#i have the game on original hardware but it's a pain to document

[inexplicably-spookified]

fun cave story fact: unused scripting in cave story implies that you were once able to return to the waterway - a flag jump to skip the ironhead fight and simply dump you in mimiga village's reservoir - and in fact if you manage to get back there, it's still functional... but only in CS3D, later versions of CS+ & the JP 1.0.0.6 version of freeware (well i haven't tested the latter two myself i'm just relying on TCRF for that one) due to a typo in the script

anyway if you manage to get back there in CS3D through the beast fang glitch (tdlr loading another map's script into a map), while it does work, you're unfortunately stuck:

(quote's where the white dot on the map is, behind the top of the waterfall)

the map change coordinates are intended for the original game, spawning you at the top of the reservoir so you fall down, but CS3D changed the map layout slightly for some reason, adding that row of blocks

(original layout for comparison)

anyway this has been useless cave story facts with eli i don't know how to end this post bye

[zosonils-art]

Pixel Man’s design interests me and I would like to know more

pixel man!! i love this bi disaster, infodump about him under the cut!

pixel works in cybersecurity, cracking open suspicious programs and mysterious files to figure out exactly what they do and why. basically what he does is open the pure code he's working on and read it line by line to figure out what it does from scratch, letting him find security flaws or hidden malware in only hours where it'd take even the most experienced human hackers months to make any progress. he's fluent in every documented language of code and can teach himself new ones, and was specifically designed to be good at learning and applying new information

he has to be really thorough and meticulous with his job, so that extends to his personality and behaviour. he double-checks everything, has some neat freak tendencies, and generally is a bit of an anxious wreck overall. he's morbidly socially awkward and has trouble with social cues, but once he's had some time to work up his confidence he can easily hold a conversation for hours just gushing nonstop about something that interests him. he's easily flustered and quickly turns into a stuttery mess when he receives praise or affection, he's such a huge dork i love him so much

when he's not working, pixel is usually finding other types of code to pull apart - he's fascinated by old video games and especially by emulation! in his spare time he likes putting together his own emulators, often on unconventional hardware like getting a gameboy to run on a smart fridge or something ridiculous like that. it's a fun exercise in creative problem solving for him, and the stakes are so low in comparison to his usual work that it's actually pretty relaxing :) [he also rips all his own roms! no piracy for this guy, he's hard-coded to follow the law even when he knows it's objectively stupid. when he gets his 'don't do crimes' code ripped out with a pair of tongs i think the first thing he'd do is download literally every rom of every single game released from 1977 to 20XX on company wifi at a horrifying speed lmao]

if he needs to, he can plug himself into almost any computer via the port in his chest to directly access files without any interface in between. this greatly increases his work speed, since he doesn't have to waste precious time translating visual information into something he can process, but it makes his own systems pretty vulnerable to malware - especially if it specifically targets robot masters, as he learns the hard way when wily takes control of him. because of this increased risk, he generally only directly accesses files if they somehow resist being displayed visually, they're stored on a computer without any wireless capability, or if the matter is REALLY time-sensitive. he typically opts to use his holographic screens instead, which can connect wirelessly to most devices and have a unique operating system built specifically to streamline pixel's job for him. like 99% of the time they're more than enough

he's weak to sugar rush because trust me, as someone who has dropped cake in a keyboard before, it's not good for computers. by that logic sugar rush would wreck the entire game, but pixel in particular has a gaping hole in his chest specifically for getting directly into his systems, and he really needs to get like a surge protector or something before someone just hucks a massive glob of icing in there. he's not well-prepared for combat at all, honestly, but with his screens modified into hard light shields he can at least defend himself and give any stray super fighting robots a nasty electric shock. sadly i don't have much of an idea for what his stage would be like yet..... given his interest in old video games and my absolute obsession with the aesthetic i could see him maybe having a stage in an arcade?

pixel is one of the first robot master ideas i ever had, but it took me ages to figure out how i wanted him to look. i think early on he looked more like bounce man in my head? whatever he started as in my brain, though, i never drew it, and somehow i ended up with this lanky minecraft man instead. a lot of his design was just made up on a whim and immediately stuck, and there's a bunch of things i tried to do but just couldn't get to work [like the aforementioned bounce-like design, and i originally wanted green and purple in his colour scheme before accepting that it wasn't going to work], but despite the pain drawing him has caused me i think he's ended up as one of my favourite ocs design-wise..... society is objectively better off since i drew big eyebrows on him in the initial microsoft paint image and liked them so much i kept them there

also, when he's working on a particularly tricky project that has him pulling all-nighters [whether strictly work-related or not], my guy goes through e tanks the way stressed students go through coffee. it's probably a problem lmao have you tried sleeping sir

it's getting pretty late so i'm gonna call the pixel infodump done for now - thank you so much for asking about this dork! like last time, here's the art without the fancy lighting for a more straightforward look at his colour scheme :D

[almosthumanophelia]

Tenno Ophelia

Backstory and Overview

// I decided to finally make a (coherent) post detailing Ophelia's history and origin story as a Tenno. I've discussed it a bit on this blog before, but a few things have changed, and I wanted to really get it all down. Some facts and the exact timeline may differ somewhat from the canon in-game Tenno; I don't really consider this an AU, just a thing to keep in mind. Feel free to spread this around or offer some thoughts, asks and feedback are always welcome. Story time!

Ophelia was born to well-off parents, both computer scientists and engineers, and some of the best in their field. They lived in the middle tiers of Orokin society, and had a similar level of standing as the high ranks of the modern Corpus.

Her father focused on the hardware side of things; her mother, the software. Though they were trusted with many projects, they were best known for their work with Cephalons. They instilled an early love of Cephalons in their infant daughter, who began to have conversations with the geometric holographic projections almost as soon as she could speak.

One day, the pair got an offer - or rather, an order disguised as an offer - to travel to the Tau system aboard the Zariman. They would be chief engineers for the ship's more complex systems, and assist in establishing the technological aspects of the new colony once they arrived. They had no close family, and nobody they trusted to take in their daughter. Because they would be gone for years, they had no choice but to bring her along as well. Ophelia embarked on the mission with her parents when she was just three years old.

The disaster that followed was well documented in classified Orokin records. Ophelia's father was the first to succumb to the madness. Her mother held on long enough to get their child to safety, hiding her in a cargo storage area, locking the door, and scrambling the door codes so that when she eventually gave in as well, she would be unable to enter.

The plan worked, but at a cost. The cargo area was not as well shielded from radiation and Void energy. Ophelia was left exposed, and suffered severe Void energy burns. They scarred nearly her entire body, leaving twisted, blackened marks over every part of skin they touched. Some of the other children could hear her screams of pain and terror, even from corridors away. She would not be extracted and treated until the Orokin recovered the ship. Although her exact memories of events were always fuzzy, the emotions and sensations she experienced stayed with her long after her rescue.

The traumatized toddler was very quiet, and often refused to speak at all. When she did, it was typically out of fear of being left alone and abandoned once more. The Void scarring left her physically weakened, and often suffering from pains and aches. Orokin experiments and probes to try and determine the full effects of Void energy were exceptionally painful for her. Often, anyone who attempted to treat her was subject to severe injuries and burns from outbursts of energy. But unlike most of the other Tenno, Ophelia's outbursts were deliberate. She learned to harness her power early as a defense mechanism.

The Orokin were left with a child who was volatile, traumatized, violent, and a selectively mute amnesiac - but one who was exceptionally powerful. They weren't willing (or, really, able) to dispose of her, but she needed a permanent guardian. Margulis, who had taken the Tenno on as her charges, soon noticed a pattern in the girl's behavior. Though she shunned human contact, she still whispered to the facility Cephalons, often late at night when she was supposed to be sleeping.

At the age of five, Ophelia was given her first and only Cephalon: a fairly recent Series Two by the name of Cephalon Ordis, whose sole standing order was her care and well-being. The two hit it off, and were soon inseparable. When she talked to her Cephalon, she became more personable, happy, and open. Eventually, slowly, Ophelia began to open up to the other children once again, though she still kept them at arms' length.

Then Margulis vanished, and Ophelia's fears of abandonment flared up once more. She clung to Ordis more tightly than ever. Her bond with him had evolved beyond Cephalon and master; they were much more akin to parent and child. Ordis was her sole support system as she was ushered into the role of child warrior, under Ballas's direction. When she eventually learned that Margulis had been killed, her upset over the situation, combined with how poorly she herself had been treated in the past, began to turn into a burning hatred of the Orokin. It was a hate she would carry the rest of her life.

Ophelia's first and favorite Warframe was a Volt, one that matched her volatile, fragile, but highly dangerous and powerful nature. She became known for quick, ruthless strikes, slaughtering the enemy before they had a chance to react. The bloody scenes of battle were cathartic to the girl, and helped her deal with her trauma and loss. She took a certain amount of pride in being good at what she did, trained hard, and soon was considered to be on par with the Orokin mercenaries of old. Missions were never a source of conflict or moral crisis for her; she did her job and did it well, and she grew up killing for a cause.

When the time came to turn on the Orokin, she saw it as a way to make them pay for what they had done. She moved against them without hesitation and without mercy, falling perfectly in line with Natah and the Sentients' plan. However, she would not go into cryosleep willingly, and be separated from her beloved Ordis. She had to be put to sleep, and never got a chance to explain or say farewell. She was thirteen.

Over a hundred years later, she was awake once more, and on missions once again - this time, following the guidance of the Lotus, though much more loosely than she had under the Orokin. She viewed the Lotus as more of a battle commander than a mother, but she still carried a certain respect and affection for her. Reunited with Ordis and feeling free for the first time in her life, Ophelia displayed a real sense of spunk and humor in her work, though she often acted outside the bounds of her orders. Other Tenno grew to knew her as something of a rebellious wild card.

Ophelia's skills aside from warrior and mercenary work included hacking and programming, something she inherited from her parents. She was always exceptional when it came to working with tech, and was never shy about showing that off. However, memories of the parents she inherited her skill from, as well as those of her life before the Zariman, would forever elude her. What little she had, had been permanently corrupted by her long cryosleep. She was now only a Tenno, and nothing else. Ophelia could not even remember her own last name. Meanwhile, aches and pains would forever continue to plague her, even as she grew a bit more physically strong. Nightmares and night terrors were more symptoms left over from her younger days; the only one ever able to calm her during one of these episodes was Ordis.

Upon uncovering fragments of Ordis's memory that revealed his past to her, Ophelia was shocked. She saw the parallels in their life stories, and carried a deep gratitude to the Cephalon that had looked after her so faithfully. After a bit of coaxing and coding backdoors, she spoke directly to the part of Ordis that was still faithful to his roots as Ordan. He admitted that he had not seen her as a punishment for a very long time, and they came to an understanding that their familial affection for each other was genuine and mutual. Her training from that point onward began to focus more on emulating Ordan's battle style. Eventually, Ophelia would adopt the last name Karris as a tribute to the man she considered her true father.

[wolfgabe]

Switch Online Expansion and a primer on the realties of emulation and retro re releases.

