Official BlackBox News Thread

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:42 am

however wants to write one

if we do make a game do we like pay you royalities or something?

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:45 am

EDIT* spam posts deleted, this post no longer makes sense

Post by **Triton** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:28 pm

hey skyone think you could make one with my logo for compairison? cool btw

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 12:40 pm

If you try to sell the ROM, you might only get to sell it once before it is pirated. Sad, but true.

I believe that if you did that, you'd have to have maybe a product key, at least, on the ROM to burn it to the disk or cartridge. That may dull down the piracy, but not stop it, as the product key could just be copied.

Also, You could sell the cartridges and CDs, but remember others can make circuits that do the same thing if they reverse engineer your system. People could make carts for the Atari and intellivision at will, LEGALLY, and Nintendo only curbed this problem somewhat by making their units have a lockout chip with copyrighted internal firmware, called "10NES". A person who could build a reverse engineered cartridge and download a copied ROM file needn't pay you jack.

Perhaps a custom program that copies the ROM to the disk can have a logging function telling BB people just what "official" ROMS you are copying to the cartridges, and how many, and compares it to how many you have purchased from Black Box? People hate logging, but in this age, it is becomming a necessity.

timmeh87 · Post by **timmeh87** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:44 pm

you can get little chips that have a permanent, totally unique identification number in them. perhaps you can get the owner of the cartridge to give you this number, then compile the code specifially for them so that it will only run in the one cartridge (it checks the number) or something like that.

Extreme_Jesus · Post by **Extreme_Jesus** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 1:52 pm

piracy may be a prblem, but i dont really see this going outside the Benheck communitiy really, if it does then its good

but are you really gonna steal from people you know is my point

NES_fanatic · Post by **NES_fanatic** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 2:08 pm

Use 10NES!

Hey friends, I'd like to be part of this development team. I'd be a "less important person" in the team but I'd still contribute (you all say my boot-up animation already, right?) and it looks like it'll be fun as hell.

A friend I told about the BB said its full name should be the Black Box Entertainment Environment. Just throwing it out there....

MM007 · Post by **MM007** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 4:14 pm

The cartridge number thing may work, but may be expensive to implement.

It may be a good idea simply to send out blank cartridges for homebrew or expansion, and leave the ROM system out of "Official games" entirely.

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:07 pm

i think cartridges are too proprietary and CDs are the best choice becasue they're cheap, easy, and CD drives are all over the place. kinda like what happened with N64 vs PS1

blackbox_dev · Post by **blackbox_dev** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 6:19 pm

@Skyone: Link doesn't work for me. I'll try again later.
EDIT: It worked, and it looks great! Although that little jingle NES_Fanatic's had was awesome too.

@XPC: Sorry 'bout that. Fixed it. Welcome to the International Blackbox Team!

@MM007: Like that idea of simply selling already burned carts for official games and then blank carts for homebrew. Or that logging idea. Both good ideas...

@NES_Fanatic: Just making a boot-screen isn't enough to be part of the International Blackbox Team, but will make you a less important person.

@Krepticor: All schematics and PCB layouts will be availible to the public.

Sooo, Skyone has decided to help me with designing the Blackbox. I think he's basically going to design the GPU with me. Also, i'm thinking of using that little Parallax Propeller chip, but I'll have to look into it. After all, it's a 32-bit chip and everything.

I'm done with working on the Blackbox for tonight, but i'll be back tommorow, don't you worry.

XPCportables · Post by **XPCportables** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 7:55 pm

iam7805 wrote: @XPC: Sorry 'bout that. Fixed it. Welcome to the International Blackbox Team!

no problem, happy to be aboard!

I am working with the controller a little bit and will be posting it soon.

Javabrain · Post by **Javabrain** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:02 pm

That was me who suggested to call it the Black Box Entertainment Environment. and by the way, a splash screen is a big deal!! I mean, it took a lot of thinking to do the splash screens for systems like the Gamecube and the xbox 360! give this guy a little cred!

teraflop122 · Post by **teraflop122** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:18 pm

BlackBox Entertainment Environment as a name is a contradiction of itself. The name BlackBox was chosen for the purposes of simplicity and recognition. BlackBox Entertainment Environment does not roll off the tongue. "Entertainment Environment" contains eight sylables, four times the number in "BlackBox."

Does anyone else see that problem? Of course, it isn't my console, I'm not really on the developement team to much of an extent, and this may or may not be much of a commercial product, but I can't help but look at things from a marketing perspective.

I would like to try coding for it in the future, though

Javabrain · Post by **Javabrain** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:24 pm

Point taken. It may not roll off the tongue, but it is cool because it has two e's to accent the two b's. however, i could think of a bevvy of catchy "accents."

Javabrain · Post by **Javabrain** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:30 pm

Could you imagine if blackbox became the most primitive next gen wii alternative? But you have to have a DAMN good controller.