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in two ways: firstly I’m updating you about site development, and secondly, more regular updates are guarenteed with the new integration.

Firstly, the move to PHP. For years now most of AAG has been powered by PHP with our lovely MySQL database sitting in the background. An exception to this has been the discussion board, powered by a combination of Perl and CGI that Dave has been hacking away at for years. While he’s not a fan of PHP, it makes sense to integrate with the rest of the site, and indeed we’ve wanted to change for a while. But the old tech has been serving its purpose and has also been powering our news and site news sections. Well, we’ve just made a big step away from the 2002 technology with the move of the news section to our main database, and it’s now also in PHP. You will likely not notice the difference - the posts and the index look pretty much the same, aside from a few minor tweaks which are nothing to do with the change of technology. The URL now works in the same way as the rest of the site as a result, too.

Complementing this is the integration of Site News into the Blog. We’ve always intended to post about site developments on here anyway, and so it makes sense to incorporate the announcements here too. As a result of this merge, we’ve freed up space on the front page which is duly taken over by a list of the latest blog entries. This mean you’ll also still see the latest site announcements in the same place. The integration again removes a tie to the old discussion board.

So what does this mean for its future? Well, we’ll discuss that in a future blog entry, but ultimately it will close in its current form, and the last of the old and nasty code from the aagV3 days will finally be gone.

…OK, the logo’s not final, and none of this has actually been coded yet - it’s just an image. However, hopefully it gives you an idea of the direction in which we’re going with our new look, and I hope you like it.

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If you’ve been following the “AAG Temp Blog” that was up on allaboutgames.co.uk over the past couple of weeks you’ll be aware of why we went away. The main site was down for about two and a half weeks, and was the result of unexpected consequences of a server move, which have left the site out of action. With little notice the server needed to be physically moved, but problems were encountered at its new location, and thus prevented it from being set up again. The uncertainty over what would happen next meant it took a while for us to set up the temporary blog to provide you with some content until the full site was restored.

The new location is - as you can see from the restoration of the site - now fully set up and ready to bring you a full range of coverage once more. Further bad luck delayed this stage too - the server itself was actually damaged in transit, but thankfully the HDDs were intact, and we were able to eventually the restore the site on new hardware.

We apologise for the lengthy downtime, and we hope you will continue to visit allaboutgames.co.uk in the future - a future where we hopefully won’t experience anything like this again!

I can’t speak on behalf of other writers, but I certainly hope to make posts reasonably regularly, so please stay tuned to the allaboutgames.co.uk blog.

Now, with that out of the way, on to the core of this post: recovering semi-bricked DSs. If you’ve come to this post from a search engine, then you probably already know what FlashMe is. For those who don’t, it’s a replacement firmware for the DS (or DS Lite) that does a number of things like let you boot DS code directly from the front slot (normally you’d need a slot 1 device such as a PassMe or NoPass, as well as a slot 2 cart), boot unsigned code via the Download and Play option, strip out the health and safety screen, and add a failsafe recovery mode. Obviously installing this completely and utterly voids your warranty.

Flashing a DS is normally a fairly painless process. With DS Lites it’s a bit harder, due to being more compact, but still fairly simple. Unfortunately, if your DS chooses to turn off during the flashing process (like mine did), you can’t boot. Thankfully, FlashMe writes a failsafe bootloader that’s just able to boot DS code from slot 1 or 2 (accessed by holding start and select at poweron), so as long as this was successfully written, you can at least use your DS for more than just a paperweight. Unfortunately, trying to run FlashMe (or, in fact, any .nds files) from an R4DS (or M3 Simply, since they’re the same hardware) when in this recovery mode results in the following:

Oh dear. Not good. Thankfully, chishm, a well-known developer in the DS homebrew community, recently reverse engineered the R4’s encryption system, producing the r4crypt tool. Now, you know the _DS_MENU.DAT files you get in the R4 updates? They’re just encrypted NDS files. Can you see where this is going? Yup, you guessed it, encrypt flashme.nds, and save it as _DS_MENU.DAT in the root of your microSD card.

To make it easier for those who just want the instructions, here’s a step-by-step guide (obviously I accept NO responsibility for anyone damaging their DS further):

• Download r4crypt.
• Encrypt your FlashMe file, with r4crypt -e flashme.nds _DS_MENU.DAT.
• Copy _DS_MENU.DAT to the root of your microSD card.
• Power on with start and select held.
• Follow the FlashMe instructions as before (note: be sure to plug your DS in, for security.)
• Enjoy your un-bricked DS!

You will, of course, have to put the R4/M3 Simply _DS_MENU.DAT back on to be able to use it properly again.

