#155303 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:40 pm
Is it against the forum rules to talk about official development kits, even in very general ways?
Or have I been banned from this thread?
I understand that this is a moderated forum, but if posts get deleted without any explanation for why (perhaps a PM to the poster explaining the rules on a particular subject), then how can we know what is okay to discuss and what isn't? I don't see anything in the forum rules sticky to guide me in this particular matter.
...word is bondage...
#155321 - keldon - Mon Apr 28, 2008 7:10 am
If you are within the law then it is fine; if you are not (e.g. you do not legally have the kit) then no! And if you have [illegally] obtained the official SDK then I'm pretty "CONFIDENTIAL" appears in many places, so a PM shouldn't be necessary ^_^
#155497 - StoneCypher - Wed Apr 30, 2008 4:28 am
Asking about the kit is a waste of time. People who have it legitimately have to sign extremely strict NDAs. The penalty for breaking one of those NDAs is that Nintendo will blacklist you, which makes you almost unemployable.
No official coder will answer you in private, let alone in public.
More importantly, you would get answers. This is a problem for the people who run the forum for two reasons.
1) Half the answers you get will be people who don't know what they're talking about, are making guesses, or are outright lying. It's more common than you might expect. The reason for wanting to prevent that sort of thing is probably obvious.
2) The other half of the answers you get will be from people who stole the SDK. They get banned, then they sign up new accounts. What those people don't understand is that a lot of commercial people, myself included, got their starts in places like this, and gathering information like that from people like that makes you harder to employ. It also lowers the legitimacy of this kind of place.
So, the long and short of it is, you won't get a usable answer because it's hard to sort out the people who are guessing from the people who are stealing, but because the people checking have the real thing, they know there are (in hypothetical) leaks in the place, and they start listing people as not to be trusted.
Laugh if you want; I've been told not to employ someone because of one of those lists. I complied.
So, the reason we would prefer that you not ask specific questions about the kit is that, for possibly counterintuitive reasons, it's not just a risk to the people of the board and a risk to you, but it's also going to turn up a bunch of unusable data for you.
We would appreciate if you would avoid the topic in the future.
- StoneCypher
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#155498 - tepples - Wed Apr 30, 2008 4:33 am
| StoneCypher wrote: |
| The penalty for breaking one of those NDAs is that Nintendo will blacklist you, which makes you almost unemployable. |
Does Nintendo also blacklist people who participate in the homebrew scene without ever becoming party to an NDA?
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#155501 - nanou - Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:14 am
It's unfortunate that it's not stated more clearly in the rules. After reading the forum rules and seeing the attitude with which they're executed I noticed that the issues of piracy and SDK talk are political first, and legal second. No matter what you think of the law, it's bad politics to practice otherwise.
As StoneCypher said, it's directly detrimental to the forum to discuss these things here. There are two local places that develop for Nintendo that I may apply to in the future. I'm not going to do anything to ruin my chances and it would be a shame if other people made my association with this place a bad thing instead of a good one.
Aside from being the most innovative products, Nintendo's are relatively underpowered and the least expensive. Wii's are rightly said to "print money" not just because they're so popular, but also because unlike most consoles, they're not loss leaders -- despite being the cheapest. I almost felt bad for having more homebrew for my DS than commercial titles, but this practice allows Nintendo to all but support homebrew on their consoles. They provide no detectable opposition (beyond reasonable piracy concerns) where the norm is vicious opposition.
tl;dr We have it easy, don't fuck it up. They're playing nice, so act in good faith.
_________________
- nanou
#155519 - Miked0801 - Wed Apr 30, 2008 4:05 pm
Here's the deal with the SDK for real. It's not all that great. There's nothing really in it to die for. Like the compiler, the homebrew stuff is already more powerful in many ways and will continue to surpass the Nintendo stuff throughout the DS's life cycle. It happened on the GBC, it happened on the GBA, it's happening now. Think of the SDK is a basic starter kit with some very lame, yet have to follow rules that restrict you in many ways.
