Hacking Devolution Speculation thread

[papermanzero]

Games which are affected from audio streaming are less than games which are a multi disc game. (and the solution with dolphin is just bad...)

Both features would make dios mios and devolution perfect.

 

[Hielkenator]

I still haven't ran into that problem, but I don't think I've played for spurts of more than 30 minutes anyways.

Honestly, main thing for me is Audio Stream. Disc swap only affects a few games (and someone in another thread already mentioned using Dolphin to solve that problem), but some of my favorites (Eternal Darkness, SFA [don't hate]) have the whole game affected because of this. I know there's a whole lot of tech reasons why this is so much trouble (even mod chips are flaky with it, which baffles me), but I just never would've expected certain portions of audio to be missing from a game. Just sounds silly when you think about it.

Try pausing a game and leave it for about 15 minutes....try continueing your game. eventually it will hang...

 

[Maverick Lunar X]

I still haven't ran into that problem, but I don't think I've played for spurts of more than 30 minutes anyways.

Honestly, main thing for me is Audio Stream. Disc swap only affects a few games (and someone in another thread already mentioned using Dolphin to solve that problem), but some of my favorites (Eternal Darkness, SFA [don't hate]) have the whole game affected because of this. I know there's a whole lot of tech reasons why this is so much trouble (even mod chips are flaky with it, which baffles me), but I just never would've expected certain portions of audio to be missing from a game. Just sounds silly when you think about it.

Try pausing a game and leave it for about 15 minutes....try continueing your game. eventually it will hang...

Protip: Don't pause for that long

Like I said, haven't really played for extended periods of time. Really just here and there on Wind Waker, and the occasional testing.

 

[Hielkenator]

I still haven't ran into that problem, but I don't think I've played for spurts of more than 30 minutes anyways.

Honestly, main thing for me is Audio Stream. Disc swap only affects a few games (and someone in another thread already mentioned using Dolphin to solve that problem), but some of my favorites (Eternal Darkness, SFA [don't hate]) have the whole game affected because of this. I know there's a whole lot of tech reasons why this is so much trouble (even mod chips are flaky with it, which baffles me), but I just never would've expected certain portions of audio to be missing from a game. Just sounds silly when you think about it.

Try pausing a game and leave it for about 15 minutes....try continueing your game. eventually it will hang...

Protip: Don't pause for that long

Like I said, haven't really played for extended periods of time. Really just here and there on Wind Waker, and the occasional testing.

My test confirms the hdd spindown / not continueing after period of no user input.
It's somewhat annoying if you have to take crap and and come back seeing your game hangs and you did'nt save...

 

[Sicklyboy]

I still haven't ran into that problem, but I don't think I've played for spurts of more than 30 minutes anyways.

Honestly, main thing for me is Audio Stream. Disc swap only affects a few games (and someone in another thread already mentioned using Dolphin to solve that problem), but some of my favorites (Eternal Darkness, SFA [don't hate]) have the whole game affected because of this. I know there's a whole lot of tech reasons why this is so much trouble (even mod chips are flaky with it, which baffles me), but I just never would've expected certain portions of audio to be missing from a game. Just sounds silly when you think about it.

Try pausing a game and leave it for about 15 minutes....try continueing your game. eventually it will hang...

Protip: Don't pause for that long

Like I said, haven't really played for extended periods of time. Really just here and there on Wind Waker, and the occasional testing.

My test confirms the hdd spindown / not continueing after period of no user input.
It's somewhat annoying if you have to take crap and and come back seeing your game hangs and you did'nt save...

Protip: Don't poop

 

[Hielkenator]

I still haven't ran into that problem, but I don't think I've played for spurts of more than 30 minutes anyways.

Honestly, main thing for me is Audio Stream. Disc swap only affects a few games (and someone in another thread already mentioned using Dolphin to solve that problem), but some of my favorites (Eternal Darkness, SFA [don't hate]) have the whole game affected because of this. I know there's a whole lot of tech reasons why this is so much trouble (even mod chips are flaky with it, which baffles me), but I just never would've expected certain portions of audio to be missing from a game. Just sounds silly when you think about it.

Try pausing a game and leave it for about 15 minutes....try continueing your game. eventually it will hang...

Protip: Don't pause for that long

Like I said, haven't really played for extended periods of time. Really just here and there on Wind Waker, and the occasional testing.

My test confirms the hdd spindown / not continueing after period of no user input.
It's somewhat annoying if you have to take crap and and come back seeing your game hangs and you did'nt save...

