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Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

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11–20 of 143 posts

Re: Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

#11
post #4

I often enjoy foone’s discoveries, and this was a particularly interesting one. I just wish it wasn’t all on Twitter. Why not put the text, plus pictures and whatever else (links?), into a blog posting, or just some HTML page with basic formatting? And then link to it with just the first Twitter post. Provide an RSS feed if you feel extra charitable (which is the way I enjoy most of the content related to this that I…

Agree. I dont even understand why people use what is essentially a system made for spreading SMS to write long form articles. Just laziness? Plus, no guarantee the content wont disappear at any moment's notice. Accounts can get banned, Twitter may change their archiving policy, etc.

Re: Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

#13
post #6

TLDR: Some NES game cartridges contained coprocessors. The Pilotwings math coprocessor had 3 revisions and one of them produces slightly different outputs, even though the game ROM is identical. Star Fox had a 2D/3D chip called Super FX that sounds a lot like a GPU. It’s pretty cool that console games of that era could augment your existing hardware to support their requirements.

Small correction, these are SNES games. The extra chips on NES games were primarily memory mappers and not as interesting as what SNES games did.

Re: Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

#14
post #10
post #4

I often enjoy foone’s discoveries, and this was a particularly interesting one. I just wish it wasn’t all on Twitter. Why not put the text, plus pictures and whatever else (links?), into a blog posting, or just some HTML page with basic formatting? And then link to it with just the first Twitter post. Provide an RSS feed if you feel extra charitable (which is the way I enjoy most of the content related to this that I…

It's not terrible. Twitter just isn't your preferred venue so you find it unnatural. It's natural for me to read and for others to read and for the author to have written on Twitter. Why not put it elsewhere? Twitter is our place. And we like when content is natively published there. I have no interest in Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or Tumblr but I don't insist all the content in those places shouldn't be there…

> It's not terrible

Low text density, atrocious typography, breaking of standard grammar, arbitrarily-spaced interruptions, no inline images (for mobile), limited external links and quotations, no headings, no custom formatting, random interruptions from other users.

I really can't fathom an argument that Twitter is in any way optimal for reading content of any length. Value added is exclusively in convenience and social factors.

Re: Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

#16
post #10
post #4

I often enjoy foone’s discoveries, and this was a particularly interesting one. I just wish it wasn’t all on Twitter. Why not put the text, plus pictures and whatever else (links?), into a blog posting, or just some HTML page with basic formatting? And then link to it with just the first Twitter post. Provide an RSS feed if you feel extra charitable (which is the way I enjoy most of the content related to this that I…

It's not terrible. Twitter just isn't your preferred venue so you find it unnatural. It's natural for me to read and for others to read and for the author to have written on Twitter. Why not put it elsewhere? Twitter is our place. And we like when content is natively published there. I have no interest in Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or Tumblr but I don't insist all the content in those places shouldn't be there…

Imagine a feature length movie delivered as 300 webms.

Re: Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

#18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not terrible. Twitter just isn't your preferred venue so you find it unnatural. It's natural for me to read and for others to read and for the author to have written on Twitter. Why not put it elsewhere? Twitter is our place. And we like when content is natively published there. I have no interest in Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn or Tumblr but I don't insist all the content in those places shouldn't be there…

> It's not terrible Low text density, atrocious typography, breaking of standard grammar, arbitrarily-spaced interruptions, no inline images (for mobile), limited external links and quotations, no headings, no custom formatting, random interruptions from other users. I really can't fathom an argument that Twitter is in any way optimal for reading content of any length. Value added is exclusively in convenience and so…

You're listing values or things that are specific to your client or your understanding of the platform. For example, I didn't see "random interruptions from other users" when I read that because I know the best way to consume that content isn't on my timeline.

And it's fine not to like Twitter or not be savvy with it or not be interested in becoming savvy with it. But when you see an absolute position that one's values are the only correct ones it should set off loud bullshit alarms in your head whether it's someone else making the argument or it's you. Especially if it's you, because you have more to gain by remembering your own humility than helping someone else find theirs.

Re: Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

#19

> you carefully dump acid on them, and you visually extract the ROM data. Super interested in how that works. Do they literally map out the chip at a transistor/gate level?

Yup check out https://hackaday.com/2017/05/02/how-to-reverse-engineer-a-ch... and Ken Shirriff's excellent blog http://www.righto.com/search/label/reverse-engineering

Re: Pilotwings demos act differently depending on when the cartridge was made

#20
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not terrible Low text density, atrocious typography, breaking of standard grammar, arbitrarily-spaced interruptions, no inline images (for mobile), limited external links and quotations, no headings, no custom formatting, random interruptions from other users. I really can't fathom an argument that Twitter is in any way optimal for reading content of any length. Value added is exclusively in convenience and so…

You're listing values or things that are specific to your client or your understanding of the platform. For example, I didn't see "random interruptions from other users" when I read that because I know the best way to consume that content isn't on my timeline. And it's fine not to like Twitter or not be savvy with it or not be interested in becoming savvy with it. But when you see an absolute position that one's valu…

Twitter's code and formatting very often causes chunks of threads to become detached, and it's not a simple matter of whether you're on your timeline.

And especially with replies, twitter has very strong opinions about what to show you and 'savvy' doesn't override that.

And defaults matter. Complaints about the standard client are valid complaints.

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