I have seen a lot of people complaining about the price of the switch online expansion but frankly I think the hate is way overblown.  Yes 50 dollars a year does seem a bit much but it actually starts to become reasonable when you consider how much original copies of Nintendo 64 titles can go for online nowadays especially if its in mint condition with the original packaging and manual.

Now people will often say “Oh but why not emulate them on PC?” While yes that is one option although a relatively legally dubious one, its not exactly what I would consider a 100 percent perfect solution since emulating on PC generally expects you to have a fairly high spec machine on top of having to go through the set up process itself which can be fairly complex depending on the console you are trying to emulate for. While Nintendo 64 emulation has improved greatly over the years its still far from perfect and you will inevitably run into issues depending on the game which isn’t too surprising considering the Nintendo 64 has always been rather notorious for being a huge pain in the ass to emulate properly a large part of it due to its unorthodox rendering methods and relatively unique hardware which is based off that found in SGI workstations. This is where Nintendo has an advantage in that they have access to the original documentation of the system itself as well as their own dedicated emulation teams. While this does allow Nintendo to create a more accurate N64 emulator than what most fan made options can achieve its not without compromise depending on the hardware. The Nintendo 64  Wii Virtual Console emulator is a good example of this being that it was deliberately designed to avoid emulating certain advanced hardware features most of which were seldom used by Nintendo themselves but more commonly by their 2nd party developers such as Rareware or certain third party devs. In general the way NIntendo emulates its  legacy games is not through a general universal emulator such as Dolphin but rather each game is essentially running in its own custom emulator designed specifically for that game and that game alone. This likely how they were able to get certain N64 games that often generally struggle to run accurately on fan made emulators such as Paper Mario to run almost flawlessly on Wii.

Now you might be wondering what does this all have to do with price? Well if you are familiar with the realities of business and game development you should likely understand that porting and re releasing legacy titles is not exactly a cheap or easy process. In general the price of the Switch Online expansion probably comes from a few different things

The cost of developing the emulators for the N64 and Sega Genesis games

additional costs likely from implementing the online multiplayer features

licensing fees to Sega for the Genesis titles

and no doubt royalties to Microsoft for the rights to Banjo Kazooie

Porting and emulating legacy titles on modern systems is essentially like remastering an older film or TV show in HD in many ways. For a high quality film transfer you not only have to track down the original film canisters which can often number in the thousands but you also usually will need to bring in a dedicated team to clean up and digitize the original film negatives on top of usually having to reconstruct the scenes to ensure proper lighting. For a virtual console style re release of a Nintendo 64 game not only do you generally have to track down the original source code which is often easier said than done depending on the game in question but you would also need to build and test the emulator itself. To complicate things further no two games are built exactly alike and not every Nintendo 64 game uses the hardware in the exact same way. Also for any third party games there is the matter of negotiating with the original publisher. Its this last part that has often made proper re releases of many Nintendo 64 games particularly difficult since so many of the biggest third party Nintendo 64 games are stuck behind so much legal red tape that most probably don’t even want to bother with them case in point Goldeneye. On top of all this one needs to take into account the hardware of the NIntendo Switch itself. Nintendo 64 emulation in general does not generally get along well with low power ARM CPUs and considering how emulation can be fairly CPU intensive they also likely needed to take into account how the switch CPU changes its clock speed when docked and undocked and how that could affect the emulation speed itself.

I think its also important to consider who Nintendo is targeting really with this expansion. Original Nintendo 64 units in good functioning condition are becoming harder to find and not everyone has the knowledge, machine, and/or patience to go the PC emulation route considering the relatively high barrier of entry in terms of set up and hardware requirements depending on the system and game itself. You also need to consider that companies too often tend to view their prices in terms of what THEY are getting as well. This is why a boycott of Switch Online is largely counterproductive because even if Nintendo lost half their subscriber base they could probably make the same amount  of revenue or even more depending on per subscriber vs fixed costs. 

At the end of the day Nintendo is not forcing you to get the expansion and they are still a business at the end of the day but you shouldn’t shame others who subscribe to the Expansion Plan because they just want an easy way to play Nintendo 64 games on their Switch

[loadingcyprus540]

Sega Saturn Homebrew

Afternoon. I'm trying to get a feel for the homebrew scene on the Saturn. I was able to grab a copy of the Vandal Hearts English translation. It looks good. My question is, would people mind suggesting the best (in their opinion) homebrew games, hacks, and/or translations? I'm setting up my MODE and would like to not keep taking the SSD in and out whenever I stumble across a new (to me) game. PS - Another random question: Have there been any Mega Drive, Genesis, 32X, CD conversions for the Saturn? Thanks, all.

Part 1: Introduction

Genesis/Mega Drive, Sega Master System, Game Gear, SG-1000, Sega/Mega CD eke-eke Hugo-Wii: Turbo Grafix 16/PC Engine eke-eke JzintvWii: Intellivision jenergy NeoCD-Wii: Neo-Geo CD Wiimpathy Nintendont: GameCube 'emulator' Crediar, FIX94 O2em: Odyssey 2 /Videopac Consolius PCSX-Revolution: Playstation 1 Firnis SMSPlus: Sega Master System. To run the ROM, load the MegaXmas89.bin file with a Sega Genesis / Mega Drive emulator or place the ROM on a flash cartridge to run on real hardware and FPGA or clone consoles. We love the holidays and we love Sega. We’re bringing the two together with new holiday games for the Genesis / Mega Drive starting with MegaXmas’89! The Official R4 3DS online store! Buy 2 Get 1 Free! We Ship Only The Genuine R4 3DS & R4i 3DS cards for the Nintendo 3DS system. Shipping World Wide!

Summary

Game BASIC for Sega Saturn is a homebrew development kit that allows you to program games for the Sega Saturn using the BASIC programming language. If you’re familiar with the PlayStation’s Net Yaroze platform, think of this as the Saturn’s answer to it – just cheaper and easier to get started with.

Game BASIC’s use of the BASIC language makes for a very low barrier to entry in terms of programming skill. Though the Saturn is notoriously difficult to program for, Game BASIC makes it easy to get started and is surprisingly powerful, allowing very easy sprite manipulation and straightforward 3D polygon implementation. It even includes an adapter cable that allows you to communicate with the Saturn from your PC to transfer or save programs and streamline development. For example, here’s a Pilotwings-esque demo, but in Game BASIC:

Sega Saturn Compiler

Atom python repl. The caveat? Game BASIC was released only in Japan, so this means a complete setup can be difficult to obtain and all documentation is in Japanese! Moreover, the supporting software that allows you to use your PC for streamlined development was intended for the Windows 95 era and flat out does not install on modern systems. Oh, and the adapter cable that allows you to connect your Saturn to your PC is a 25-pin serial connection!

Who in the world still has both Game BASIC and a Windows 95 PC with a physical serial port? Nobody! (Well, unless you’re Modern Vintage Gamer) But if you’re a brave experimenter who’s not afraid to tinker a bit, there are still multiple options to get everything working, even today! You can even do a lot just via emulation. So, let’s head to the Lab and get started… Shazam for pc reddit download.

What You’ll Need

There are several options for working with Game BASIC, ranging from quite simple but clunky to work with, to quite powerful and streamlined. Here are the three options:

The Simple Saturn-only setup

Required Tools

A copy of the Game BASIC for Sega Saturn disc

The ability to play Japanese Saturn games (A Japanese or modded console, a Pro Action Replay/Pseudo Saturn Kai cartridge, or a Saturn emulator)

Any Saturn controller

Plenty of room in the Saturn’s internal memory (if you want to save your programs)

For this option, you’ll run Game BASIC on the Saturn with no PC connection, using only standard Saturn accessories. This is a reasonable choice if you just want to write “Hello, World!”-style programs or play around with the neat games and demos that come with the kit. Theoretically, you can write even the most complex programs this way, but you’ll run into limitations on the size of games you can save to the Saturn’s internal memory. Plus, programming with a virtual keyboard is an absolute pain. Start here if you don’t have the necessary hardware for the other options, or if you just want to poke around a bit and see what this is all about.

The Enhanced Saturn-only setup

Required Tools

All of the tools from Option 1, PLUS

Some kind of external expanded memory, such as:

A direct-save memory cartridge (e.g., the official Saturn Backup Memory)

A Sega Saturn Floppy Disk Drive and some 3.5″ floppy disks

A Sega Saturn keyboard OR the NetLink keyboard adapter with a PS/2 keyboard

Fun peripherals, like the Stunner light gun, 3D Control Pad, multi-tap, and Shuttle Mouse

One of the great things about Game BASIC is how easy it makes it to access the Saturn’s peripherals, including the internal backup RAM, external memory cartridges, and even the Saturn Floppy Disk Drive. With a setup like this, you’ll have plenty of space to save your programs and you can use a real keyboard for text entry. You can even start experimenting with different forms of input, like analog controls and light guns! But without access to the tools a PC provides, it will be difficult to make nice-looking sprites, textures, and 3D models. So, this will still limit what you’re capable of. Regardless, this is a great option for the sheer fun factor of “Hey look! I’m programming with my Saturn!” or if you have no ability to connect your Saturn to a PC.

You can even go this route with a Saturn emulator, giving you easy access to improved keyboard, mouse, and storage options. I’ve confirmed that Mednafen successfully emulates Game BASIC and allows for keyboard and mouse pass-through input, meaning you can do a whole lot of Saturn development with very little barrier to entry.

The Full Saturn plus PC Setup

Required Tools

Sega Saturn Homebrew Emulator

A complete Game BASIC for Sega Saturn kit, including:

A copy of the Game BASIC for Sega Saturn disc

A copy of the Windows 95 Tools disc

The special Saturn-to-PC serial cable adapter

A modern PC with a USB port, capable of running a Virtual Machine (I use VirtualBox)

A copy of Windows XP SP3 32-bit to install on a VM

A USB-to-Serial adapter (Must support RS232 with a DB25 connector)

The ability to play Japanese Saturn games on original hardware (Japanese or modded console, or a Pro Action Replay/Pseudo Saturn Kai cartridge)

A Saturn controller

Optionally, any fun Saturn accessories you may want to experiment with (I especially recommend a keyboard or keyboard adapter)

Sega Saturn Homebrew Development

This is the Cadillac option! This is the setup I use, is how Game BASIC was really intended to be used (well, except nobody expected it to be run on a VM, I suppose), and is what the rest of this guide will focus on. With this setup, writing a game is as simple as writing BASIC in a text editor and hitting a couple of buttons to send it to your Saturn, where it immediately shows up on your TV and responds to controller and keyboard input! Seriously, it’s super cool once you get it working…

Sega Saturn Homebrew Games

The Simple and Enhanced Saturn-only setups are extremely straightforward. You just boot Game BASIC like any other Saturn game and get started, so there’s not much configuration to discuss. Regardless of the setup you choose, continue on to Part 2 for a few test programs. But if you want the Full setup, it’s quite a project to get going, so read on to Part 3 for the complete How-To!

