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Classic Games (Games) PlayStation (Games)

Two-Player Pong Homebrew Arrives On PS3 54

Posted by timothy from the overqualified dept.
Croakyvoice writes "Dragula96 has released the first 2 player Homebrew Game. Using the Blue Disc Java runtime on the PS3 and the Minimal BD-J (Java) Devkit, this will run on any PS3 on any firmware — Pong finally arrives on PS3."
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Two-Player Pong Homebrew Arrives On PS3 More

Two-Player Pong Homebrew Arrives On PS3

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  • Pong finally arrives on PS3! (Score:5, Funny)

    by 4D6963 ( 933028 ) on Sunday July 27, 2008 @05:06PM (#24361497)
    OMG! Can you say killer app?
    • But will it run on a Beowulf Cluster?

    • Finally, a game that makes the PS3 justice! =D

      On a more serious note, this is one of the more fun games I've seen released so far.
      Disclaimer: First Person Shooters, Car games and Beat 'em ups (Read: Fighting games), Sports games and any platformer or RPG that contains racing sequences royally sucks, OMNSHO.
      This rules out most games on PS3, XB360 and even most Wii games.
      Actually, it rules out most games released on any platform the last 10 - 15 years... =/

      • It also rules out pretty much any top 100 selling game for any platform in the last 10 years.

        I mean, what do you play? Tetris?

        • Well... These days I mostly play old adventure games via Scummvm. I've even refurbished my old Amiga 1200 so that I can play old favorites without an emulator. =)
          Some strategy games are good too.
          Did play World of warcraft for a while, but it got really boring quite quickly.

          I do own a PS2, but I tend to get bored with most games after 10 - 20 minutes of play.
          Best PS2 games I've played recently is Okami and a PS2 port of Flashback [cyxdown.free.fr]

          I'm simply not the target audience of most games released. =(

      • Final Fantasy 7 had a racing sequence...

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by elrous0 ( 869638 ) *
      Sony marches boldly into the 1970's! Maybe next we can get Zork.
  • They've nearly caught up to the commercial offerings.

  • This "two-player" version of Pong sounds much more difficult than the original single-player version!

    -Peter

  • FormerComposer (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FormerComposer ( 318416 ) on Sunday July 27, 2008 @05:34PM (#24361681)

    While not wanting to take away too much from this, in the early 80s, Radio Shack released a version of Breakout (the ball and bricks game) that had nine modes including 2-player versions in both cooperative and competitive modes. You could put English on the ball (square) because of the 2-D paddle motion (not just 1-D). In some modes (bricks at top of screen), gravity also affected the trajectories.

    For the Color Computer ("CoCo") -- 1K of RAM (included the screen memory) and 4K of ROM for the program. Don't remember if there was anything like a BIOS but I believe not. No OS, no virtual machines, or any of the fun things available nowadays.

    I spent many long nights squeezing my code into that tight shoe -- and along the way fell in love with the Motorola 6809 as probably the best designed microprocessor ever made. (I haven't seen anything since then to change my opinion on that.)

    The more things change, the more they stay the same ....

    • I learned on that machine, and figured all machine language was like the 6809, I couldn't believe some of the goofy things my friends had to deal with on other procs. My favorite thing was the 16 bit multiply.

  • more importantly (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Sunday July 27, 2008 @05:43PM (#24361749)
    Unless I missed something (which is entirely possible), I think the more important story here is that someone has found a way to be able to load what appears to be ANY Java-compatible code on the PS3 via nothing more than a USB memory stick. At the moment, this has manifested itself in the form of Pong. But it'll be exciting to see what else people come up with in the coming weeks and months.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The Orange Mage ( 1057436 )

      piracy-enablers?

      • Considering you can only play Java content (and as Akir point out below, only content that conforms to the BD-J spec), I'd say it's fairly unlikely that we'll see any pirated content using this method. Unless you want to pirate some of the Blu-ray minigames....

    • Re:more importantly (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SanityInAnarchy ( 655584 ) <ninja@slaphack.com> on Sunday July 27, 2008 @09:11PM (#24363363) Journal

      That's not news. It's by design -- BD-J allows you to put executable Java on a Blu-Ray disc, much like HDi allows you to put executable JavaScript on an HD-DVD. The news might be that a dev kit makes it easier than burning a disc...

