Publishing games.

All general 3DO chat here please.

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3DOKid
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Publishing games.

Post by 3DOKid » Sun Feb 03, 2008 10:43 am

With the demise of Older Games, does anyone know anything about publishing games?

I guess you just get the rights from the original IP ownets and buy a CDROM burner and colour printer. :?:

I also guess we also need to figure out how to encrypt games. Looks like something todo with the gameguru bootloader.

We could just get some stuff for us lot on here sorted out.

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Post by BryWI » Sun Feb 03, 2008 7:23 pm

I tried to think of ways to convince some people to get them to reverse engineer the boot process on those discs. But then i realised that we really dont have anything to be encrypted thats worth while... or at least i assume.

Mobius

Post by Mobius » Sun Feb 03, 2008 11:51 pm

Sounds like a chicken/egg problem. We don't have anything worthwhile to encrypt because nobody wants to put the effort into creating something that can't be encrypted and played by anyone. But we don't have encryption because there's nothing anybody wants to bother encrypting.

What's this about the game guru being used, though? I've heard a couple passing references to it, now. Is this how the OlderGames releases worked? Is there a discussion I missed?

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Post by BryWI » Mon Feb 04, 2008 3:38 pm

The boot code on the oldergames releases use something from the gameguru, wethere its just the image or not i really dont know. I never looked into it. I really havent had the motivation. Which is why i wanted to get someone else to look at it. lol. Im sure I wouldnt even know what im looking at though. But if someone reveresed it, im all for it. We really need it to get a homebrew scene going.

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Post by 3DOKid » Tue Feb 05, 2008 1:18 am

I think there were a couple of games kicking around in the hands of private collectors. These collectors were in talks, I believe, with old games.


I do think there was stuff worth encrypting.

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Post by ackmed » Tue Feb 05, 2008 6:38 am

3DOKid wrote:I think there were a couple of games kicking around in the hands of private collectors. These collectors were in talks, I believe, with old games.


I do think there was stuff worth encrypting.
I got a killing time beta that could use some encrypting.

http://www.toseciso.org/details.php?id=3910

I havent really been able to test it much, no test station, and freedo (with hacked bios) goes to a black screen when you go to start a level.

-ack

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Post by 3DO Experience » Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:14 am

ooo A Killing Time proto. I'd like to see that, but I think we were more on the subject of unreleased games.
I had been talking to RW about covers and a game I have that was never published but I think (not sure as I don't have a test station) that it would require the mouse to play... :( or other hardware.
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Post by Mobius » Thu Feb 07, 2008 4:59 am

Finally got myself a testing station on eBay... Paid a little more than I would have liked, and I think I beat out cdoty for it, but it should be fun to play around with. Maybe I can get a little homebrew going...

Those of you that have unencrypted software: If you want me to test something out, just let me know and we can probably figure something out.

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Post by 3DO Experience » Fri Feb 08, 2008 4:21 am

I saw the one you are talking about a few days ago. I wouldn't have paid what it was up for at the time but that's me. Congrats dude.
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Post by Mobius » Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:27 pm

I have an automatic search for "3DO Testing" on ebay, and they haven't been popping up very often. Prices have been going up. And after getting screwed by someone on Digital Press, I figured I'd just pay the premium.

Now I just have to hope it works okay. :)

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Post by bitrate » Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:55 pm

Mobius wrote:I have an automatic search for "3DO Testing" on ebay, and they haven't been popping up very often. Prices have been going up. And after getting screwed by someone on Digital Press, I figured I'd just pay the premium.

Now I just have to hope it works okay. :)

I think you and I both got screwed by the same person on Digital Press. Almost exactly one year ago I tried to buy some testing stations off of this person and to this very day I am still trying to get my money back. Every time I contact him I get a message back saying that I will be receiving my refund and then a month later he'll ask for my paypal account info for the 100th time, or he'll ask how much he owes me as he doesn't want to send the wrong amount... anything to postpone longer and longer.

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Post by Mobius » Sat Feb 09, 2008 12:22 am

His username was dojosky, and yeah, he had pretty much every excuse in the book. I opened a dispute with PayPal and bugged him on AIM a few times, and eventually I got my money back.

Mobius

Post by Mobius » Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:05 pm

Well, the testing station came today, but I can't seem to get it to play the demo I compiled last year. It plays CDRs of commercial games just fine -- same brand disc, burned with the same burner at the same speed. I hope I'm doing something wrong, otherwise I got a bum testing station. :(

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Post by Mobius » Tue Feb 12, 2008 12:33 am

Phew, disaster averted, I got it working! Now I just have to try out some homebrew of my own...

BTW, has anyone ever gotten CD-RWs to work on the 3DO? I'd like to be able to test my work without burning through stacks of CDRs, and my one test of an RW failed miserably.