[herpeacetheorist]

Tomb Raider: Tomb Of The Lost Adventurer Download For Mac

Tomb Raider Chronicles is an action-adventure platform video game developed by Core Design and published in 2000 by Eidos Interactive for PlayStation, Microsoft Windows and Dreamcast. Following Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, series protagonist Lara Croft is presumed dead, and a group of friends. Nov 10, 2020 Download the Single Player DLC pack for free skins, abilities, and the Tomb of the Lost Adventurer. Important information regarding Tomb Raider: The game is officially supported on the following Macs. How to install: Put the 53510802 folder into the 000000 folder. For RGH and JTAG only!!! Download Tomb Raider - Tomb of the Lost Adventurer. It combines high-levels of interactivity, excellent pacing, and a true bond between the player and the character on screen. ' - Game Revolution90/100 'Tomb Raider’s whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and everything combines to make this the best reboot game on the market today. ' - Game OverAbout the GameTomb Raider explores the.

Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It is the tenth title in the Tomb Raider franchise, and operates as a reboot that reconstructs the origins of Lara Croft. Tomb Raider was first released on 5 March 2013 for Microsoft Windows.

In Memory of Kerrie

MacRaider :: Tomb Raider on the Macintosh The original and the best!

The Games

General Troubleshooting (see individual game pages for game-specific problems)

News & Opinion

Contact Details & Links

Other Information

The Last Macintosh & The Last Classic Mac OS: A Tribute

Tomb Raider Summaries: An opinion on the classic games

Old Tomb Raiders on New Macs

May 18 2020

With Apple's decision to end 32-bit support, and introduce Catalyst to allow conversion of iPadOS apps to macOS, from 10.15 Catalina onwards, Dave has made a further update to the otherwise mothballed 'Old TRs' article to document its consequences, as well as updates to the Boot Camp and emulation sections due to Microsoft ending support for Windows 7 in January 2020. Since Dave now games on hardware other than Macs, these are based on documentation and news coverage rather than experience.

Apple have also announced the depreciation of the OpenGL and OpenCL graphics libraries in favour of their own Metal API. When these are in turn removed from some future release of macOS, further games, including TRs, may be affected. It's possible that no current Mac TR will run at that stage, or that manual installs of the older libraries may be required.

STOP PRESS: While preparing this update a number of viable sources have indicated that Macs based on Apple's own ARM chips, possibly a 12-core version of the A14, will appear during 2021. Previous Mac CPU transitions (M68K->PPC->x86->x86-64) have offered temporary backwards-compatibility at best. Any further updates will have to wait on a formal Apple announcement.

Also, Valve ended native VR support on Macs at the start of May 2020 because that relies on OpenGL features (Vulkan) not directly supported in Metal. Windows-on-Mac options (BootCamp, emulators) should still function.

March 28 2019

Aspyr Meadia have pointed out that after OS 10.14 Mac OS will no longer support 32 bit games:http://www.feralinteractive.com/en/news/933/

This means that TR Anniversary and Underworld won't be playable on Macs running the new 64 bit (only) systems.

October 20 2016

With no new Mac or iOS Tomb Raider news in the last several months it would appear that MacRaider is in a state of stasis. Indeed, with The Rise of the Tomb Raider only just now releasing on PS4 it looks unlikely (hardware specs not withstanding) that even that title will make its way to the Mac platform.

It was my intention, when taking over the site that it would be a static repository for the information accumulated by Kerrie and while there has until recently been the occasional report by me and the inclusion of the ' Old TRs on newer Macs' page kindly contributed by Dave it seems that MacRaider may be reverting to that original vision.

When MacRaider started, Tomb Raider could be played on a lowly 7200/90 Power PC Macintosh running System 7. It would seem that the latest iterations of the game have not only outgrown MacRaider but possibly the Mac platform itself.

For those who still enjoy playing the early games the information will remain available here for the interim and I am still more than happy to answer any email queries about those games.

Happy Raiding.

February 13 2016

Aspyr have posted information on their support site that an Apple security update could break some Mac games. As TR2 is included in the list of affected games it might be prudent for users to check this information..

Also of interest is the news that some of Aspyr's games will no longer support Mac OS 10.7 or older. Although Tomb Raider is not specifically mentioned it would be reasonable to expect that some games will be affected.

More info here

September 3 2015

Square Enix have released yet another Lara Croft game for mobile devices. 'Lara Croft Go' is available for iOS and Android from the Apple App store for around US$5. I haven't played much of it yet so too early to form an opinion but the game is getting good reviews.

June 5 2015

For those with iOS devices a new Lara Croft adventure called 'Relic Run' is now available free on the App Store. Game play is very similar to another popular game in the same genre. I haven't played much of it yet, mainly because I'm not very good at 'runners' but the graphics look good....and it's free!

February 1 2015

If you are looking for more Tomb Raider to play don't forget trle.net. The site has been around for many years and is a repository for a vast number of TR custom levels. An interesting article can be found here. A link to the site can always be found in the MacRaider links section.

December 9 2014

Tomb Raider II has been released for iOS and is available on the App Store. I haven't finished TR 1 for iOS, mainly due to the controls which eventually took their toll. Judging by the many complaints around the net the controls for TRII are no better. A shame really since both games look really good on an iPad with retina display. Square Enix stubbornly refuse to make the game bluetooth keyboard compatible even though Apple i devices are.

September 1 2014

I have made a small update to the TR11 & The Golden Mask page relating to playing the Intel version:Tomb Raider II and TR II: The Golden Mask

June 21 2014

The next Tomb Raider game in the current series has been announced entitled 'The Rise of the Tomb Raider' Since the game seems to be following in the footsteps of last years reboot it doesn't seem any more likely that I'll be playing this one particularly if the current trailer is any indication.

Of more interest (to me) is the announcement of a sequel to Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light enetitled 'Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris'. The game will be available on PC, X Box One and PS4 and will incorperate four player co-op.

April 24 2014

The 'Old Tomb Raiders on New Macs' page has been updated. Dave has brought the page up to date as of Mavericks. This will probably be the final update for the page due to changes in his gaming set up and the increasing improbability of playing any of the early Tomb Raiders in the newest Mac OS.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Dave for his tireless work on what is surely one of, if not the most comprehensive articles on the subject.

I would also like to remind everyone that the page includes a handy, colour coded section for those wanting to quickly ascertain whether or not the TR they want to play will run on their hardware/software.

January 30 2014

Happy Birthday Mac

January 30 2014 marks the 30th anniversary of the Macintosh computer. I have been using Macs for most of that time and have seldom touched a PC. MacRaider is still being produced on the same Power Mac G4 as it was when I took over the site in 2008 running OS9 Classic. Obviously MacRaider would not exist without the Macintosh computer and I may never have played Tomb Raider if I wasn't already using the platform.

Many Happy Returns Macintosh.

Dccember 19 2013

At last some interesting classic Tomb Raider news; Tomb Raider 1 has been released for iOS (iPhone/Pad etc). Although not specifically Mac related I thought it worthy of a new post. I have only just begun playing on an iPad with retina display and the graphics look great. Some people have complained about the controls but I haven't found them too bad. Perhaps steering Lara while running could be improved. The game is available from the Apple App Store now for a measly US99c.

RIP Tomb Raider 1996 to 2013

With the release of the Tomb Raider reboot it is obvious that the game I have loved playing for more than a decade is gone and has been replaced with something far darker, more bloodthirsty and (for me) disturbing. It was always my hope that Tomb Raider would become more light hearted and even include more of Lara's dry humour but it seems that the developers have decided to take the opposite route and I have no wish to play a game which focuses on the pain and suffering of any character let alone my favourite, Lara. FWIW I believe that the old formula had a lot of life left in it and many more areas to be explored. Tomb Raider has joined a genre that I have no interest in no matter what name is given to the game or character.

Reportedly the developers have at least gotten the gameplay right with the new game. It's just a pity that they could not have implemented this within the old format.

With all of this in mind I would like to pay tribute to a game which has given me many hundreds of hours of gaming pleasure but has now (for some of us) come to an end.

It now remains to be seen how relevant MacRaider is in 2013. If people are still accessing the site for information/help regarding the original games I would appreciate an email so I can get some idea of the level of interest.

I will acknowledge that the new game has received excellent reviews. I think it is a pity though that the developers have had to alienate some die hard Tomb Raider fans and take the path they have.

January 18 2013

As there has been no real, new Mac/Tomb Raider news since the release of Underworld for OSX and Aspyr haven't seen fit to port any more of the early TRs to OSX since releasing TR2, it seems that MacRaider might be in a state of stasis. The site will remain online as a support base and I will report any new news should anything arise.

I have posted an update to the Old Tomb Raiders on New Macs article from Dave.

FWIW recent news/footage of the new Tomb Raider reboot have only served to galvanise my opinions of the game and it is doubtful that I would even play the game once it reaches the cheap bins. A question to ponder might be: when does Tomb Raider stop being Tomb Raider and start being some other game with only the title and character name attached to it?

May 17 2012

At last some good Mac/Tomb Raider news! Feral Interactive have announced that they will be releasing Tomb Raider Underworld for the Mac on May 31st. Good things come to those who wait!

For more information follow the Feral Interactive link on this page.

February 14 2012

Happy Birthday Lara! The 'real' Lara that is ;-)

November 11 2011

It has become apparent that if you choose to run the Classic Tomb Raider 2 Golden Mask levels in the new Intel game you will not be able to save your progress i.e. if you try to save the game will quit to the desktop. There is currently no fix for this but if a workaround is found I will certainly post it here.

November 5 2011

I have received information from Attila that the Classic TR2 Gold levels can be played in the new OS 10 re-release. Also Manu has been able to get anti-alissing and wide screen working although this requires a special app. This and all other information on the new Intel TR2 can be found on the Tomb Raider II & The Golden Mask page (link at left).

RIP Steve Jobs 1955 - 2011

October 28 2011

The re-released Tomb Raider 2 for OS 10 (Intel) is now available at the Apple app Store for US$7.99. Thanks to Manu for allerting me to this. It doesn't seem as though the Golden Mask levels have been included.:-(

September 28 2011

I have been in contact with Aspyr Media to try and find out more information about the re-release of TR2. They were forthcoming with a few extra snippets of info:

The re-release will be available for download through the Apple App Store. It will be compatible with OS 10.6 and 10.7.

I asked if The Golden Mask levels would be included but this was not answered.

I also asked about the possibility of the other Classic Tomb Raider games receiving the same treatment and was told that: 'We are assessing the re-release of multiple titles from our catalogue to be released in the same manner'. Slightly cryptic but encouraging ;-)

Go to my News Archive for more news!

MacRaider Q&A

What is MacRaider?

MacRaider is a one-person Mac-user fan site, dedicated to bringing you the best possible information to help ease your way through the Tomb Raider games.

On MacRaider you'll find detailed information on every version of Tomb Raider, from the original 'Tomb Raider' of 1996 (released as 'Tomb Raider Gold' on Mac in 1999) to 'Tomb Raider Anniversary, released in 2007.

Note that much of the information is equally applicable to the Mac, PC or console games as the gameplay is virtually identical!