Protip: Don't poop

...or just let it go...and keep playing....

 

[Sicklyboy]

My test confirms the hdd spindown / not continueing after period of no user input.
It's somewhat annoying if you have to take crap and and come back seeing your game hangs and you did'nt save...

Protip: Don't poop

...or just let it go...and keep playing....

Just keep a bucket by your chair, NO BIG DEAL.

 

[Hielkenator]

My test confirms the hdd spindown / not continueing after period of no user input.
It's somewhat annoying if you have to take crap and and come back seeing your game hangs and you did'nt save...

Protip: Don't poop

...or just let it go...and keep playing....

Just keep a bucket by your chair, NO BIG DEAL.

Man, I need a bucket right now....

 

[Maverick Lunar X]

I left mine paused for about two hours straight, came back and it was fine, so i guess it only affects certain HDD's

 

[Shano56]

I left mine paused for about two hours straight, came back and it was fine, so i guess it only affects certain HDD's

yes. obviously. it affects HDDs with the power save/automatic idle feature. Normally it's not a problem, however no one has figured out how to wake up a device properly after idles during a game (either that or it's not possible)

 

[tueidj]

Pretty sure they wake up fine, the problem is that games have a set timeout period for every single disc operation (like the memory card issue I wrote about) and the time taken for the HDD to spin-up causes it to expire.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Pretty sure they wake up fine, the problem is that games have a set timeout period for every single disc operation (like the memory card issue I wrote about) and the time taken for the HDD to spin-up causes it to expire.

I was thinking about this earlier, actually - would it be technically possible/feasible for Devolution to detect that a drive has gone to sleep, trigger the game's "Please close the disk tray" screen, and wait to "close the tray" until Devolution detects that the drive has woken back up, presumably triggered by pressing a button on the controller?

 

[DaFees]

...or just let it go...and keep playing....

Sorry, I couldn't help but think of this episode of South Park as a sort of yes response,

Spoiler

 

[tueidj]

I was thinking about this earlier, actually - would it be technically possible/feasible for Devolution to detect that a drive has gone to sleep, trigger the game's "Please close the disk tray" screen, and wait to "close the tray" until Devolution detects that the drive has woken back up, presumably triggered by pressing a button on the controller?

There's no standard method to check if a device has gone to sleep. There's a few manufacturer-specific methods, or you can try a read and see how long it takes (but you can't be sure if it's just asleep or dead), but the better fix is to not let it go to sleep in the first place which is already implemented.

 

[PsyBlade]

pausing the game on reads that take to long has its merrits too
even if the drive does not spin down

if the drive is dead things gona burn regardless
I don't think being stuck on the tray screen is much worse than a crashed game

but it could handle other things
eg a drive that was disconnected by accident (with some additional code that resends the apropriate commands)
or stuff like the xenoblade video crash thats caused by the long seek because of the 4G file split (the resulting fragmentation to be exact)

 

[wiismodrome]

... but the better fix is to not let it go to sleep in the first place which is already implemented.

Which means that the program does a periodic read to keep the drive awake?

 

[Hielkenator]

I was thinking about this earlier, actually - would it be technically possible/feasible for Devolution to detect that a drive has gone to sleep, trigger the game's "Please close the disk tray" screen, and wait to "close the tray" until Devolution detects that the drive has woken back up, presumably triggered by pressing a button on the controller?

There's no standard method to check if a device has gone to sleep. There's a few manufacturer-specific methods, or you can try a read and see how long it takes (but you can't be sure if it's just asleep or dead), but the better fix is to not let it go to sleep in the first place which is already implemented.

Well, I took a look at what my drive does...and it acctually does not go to sleep.
The time between pausing and trying to continue was about 1h30min.
At that point what is loaded from a game can be played. For instance; a v s game iin capcom vs snk eo, or a room in zelda ww, ocarina of time etc.
when the game need new data at some point it results in a black screen.
Hdd keeps looking for data.

 

[Maxternal]

wouldn't that be because that "what is loaded from a game" is still in RAM and it doesn't actually need to read from the sleeping drive for that. Not until it "need new data" does it actually try to read from the drive. At that point it takes too long and it just assumes the drive is broken, complains and gives up.

 

[PsyBlade]

you should be able to tell the difference between a spining and non-spining drive by its vibration (sound, touch)

 

[Jman69]

As tueidj already stated that Devolution will keep the drive alive, having a drive that does or does not spin down doesn't really matter. A watchdog was implemented in most cIOS to counter this problem, and I have had no issues with my drive with those.