Acekard R.P.G. loader 4.01 released & Open Source!

[Alastair]

Why are you attacking him? haha
The R4 certainly is one of the best, no-ones denying that.
It's the second best and the Acekard can hope to be the third best.

 

[iwakura]

Why are you attacking him? haha
The R4 certainly is one of the best, no-ones denying that.
It's the second best and the Acekard can hope to be the third best.

seeing that you own a cycloDS, where do you think that belongs in the rankings, alastair? I'm just curious.

 

[stop_loading]

Actually, the R4 is long from dead. If you want a great priced card that does everything that's NEEDED, R4 is the way to go, definitely. If you want more space for media and such, then Cyclo or possibly Acekard. For NDS games and homebrew compatibility at a rock bottom price, R4 is still king.

cheap = king?

let's all hail Mcdonald's dollar menu

R4 = poor man's flash card

 

[cynthia]

Somebody said that the code is bad, but it isn't that bad IMO. I've seen worse. It would pretty maintainable though it would require quite a while to review all of it.

The english comments aren't all that bad, and there wasn't many dirty looking hacks or workarounds from what i saw. (I didn't check all of it though)

The bad things are : there were some commented-out code, without any comment of why it was commented-out... Also some Chinese comments were in it. And the methods were not the best choice of naming, a lot of the methods gave me no idea what it does. Which isn't good.

It shouldn't be the hardest code to maintain. Moonshell is way larger when it comes to the code anyway.

 

[cubin']

The CycloDS Evolution completely destroyed the R4, not to mention that the R4 pretty much is useless now that they haven't fixed Worms Open Warfare 2, it is like a statement saying that in the future they will be slow to release updates, or maybe not at all...

the Cyclo destroyed the R4? how? the R4 is 'pretty much useless' ??!? They could release a patch in the next week and then they'd be even in my opinion.

I can still play any DS game I want on my R4 so it's hardly worth getting another flashcard for these incredible must have features that the cyclo has (ie: none, it has zero worthwhile extra features than the R4 ZERO!)

I'd love a cycloDS if someone gave one to me for free but apart from that I doubt many R4 users would ever switch to something more expensive that does the exact same thing.

 

[d33t]

I'm pretty excited to see if anyone runs with this cart. I can see people releasing and maintaining their own versions of the firmware too, which could be both good and bad. Still, if it keeps features coming and they maintain the project well, it can't lose. Open source is pretty great and invites a lot of innovation.

As for the code being sloppy and poorly commented, I don't see why it would/should keep people from buying the cart itself. I'm sure they aren't the only company who's code is like that, they just happen to be the only one you can see. In fact, I'd be surprised if ANY flash cart's firmware was cleanly written, well documented and efficient. It's more of a "if it works and it's stable, get it out the door" situation.

Lastly, even if the community never takes hold of the cart, it's coming out of the gate with all the standards anyway, plus the mixed Flash/MicroSDHC combo, which is cool on its own. As long as Acekard keeps up on the updates (which they seem to have done with their older cards already) this cart should be pretty amazing. That's all assuming that the features work

Anxiously awaiting the review!!

EDIT: Just read through all the posts. The R4 vs CycloDS stuff is entertaining

. I have an M3 myself, which I love, but if I was in the market for a new cart, the CycloDS would get my business. Download play, MicroSDHC and their update track record are all very impressive and well worth the extra cash. But, I love my M3; it's done everything I've needed it to and it was really cheap.

Also, I didn't realize that the Acekard didn't have some of the most basic of features yet (download play, soft reset, etc); that kinda sucks. Hopefully it'll be added soon or it could be a very bad first impression for a lot of people. I also hope they (or someone active in the community) really maintains the open source project. The single most important aspect to making open source work is project management and maintenance; without it the community will never materialize....

 

[cory1492]

I'll shut you all up right now on this R4/cyclo stuff in a AK thread: maybe R4 is "behind" because they were busy OEM'ing CycloDS?