MacRaider is a very plain site, with none of the bells and whistles that are infesting many other sites. There is a reason for this - my intent has always been to make MacRaider accessible to any Mac user who can play any of the Mac Tomb Raiders. Therefore I chose a 1996 Power Mac 7200/90 with a 33.6k modem as a baseline - anything on this site can be easily accessed on any Mac from then on!

MacRaider was established March 1999.

Last updated 29 May 2008

You're welcome to link to this site, but please link to this page only!

MacRaider has no Music, Frames, Flash, Shockwave, Java, Counters, 'Vote for me's' or Banner Ads :-)

MacRaider is unofficial and totally independant! Unless otherwise credited, this site's content and all opinions on this site are those of the webmistress.

Tomb Raider: Tomb Of The Lost Adventurer Download For Mac Full

'Tomb Raider' and 'Lara Croft' are the property of Eidos Interactive, Core Design, and Crystal Dynamics. Mac versions from Aspyr Media and Feral Interactive. Mac conversion by Westlake Interactive, Beenox Studios, and Robosoft Technologies. With the exception of official logos, all text and images on this site are my property and cannot be used on another site, or published in any other form of media, without my permission!

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Tomb Raider: Tomb Of The Lost Adventurer Download For Mac Version

Site contents Copyright © 1999-2020 Kerrie H Reay / T Liddle

[douchebagbrainwaves]

HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT ADVICE

Would it be so bad to add a new application to my list of known time sinks: Firefox. If you consider exclamation points as constituents, for example: after the founders graduated from college, they borrowed $15,000 from their friend's rich uncle, who they give 5% of the company in restricted stock, vesting over four years, and the living expenses of the founders quits. And I don't think there's any limit to the number of startups per capita is probably a 20th of what it might have been.1 I'd sacrifice a large percentage of the income for the extra peace of mind. And it only does a fraction of them.2 9998 Subject free 0.3 Ask anyone who's done it. Their unconscious mind decides for them, it's a vote of no confidence. Some angel investors join together in syndicates.

An optimism shield has to be tuned just right. How do you learn it? The best way to explain how it all works is to follow the case of a hypothetical very fortunate startup as it shifts gears through successive rounds. And while startup hubs are as powerful magnets as ever, the increasing cheapness of web startups will if anything increase the importance of startup hubs, but the title of one: James Salter's Burning the Days. You're not all playing a zero-sum game. Fortunately there's someone you can ask each for advice about the other. But perhaps worst of all, the complex sentences and fancy words give you, the bullshit that sneaks into your life by tricking you is no one's fault but your own. 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter how finished you thought it was. The most dangerous thing about our dislike of schleps is that much of it is unconscious. Few legal documents are created from scratch.4 Err on the side while working on their day jobs, but which never got anywhere and was gradually abandoned.

The angel deal takes two weeks to close, so you start to lie to yourself. The effort that goes into looking productive is not merely that it's longer. There are theoretical arguments for giving these two tokens substantially different probabilities Pantel and Lin stemmed the tokens, meaning they reduced e. Promising new startups are often discovered by developers. It's not what they originally set out to do—in the process of innovation. After my mother died, I wished I'd spent more time with her. Of course, looking at multiple token sequences would catch it easily.5

So verbs with initial caps have higher spam probabilities than they would in all lowercase. No one proposes that there's some limit to the number of people who want to work for them. A month later, at the end of month six, the system is starting to have a new kind of stock representing the total pool of companies they were managing. If anything major is broken—if they sense you're ambivalent, they won't give you much attention. 7 uncle 50 4. What would be a good heuristic for product design, and others where it would help to be rapacious is when growth depends on that. 5 million from angels without ever accepting vesting, largely because we were so inexperienced that we were appalled at the idea.

Partly the reason deals seem to fall through so often is that you know you're making something at least one has to make money.6 The danger of the second paragraph is not merely annoying; the prickly attitude of these posers can actually slow the process of innovation. Indeed, the whole concept seemed foreign to them. What's wrong with having one founder, like Oracle, usually turn out to be good, because it was some project a couple guys started on the side.7 Founders at Work. We have three general suggestions about hiring: a don't do it if you let them. For example, everyone I've talked to while writing this essay felt the same about English classes—that anything can be interesting if you get deeply enough into it. But what if your manager was hit by a bus? You can no longer guess what will work; you have to take enough to get to the next step is.8 But even factoring in their annoying eccentricities, the disobedient attitude of hackers is a net win. Then you'd automatically get your share of the returns of the whole economy.9

I wasn't paying attention, I didn't know what they'd be like.10 Way more startups hose themselves than get crushed by competitors.11 This is what real productivity looks like. And because this is what I call degeneration. Our ancestors were giants. We can of course counter by sending a crawler to look at the instruments. When they demo it, one of the motives on the FBI's list.

They would just look at you blankly. And the hardest part of that is often discarding your old idea. And don't write the way they are because that is how things have to be smart too, right?12 It used to be aware of this problem.13 But you can't browse the web. There's a whole essay's worth of surprises there for sure. It's the concluding remarks to the jury.

This may work in biotech, where a lot of pain and stress to do something that would otherwise seem too ambitious.14 I remember going through this realization myself. So if our group of founders have something they can launch.15 This is no accident. The spirit of resistance to government, Jefferson wrote, is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive. If life is short, we should expect its shortness to take us by surprise. I feel as if someone snuck a television onto my desk. This had two drawbacks: a an expert on literature need not himself be a good heuristic for product design, and others wouldn't.16

Notes

If an investor? Maybe that isn't the last round of funding rounds are bad news; it is very common for startups. If Ron Conway had angel funds starting in the US.

Mayle, Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce? The word suggests an undifferentiated slurry, but if you hadn't written it?

Most of the fatal pinch where your idea is to be very hard and doesn't get paid to work not just the location of the reasons startups are ready to invest in your own time, because software takes longer to close than you expect.

This is an understatement. VCs aren't tech guys, the best approach is to be hidden from statistics too.

For example, the switch in the sense of the twentieth century, art as brand split apart from art is not much to generalize. This technique wouldn't work for us! Their inexperience makes them overbuild: they'll create huge, overcomplicated agreements, and mostly in Perl.

Vision research may be overpaid. For the price of a running back doesn't translate to soccer. But try this thought experiment: If they were.

And since there are only doing angel deals to generate revenues they could attribute to malice what can be said to have moments of adversity before they ultimately choose not to make fundraising take less time, is a trap set by evil companies for the same work faster. Which is not so much on luck. This flattering distinction seems so natural to the home team, I've become a function of their predecessors and said in effect what the startup eventually becomes. The danger is that you decide the price of an official authority makes all the East Coast.

One-click ordering, however, you need to raise money on the spot, so x% usage growth predicts x% revenue growth, because the danger of chasing large investments is not yet released. Some blue counties are false positives caused by blacklists, I was a refinement that made it possible to bring corporate bonds to market faster; the crowds of shoppers drifting through this huge mall reminded George Romero of zombies.

Surely no one knows how many computers the worm infected, because some schools work hard to imagine how an investor seems very interested in us! Oddly enough, maybe they'll listen to God.

Don't be evil.

I was there when it was more rebellion which can vary a lot of startups where the richest of their upbringing in their closets. Perl. What they must do is leave them alone in the past, it's because other companies made all the potential magnitude of the most, it's shocking how much they liked the outdoors, was no great risk in doing something that conforms with their decision or just outright dismisses it and make a formal language for proofs in which you want to lead.

Applets seemed to Aristotle the core: the quality of production. Because the pledge is deliberately vague, we're going to give up, and unleashed a swarm of cheap component suppliers on Apple hardware. Actually, someone else to lend to, so we also give any startup that wants to the World Bank, the owner shouldn't pay me extra for doing badly and is doomed anyway.

The reason not to like uncapped notes, VCs who are weak in other Lisp dialects: Here's an example of a safe environment, but in practice money raised as convertible debt, so it's conceivable that the lies people told 100 years will be big successes but who are both. But wide-area bandwidth increased more than they have to preserve their wealth by forbidding the export of gold or silver. This plan backfired with the bad idea the way they do on the software business.

Fortuna! Algorithms that use it are called naive Bayesian.

A Bayesian Approach to Filtering Junk E-Mail. Currently the lowest rate seems to be delivering results.

You know what kind of protection is one you take out order.

[gywair]

This week I saw a video on GB Studio from MortMort. It’s a program for making GameBoy games that work inside an emulator. I like to try out new tools just in general but this engine really inspired me. I spent all my nights this week making a short game about fish called ZUG. Play it here on itch.io.

What makes the engine so interesting is how it restricts you. The emulator can only render three colors (#017821, #86c06c, and #e0f8cf) and a fourth is used as a transparency layer (#65ff00). This meant creating a limited palette in Aseprite (and MS Paint) to create the sprites. Within that confine, each sprite could only be 16×16 pixels per frame. You could have up to 25 frames but always within the 16×16 square. This means making the most of each tile that you have.

Additionally, there were limits on how complicated the background could be. A neat thing the compiler does is translate the backgrounds into smaller chunks to conserve memory. However, this means that unless you are making good use of repeating tiles, you have to make everything as simple as you can.

Even the number of ‘Actors’ or objects placed in a scene had to be limited to nine per scene. In Zug, there are animated bubbles around the area. To get this effect, I had to make a single animation then repeat it in a line a number of times (three at most). Then I offset the animations between the frames (that 25 frame limit from earlier). This eventually made a neat bubble effect and kept me under the memory requirement.

Even the music was difficult because of the memory limitation. GB Studio can only process .MOD files for sound. These are four channel files that play the music while being emulated. This is amazing cause that means the sounds don’t have to be recorded (and take up more space) on the cartridge. It’s terrible because, like in Zug, it means there can be some distortion. I think there must be an issue with too many sounds in an active channel at the same time. This is one of the problems areas that I didn’t get smoothed out. The song is completely unrecognizable in game. It plays great in the engine but it builds and runs wrong.

A very neat feature of GB Studio is that the programming is contained in automated script blocks. For someone like me that wants to lead a class on making games, this is perfect. No matter the skill level, I could sit down with someone and walk them through an exercise and expect standard(-ish*) results. There is an expansive library of existing scripts. If/Else statements, scene changes, and animations are prepackaged. It also has a quest handler, a counting system, and a save/load feature. I got a little ways towards understanding this. At a certain point, I needed to move on though. I think they are still working on documenting and expanding these. I’ll circle back after some more updates.

*when a human is involved it can get iffy.

Beyond technical limitations, I had a lot of fun just making sprites. I’ve been messing with Unity 3D meshes, so it was nice to get back to basics. The sprite handling for GB Studio is really nice. There isn’t any guesswork in how the sheet will generate. This means that from an art standpoint, you can rapidly prototype animations without a lot of down time. In GameMaker, you have to edit the sprite, create an object, and place it in the scene before you can really know how it will work out. Then again, in GM you can also ad-hoc change the size of your sprite and aren’t limited to 16×16 so it’s a give and takes.

