3DO ZONE Forums

Well, I aquired a Test Deck for the 3DO. Know what that means? It's time to try my hand at getting a team together for this and see what we can do. Flex some muscle and all. Hopefully this all works out. Hope to see you all on the opther side of things, let's be friends!

My question is this, where do I get programming information about the 3DO? Kits, stuff like that? If it is known, I need to know so we can do something here. It is high time for the 3DO to get some new games, and it is about damn time.

Cool. nice to see some new efforts. I have some of the development software, and I believe Devin said in another post he still has his dev stations. Also, 2 versions of Freedo support making your own roms. And there is software available that will help you build a 3DO image.

Drax

Well now, this is great news indeed. Anyone want to embark on a journey with me and build a groovy 3DO game? Get to be a part of YB Games? Always need the help. I am an artist by trade and can come up with ideas and such, I need someone that knows programming. Ben, the second half od YB Games is not interrested in working on the 3DO. Could always use new blood for something new on the system. Anyone?

What did you have in mind? My programming is rusty (I've been doing database work the last several years), but I'd like to contribute where I can. I don't have any experience doing 3D, though. So, it'd have to be something with a fairly small scope, or with a long enough dev cycle that I could learn along the way.

Well, I am not really looking for anything super heavy in the 3D department either. I am actually a huge 2D fan, plus looking at what the 3DO has for V Ram, doing 2D games on the system would be very cool. Depending on what people are interrested in doing, I am all for it. We also would need a coder to, well, write code for the game. Like I said, I have all kinds of ideas for games, but obviously, this is just something to make sure we can even do anything with the 3DO at this point, so what kinds of ideas do you have in mind? If you have AIM, drop me your AIM so we can chat about this. The more people we get involved in this though, the better the chances of coordinating a successful game out of all this.

Well, so far as I know, there is no 3DO homebrew scene, period. So we would need to start from scratch and build the foundations that development can grow from.

We need any and all documentation that exists, anywhere. Whether it's from the leaked dev kit, the FreeDO people, or the guy that wrote Icebreakers, it doesn't matter. We just need people to start doing brain dumps and tell us everything they know.

Then we would need to start simple. Very simple. I'm talking "Hello, World!" simple. Then once we have a grasp on getting code to run on the 3DO, period, we can move on to simple demos, like capturing input and displaying sprites.

While all that's going on, we can lay out plans for an actual game. While we're learning to write basic demos, we can work out a design doc and get basic artwork created, like character sprites. Even then, we need to keep it simple -- like a puzzle game, or a single-screen arcade-style game (think Bubble Bobble). Of course, given the 3DO's power and close attention to artwork, we can still make it a very nice looking game!

Well, for simple demos, you may want to start with the guy who beat the encryption AND already has several simple demos already available :

3DO Homebrew

His samples do work in FREEDO, and he has download links to a CD-image disector/assembler too (OperaFS[De]Compiller).

Kanpai!
Drax

Gir Draxa wrote:Well, for simple demos, you may want to start with the guy who beat the encryption AND already has several simple demos already available :

3DO Homebrew

His samples do work in FREEDO, and he has download links to a CD-image disector/assembler too (OperaFS[De]Compiller).

Kanpai!
Drax

Well, I have seen this stuff, and it is cool for what he is doing. When I am saying smaller stuff that would teast if we could get the 3DO to work, I am still talking full on games. Not saying what he is doing won't end up that way though as tinkering like he is doing is what usually comes up with some of the best stuff, period!

Too bad, I just sold my 3DO dev station and the complete set of dev books that came with it...

Plumbers Don't Wear Ties 2.

That's all I'm saying.

3DOKid wrote:Plumbers Don't Wear Ties 2.

That's all I'm saying.

ok ill add to it then

NOW WITH NO CENSORSHIP SYMBOLS AT ALL
and no gay ass code that doesnt work

You folks need any actors

UnholyTancred wrote:You folks need any actors

Due to lack of programming skill and desire to be in the game - I'm cameraman!

In all seriousness I think this could be a winner. It would be like a sequel to "Plan 9 from outer space" (Was there one?) Anyway - PDWT was considered widely to be the worst game ever. I think releasing the sequel, on the 3DO, the most failed games console history, would get quite a lot of short term coverage. Plus it would be relatively easy to make. Compared to say Wing Commander 2007 if you follow!

...

I'll even write the script

3DOKid wrote:

UnholyTancred wrote:You folks need any actors

Due to lack of programming skill and desire to be in the game - I'm cameraman!