I hope this information will be of use to some people, and I would like to thank chishm so very much for both writing r4crypt, and for telling me how to do this on IRC.

Last year I got a new laptop. It’s fairly decent (by no means high-end, but it has 1GB RAM, a Core Duo T2300 CPU, and an nVidia GeForce Go 7400 - enough to play most games at its native resolution of 1280×800 without any problems). It also has Intel HD Audio. My issue with this comes from two completely different areas.

First up: Microsoft. Microsoft has Windows XP support for the audio system, as outlined in Knowledge Base entry #888111. But wait! What’s this I see?

Note This hotfix is not available for download. To acquire this hotfix, contact Microsoft Product Support Services. For more details, see the “More Information” section.

Oh how very useful. I had to spend quite a long time tracking down a copy of hotfix 888111. Thankfully Windows isn’t my primary OS, and Linux (Ubuntu) just supported it out of the metaphorical box, though on there there’s no audio input.

Secondly (and finally), the audio quality just really isn’t that good. I’m not sure whether the blame lies with the audio chip maker or the laptop manufacturer, or maybe it’s even a driver issue - though I doubt that for most of the issues - but there are a number of issues. For a start, there’s a constant hiss that I can hear, even when audio’s muted; in some circumstances when my laptop’s closed, I get regular clicking and similar quality issues in some circumstances; and finally, audio sometimes seems to get “backed up”, so a whole batch plays quickly after a brief pause, and will sometimes change volume (this one I’m more inclined to believe could be a software issue, but I don’t really feel like testing that).

Now, I know that audio quality on integrated hardware is unlikely to be great, and I’m by no means an electronics engineer, so I also don’t know if it’s technically possible to make a small integrated chip that doesn’t suffer from interference, but the audio quality just bugs me. For contrast, I happily use a Sound Blaster Live! Platinum 5.1 on my desktop, and thats not considered to be particularly high end, so I’m not an extreme audiophile.

(Of course, if anyone from Creative or another audio company is reading, I’ll happily review an ExpressCard X-Fi or other sound card. Or hey, even a USB one. *ahem*)

Tried booting up, and switching to the 360 input on my monitor, but it wasn’t happening. I rebooted the console, and got an output this time - only I got a lot of crackle on the display (which was showing the Dashboard), and a loud whining through the speakers. Another reboot gave the same issue. A further reboot after a few mins to cool down gave the famous ‘three red lights of death‘ - something I now get on every boot, even after leaving it disconnected for half a day.

The particularly interesting point is that it failed while playing Resistance: Fall of Man on the PlayStation 3, which has been sitting next to the 360, with the MS machine being booted up to demonstrate both Gears of War, and what it looked like in HD. Still, I guess sitting the rival consoles next to each other wasn’t the best of ideas… conspiracy theory, anyone?

Like Christmas, Easter isn’t a good time for things to fail, as bank holidays prevail, so I decided to pop off an e-mail to Microsoft that evening so they could reply as soon as possible. They have done, but other than directing me to that same webpage about the lights, they have given me numbers to call “for more help”. Thankfully I can call an 0800 number, and hopefully I’ll soon be sending my machine off for repair… just a pity it’s over 2 months out of warranty (so it’s going to cost me).

Stay tuned to this blog for exciting further progress!

With the new server switch, the forums being opened, and the new stylesheet, there may well be some issues, so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you spot anything broken or wrong or just plain ugly (with the one exception of various forum pages in IE6; they’ll always look wrong. Upgrade to IE7 or Firefox or Opera.)

That’s pretty much all I have to say except enjoy!

This is where the Free Ryzom Campaign steps in. The Free Ryzom Campaign aims to raise enough in donations to purchase the rights to the game, and release it as Free software (note the capital F - if you don’t get the distinction, read the linked document) under the GPL, whilst maintaining a central server (which would be subscription-based) for people to use. Of course, in order to be able to do this, they need you. As I write this, €144,478 has been pledged, and their current goal is €200,000.

This isn’t the first time that a group of people have raised money to get some software open sourced. Blender is a 3D modeling tool that started off life as a shareware application. After a few years, the authors went bankrupt, and €100,000 was raised in order to get it released under the GPL. Now it is actively maintained, has greatly improved, and has a community around it who have created works such as the impressive Elephants Dream.

Hopefully The Free Ryzom Campaign will win the bid to get the rights to Ryzom, and it will become improved as has Blender. Either way, it will certainly be an interesting project to watch in the years to come.

I’m currently using Synergy to play GalCiv 2 on my laptop (booted into Windows), using my desktop’s (booted into Linux, as always) keyboard and mouse, with the audio output from my laptop connected up to my desktop’s sound card’s input. Fun times. Now to see what other games play nicely with Synergy…