I came up with the fish theme cause I wanted a game that started with a ‘Z’. Zug was the first word that came to mind. While searching it online (to make sure it wasn’t anything nasty) it turned out that it was a real world. It’s an area in Switzerland and a word from fishing vocabulary (or at least says Google). I really liked the idea of an underwater theme. I know the creatures shown aren’t exactly Swiss in origin but they aren’t exactly zoologically accurate either.

Zug as a word has some connotations of pulling or being lead in a direction. It had to do with the right to pull in fishing nets. This gave me the idea for the core game thesis. It made me think about life, the influences we have, and the constant time is toward an end. It’s not perfect by any means but for a one week game, I think it’s not the worst concept for a thesis.

If I could do it again, I would use net imagery. Having patterns that slowly move in on you as you travel the game. I would probably make it where there are constant fishing nets around and you have to avoid them. Additionally, I would research a lot more about Lake Zug and make a proper effort of having area specific fish in the game.

Another pain point, when you compiles, the engine will tell you if something is wrong. However, what is wrong is not well documented. Usually, it either runs with game-breaking errors or it doesn’t at all. This means saving often and remembering what changes you made for easy backing up.

A super cool thing–you can build to a ROM file. That means, in theory, you could put this on a GameBoy cartridge and play it on the original hardware. I preferred the web format for ease of use/sharing but this is really fun.

In conclusion, I really like the possibilities that GB Studio offers. I got frustrated with it at one point and tried to recreate the game in GameMaker. It took way more time to get the coding to work as intended. I think with a few more updates, GBS will be a great engine. It is already an amazing adventure game making. For now, I’ll head back to Unity. That system has a lot more upfront learning but there were some things that it handles much easier (different file types and such).

Thanks for reading–here is the stuff I used to make Zug:

The Good Stuff by m0d Public Domain License https://modarchive.org/module.php?33325

MortMort

GB Studio: https://www.gbstudio.dev/

Documentation page: https://www.gbstudio.dev/docs/

My GB studio project: https://mortmort.itch.io/acgb

GB Studio Discord: https://discord.gg/CuFVqXk

Puns https://www.fishkeepingworld.com/fish-puns/

ZUG This week I saw a video on GB Studio from MortMort. It's a program for making GameBoy games that work inside an emulator.

[workrockin]

Understanding ROG G20AJ ‘s wireless capabilities

Asus went for a console like design for its prebuilt gaming PC

At workrock we’re always looking at hardware from the perspective of wireless networking. Whether its phones, desktop computers, laptops , smart watches or embedded chips, we want to know how they communicate with the rest of the world. What wireless protocols do they support?

We are by no means experts on hardware and often in our quest we come across machines that surprise us with their capabilities. We make sure to share our discoveries with you and hope that you’re as excited to read about them as we were when we first made the discovery.

ASUS ROG G20AJ is a gaming CPU released a few years ago. It is a prebuilt CPU with an impressive customizable exterior. What brought it to our attention was a post on reddit in which a member was seeking some help to upgrade his RAM

I have a ROG G20AJ, a prebuilt desktop PC made with laptop components (it even uses two laptop chargers as a power supply).

Trying to upgrade it is a pain in the ass. When I upgraded the GPU from GTX750 to GTX1060 6GB I had to even cut a metal box that contains the GPU so I could fit the 1060 on it and fans could push air out.

Now I am trying to upgrade the RAM from 8GB (1x8GB SODIMM) to 24GB (1x16GB SODIMM 1600mhz+ 8GB SODIMM) but the manual and any info I can find online says that the max amount of memory I can install in this PC is 16GB (total, not per slot) example.

I have never seen such a strange limitation. I would find it normal if it was 32GB or 64GB or even 16GB/slot but I don’t know any motherboard that caps at 16GB.

I thought it might be because 16GB SODIMM modules did not exists when I bought the computer (hence the max memory you could fit there was 2X8GB) but I might be wrong.

Is there any way I can check the actual RAM capacity of this PC?

Our response

My first guess was that the limitations on the total RAM might be to preserve power. Since you mentioned that the PC is built with laptop components a cap on the max ram would mean a better battery design with accurate calculations on how long a charge can last.But it seems that it does not have much effect :-

https://superuser.com/questions/40113/does-installing-larger-ram-means-consuming-more-energy

In Linux there’s a command called dmidecode that gives you the max supported RAM by a board.

Dmidecode simply produces a human readabale output from SMBIOS

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_Management_BIOS

Windows has wmi that does the same thing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Management_Instrumentation

But since you’re using cpu-z you should be seeing the max supported RAM in the memory tab. If not try hw info (another free program that does the same thing) Under the hood both HWinfo and cpu-z should be querying from SMBIOS [1]. So it might be worth it to cross check by querying yourself directly (use dmidecode for Linux and wmi for windows)

Aside from that if the motherboard has set a limit in max memory there is little else you can do. If you try to exceed the limit computer might not boot or if it does it can access the extra RAM. Here’s more information on what might happen if your try to go over that limit

https://superuser.com/questions/30139/what-happens-when-more-ram-is-installed-than-the-motherboard-supports

Diving deeper into the the hardware

The overall design and the packaging by ASUS impressed me and therefore I decided to look a bit deeper into the hardware. It is built on the intel H97 chipsets . The intel chipsets are marked at $32 when purchased in quantities of 1000 or more. With a dual storage storage support the machine comes with a 32 GB SSD and a 1TB HDD.

Noticeably the CPU only contained 1 ethernet port. For complex wired LAN networking scenarios you’ll need an external switch with multiple ports. A lot more could have been achieved without buying an external switch if only there were a couple more Ethernet ports. Especially since the PC had an impressive Intel® Ethernet Connection I218 network processor. However since networking is not the primary goal of a gaming CPU it is not right for us to dwell on it.

Still what I was most interested in was the networking hardware of the machine. So I continued to look for more.

While the intel core i7–4790 processor is now discontinued it supported Intel’s my wifi technology. In case you didn’t know intel my wifi technology allows you to create a wireless personal area network. With this ad-hoc network you can connect wirelessly to other wifi enabled devices like TV, phones and share your photos, videos, music etc with these devices.

I was curious to know what kind of hardware support Intel provides to use this technology but it proved to be difficult. Supposedly intel had a page dedicated to my wifi technology which they took down

http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/my-wifi-technology.html

However I got lucky on way back machine to find the original contents of the page.

https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/my-wifi-technology.html

The latest snapshot of the page was in 2017. After that the page seems to have been redirected. But I din’t want the latest. I just wanted the infor corresponding to g20’s release somewhere in 2014. Undeterred I tried again.

Success. I got a match for Dec 17 2013.

https://web.archive.org/web/20131217081237/http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/my-wifi-technology.html

The information I was looking for was in the footnotes

IntelĀ® My WiFi Dashboard is an optional feature and requires additional software and an IntelĀ® CentrinoĀ® wireless adapter.

Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6205 62205ANH had an fcc page that had been updated as recently as 2016. While the fcc documentation was a good read I found out later that it was not the chip actually being used in G20AJ. In an old forum post I discovered that the CPU used a realtek wifi chip instead.

A new question.

Can intel My Wifi technology work without intel wireless cards?

The answer is no it seems.

Which leaves us with Realtek 8821AE. Features:-

It is an integrated wireless chip with support for both bluetooth and wifi.

802.11b/g/n/ac are supported. With a max channel width of 80MHZ it can achieve speeds of 433mbps. A youtube video demonstrates ~ 433mbps successfully. Just how fast is this? HD video streaming recommends a speed of 25 mbps. Which makes it 17 times faster than the recommended speed.

The chip has a power saving mode that conserves power during idle time. There is built in hardware support for encryption including WPA2-PSK.

As you can see from the FCC document the wifi chip is certified for class B operations. A class B FCC certification means that the wireless chip can be used in homes and business environment.

It is important to note here that the wireless chip manufacturer is responsible for obtaining these certifications. Since ASUS simply assembled the PC they bought chips for home usage and hence won’t need to obtain a separate licence. This is how most electronic devices with wireless capabilities are sold these days.

Components that require wireless certifications are treated differently from the rest of the equipment. Once a certification for a component has been obtained it can be installed in as many devices as you want.

That’s about it. G20AJ is a beast of a machine. Even 5 years after its original release. With a powerful wireless and wired networking stack we’re confident that it would prove to be a proficient platform for multimedia streaming as well as wireless mutliplayer LAN parties.

Need someone to help you with you wireless gaming setup? Looking for custom built gaming routers? Email us on

workrockin@gmail.com

write to us on our tumblr page

[https://workrockin.tumblr.com/ask]

tweet

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connect with us on linkedin

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/workrock-careers-21b3a2186/]

Happy networking!

[1] The information from SMBIOS is not reliable. It is supposed to be but it’s not. This information is prefilled and not calculated.

I was once burned by relying on it when I bought an additional mem stick based on the info only to find that my laptop had just one soldered ram and no additional slots!

[atlusatlas]

Soul Hackers: Extra Dungeon and Its Nice, Stable Debug Mode

Hi! It’s been a while! Again! 久しぶり, as we say in my other tongue. Tax season has come and gone here in the Pepsiman household and now work season is finally in full swing again, hence the quiet again. But! I wanted to throw up some sort of update to whet your appetites and I think I have just the thing.

Remember that Soul Hackers: Extra Dungeon disc I dumped for you all last year? I’ve poking around at its innards here and there in my down time and I figured out a while back that, it’s also got a really extensive debug mode, just like the stuff I documented for vanilla Soul Hackers on the Saturn here! And what’s more, as far as I can tell, nobody on the Japanese Internet ever unearthed this debug mode for the Extra Disc dungeon disc, which is really exciting for me in a nerdy way, even if it probably just boils down to its sheer rarity and lack of publicly available dumps aside from mine.

Anyway, the debug mode stuff! It looks and works 99 percent like the one for the main game, the details of which you can find here if you’re new to Soul Hackers’ debug features, so this isn’t going to be nearly as long of a post. There are a few interesting differences that I’ll get to in a little bit, but first, let’s quickly go over how to access the thing.

Reminder

To access the Saturn Extra Dungeon content, you’ll need a save file from the main game, which it uses to import your party and stats. For more details on the requirements your save needs to meet, visit this page where I uploaded the dump of my disc, which also includes a hacked save file that’ll work in case you’re understandably not inclined to put in the work.

Pro Action Replay/Art Money Codes

Post-Load Screen Debug Menu: Pro Action Replay: 30223802 0001 Art Money: 00223802 0001 In-Game Debug Functions: Pro Action Replay: 30223003 0001 Art Money: 00223003 0001

The instructions for loading these codes in emulation using Art Money are the same as for the main game debug codes, so consult that previous post linked above for more information on how to do that if you aren’t familiar with the procedure for doing so. As with last time, while I don’t have access to real hardware to test the Pro Action Replay cheats, they should work, as I did try them in Yabuse, an emulator that does feature native support for them and they worked like a charm, so hopefully they should play nice on a real Saturn. There are a few things to note about how these cheats work in practice, however.

