Official bitching about Hudson abandoning VC support. [VC/WiiWare = lost cause]

I downloaded Pokemon Snap last night and played it for the first time - for 4 hours straight. I love this game! How is there no sequel?
 
So did Australia VC cop anything? Cause I can't be bothered to load it up and check only to run into disappointment.
 
So I guess we haven't had any new developments turn up from people searching for pictures added in advance (as it went last week)?
(Not to be lazy--I just don't know how people do that. If I did, I'd look myself.)
 
Capndrake said:
Nope, you don't get C64 games.
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What a fucking rip. (especially since some of my earliest gaming experiences were on C64)

I've got 2400 points sitting in my VC account, and have been for at least 3 months straight.

I don't give a flying fuck if Terranigma was released for 2K points, I'd still buy it. Fuck you Nintendo.
 
I fired off a PM to a few people about this, but I'll post here as well in case a bystander can help me out. I'm trying to rewrite a VC game image sniffing script I had in 2006 but lost in a hard drive crash last year. I remember the jist of how the script went, but I can't seem to track down the proper user agent to spoof or in lieu of that, a sample pathway for one of the game images. If anyone could oblige either of these two things, that'd be killer. Thanks in advance!
 
Stumpokapow said:
I fired off a PM to a few people about this, but I'll post here as well in case a bystander can help me out. I'm trying to rewrite a VC game image sniffing script I had in 2006 but lost in a hard drive crash last year. I remember the jist of how the script went, but I can't seem to track down the proper user agent to spoof or in lieu of that, a sample pathway for one of the game images. If anyone could oblige either of these two things, that'd be killer. Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
Just a link to a random picture? Here's the most recent one, Paradroid (EU).
 
Stumpokapow said:
I fired off a PM to a few people about this, but I'll post here as well in case a bystander can help me out. I'm trying to rewrite a VC game image sniffing script I had in 2006 but lost in a hard drive crash last year. I remember the jist of how the script went, but I can't seem to track down the proper user agent to spoof or in lieu of that, a sample pathway for one of the game images. If anyone could oblige either of these two things, that'd be killer. Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

I've tried looking for a new one with no luck. I'm not really knowledgable with network protocols so I had a lot of trouble figuring out how read the UA string from the stream of packets and just gave up.
 
Thanks Capndrake, Somnid.

I didn't end up getting the useragent, but Capndrake's url was enough for me to be able to recreate the script. I have it set up to cache pretty aggressively and run in the backlog, taking breaks every burst so that Nintendo's servers don't interpret the scraping as a DOS...

... but basically what I think I'm going going to do is just run it across all platforms and all possible ID codes. If the images are put up, this baby will download them. :D

Edit: aaaaand basically scraped. Doing a second pass to pick up imports.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Thanks Capndrake, Somnid.

I didn't end up getting the useragent, but Capndrake's url was enough for me to be able to recreate the script. I have it set up to cache pretty aggressively and run in the backlog, taking breaks every burst so that Nintendo's servers don't interpret the scraping as a DOS...

... but basically what I think I'm going going to do is just run it across all platforms and all possible ID codes. If the images are put up, this baby will download them. :D
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That's a lot of page requests. I only run my proggy once a week or so across a range of possible values on the systems updated in each region. WiiWare in the US has had entries from WB6E to WVCE, so that alone requires scanning missing entries from W00E to WZZE if you want to be thorough.

36 alphanumerics^2 - 8 existing titles = 1288 page requests

For most VC systems, you can probably restrict the scanning range to reasonable values based on what's already up. i.e., the NES currently runs from FA6E to FECE. So, scanning from FA0E to FCZE and skipping existing entries would only require 39 page requests as opposed to 1227 for F00E to FZZE.
 
Cheesemeister said:
That's a lot of page requests. I only run my proggy once a week or so across a range of possible values on the systems updated in each region. WiiWare in the US has had entries from WB6E to WVCE, so that alone requires scanning missing entries from W00E to WZZE if you want to be thorough.

36 alphanumerics^2 - 8 existing titles = 1288 page requests

For most VC systems, you can probably restrict the scanning range to reasonable values based on what's already up. i.e., the NES currently runs from FA6E to FECE. So, scanning from FA0E to FCZE and skipping existing entries would only require 39 page requests as opposed to 1227 for F00E to FZZE.
Click to expand...

I thought about this before-hand. Although I highly doubt that 10k page requests would really buckle Nintendo's servers, I put in the following mechanisms:

- Do not request a page you already have an affirmative answer for.
- If server returns a 404 or other error message, don't download anything.
- For all consoles except WiiWare, stop searching if you go 72 continuous requests without finding anything.
- Fire requests off in batches of 100 waiting a minute or two (value randomly generated) between batches.
- Only do one thread at a time. Wait for the previous request to finish before sending off a new one.

Also, for the two-digit game code, I'm only scanning game codes starting with A-Z since all existing game codes appear to fit that criteria.

I think personally these restrictions are more than reasonable. I read your post a long time ago in the thread where you hypothesized that many users doing this sort of thing could act to slow down Nintendo's already very slow servers, but I'm not worried. Benchmarks on a low-end processor 1gb ram Tomcat server can process ~5000 HTTPS requests per minute, so I can't imagine that 100 or so HTTP requests per minute against presumably a server farm will be an issue.
 