The other thing with SDK discussions: If you are a legit Nintendo developer, you already have easy official ways to share and discuss issues with both other developers and Nintendo. There's just no reason for licensed developers to discuss SDK issues here in a public forum. Anyone who does is either very, very stuck on an obscure issues or isn't legit.
#155520 - M3d10n - Wed Apr 30, 2008 4:12 pm
Also, by avoiding talking about the official SDK (because you are either breaking NDAs or using illegally-obtained software), we avoid confidential or copyrighted information from affecting the development of homebrew SDKs and libraries, which lowers the chances of them being shut down (they are relatively safe as long as they stick to reverse engineering only).
#155521 - SimonB - Wed Apr 30, 2008 4:17 pm
| Sweater Fish Deluxe wrote: |
Is it against the forum rules to talk about official development kits, even in very general ways?
Or have I been banned from this thread?
I understand that this is a moderated forum, but if posts get deleted without any explanation for why (perhaps a PM to the poster explaining the rules on a particular subject), then how can we know what is okay to discuss and what isn't? I don't see anything in the forum rules sticky to guide me in this particular matter. |
Im not sure which thread/post you are talking about, but if you have any complaints about how a moderator has acted, by all means PM me about it and Ill look into it.
Simon
#155529 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:10 pm
I don't have any specific complaint and I don't know who did the moderating anyway. My first post that got deleted probably did overstep the bounds by specifically mentioning leaked SDKs for various systems and I was somewhat cognizant of that as I was posting it, so I wasn't surprised to see it deleted. however, I posted essentially the same questions again without making any direct references and I was very surprised that that one was also deleted, but maybe the moderator didn't notice that it was different.
Basically, what I was asking was just how high level the official SDK is. My impression from seeing various commercial DS games and perhaps from other sources as well is that it's pretty high level.
This was in relation to the discussion about PAlib and libnds and I pointed out that even if the official libraries are high level, doesn't mean that they'd be much like PAlib, but I also don't get the impression that they're very much like libnds. I hoped that someone could say something to that point, but I nderstand the issues about NDAs and warez that make discussing official devkits difficult.
...word is bondage...
#155530 - josath - Wed Apr 30, 2008 6:16 pm
Not like it really matters in the palib discussion anyway. The argument isn't about highlevel vs lowlevel (besides the occasional zealot who says you should write everything in ASM heh). If a well written highlevel library came out, most of the experienced developers would probably be in support of it.
Anyway, that's besides the point. I agree, that there's really no room for any discussion about the official SDK on this forum, no matter how vague or subtle it is.
#155535 - Sweater Fish Deluxe - Wed Apr 30, 2008 7:03 pm
| josath wrote: |
| Not like it really matters in the palib discussion anyway. The argument isn't about highlevel vs lowlevel. |
Yeah, if you re-read my post, you'll see that I already made essentially the same point. However, some other comments in that thread made me start wondering how high level the official SDK was. I wasn't really trying to make any argument (I think if you re-read the whole PAlib or libnds thread you'll see that I often wasn't trying to argue about which was better at all, but people kept assuming that I was), I was just trying to expand the discussion a bit since it seemed like an interesting sub-topic. But maybe it's not appropriate for this forum.
...word is bondage...
#155546 - Dwedit - Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:12 pm
Seeing all this anti PAlib sentiment here...
So, what exactly would be wrong with downloading the PALIB source code, then selecting any code that's good? How good is their ARM7 MP3 player + Wifi core?
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#155548 - josath - Wed Apr 30, 2008 9:17 pm
| Dwedit wrote: |
Seeing all this anti PAlib sentiment here...
So, what exactly would be wrong with downloading the PALIB source code, then selecting any code that's good? How good is their ARM7 MP3 player + Wifi core? |
Nothing would be wrong with that, but looking at all the bad code is very discouraging. Also it's not "their" mp3 player or wifi library, palib maintainers simply found other people's libraries and added PA_ wrappers to it.