In all seriousness I think this could be a winner. It would be like a sequel to "Plan 9 from outer space" (Was there one?) Anyway - PDWT was considered widely to be the worst game ever. I think releasing the sequel, on the 3DO, the most failed games console history, would get quite a lot of short term coverage. Plus it would be relatively easy to make. Compared to say Wing Commander 2007 if you follow!

...

I'll even write the script

Get writing!

Gir Draxa wrote:Well, for simple demos, you may want to start with the guy who beat the encryption AND already has several simple demos already available :

3DO Homebrew

His samples do work in FREEDO, and he has download links to a CD-image disector/assembler too (OperaFS[De]Compiller).

Kanpai!
Drax

Yeah, this kind of stuff is pretty much where we need to start. Too bad his site doesn't have more source code and more English! I think I might refresh my memory on basic assembly and try to get a couple simple demos running on FreeDO over the next few days.

WindowsKiller wrote:Too bad, I just sold my 3DO dev station and the complete set of dev books that came with it...

Argh!

More English?

I can read in Russian... not all that good however because I hardly ever read but I can still understand it.

I too can read in Russian... And probably, can help with development of the game (I can write in asm and C).

Maybe create OSS project and publish on http://code.google.com/hosting/ ?

Great! I see a reference to OperaFS [De]Compiler on the above site, but I don't see a link to download it. Can either of you tell me if he has a reference to where to find it? Or know where to find it, yourselves?

I'm also wondering what the .3bn file format he's using is. Is that simply a binary compiled directly from the assembly code, or is it a specific 3DO format? If it is a specific 3DO format, is it what OperaFS[De]Compiler outputs?

OperaFS[De]Compiller: http://altmer.arts-union.ru/3DO/downloads/CompilFS.rar

And other utils developed by Altmer:
http://altmer.arts-union.ru/3DO/3do_utils.htm

All the text is showing up as "?"s... Can you tell me what they all say?

Compile, Decompile ISO
Extra log(SPY), Unload Disk Lable?

Alright, I got this working... The left button extracts the contents of a 3DO CD or ISO while the right button creates an ISO. That's kind of the opposite of what the labels imply, but hey, whatever works.

I haven't been able to get gcc to run under cygwin. Does anyone know a Windows-based compiler that would work?

Hmm, well it is good too see that I sparked some interrest in getting a project off of the ground. Anyone really interrested in helping me over here? Get a programming team off of the ground under the YB Games banner?

Alright, I got gcc working, but I don't think it was configured for ARM support. I don't know how to do that, so I just installed GNUARM and that seems to be what I need.

I wrote a little Hello World in C and compiled it for an ARM60. If I load it in FreeDO, I just get a black screen. That's better than getting the "Insert Disc" screen that you get when you try to load something incompatible, but it's not what I wanted!

I also tried recompiling the assembly source from the sonic_test demo from the site above and just got syntax errors.

So, I'm kind of at a roadblock here.

Mobius wrote:I wrote a little Hello World in C and compiled it for an ARM60. If I load it in FreeDO, I just get a black screen.

Can't help that much with C programming, but I faced the same problem with the FZ-35s. Whatever you send to standard output isn't shown on the screen, it just stays black. Intended behaviour I guess.

Yeah, the 3DO's display output starts at a specific address in RAM: 0x2c0000. I'm guessing standard output just doesn't put anything there.

So, I've been focusing on getting the sonic_test demo to compile and run. The GNU tools apparently differ a bit from the tools the original author used, so it's been a matter of learning the tools and cleaning the code up to compile succesfully.

At this point, I've been able to compile without any errors, but, again, I just get a black screen when I run it in FreeDO. I looked at the binary with a hex editor, and I don't think the image files are being included properly.

I started a thread at the FreeDO Homebrew forum, and cdoty replied, but there's not much traffic over there, so it's slow going.

Maybe one of Russian-speaking members here can contact the author of those demos and convince him to join and help us?

Damn, you guys hijacked my thread and they totally ignore me? I feel the love, fine, be that way then.

Haha... Sorry, I just think it's a little early to talk about large projects when we're having trouble even getting something to compile! We'll talk more when we've got demos working for graphics, sound, and input.

T2KFreeker wrote:Hmm, well it is good too see that I sparked some interrest in getting a project off of the ground. Anyone really interrested in helping me over here? Get a programming team off of the ground under the YB Games banner?

I cant create a game for the 3DO, but I very want to help