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Post by BryWI » Tue Feb 12, 2008 8:38 am

even if you did get a cdrw to work... you are really gonna strain the crappy laser on the drive. I really cant recommend that. Those discs are even harder to read than low speed burned cdr.

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Post by cdoty » Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:29 pm

Mnemonic did the encryption on the OlderGames 3DO disks (http://thdo-homebrew.narod.ru/). But he's incredibly difficult to work with.

The last time I talked to him, he wanted $75 to encrypt a CD, which isn't bad.

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Post by cdoty » Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:31 pm

Mobius wrote: What's this about the game guru being used, though? I've heard a couple passing references to it, now. Is this how the OlderGames releases worked? Is there a discussion I missed?
I'm not sure what the purpose of the Game Guru files are. Game Guru doesn't offer any utilities to boot unencrypted disk, it was only useful in editing save games.

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Post by 3DOKid » Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:41 pm

These guys are merely (and I don't want to under value what they are doing) merely reverse engineering. There must be a hook in the Game Guru boot sector, perhaps a little extra engineering in the Game Guru disk that can be exploited.

Mobius

Post by Mobius » Sun Feb 17, 2008 10:54 pm

cdoty wrote:Mnemonic did the encryption on the OlderGames 3DO disks (http://thdo-homebrew.narod.ru/). But he's incredibly difficult to work with.

The last time I talked to him, he wanted $75 to encrypt a CD, which isn't bad.

Hmm, so he's in this for a profit... I wonder if anything could change his mind. Or if he really wants money, if he'd be willing to sell the know-how for encrypting discs.

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Post by 3DO Experience » Sat Mar 01, 2008 5:53 pm

Nope, I talked to him years ago, all he wants is money. :(

As for having projects to encrypt imagine a translation of Blue Forest Story, or getting to see the tons of extra levels in Icebreaker 2. I dunno who else has taken apart the game but there are an a$$ load of unused and previous versions of levels just sitting around on the disc.
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Post by Mobius » Mon Jul 07, 2008 3:01 am

To those that were talking about GameGuru and the Older Games releases, can you detail how you found reference to GameGuru stuff? I'm looking at Icebreaker II in 3DO Commander right now, and I'm not finding anything referencing GameGuru.

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Post by BryWI » Mon Jul 07, 2008 1:35 pm

hmm maybe that one doesnt show the game guru screen on boot up? I know the others do. Let me check into it.

EDIT. watch the boot sequence. It shows the game guru startup screen.

Mobius

Post by Mobius » Mon Jul 07, 2008 11:25 pm

Oh, how'd I miss that? :lol:

Mobius

Post by Mobius » Tue Jul 08, 2008 4:22 am

Hmm... It looks like it's just using the BannerScreen file from Game Guru. I'm not finding any other GG files in there. Maybe there's something in the LaunchMe, though. I will keep digging.

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Post by mattyg » Wed Jul 09, 2008 12:39 pm

Call me a stubborn optimist but I believe finished or nearly finished versions of the folowing games actually exist : Waterworld , NHL '96 , Wing 4 , MK3 , Golden Gate . Anyone think or know of others ? Someone somewhere has these protos - there have been too many hinted at.These are what we we need to be targeting.I'll keep trawling and post any finds.Good luck Mobius.
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Post by mattyg » Wed Jul 09, 2008 1:11 pm

shredfest?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K2kuP_anAc

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Post by Beef Supreme » Thu Jul 10, 2008 3:08 pm

i badly want nhl96 and mk3

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Post by mattyg » Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:09 pm

I was going going back through some digital press interviews last night and found one from Gregg Tavares who used to be one of the lead progammers for Crystal Dynamics and worked on Crash n Burn and Gex.He was also working on Disruptor for M2 and from reading between the lines this version was the primary one from which the PS1 release came. During the interview he was asked if he kept any unreleased games he worked on over the years and he replied that he pretty much kept EVERYTHING ! Some of these guys who worked on games back in the days of yaw HAVE kept unreleased games. Now if we just started tracking some of these programmers down their egos may want their unreleased games published for sentimental/ego reasons! Maybe I'm naive but some well directed correspondance may just work.
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Post by 3DOKid » Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:26 pm

People allegiances run deep, regardless of anything ;)

It's the difference between what's in your heart, and what you are supposed to believe.

Programmers are human too :)

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Post by mattyg » Thu Jul 10, 2008 10:37 pm

very eloquently put! I hear what your saying.
"purge with fire Bretheren"

3DO is dead , long live 3DO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K2kuP_anAc

"The greatest games in the world take seconds to learn but months to master. The worst take months to learn and minutes to finish."...MattyG

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