#155563 - yellowstar - Wed Apr 30, 2008 11:37 pm
@all:
Does all of what was said, have to do with why this was never answered?(In my bgs topic)
| yellowstar wrote: |
is it legal for a homebrewer, to help another homebrewer by using the official Nitro Capture toolkit to capture a video of a 9-month-old problem?
|
#155569 - silent_code - Thu May 01, 2008 12:18 am
<OT>
9-month-old problem? ... ... "damn, her belly just keeps growing and growing. it's going for nine monthsm like that..." <- will evolve into a life long "problem", very soon. ;^D
</OT>
Last edited by silent_code on Thu May 01, 2008 12:24 am; edited 1 time in total
#155570 - josath - Thu May 01, 2008 12:23 am
| yellowstar wrote: |
@all:
Does all of what was said, have to do with why this was never answered?(In my bgs topic)
| yellowstar wrote: |
is it legal for a homebrewer, to help another homebrewer by using the official Nitro Capture toolkit to capture a video of a 9-month-old problem?
|
|
Either:
1. the guy has the sdk stuff officially, in which case he should not be asking here, but instead asking his company's legal department or nintendo directly, or:
2. the guy has the stuff illegally, in which case it doesn't matter what he's using it for, he still either stole it or broke some contracts to get it. I'd stay far away from him, so you don't get in trouble as well.
#155572 - yellowstar - Thu May 01, 2008 12:37 am
There was some person some quake topic on here, whom posted that he could take some screenshots of quake since he has the toolkit. And that's why I originally asked about that legal question. He wasn't posting about the official SDK, for code and whatnot here, that I know of.(I was going to ask him if he could help, if anybody answered that legal question)
@silent_code:
amusing. :-) It will be 10-months tomorrow. Getting close to being a year old...
#155587 - keldon - Thu May 01, 2008 7:20 am
I once saw an official PSP-devkit on ebay that was acquired by bailifs (or something of that sort) for a company that went bankrupt. I was curious about it since I have legal access to the SDK ... but back on topic, maybe some hardware was acquired that way (so they may not have been doing anything 'wrong' in 'their' case).
#155658 - the warlock - Fri May 02, 2008 5:27 am
Why wouldn't you just take a screengrab from the most accurate emulator you could find instead? They've gotten pretty damn good lately, especially for homebrew testing.
#155659 - josath - Fri May 02, 2008 5:32 am
also, why do you believe a screenshot will somehow solve your problem?
#155660 - the warlock - Fri May 02, 2008 5:46 am
| josath wrote: |
| also, why do you believe a screenshot will somehow solve your problem? |
the problem of not having any ingame screenshots on the site for a homebrew game? Screenshots tend to solve that problem fairly well.
#155671 - tepples - Fri May 02, 2008 12:35 pm
By now, do any publicly available emulators support recording video? That is, I'd like to take 30 screenshots a second and then have the program either assemble them into an AVI or put them into a series of bitmap files so I can assemble them myself with VirtualDub.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.
#155673 - simonjhall - Fri May 02, 2008 12:52 pm
I tried something similar with display capture on the actual DS in order to record some Q2 videos, but due to the inconsistent frame rate it looked a bit lurchy ;-)
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#155675 - silent_code - Fri May 02, 2008 1:09 pm
dualis supports it, but it doesn't support a lot of other things and it looks like it's not being updated for a really long time.
however, you can still caputre stuff in whatever window you want with virtual dub, which is freeware. ;^)
in the main window, go to: file->capture mode
in the capture window do: device -> screen capute
then: video -> source...
set it up as you like.
hope that helps a bit. :^)
#155694 - yellowstar - Fri May 02, 2008 9:49 pm
I want to capture videos, not screenshots. Screenshots wouldn't help, as they wouldn't have the glitch, while the videos would. Dualis crashes on my bg .nds... Desmume and iDeas emulate it correctly, but they can't capture videos. If somebody would add video capture into open-source Desmume, I could capture some decent video. I tried capturing video before with Desmume and Debut,(video capture software)
and the quality was really bad.