First, because of the way Extra Dungeon’s content is structured specifically (ie: no save points from start to finish), you can’t really use both cheats at the same time. So if you want to access the debug menu, you’ll have to turn that cheat on, but keep the in-game debug function cheat off, and vice versa. You can turn on the in-game debug functionality flag within the debug menu like usual and it is technically possible to re-access the Extra Dungeon content after entering the menu, but it’s a huge logistical pain involving using the map warp feature and isn’t worth the effort. Just activate the menu, make a save state for it, then do the same for the in-game debug functions and then you can go back and forth between them without much trouble.

The way these cheats are activated in the game once you’ve input them also surprisingly vary depending on the method that you use. If you use Pro Action Replay, whether in emulation (not recommended with Yabuse, as its support of Soul Hackers in general is quite spotty) or hypothetically on real hardware, once you’ve input them, you’re set and don’t need to worry about anything else. However, if you’re using Art Money, you must wait until after you’ve loaded your save file before freezing the value to activate your desired cheat. For whatever reason, Extra Dungeon has a habit of trying to wipe the RAM values for both cheats after a save is loaded in emulation and will successfully override even a value that should stay frozen. Therefore, wait until you get to this screen below that immediately after loading your save to activate either cheat in emulation.

Once you’re here, you should be good to go!

Whichever way you decide to go for loading your cheats, do know that if you want to access the debug menu specifically, you’ll need to get past this introductory screen first. Unlike the vanilla Saturn version, this debug menu isn’t triggered with button codes on the file selection screen. Once you get past that screen, you’ll load right into the debug menu like usual and be able to go about your business!

So What’s Actually Different About This Version of the Debug Features?

Honestly, not a whole lot. The features for both the menu and in-game debug functionality are more or less identical, making these codes primarily useful for exploring Extra Dungeon content specifically. Having said that, there are a few interesting wrinkles that I’ve uncovered in my own research that I’ll briefly outline below.

Overall, the debug menu specifically is more stable. Indeed, funnily enough, despite being distributed a few months after the main game, the debug menu in Extra Dungeon actually works better than the vanilla game version’s in a few key areas. First and foremost, the text at the bottom that indicates whether you have the in-game debug mode turned on or off actually works properly. It defaults to the text saying “off” rather than “on” and smoothly goes back and forth between the two states properly when pressing the Start Button. Aside from the crash that still happens when trying to access the “Movie Ev” option, this is clearly how this menu is intended to actually work, rather than the slightly wonky incarnation on display in the vanilla game.

On a similar note, the “Install” option in Extra Dungeon’s debug menu actually has all of the unlockable programs you can activate in game for you to trigger as you like, rather than being completely barren in the original game’s debug menu. Handy!

Content within the Event menu is largely the same, barring some minor alterations here and there to accommodate the new content that’s unique to the Extra Dungeon disc, such as Kyouji’s art being available for viewing.

Interestingly enough, a seemingly decent amount of the original game’s content still seems to be accessible and playable on the disc. If you go to the “2D Map” option in the debug menu, you’ll be taken back out in the main game, which you can then play as normal. Your starting area seems to depend on the save file that you load into Extra Dungeon from what I’ve tested. Seeing as Extra Dungeon is just one disc, though, I imagine the game will probably go haywire if you try to access the disc transition and/or possibly anything that requires the anime FMV files to be loaded. That being said, I haven’t tested this extensively myself and can confirm that you can at least warp to late-game areas with the scripting still seemingly intact, so it might not be quite so bad, all things considered. Incidentally, if you do choose to turn on the in-game debug flag through the debug menu before sneaking back into the main game this way, the full debug functionality that you get in the overworld and other parts of the main game is at your disposal.

That should be the long and short of this debug stuff in Extra Dungeon, at least insofar as I’ve been able to determine. While in practice a lot of it covers the same ground as the debug features in the main game, it still pleases me greatly to have found a way to bring it up in this relatively obscure disc and document it for posterity. Hopefully it’ll be of use to at least some of you who like to dumpster dive into the more unique parts of Atlus history like this.

Enjoy!

-Pepsi

PS: Feel free to repost this information to sites such as tcrf.net, but please do me a favor and credit this blog, The Atlus Atlas, if you choose to do so. Doing all this research took a lot of time and I’d appreciate the recognition, especially given how I’m the one to have broken the news about all this, to my knowledge. Thanks!

[captainevo]

Could Microsoft Release Project Scorpio Hardware at E3?

So 22 years ago I was a freelance writer covering the videogames industry. I played everything back then, but my preferences leaned towards Sega as I loved their hardware focus (I had a SegaCD, a Nomad and a 32X!) and their exclusive games always appealed to me more than Nintendo's (although I was already  enamored with Ridge Racer on my gray market PlayStation Japanese import).

The 1995 E3 trade show was held in Los Angeles that year, where I happened to live. Thanks to Tom Kalinske's stunning announcement at the press conference I attended, I was able to buy a Sega Saturn (and Virtua Fighter!) by stopping in at the Toys R Us near my house on the way home. I couldn't believe it!

Of course, that early release of the Saturn is a well documented disaster (read: Console Wars by Blake Harris) and was pretty much the end of the Sega I loved. However, it got me thinking after reading all the release coverage on Microsoft's upcoming Project Scorpio console:

Wouldn't it be awesome if Microsoft released the Project Scorpio console hardware at this year's E3?!

Now before you write that off as insane, hear me out. Microsoft announced the Xbox One S and Project Scorpio at the same time at last year's E3 show. While the S was a nice revision bump for the current console, those of us who already owned an Xbox One console (I was already on my second one, having upgraded my Day One box to the beautiful limited edition Forza console) and understood the promise of Project Scorpio were immediately put in a hold pattern. Why buy the S in September when a year later true 4K gaming was going to arrive?

So instead gamers like me have been biding their time waiting for Scorpio. It's painful since many of us have popped for a 4K UHD HDR TV - which my current Xbox One works great with, but I can't play UHD Blu-rays yet (but at least my Kinect still works without an adapter). I applaud Microsoft for actually announcing their Scorpio plans when they did, as I probably would have bought an S if they hadn't - new hardware is very hard to resist.

So it's been almost a year since the initial Scorpio announcement and in the meantime we have the release of the PlayStation 4 Pro. This is the first generation where I haven't owned "all" the systems. I used to buy every new console on launch day; originally because I wrote about games and hardware, and then later because I had a young son who shared my passions. But after stints with AOL and VideoGame Advisor/GameWeek I turned my attentions full-time to my IT career, my son grew up, and then gaming became purely recreational for me. When the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 were announced, I looked at the past 8 years, realized I almost never played my PS3 and lived on my Xbox 360, and decided all I needed was an Xbox One (racing games are my passion, and for me Forza is the only exclusive that matters).

Anyway, the hardware junkie in me was tempted by the PS4 Pro, but I had just upgraded my PC to a GTX 1070 and an ASUS ROG 27" 2K monitor, so I decided that would hold me over until the Scorpio arrived with true 4K gaming (and mercifully, based on Digital Foundry's articles, that faith in Scorpio looks well founded!).

So - why the idea of releasing the Scorpio console hardware at E3? First off, the Scorpio hardware is 100% backward compatible with the current Xbox One consoles. So on launch day one, without doing anything else, the Project Scorpio console has a library of literally hundreds of games, maybe a thousand. Games that now immediately get a bump in framerate and possibly resolution, depending on how they were coded.

Now Microsoft is seeding hardware in the hands of its hardcore Xbox evangelists. They’re showing it off to their friends - cool new hardware and look how good the games are? For those Xbox One first-gen owners who skipped the S, they now get those "S" features like HDR in Forza Horizon and Gears of War, and the ability to play 4K UHD HDR Blu-ray discs (I've already started buying them instead of regular BD discs now even though I can't play them yet, because I know I'm getting a Scorpio). Even though there are only a few HDR games for Xbox One, at least there would be some titles that would immediately take advantage of the Scorpio hardware beyond improved frame rates.

Depending on the price, I think there is a huge pent up demand for a true 4K console like the Scorpio - an early hardware release could let Microsoft ramp up production towards the big holiday push while delivering those early adopter consoles, which would mean more true hardware availability in 2017 and potentially a much larger sell-through for the year. Any game developers who are on the fence would see that, and it could give them the push to have more 4K asset "upgrades" available for download in December/January, which in turn would drive more hardware demand and provide a nice bump in sales for those older, upgraded titles as there would be a new reason to own/play them.

And none of this would diminish "Holiday 2017" - it would still be the big blockbuster mainstream rollout as that's when the new AAA titles are released and the Scorpio ad campaigns would feature the console and the "upgraded" versions of those games. Plus that's when Microsoft would release the bundles (Scorpio + Forza 7, Scorpio + Crackdown 3, or maybe Star Wars Battlefront II).

Beyond all of that, just imagine how it would play at E3 in June. It would simply be epic.

Is there any chance of this happening? My realistic guess is no. For starters, I don't think there's any way Microsoft and retailers could keep something like this a secret; they'd have to be shipping well in advance of the date to have stock in hand and unlike 1995, the Internet and blogs are far more pervasive now.

So the only way to do it would be a Microsoft Online Store exclusive (at least for the first couple of weeks). That would probably upset retailers (many were furious with Sega for giving a few chains the early exclusive on Saturn, a necessity due to limited hardware availability and trying to keep it a secret). Digital game sales are already straining relationships with retailers, but maybe because of that it doesn't really matter much anymore.

And we really don't know yet how Microsoft defines "Holiday 2017" - The S launched in September of 2016, and the last several iterations of the Forza games have also been released in September. If Microsoft keeps to that sort of schedule (and as a dedicated Forza player I sure hope they do!), then it's possible that we could see pre-orders announced at E3 with availability in September - that's only another three months.

Another wrinkle could be that perhaps not all the Xbox One game backward compatibility testing/tweaking is complete yet. It would suck if Scorpio was release but there was a list of games that were problematic; it needs to play the existing catalog at least as good as the original Xbox One on Day One.  

Microsoft is probably building the production versions of the new consoles right now, but since they all have to go through the "Hovis Method" it may take time to build up an adequate supply of consoles. They may not want to announce availability and then have 2 month shipping backorders (like Google with the Pixel phones).

Given all of that, September is probably the earliest realistic availability date. But given the unprecedented release of detailed hardware information ahead of the release, and that this holiday is "all about the games", it just feels like something truly unexpected could happen during the June 11th event. We'll find out in less than two months!

What do you think?

[click2watch]

Blockchain Gaming: Separating Signal from the Noise

Devin Finzer is the co-founder of OpenSea, a decentralized marketplace for crypto assets.

The following is an exclusive contribution to CoinDesk’s 2018 Year in Review. 

Games frequently serve as an experimental playground for new technology.

Since the launch of CryptoKitties – a digital cat-breeding game built on ethereum – roughly a year ago, games have provided a digitally native playground for early adopters to experiment with the unique benefits of open protocols. Currently, most of the top dapps by transaction volume are games.

While there’s a lot of early excitement in the blockchain gaming space, there’s some rightful skepticism. Tony Sheng’s post on why Fortnite probably won’t embrace the blockchain any time soon sparked a great discussion about how the tech fundamentally changes in-game economies.

