CPU was still alive and kicking, yet somehow the
computer was receiving garbled USB messages. As this keyboard has a built-in USB
hub, the stab-in-the-dark diagnosis was that the chip responsible (a Genesys
GL850G) had gone bad and needed replacing. Unfortunately, the chip is a 28-pin
10mm*8mm surface mounted design, and our bumbling hero has never before soldered
an SMD component, much less reworked a board!

To properly capture the fear of someone doing surface-mount rework for the first
time, everything in this piece was written minutes after happening.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2016/06/17 - segger, j-link, korg, microkey, debugging, soldering,
electronics, inexperience, pure uncut fear, christmas miracle


AUDIO ANALYSIS, PART 1: DIGITAL AUDIO

Mon 16 November 2015



Today I'm going to try and explain how digital audio works. Most people have a
vague idea about how sound works. "Sound is a wave!", they might say. "Sound
bounces off things!", adds another. "Sound increases as you get closer to the
stacks!", relates one subject matter expert. "What?", asks someone else? "I SAID
SOUND INCREASES AS YOU GET CLOSER TO THE STACKS!" "Sorry I couldn't hear you
over my crippling tinnitus! Dear Jesus if only I had known more about sound!"

This will be a really simple primer about digital sound waves and how they
contain musical notes. To follow along at home, you'll need the excellent free
audio editor Audacity. Download it if you don't have it already, then open it up
to an empty window.

Right, so what does a single note "look" like? Let's start with a sine wave.
Sine waves have an easily recognisable and pure-sounding tone. In our Audacity
window, we'll click Generate -> Tone.

Oh look, they've helpfully picked a Sine wave as the default, with a frequency
of 440 Hz and an amplitude of 0.8! (I changed the duration to only 5 seconds, as
the default of 30 is a bit too long.) Let's hit OK.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2015/11/16 - audio analysis, audio, digital, sine waves, frequency,
maths, coma, hospital


J-LINK DETECTIVE SQUAD: DEAD KORG MICROKEY-37

Sun 08 November 2015



I love the KORG microKEY 37. It's an excellent entry-level MIDI controller that
fits unobtrusively on your desk, great for impromptu jamming when you should be
focused on something boring like "tax" or "finding a new house before eviction
day". The keys feel pretty soft, as they use rubber domes instead of metal
springs, but the velocity response is excellent. I highly recommend it, as it's
one of those products which basically lives forever and delivers year after year
of good service.

I bring this up because back in about February, my KORG microKEY 37 stopped
turning on. The unit would no longer connect via USB; each time it would give up
at different points during the initial handshake, with dmesg spewing a number of
unhappy messages. Here's one attempt at plugging the device in.

[Sun Sep 27 06:00:56 2015] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 17 using xhci_hcd
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:56 2015] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: Setup ERROR: setup context command for slot 16.
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] usb 3-1: hub failed to enable device, error -22
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 18 using xhci_hcd
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] usb 3-1: device descriptor read/64, error -71
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: Setup ERROR: setup context command for slot 17.
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] usb 3-1: hub failed to enable device, error -22
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] usb 3-1: new high-speed USB device number 19 using xhci_hcd
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:57 2015] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:58 2015] usb 3-1: device not accepting address 19, error -71
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:58 2015] usb 3-1: new full-speed USB device number 20 using xhci_hcd
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:58 2015] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:58 2015] usb 3-1: Device not responding to setup address.
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:58 2015] usb 3-1: device not accepting address 20, error -71
[Sun Sep 27 06:00:58 2015] usb usb3-port1: unable to enumerate USB device


Oh snap! I'm torn on what to do... buying a replacement is doable, but this one
was limited edition and a replacement wouldn't be the same cool colour scheme!
Maybe there's a clue to what went wrong inside the unit?



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2015/11/08 - segger, j-link, korg, microkey, debugging, detectives,
electronics, inexperience


INTRODUCING MR. CROWBAR! UNTOLD MINUTES OF REVERSE ENGINEERING FUN FOR AGES
26-29!

Thu 22 October 2015



I believe that one of the best ways of allowing creativity to overcome limited
technical skill is to build upon stuff that already exists. Take game modding;
just try and count the number of successful games that started out as a
modification of an existing one. Would these developers have gotten anywhere as
far with their idea if they couldn't build on an existing engine and assets, not
to mention community support? WOULD THEY?

Indeed, game modding is an important springboard for new developers to cut their
teeth in a familiar setting and form a good understanding of how games work in
the real world. There is, however, one rather large barrier of entry for people
to start playing with the innards of their favourite game: tools. Occasionally
the engine author will encourage custom content and give their developer tools
out for free. But most of the time games are 100% not designed with modding in
mind, leaving it up to a tiny number of skilled reverse engineers to write their
own tools and share them with the community.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2015/10/22 - mr. crowbar, python, reversing, dos, games, lemmings, niche,
scratching, itch, scraping, barrel


GUIDE: BACKING UP CRAP DVDS

Sat 10 October 2015



Let's tangent for a moment and talk about DVDs. The DVD standard was designed
for the low-powered embedded hardware of the late 1990s. The copy protection is
primitive, and the DVD format is public knowledge by now, making it easy to
backup or format shift your DVD collection as is your God-given first sale right
(unless you live in the US or anywhere that just signed a trade agreement).

For reasons of Christ Knows Why, some publishers (ignorant of how top-down video
piracy generally works) think that the best way to prevent this is by using
third-party copy protection schemes. This so-called protection is of the "no
True Scotsman" variety; it adds a lot of intentional errors to the DVD that
would make most software players (and the authors of the spec) rightfully vomit.
But that's ok! Because the discs are designed for a True Hardware DVD Player,
one that is infinitely more robust than your PC-based counterparts and will soar
over the corrupted blocks like a majestic eagle.

Just to repeat this again, these publishers sell a product with severe mastering
defects on purpose and just hope the error correction is really good and you
don't notice.

This article will walk you through the five categories of dirty tricks used to
limit fair use. Normally you only have to worry about a couple of these; but I
had the misfortune to buy a DVD (Chris Morris' excellent Brass Eye) which had
ALL DAMN 5. And for the first time, none of the DVD playback software I tried
would play the episodes when selected on the menu.



Article continues here! KEEP READING, YOU

Posted 2015/10/10 - dvd, defective, ripping, format shifting, despair, the
future, lousy

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