@simonjhall:
I was wondering what would happen if I commented out the file writing code in my display capture code... It's really slow, but it must be the display capture's fault.
#155700 - silent_code - Fri May 02, 2008 11:43 pm
have you tried the approach i posted earlier? it records videos and you can select the codec or even capture raw data (with sound and all, just uncompressed) and encode it later.
i use the xvid codec and i can't tell a difference between a 3 gb raw and a 130 mb compessed video afterwards! it's awesome and easy to set up (just choose a general proflile and the target file size / bitrate)!
it's worth trying!
greetings!
#155713 - M3d10n - Sat May 03, 2008 4:55 am
I had to capture a video of a DS homebrew project a while ago, and I did it by hooking the PC's TV-out S-video to another PC with a video capture card and recording it there, since no movie recording app could record the no$gba nor IDEAS at acceptable framerates.
It isn't very sharp, but looks alright if you set Windows to the lowest possible resolution so the emulator window won't become too small in the video.
#155755 - yellowstar - Sat May 03, 2008 10:42 pm
I tried Virtual Dub, but it didn't work on this XP. I'll try it on Vista. All get is a huge file that would take forever to upload with Dial-Up, and a black screen in the output with some bar at the bottom.
#155757 - silent_code - Sat May 03, 2008 10:56 pm
i'm on xp32sp2 and v 1.7.8 works like a charm on my laptop (turion 64 x2 ~1.9 GHz, 2GB)
my offer: you can pm me about it and i will try to record it for you. is that ok? :^)
op: i used this to record stuff from a webcam, as well as recording painting in photoshop on the same machine. ;^)
i'm going to test capture no$ right *now*. ;^D
EDIT: everything looks fine (captured at 25 fps / 270 x 408 xvid 1024 kbps, 44.1kHz 16bit mp3 128kbps). i'm ready to roll, waiting for your call!
Last edited by silent_code on Sat May 03, 2008 11:46 pm; edited 1 time in total
#155761 - yellowstar - Sat May 03, 2008 11:46 pm
The PM is waiting in your inbox silent. No$gba, at least the latest free one, doesn't work with this problem for some reason. Desmume version 3.3.3 and up work, and so does iDeas.
Sorry for the hijack Sweater Fish Deluxe - but I guess you're done here.
#155768 - HyperHacker - Sun May 04, 2008 1:01 am
| josath wrote: |
| yellowstar wrote: | @all:
Does all of what was said, have to do with why this was never answered?(In my bgs topic)
| yellowstar wrote: |
is it legal for a homebrewer, to help another homebrewer by using the official Nitro Capture toolkit to capture a video of a 9-month-old problem?
|
|
Either:
1. the guy has the sdk stuff officially, in which case he should not be asking here, but instead asking his company's legal department or nintendo directly, or:
2. the guy has the stuff illegally, in which case it doesn't matter what he's using it for, he still either stole it or broke some contracts to get it. I'd stay far away from him, so you don't get in trouble as well. |
3. The guy bought it from someone who [bought it from someone who [bought it from someone who [...]]] did 1 or 2.
Anyway the rules are fine, but what bugs me is the mods' tendency to just delete posts or remove text from them without leaving any trace. No edit log, no note explaining what was removed and/or why, no PM mentioning the removal, it just vanishes, Orwell-style. So aside from the obvious censorship issue, people are left confused (wasn't there a post here? or this paragraph doesn't make sense?) and the exact offense is often unclear.
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#155777 - silent_code - Sun May 04, 2008 2:08 am
i agree with HH, that there should at least be a note, so the person that (maybe even unknowingly) offended the rules has a chance to learn a lesson and avoid certain topics in the future.
i don't mind deleting spam (means advertising commercial or offending products in inappropriate places and / or ways) threads and posts without a note, though. ;^D
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