It won't be the big mess one would imagine looking at the current source code, especially if AK make some form of public SVN and actual collaboration occurs. Ever used XBMC? It's a great example of a collaborative effort (though I can't say the source to that is anywhere close to tidy most days).

 

[recover]

Whoa!
I see that this has gone out to yet another historical flame fight, and it's not even about the card we're supposed to discuss here!
I think it's better if we stay on topic, this discussion is about the ARPG, its features, and speculation about the card's future.

I think it's pretty much a matter of time, we won't really see any sudden reaction to the open source TODAY.
Think about it, AceKard got a lot of things to keep up with now, SVN repository, bug tracker (I wonder if they'll make one, I did mail it as a suggestion), fix bugs etc.
It's really up to them to fix this and make the card attractive to developers (maybe send some freebies to some devs they like?).

 

[TLSpartan]

If Acekard wanted to they could set up a bounty system. I mean you could get 50 bucks for coding in soft reset and stuff like that. They would save heaps on paying programmers

 

[cynthia]

If Acekard wanted to they could set up a bounty system. I mean you could get 50 bucks for coding in soft reset and stuff like that. They would save heaps on paying programmers

What you didn't notice is Acekard is from China. How much to you think the average wage is in China?
You can hire a full-time housemaid for a month with just 150USD in China. And full-time means she serves you 24/7, and lives in the house. I'm not very clear about IT professionals, but 50 bucks for one feature would be a crazy amount for a company in China to pay.

 

[Hit]

They could better make an plugin system wat makes it avaible to controll the wholle device
But releasing the source is bad
Preppair for clones

 

[Kellicros]

Very wise move to have the firmware open-source, lets see if the other flashcarts follow the footstep. Let's see, flashcarts, aside of the purpose of running *coughs* backups, they are very vital for homebrews. Now, if the flashcart developers are having a hard to to squeeze out new ideas to improve the firmwares, why not let the homebewers do it?

Slightly offtopic though, seeing how popular the R4 is, having the firmware open-source means a lot, it is almost like a dream.

 

[shakirmoledina]

but ppl should leave it to the developers to make it since they know more of the device and how much do u trust the ppl to do... Take emus for example... if nintendo made the emu (lols) it would be done in few months or weeks becuz they know what to do so what about the R4 and others as developers know more on how to program it...

 

[cubin']

I'm a little worried about dodgy firmware that ends up bricking your DS because some noob didn't know what he was doing.

If I get one I'll only be downloading the official updates.

I hear download play isn't 100% with this card yet? can anyone confirm this?

 

[4saken]

I'm a little worried about dodgy firmware that ends up bricking your DS because some noob didn't know what he was doing.

If I get one I'll only be downloading the official updates.

I hear download play isn't 100% with this card yet? can anyone confirm this?

Yes, it is not 100%

 

[felix123]

but ppl should leave it to the developers to make it since they know more of the device and how much do u trust the ppl to do... Take emus for example... if nintendo made the emu (lols) it would be done in few months or weeks becuz they know what to do so what about the R4 and others as developers know more on how to program it...

Um, the unofficial Zelda: Phantom Hourglass Chinese translation was done in two weeks by unpaid volunteers.
The official English translation by paid Nintendo developers is not out yet.

Don't dis developers just because they are not official.

 

[cory1492]

but ppl should leave it to the developers to make it since they know more of the device and how much do u trust the ppl to do...Seriously, I trust the likes of moonlight and dragonminded, or for that matter any dev who just picked up the DS toolchain yesterday over the official product group some seem to champion to the point of thread hijacking lately around here. If one is antsy about in development updates from homebrewers, there is always the option to wait until others who have the ability to recover their DS from any catastrophe confirm operations.

