That’s a long story actually. Analogue has a (poorly implemented, in my opinion) marketing campaign advertising that their FPGA consoles don’t use normal software emulators like say SNES9x. Their devices instead emulate the consoles on a special chip called an FPGA that lets you mimic the circuits that make up the CPU and other parts. It’s still emulation, just a very different kind than what you normally get on devices like this. That’s also why it’s so hard to release new cores for the Pocket, because you have to create this mimic circuit design that often doesn’t exist elsewhere.
Analogue also doesn’t advertise the ROM playing nature, but their official cores are just a download away in a dedicated area they put aside for community contributions.
Just FYI, FPGA stands for Field Programmable Gate Array and they’re pretty much like a custom SoC which can be altered, modified or revamped in the field without the need to produce a new chip.
Maybe… maybe this is the next stage of enshittification? When enshittification has so utterly destroyed a company that it’s essentially worth nothing, there’s only two options: it dies, or the remaining employees who actually care about it buy it in an attempt to save it.
I don't use neopets anymore but I have been following the neopets saga. I will believe it when I see it, they promised this with the site redesign back when flash died, and most of the original games are still not playable years later.
I would like Gabe to with the EU to make a EULinux. They both have respective reasons to get away from Microsoft’s control over software, and I would very much like to daily drive a Linux without worrying about game compatibility. Unfortunately, I am stuck with Windows because I play many obscure or old games, and simply hate dealing with technical hassles enough as it is. Here’s hoping that Linux becomes good enough within a couple years from now.
Here’s hoping that Linux becomes good enough within a couple years from now.
I jumped head first into Linux without any prior knowledge a year-ish ago, I went and chose what seemed to be a simple distro (Debian) and later found out it’s one of the more difficult distros out there (also most native packages are outdated) and some how made it work day to day.
Basically every game on steam is Linux compatible and a good handful of popular anti-cheats have partnered with Valve to ensure proper compatibility.
Now the problem is, game producers (like Ubisoft & EA) have been pushing this rhetoric that Linux users are all cheaters & hackers and intentionally prevent users from connecting to their servers or even launching the games.
I think the switch isn’t as bad as you make it seem. Hope I provided some insight.
I ply in games that aren’t sold on Steam, that require Japanese locale, do mods, and so forth. Edges cases even on Windows can be a problem. My efforts with trying to get into Mint, made it clear that issues would pop up.
Linux is an good idea, but not yet suitable for intermediate users.
I think the biggest hurdle against transitioning away from Windows to Linux for most government offices isn’t the OS itself - but rather the MS Office suite!
You’d honestly be surprised how pervasive Excel is amongst white collar workers; and I think the biggest hurdle is the uncertainty of compatibility (of formulas, macros, workbook links etc.) from Excel to Open/Libre Office alternatives.
My understanding is that Libre Office is the closest to actually being a good replacement to Excel. Having used Libre Office’s Excel equivalent, it does not feel good to use (then again, neither did Excel).
I’m not sure if we’ll ever be able to replace the Microsoft office suite - Microsoft owns the rights to those softwares’ workflow paradigms IIRC, and people who have been taught those workflows are not going to abandon them. I mean, we’ve not even managed to move away from the staggered qwerty layout that was established for typewriters in the 1870’s. I think the only options are for schools to either adopt new paradigms (using opensource software as teaching tools) over mass adoption in industry.
I’ll give Libre Office a crack over the weekend, if/when I get my Bazzite installation going and will see how it goes; I wonder just how much support it has for the newer functions that have outputs that overfill into adjacent cells (e.g. UNIQUE)?
I tried dworak for awhile and just like switching from windows it is a bit rough sometimes. Every game you play have to change keybindings as a person who play a lot of different games it became too much. But writing was so good. So much easier and intuitive. Only took like a week or something to get into it.
It is still a mystery to me why no one ever created software that can automatically pull videogame input config files and rebind for other layouts. I guess it is somewhat niche. At the same time, input config files are all pretty similar and it sounds fairly straightforward as a project.