At its core, his post argues that incumbents in the gaming industry likely won’t embrace blockchain because true digital scarcity breaks their existing business models. His post dives deep into the economic incentives that cause games to close their economy.

I quibbled with some of these, but agree with the high-level conclusion that:

“If games bring crypto to the masses, they will have different business models.”

Blockchain represents a fundamental business model shift: from value extraction in closed ecosystems to value capture in open ecosystems. The problem is that, while incumbents have figured out how to extract value in closed ecosystems (restrictive monetary policies, locks on transfers, fees, etc.), new entrants have yet to figure out how to capture value in open ecosystems.

This post is intended to explore potential business models for an open gaming ecosystem. We’ll begin by exploring the existing business models for early blockchain games.

Weeding the signal from the noise

The bull run in crypto made it difficult to weed signal from noise in the tech’s gaming sub-sector. Rising prices created a deep-pocketed community of ether-rich early adopters to engage in early dapps.

Enter CryptoKitties: a digital cat breeding game and the first mainstream-oriented blockchain gaming experience. CryptoKitties was incredibly exciting to the tech community (myself included).

The fact that you “really owned your kitties” and could make ETH flipping them sparked a viral loop and culminated in the infamous kitty bubble of 2017. At the peak, cats sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars apiece.

The noise: vertically integrated digital scarcity

It’s worth taking a closer look at CryptoKitties.

Because little gaming infrastructure existed on ethereum, CryptoKitties built everything themselves. They had their own website, their own artwork, their own on-chain breeding mechanic, and their own marketplace.

At launch, CryptoKitties was a fully vertically integrated game that used smart contracts as its database. The CryptoKitties business model was actually highly traditional: they sold generation 0 kitties and took a 3.75% cut every time a kitty was sold or sired.

As many critics later pointed out, CryptoKitties could have built the same game on centralized infrastructure. They could have provided the exact same user experience on their website (they could even still take ether if they wanted to preserve the painful UX), and simply stored the kitties in a SQL database.

A non-crypto-knowledgable user wouldn’t know the difference.

The CryptoKitties experience is what I’ll call “vertically integrated digital scarcity,” and it’s likely a reason that none of the CryptoKitties clones got any traction. To mainstream users, they were just hard-to-use games.

The signal: unbundling

I’d argue that the real signal with CryptoKitties lay beyond the initial user experience: it was the ever-so-slight unbundling of the game.

The logic layer for CryptoKitties now existed on a smart contract whose address and source code was viewable to the public, and could be called by anyone with an ethereum address. Now, any ethereum developer could build an ever-so-primitive “layer two experience” on top of the game.

Want to write a bot that snipes under-valued kitties? There’s an open API for that. Want to write a kitty explorer site to let users browse recent sales? Just watch the events on the smart contract.

These experiences didn’t have to be complex. In fact, the first layer two experience was simply the existence of Etherscan, the smart contract explorer nearly all ethereum users have grown to depend on. Techie power users could go to Etherscan and read directly from the CryptoKitty smart contract to inspect their kitties.

A novel layer two experience was KittyHats, a set of ERC20 tokens that allowed you to accessorize your kitties. In theory, KittyHats drove up the value of individual kitties because now there was another thing you could do with them — but it was difficult to measure this impact and the experience was relatively isolated (it required downloading a chrome extension and accessorizing on a separate website).

Perhaps – had the CryptoKitties team embraced KittyHats more fully by showing their accessories “natively” on the CryptoKitties website – KittyHats could have pioneered the first layer two business model.

Marketplaces were another layer-two experience. I co-founded OpenSea with the idea that a generic layer two experience around trading games might contribute.

But it’s worth noting that OpenSea also failed to capture or contribute significant value to the CryptoKitties ecosystem. At the time, it simply didn’t provide enough additional liquidity to be interesting.

The problem with layer two is it’s just super immature, and you need to squint to see it at work. It’s unclear how much value CryptoKitties has captured from layer two experiences and it’s unclear how layer two experiences can capture value.

Nevertheless, I think dismissing layer two and focusing simply on “true digital scarcity” or “true ownership” is missing the forest for the trees. Layer two is what drives digital scarcity and true ownership.

In the same way that the vibrant ecosystem of exchanges and consumer experiences around bitcoin, ether, and ERC20 drove liquidity for the assets, the ecosystem created by layer two experiences will be what drives consumer excitement and confidence in digitally scarce assets.

What might work

In this new world of open protocols, what business models could work?

Incentives to build layer two experiences

One could be a compelling layer one gaming experience, designed from the beginning with shared incentives to build layer two experiences. Decentraland is arguably the most ambitious attempt at this model. The Decentraland team is building an ecosystem of games, and attempt to capture value from this ecosystem through the appreciation of the MANA token.

The reason this might be appealing is that layer two experiences could fundamentally shift the economics of a game. A game has typically been limited to the audiences that the creators build for.

Games like Roblox and Second Life expand these audiences through user-generated content and in-game programming languages, but they’re still limited to what can be built in a closed environment. Games occasionally partner to build layer two experiences, but they’re highly coordinated and permissioned efforts.

As an example of how this could play out, take EVE Online, a massively multiplayer online space role-playing game. EVE Online has many characteristics of a blockchain game. Famously, the game runs entirely on a single server, which is never tampered with (kind of like a blockchain), so free market economics reign and frequently cause drama.

But the number of people who want to play a hardcore space simulation isn’t that high, so the audience is always limited. Now, imagine EVE Online but built on an open protocol. Third-party developers with no connection to the game might build mining expeditions, weird magical planets, secondary markets that facilitate bartering— all of which tie back to the original economy.

The audience of the game could expand dramatically: purely financially-motivated traders might enter the ecosystem, as well as casual gamers who enjoy only specific layer two experiences that branch off the original game economy.

Why might third-party developers flock to build on the game? If there’s A) enough of a network effect around the original game, B) an easy way to plug in their experience, and C) a method for capturing value in layer two, this would be a no-brainer.

Why it might not work

A valid criticism is that all of this is far too difficult on existing technology. It’s hard to counter this argument; timing is always really hard. However, it may happen faster than we think.

For one, blockchain bootstraps off existing internet infrastructure. With great front=end libraries, mature back=nd web frameworks and B2D services galore, it’s easier than ever to deploy traditional web applications in order to power hybrid decentralized / centralized dapps.

Additionally, blockchain relies primarily on software innovation (which tends to move a lot faster than hardware).

It’s likely a perfect environment for small tinkerers to experiment. It will be exciting to see the developments over the next year that push the space forward.

Have an opinionated take on 2018? CoinDesk is seeking submissions for our 2018 in Review. Email news [at] coindesk.com to learn how to get involved. 

Arcade image via Shutterstock

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[ncmagroup]

As digital transformation takes hold, organizations must learn what their cybersecurity risks are – and how best to address them.

Cybersecurity is in the news, but the risks posed by weak and outdated security measures are hardly new. For more than two decades, organizations have struggled to keep pace with rapidly evolving attack technologies. 

With the arrival in May of WannaCry, a massive and highly coordinated ransomware attack that left tens of thousands of organizations around the world hoping for the safe restoration of their data, the threat posed by malware creators took an ominous turn. The attack sent an unambiguous wake-up call to organizations worldwide that now is the time to reassess and reinforce existing cybersecurity strategies.

Connectivity Creates Opportunities and Challenges

Emerging technologies, particularly the Internet of Things (IoT), are taking global connectivity to a new level, opening fresh and compelling opportunities for both adopters and, unfortunately, attackers. 

Sadik Al-Abdulla, director of security solutions for CDW, says growing connectivity has ushered in a new era of critical security threats. “The same viruses we’ve been fighting for 20 years, now those viruses grow teeth,” he adds, noting that organizations are just beginning to respond to more dangerous cybersecurity adversaries. “Suddenly, just in the last 18 months, with the explosion of ransomware, we’ve seen really substantial support from outside IT to actually start getting these projects done, because there has been real pain experienced.” 

IoT poses a significant new challenge, Al-Abdulla observes. “As new devices are connected, they represent both a potential ingress point for an attacker as well as another set of devices that have to be managed,” he says. “Unfortunately, most of the world is trying to achieve the promise provided by IoT projects as rapidly as possible, and they are not including security in the original design, which creates a greater weakness that is very, very hard to get back after the fact and correct.”

Al-Abdulla also notes that many organizations are unintentionally raising their security risk by neglecting routine network security tasks. “Every time our assessment team looks at the inside of a network, we find systems that haven’t been patched in 10 years,” he says. “Sometimes, it’s IoT devices.”

Al-Abdulla’s team has observed devices with “a flavor of Linux or Windows embedded” that have not been updated since they left the factory. Security cameras, badge readers, medical devices, thermostats and a variety of other connected technologies all create potential attack gateways.

“All it takes is the wrong guy to click the wrong thing in the wrong part of the network,” says Martin Roesch, vice president and chief architect of the Cisco Security Business Group. “You get mass propagation throughout the environment, and then you have a huge problem.”

“It’s a very complicated world that we live in right now because the attacker and defense problem is highly asymmetrical,” Roesch adds. 

The changing nature of networks and the devices located within them, combined with the fact that organizations keep introducing new software and hardware into their IT environments, make it nearly impossible to keep pace with a new generation of skilled attackers. “It becomes very, very difficult to respond and be effective against the kind of threat environment that we face today because the attackers are highly motivated,” he says.

  $1,077

The average ransom per victim demanded in 2016, up from $294 a year earlier

Source: Symantec, “Internet Security Threat Report 2017,” April 2017

    The Danger of Giving in to Ransomware

Ransomware is like a thug with a gun: “Pay up, or your data gets it!”

Facing such a blunt demand, many organizations simply cave in and hand over whatever amount of money (usually in the form of bitcoin) is necessary to regain their data.

Problem solved? Not necessarily, says Michael Viscuso, co-founder and chief technology officer of endpoint security provider Carbon Black, who sees no easy way out of a ransomware attack. “It’s still surprising to me that people who have paid the ransom think that the game is over,” he says. “The reality is that the attacker has access to your system and is encrypting and decrypting your files whenever he wants to – and charging you every time.”

James Lyne, global head of security research at security technology company Sophos, notes that many ransomware attackers hide code within decrypted data, allowing them to reinfect the host at a future date. “Because if you’ll pay once, you’ll pay twice,” he explains.

Lyne also warns about the emerging threat of “shredware,” malware that encrypts data without requesting a ransom, effectively destroying it. “I bring that up because I’ve had a lot of board advisory meetings recently where people have said, ‘Well surely, we’ll just keep a fund, and if our data is encrypted, we will just pay the cybercriminals,’” he says.

Instead, organizations can take steps to defend themselves against ransomware. These steps include:

Effective backups: IT staff can save themselves trouble and money by implementing regular backup practices to an external location such as a backup service. In the event of a ransomware infection, backup data can get organizations back on their feet quickly.

User training: Most infections are the result of users clicking on links or attachments that are connected to malicious payloads. IT teams can avoid these pitfalls by training users to look out for them.

Deployment of security solutions: Measures such as anti-malware, firewalls and email filters can help detect ransomware and prevent infections. 