      If BD-J is anything like HDi was, it'll be crushingly limited, compared to what the PS3 can do. You're not really going to get a lot more than Pong and Space Invaders out of it. You'd be much better off developing for PS3 Linux, if you're so determined.

      • You'd be much better off developing for PS3 Linux, if you're so determined.

        Yessssss! That means PS3 NetHack!

        Finally a reason to buy a PS3!

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      it'll be exciting to see what else people come up with in the coming weeks and months.

      Asteroids! Hell yeah!

    • Absoloutely agreed! This is the first I've damn well heard of anything like this on the PS3.

      Where to next?

    • It's Snake [dcemu.co.uk].

      I'm just wondering if they'll close this off (running BD-J off of non-disc media) in a forthcoming firmware update...

  • Oh Yes (Score:5, Funny)

    by dunezone ( 899268 ) on Sunday July 27, 2008 @05:47PM (#24361791) Journal
    Remember how Sony said to give them another year? The wait is over, maybe they will release an extreme version with multiple colors?

  • Gah.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Akir ( 878284 ) on Sunday July 27, 2008 @06:08PM (#24361945)
    As typical on Slashdot, anything that relates to technology in a game system is attributed to the game system itself. BD-J is Java for Blu-ray disc players. It's not PS3 homebrew - It's Blu-ray homebrew.

    • Mod parent up ! This basically clears the whole issue up!

      But hey, maybe theres a potential exploit waiting to be found!

      N.

    • Mod player up. I thought someone found out how to run unsigned code on the PS3...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Taulin ( 569009 )
      So that is like the way to make fancy menus and such? Like, I saw Dragon's Lair on DVD that could play on any DVD player? That is pretty cool if is so flexible you can do that much.
  • As apposed to what? 1 player pong?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ozphx ( 1061292 )

      What is the sound of one paddle paddling?

    • Pong squash; Pong vs. CPU (Score:4, Informative)

      by tepples ( 727027 ) <.tepples. .at. .gmail.com.> on Sunday July 27, 2008 @07:45PM (#24362703) Homepage Journal

      As apposed to what? 1 player pong?

      Some videoairhockey chips implemented a 1-player variant called "squash" where the player bounced the ball against a wall at increasing speeds. A more sophisticated 1-player videoairhockey game uses two paddles, one on each side of the screen, one controlled by the player and the other controlled by the computer. The computer calculates where the ball will end up when the ball reaches the computer's side, using incidence = reflection, and then moves its paddle to block the ball.

  • Finally, (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    a good game for the PS3 is out! I told you guys that this would happen! Now you'll all be sorry that you bought your 360s and Wiis, 'cause PS3 is finally gonna OWN!

  • While I applaud their efforts, was it seriously that difficult to implement a simple AI for a 1 player mode? You know, move the paddle to the same Y coordinates as the ball...seems trivial to me.
  • I've been waiting for the justification and if this is'nt it to spend $300 some odd dollars on anouther game system I don't know what is!

  • Not really the first homebrew game... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ranulf ( 182665 ) on Monday July 28, 2008 @04:12AM (#24365633)

    This is hardly the first 2-player homebrew game on the PS3.

    I released my Puzzle Bobble clone pubble [ranulf.net] almost a year ago. That actually supports 2-5 players.

    What's more, it's open-source and written in Python using my PS3 2D sprite library, python-ps3 [sourceforge.net] which has a good library of SPU-accelerated sprite and alpha-blending routines, wireless sixaxis support and rumble support on a dualshock 3. I'm currently working on 3D rasterisation too, although that will be some months off yet...

    • Your accomplishments are noted, and indeed I'll be looking into that when I get around to putting Linux on my PS3. Sounds cool.

      As others have noted, though, the particular 'game' in TFA plays on an unmodified PS3 without Linux on it, because it takes advantage of the Java subset built into the PS3 for Blu-ray support [wikipedia.org]. It is to that extent interesting, as it is a 'homebrew' game that can be played on an unmodified PS3 using its built-in, stock OS, without having to pay Sony a license fee.

      It's debatable h

  • Java? I was almost excited by this. :(
    • NEWSFLASH: Secret underground hackers release the first homebrew mail client for ps3. Astoundingly simple, this works by pointing the ps3 browser at gmail.com. Sorry you didn't think of it first in order to take credit? Too bad!

  • 1080p compatible?

    • 1080p compatible?

      Yes, and the details are just amazing. Especially the corners on the ball -- they're just incredibly sharp.

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