Lutris has an option to switch to US QWERTY. Also doesn’t take much effort to do manually but it’s buggy with X.org (sometimes it insists on keeping the previous layout for no reason).
It’s not really ever an issue to rebind keys manually, it’s just time consuming. The point of auto-rebind would be time saving for nonstandard keyboard users.
I use BÉPO AFNOR and some games don’t like É instead of W, autorebind only works for me in games that actually have modern keyboard management and use key codes and/or understand Unicode, dead keys, etc. I’m better off setting the keyboard to US QWERTY
The main issue with Excel is that it is not multithreading in all operations. But for a lot of things it is the only software that can fit the bill.
Libre office feels a lot worse in to work in up to 8 hours a day compared to Excel and it is probably still missing some features like powerquery among others. I do need to test it again, it has been a while.
Then again I work as accountant so I am probably in minority of Excel users.
So, some time ago I saw a video about Microsoft about how they had gotten their OS so bad that now nobody wants to use it by always going all in into the newest big thing (Vr and win 10 mixed reality, tablets and win 8) and i think the same is going to happen here. microsoft will try to make their whole OS just like steamOS, and fail hardly at both the normal consumers and the handheld market
Man I’ve not heard about the finals in a while. I remember I played it every day for two week straight and got everything for my class. Is it better now than at launch?
as long as analogue didnt use the devices actual hardware design and code, its completely legal. theyre not selling you games, theyre selling you a piece of hardware capable of playing said games with their own hardware design.
i dont want to say emulation in a soft sense because its not software emulation, its hardware to hardware emulatoion.
This is actually advertised as having no emulation, all FPGA. Idk if those are compatible but they also say the n64 was the first multiplayer console in the header so they’re clearly a little sketchy on the details lol
FPGAs would be considered “hardware emulation” but a lot of people don’t like that term, and think emulation should be a term limited to software.
Like, there aren’t real N64 chips in there. The hardware IS emulating an N64 - it’s just not doing so in a way that’s comparable with software emulation at all.
Analogue likely doesn’t emulate the hardware at the transistor level, as it’s far more difficult than doing what most software emulators do.
From an interesting (altough non-conclusive) HN-thread:
Without seeing the code, it’s impossible to know where Analog’s implementation falls on the spectrum of software emulation vs hardware simulation. There is nothing magical about FPGAs that automatically makes anything developed with them a 1:1 representation of real hardware. In fact, there are plenty of instances where the FPGA version of a particular console is literally just a representation of a popular emulator only in verilog/vhdl. In many instances, even the best FPGA implementations of some systems are still only simulating system level behavior. Off the top of my head, one famously difficult case is audio, where many chips have analog circuitry that cannot be fully simulated. [1]
Same reason emulators are allowed. As long as the emulator doesn’t use Nintendo’s literal software/hardware or schematics, and as long as the emulator doesn’t traffic in illegal file-sharing, it is allowed. Or at least, it exists in a legal grey area. And Analogue’s pitch is original hardware, essentially rebuilt from scratch using FPGA technology. You still need actual Nintendo 64 carts to use this device. Or at least, that is how it is marketed.
I think the recent emulator shutdowns by Nintendo were more about software piracy. The devs knew that their emulators were being used to play unreleased Nintendo games. The emulators themselves may have been safe and legal, but the devs are mostly just volunteers, or small time operations running on a patreon. As soon as Nintendo applied even the smallest amount of pressure, the devs caved, because they don’t want to spend their entire life savings and then some trying to defend software piracy on principle. Me thinks that Analogue would actually put up a fight if Nintendo tried anything, and that’s why Nintendo doesn’t try anything.
Agreed. I also want to add that this is not a mass market product, plus its not current gen either. So Nintendo does probably not care at all, in addition to what you already said.
Why shouldn’t it be allowed? The company does not violate any copyright, trademark or patent. Otherwise Nintendo would have sued them for their similar project, but for Game Boy, the Analogue Pocket.
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