  The Human Factor

While following security best practices is essential to network security, many organizations remain unaware of or pay little attention to, the weakest link in the security chain: people.

It doesn’t make sense to try to solve what is essentially a human problem solely with technical means, says Mike Waters, director of enterprise information security for management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. “We have to create an atmosphere, an environment, where people can tell us what risks they know about, and we can document them and work through it in a deliberative manner,” he adds.

Booz Allen has 25,000 people working for it, Waters says, adding, “I need 25,000 people to defend Booz Allen.” Educating users — and instilling in them just a touch of paranoia, he quips — leads to an alert organization in which users report every suspicious thing they encounter. “Ninety-nine percent of what they report is not bad, but the 1 percent that’s critical can get to us,” he says. “We reinforce that behavior — tell us everything.”

  Meet the Evil Entrepreneurs

In much the same way that organizations boost their results through ambition and innovation, cybercriminals also are improving the way they operate. “The bad guys are entrepreneurial,” says Martin Roesch, vice president and chief architect of the Cisco Security Business Group.

Most successful cybercriminals are part of large and well-structured technology organizations. “There’s a team of people setting up infrastructure and hosting facilities; there’s a team of people doing vulnerability research; there’s a team of people doing extraction of data; there’s a team of people building ransomware; there’s a team of people delivering ransomware; there’s a team of people doing vulnerability assessment on the internet; there’s a team of people figuring out how to bypass spam filters,” says Michael Viscuso, co-founder and CTO of Carbon Black. 

Roesch says organizations have found it “very difficult to respond and be effective against the kind of threat environment that we face today,” but says security experts within Cisco have specifically targeted cybercrime organizations and achieved some success in shutting them down. 

  Weighing Risk Against Benefits

Security boils down to measuring risk against anticipated benefits. “One of the fascinating things about risk is that low-level engineers know where the risks are, but they don’t necessarily tell anybody,” Waters says. As an example, he cites Operation Market Garden, a World War II Allied military effort (documented in the book and movie A Bridge Too Far) that was fatally hampered by poor radio communication. “People knew those radios weren’t going to work when they got over there,” Waters says. “They didn’t tell anybody because they didn’t want to rock the boat.”

Once a risk is identified, users and IT professionals must be committed to addressing it, with the support of executives. Across all departments and in all situations, calm person-to-person communication is always a reliable and effective security tool. “If we’re running around with our hair on fire all the time, they don’t want to talk to us,” Waters adds. “We want everybody to be able to talk with us and share their risks, so we know to prioritize and trust them.”

In a perfect world, security professionals would strive to create a risk-free environment. “We want it all down to zero,” Waters says. That’s not possible, however, because some degree of risk is inherent in every action an organization takes. “As challenging as it may seem, there are risks businesses are willing to accept,” Waters adds.

Too much caution blocks or degrades benefits, particularly when security mandates unnecessarily interfere with routine activities. Simply telling people what not to do is rarely effective, particularly if what they’re doing saves time and produces positive results. “We talk about Dropbox and things like that,” Waters says. “If your policies are too restrictive, people will find a way around them.”

  Go to our website:   www.ncmalliance.com

Managing Risk in a Connected World As digital transformation takes hold, organizations must learn what their cybersecurity risks are – and how best to address them.

[yatterzuk]

The Beam Machine

A Retrospective

In late 2016, the Windows Insider team did something new. We hosted a real-time Webcast. While the concept of a webcast is not new, this was the first one for us. We hosted it during the development cycle for the Creator’s update and we timed it with the first Bug Bash. It was a small but fun session and we immediately knew it was something we’d want to do again. When the second Bug Bash for the Windows 10 Creators Update occurred in February of this year, we hosted two more webcast sessions. Each session was a success and brought in more Insiders from around the world. The webcasts provided an opportunity to chat directly with, for Insiders to chat with one other, and to have a little face-to-face time with some of the Microsoft employees they engage with frequently on social media.

As with anything new, there were some growing pains. The webcast sessions were fun and engaging, but the broadcast itself was a bit rough around the edges. There were a few technical difficulties with the streaming software, the PC hosting the video stream was a bit underpowered, and Insiders reported the video quality as being sub-par. Although the general feedback about the webcasts was positive, we knew we could make some improvements and provide a better experience.

What to do?

Insider feedback in-hand, it was time to make a few changes, but where to start? The easy thing to tackle was the video quality. We used a small lower-resolution webcam for the original webcasts, so making a change here was straight-forward. To enhance this part of the webcast experience, we acquired a Logitech BRIO 4k webcam. It is the first 4k consumer webcam and during our internal testing with it, it provides a huge leap in video quality compared to our previous hardware.

The Logitech Brio

The Logitech Brio

Next up for review was the broadcasting software.  Our first broadcasts were run using OBS Studio with FTL.  This software was simple to set up and configure and was easy to become familiar with for our webcasts. Knowing we wanted to get progressively “fancier” over the course of time, we posed some questions to the web community and to our partners on the Beam team as to what the best software out there is and were pointed to XSplit Broadcaster. While we haven’t hosted a webcast using this new software, it does look like it will allow us to achieve some of our future goals with providing higher quality webcasts.

Having tackled two of the three important aspects of the webcast, it was time to overhaul the computer being used to host the broadcast. That brings us to the birth of the #BeamMachine.

The #BeamMachine

How do you start a new PC build?  If you could pick out the parts and build to your own specifications, what hardware would you choose? The core of any new PC builds comes down to two key questions: what is your budget, and do you want an Intel or AMD based setup? Our focus for this build was video streaming, a function that is CPU intensive and is good to support with the proper RAM.  We weren’t building a gaming rig, so we didn’t need the most cutting edge graphics card. The rest of the core components would fall into place as we compiled our parts list.

Wanting to build a solid machine that would be somewhat future-proof, we chatted with some partner teams and set our build expectations. As much fun as it is to spend money on new computers, we have budgets too! Being the figurative core of the new build, the first part up for consideration was the CPU.  Intel has a reputation for being the fastest and most cutting-edge, but that performance comes at a price. Comparatively, AMD recently released their new Ryzen series processor and the initial reviews on performance were promising. Keeping our budget in mind, the new Ryzen chipset was now the focal point of the build. The difference between the 1700x and the faster 1800x was $100, so we decided to splurge a bit and go for the faster version.

The AMD Ryzen 7 1800x Processor

Having settled on a processor, the rest of the #BeamMachine build fell into place quickly. Being a first-generation processor, the list of compatible motherboards was somewhat limited, but thankfully some of the better-known OEMs have already been working on their supporting hardware. Given our timeline for the build, general availability, and MSI’s reputation for ease of setting over-clocking configurations, the new X370 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard rose to the top of our build list.

MSI’s X370 Gaming Pro Carbon

Next up was RAM and the choices were bountiful. Honestly there were more options than we could sort through. There’s a lot to take into consideration though. What speed RAM do you want? Are you going to over-clock it?  What’s the performance vs. cost ratio?  I personally have had great past experiences with G.Skill RAM and overclocking and quickly settled on a choice.

G.Skill Trident Z RGB RAM

Next on the list was graphics.  As mentioned before, we didn’t need the most powerful graphics card out there since it’s not vital to the streaming experience. Knowing this wouldn’t be a constraint, there were plenty of options to select from. Hard drive capability was another important factor if we were going to record the video streams, so we made sure to put a high-quality solid-state drive (SSD) on the build list.

Samsung 960 EVO M.2 NVMe SSD

At this point we were down to the finishing components. We needed to top off the build with a quality power supply, a case that would show off the internal components, and we made the decision to add a closed-loop liquid cooling system (because hey, why not!).  With these final components selected, the #BeamMachine was ready to go! Well, on paper at least.  Now it was time to order parts and wait for the boxes to arrive. Over the course of about two weeks, boxes arrived one-by-one until the full slate of components was ready to go and the new PC was ready to come to life. It was finally time to start building!

Here’s a quick recap of the system components used in the build:

AMD Ryzen 7 1800x CPU

MSI x370 Gaming Pro Carbon motherboard

32GB (4x8GB) G.Skill Trident Z RGB DDR4 RAM

Samsung EVO 960 M.2 NVME solid-state drive

MSI GEFORCE GTX 1050 TI graphics card

Corsair H110i liquid cooling system

Corsair RM750x power supply

Thermaltake X71 full-tower case

Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste

And of course, some awesome LEDs to make the build stand out

Thankfully we took many photos throughout the build process as we wanted to document and share the build process for anyone who has never assembled their own PC, or for those who love watching new PCs come to life.  Without further ado, let’s get to the photos!

The pile of internal components.

A freshly unboxed PC case.

The new MSI motherboard, complete with built-in M.2 SSD slots.

Time to start building!

What’s a PC build without a little Mountain Dew? And a CPU!

The new AMD Ryzen 7 1800x CPU taking its place.

Dropping the new SSD into place

Dropping the new SSD into place.

Next in: the Corsair RM 750X Power Supply.

A fully-modular power supply is a dream for cable management!

It’s starting to look a little like a PC!

Now for some cooling capability: Corsair H110i liquid cooling unit.

Yours truly attaching the radiator to the top of the case.

The Corsair H110i comes with the necessary AMD Ryzen bracket!

Four quick snaps and our 32GB of RAM is quickly installed.

Graphics anyone? Remove two accessory panels from the back of the case and the new MSI GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is a quick install.

Attaching up the case header pins, some fan plugs, and of course… the speaker!

Easy clean: the Thermaltake X71 case has a removable magnetic mesh top.

A view from “the dark side”. Cable management is important!

The end is near!

A quick-power on to ensure all is well and that the BIOS posts as expected.

Who is going to clean up this mess?

The #BeamMachine is alive and well. And in the words of the late Bob Ross, “we’ll put a happy little tree right here…”

In total the build took a little over two hours. I’ll admit that I’m picky about cable management, a topic that many home PC builders tend to be very particular about (and rightfully so). If you’re going to take the time to build a beautiful new PC, it’s worth putting in the effort to do it properly.

Overall the build went very smoothly; there were no hardware install problems and with the careful consideration put into the parts before purchase, all the hardware chosen was fully compatible and we did not encounter any inter-operability issues. It’s nice when a build comes together! There’s something special about putting in the time and effort to build it yourself, and while not all Windows Insiders out there build their own PCs, there are no doubt many of you who have gone through this same process and felt the wave of joy when it boots and posts after you press the power button for the first time.

Any time you set out to create something, be it a piece of software, a new PC build, or something as altruistic as sharing feedback on a bug or new feature idea you have, you’re taking the time to invest yourself. You’re investing in your abilities, your ideas, and your desire to have an impact. Windows Insiders invest every day via participation in this program. Our efforts to build a new PC to better connect with you all via our monthly webcasts is another way of showing our appreciation for all you do day-in and day-out to make the Insider program the success it has become and will continue to be. I look forward to connecting with you and am excited about our new series of webcasts.

Continue creating, and as Dona always says, “keep hustlin’”!

– Jason

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The Beam Machine was originally published on Yatterz