They could better make an plugin system that makes it available to control the whole device
But releasing the source is bad
Prepare for clones

If it get's cloned, it will be very bad clones. Judging by the source, much of the proprietary stuff is done internally on the asic's, also judging by the number of R4 clones on the market today it is also a very effective way to protect their product (for example, just have a look at how well Cyclo's SuperCard slot2 knockoffs are doing these days... THAT's why in my books R4, AK, EZ5, DS Link, Ncard etc are still the better products, one might say it's a poor man's product but at least it is a poor man's not possibly stolen design or outsourced product).

Giving their hardware's software protections of a sort to prevent cloning after open source release also explains in a way that should make sense to most as to why it may have taken them 10 months to bring the HARDWARE to market... making sure the internal code wouldn't show faults down the road is pretty important when it becomes more complex (more important IMHO than making a menu that does more than the basics before the hardware is fully tested as reliable in most consumer situations).

I had some hope that other teams like EZ would step up to open source their stuff, but after reflection I don't believe their products were built to the idea of hardware based protection once the source was out (aka: making us consumers safe from bad fakes). I am hoping for a lot with AK RPG, and I hope most aren't too dense to realize the value of this style of openness from the team that they continue to jump on the "limited support waiting hoping preying for an update in a timely manner" bandwagon. Trust me, even some of the greatest/fastest coders eventually tire of updating things and eventually all the non-open products will be left behind for bigger and better things.

 

[arctic_flame]

I'm a little worried about dodgy firmware that ends up bricking your DS because some noob didn't know what he was doing.

It's impossible to unintentionally brick someones DS. And, as all upgrades should come with source (GPL?) Just look at the code yourself.

Failing that, flash your DS. There's no reason not to do so.

 

[hollabackitsobi]

Alright, there are several things wrong with your post. First, why do you call yourself out as being biased? That's rather stupid, and I don't see the point in it. Second, you fail to understand what the word impartial means. Impartial means you don't favor one over the other when making judgements, and will highlight merits and faults regardless, not that you love them all.

And yes, it's true that about 99.8% of DS games don't work on the R4, therefore rendering it completely useless. I guess you're right, burn all the R4s because Worms and Deltora Quest don't work. And when you say "100% compatibility is pretty much available on all carts except the R4 and older carts", what older carts? Everything, right? There aren't THAT many flashcarts out there, so among them R4 still stands as one of the best. Name 5 other DS carts with absolute 100% compatibility, and I will stand proven wrong.

And you say you "eventually" expect it to get more popular, yet is it there now? We live in the present, and speculating about the future does nothing to change the here and now.  Even though incompatibility is a big issue, it's *easily* fixed in comparison to something like say, soft reset or the Acekard's lacking download play.


How exactly do you know that I made the judgement favoring a single cart over another? I got all of them under the same circumstances, I tested all of them using the same tests, and my judgement is based on the cart's same tests. I used the same files to test them, I used the same games to test them, I don't see how you can call me bias. Just because I don't like a cart that you have, and I like a cart that you don't have? If anything, you are bias as you only have the R4.

I'm sorry for taking this thread off course, but Pharoah is very wrong on this one. YOU called YOURSELF bias, go to your post a couple pages back when you say "...bias is apparent (I think you meant inherent) in human nature...", so don't come here and say I said you were biased, you called yourself out on that one. And how am I biased? Rather, I'm the most impartial one here, because I call out the Acekard on it's faults each time, and the R4 as well for it's minimal compatibility issues. Plus, having all three cards doesn't instantly rid you of bias. If that was true, then the fact that I considered buying an Acekard and have a Cyclo on order right now should absolve me of the crime of being biased.

 

[KINGOFNOOBS]

Actually, the R4 is long from dead. If you want a great priced card that does everything that's NEEDED, R4 is the way to go, definitely. If you want more space for media and such, then Cyclo or possibly Acekard. For NDS games and homebrew compatibility at a rock bottom price, R4 is still king.

Wrong, N-Card already killed R4 in that aspect long ago. You can even by 1GB N-Cards for 20$