Stumpokapow said:
Also, for the two-digit game code, I'm only scanning game codes starting with A-Z since all existing game codes appear to fit that criteria.
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Not true. I see seven C64 games from C95P to C9ZP. That's all of them. I couldn't find them at first either, as I'd made the same assumption.

Refraining from downloading subsequent screenshots on missing entries is obvious, but then they typically have 3 images. Some odd or test cases have had more, so I just keep going in sequence until no more images in sequence are found.
 
I assume everyone's image searching efforts were in vain since no one posted anything. Will someone at NOA go in on the holiday to upload the images, games, and descriptions or can they remotely do that?

Have early press releases been completely eliminated or did they just crack down on people releasing them to the public early?

Could we be looking at another zero game week? I can imagine an announcement of no games in honor of Memorial Day. Are there anyone games that might be appropriate for Memorial day?
 
Luigison said:
I assume everyone's image searching efforts were in vain since no one posted anything. Will someone at NOA go in on the holiday to upload the images, games, and descriptions or can they remotely do that?

Have early press releases been completely eliminated or did they just crack down on people releasing them to the public early?

Could we be looking at another zero game week? I can imagine an announcement of no games in honor of Memorial Day. Are there anyone games that might be appropriate for Memorial day?
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Trust me there will NEVER be a zero game week. (In terms of overall Wii Shop Channel games) and most likely atleast 1 vc game from here on out. Same with WiiWare atleast 1 new wiiware game unless theirs nothing to release that week.

At the moment I cant think of any games that would have a memorial day theme...

Aw well it looks like we truly have to wait to tomorrow this week...I'll be sure to be up at 7 CST when Ninetendo posts the pr on their site and see everyone's reaction :lol
 
Cheesemeister said:
True, but this seems specious at best. Unless you have some insight into how the ID codes are assigned?
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It seems deliberate to me. I have no idea why but if you look at patterns with how the codes are assigned it doesn't seem like pure luck. Nintendo and Hudson look like they do a sort of hashing to pick where each title goes, perhaps to keep people from finding new images. Originally they were sequential and now they are randomly distributed with the possible range growing every so often. Sega on the other hand puts games in sequential order, and they've filled up entire letters with the exception of 0 and 1. Since their pattern is more obvious it seems interesting that they still skip those ones. D4 also does it sequentially.

Luigison said:
I assume everyone's image searching efforts were in vain since no one posted anything. Will someone at NOA go in on the holiday to upload the images, games, and descriptions or can they remotely do that?

Have early press releases been completely eliminated or did they just crack down on people releasing them to the public early?

Could we be looking at another zero game week? I can imagine an announcement of no games in honor of Memorial Day. Are there anyone games that might be appropriate for Memorial day?
Click to expand...

Press releases still exist but Jsnake got cut-off. It seems the rest are playing by the rules. We'll still probably get 3 games as usual split between Wiiware and VC. Since they will probably decide to kick-off the latest imports next month, we'll most likey get something like Metal Slug or Alex Kidd in Maricle World on Monday barring surprises.
 
Luigison said:
I assume everyone's image searching efforts were in vain since no one posted anything. Will someone at NOA go in on the holiday to upload the images, games, and descriptions or can they remotely do that?
Click to expand...

Well, there were games last Memorial Day, were there not? I don't see why we wouldn't get something this week. Of course, whether or not we get anything good is something else entirely.

I realistically don't expect much from the VC, since I think Nintendo will still mostly be focusing on WiiWare. Still, there's no fathoming the VC release schedule.
 
For Memorial Day, they'll decide to go with a theme of soldiers and armies. Thus, Final Soldier and Shining Force II for sure. For Memorial Day, maybe they'll decide to focus on fine American gaming, leaving us with nothing on VC since it's almost exclusively Japanese publishers supporting this service.
 
Jiggy37 said:
For Memorial Day, they'll decide to go with a theme of soldiers and armies. Thus, Final Soldier and Shining Force II for sure. For Memorial Day, maybe they'll decide to focus on fine American gaming, leaving us with nothing on VC since it's almost exclusively Japanese publishers supporting this service.
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Super Turrican Director's Cut. Believe.
 
I have had an awful weekend having to travel up for a heart wrenching funeral for a friend's 5 year old daughter and its put me down in the dumps.

EarthBound would be a nice distraction
 
Are the releases going to leak anytime soon or are we just going to have to wait for the official release tomorrow morning to know what titles there are?
 
dwin45 said:
Are the releases going to leak anytime soon or are we just going to have to wait for the official release tomorrow morning to know what titles there are?
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At this point, we're just going to have to wait.

We can always hope that someone else with early PR will come along and leak it, but I doubt it if Nintendo's cracking down.
 
I just hope they haven't read this thread and cracked down on putting the pi--

Uh, I mean--yeah, Nintendo's as tight as freaking Fort Knox and no pieces of information escape their iron grasp. Keep up the good work, guys.
 
DaBargainHunta said:
Are you just predicting this, or do you have inside info?
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Predicting. If I had inside info I'd spam fake EB releases every week until I was banned. I'd leave a hint at the real release in the writeup though. :lol
 
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