E-Reader cards cracked

[davidbrit2]

Bitchin'.

Slashdot article (http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/04/19/1745253.shtml?tid=127&tid=186&tid=207)

Yes, this apparently means you can make your own cards.

[§ Gideon §]

I agree. Bitchin'.

You'd have to have a pretty expensive printer to do that at home, though.

[davidbrit2]

Yeah, I'm playing around with my HP PSC 1330 right now to see if I can even get readable prints. Failing that, I'll try it on the laser in the computer lab tomorrow. If you change the image to 320 dpi, it comes out about the right size.

[Jorpho]

Gee, I always thought the E-Reader cards used magnetic strips.

Does this mean people will be able to produce games as extremely long strips of paper? Or is there still a limitation on the length of the strips that can be scanned?

[davidbrit2]

The homebrew one is longer than a standard card, so the actual limit is probably quite larger than what they actually use on the official ones.

I think we can assume that inkjets will not work, no matter how much you screw with the settings. They're just too inaccurate, and shoot dots into the wrong locations. I can't get anything readable from mine.

[Jorpho]

(Whoops, double post.)

[Bratwurst]

The promotional potential for this would be really cool, if somewhat limited considering the e-reader's distribution / popularity.

I'm imagining a business card passed around E3 with a line of code for a demo on one side.

[§ Gideon §]

LOL I don't know about that e-reader business card suggestion... Personally, if someone handed me one, I'd be really impressed. But, I don't think it would fly in the business world! They have specially-shaped CDs for that.

I'd think it'd be really cool if a kid sent out his b-day invitations on e-reader cards!

[davidbrit2]

Oh, I should probably mention this...

I think Nindendo might hold some kind of patent on the technology and/or encoding. So don't do anything that's going to make them go SCO on you. Heh. Don't you love it when company names become self-slandering verbs?

[Half Japanese]

You know what else is cool about that article? It links to Achika's www.vidgame.net to give more info on the e-reader!

[§ Gideon §]

That is pretty cool. I just went to that site for the first time the other day. Congrats, Achika! (or does this sort of thing happen often?)

[Querjek]

I emailed Tim yesterday and (to my surprise) got a reply very fast last night. He put better printing instructions up on his site (http://users.skynet.be/firefly/gba/e-reader/). I'm going to try using photo paper today. And Tim also said that he would be releasing new codes shortly :)