Items tagged with modding
If there's one thing we love, it's watching New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick staring incredulously at a reporter after being asked a dumb question. And if there's a second thing we adore, it's a good old fashioned retro gaming mod. We'll have plenty of opportunities to see an annoyed Belichick answer questions in the coming weeks, but for the latter, a huge tip of the hat goes out to GingerOfOz for his PS2 Eclipse project. What exactly is the PS2 Eclipse? It's a new console. Wait, it's an old console, and specifically Sony's legendary PlayStation 2, but in new digs. Yes, you're going to want to buy this thing with your hard earned cash, and no, it's not for sale. But depending on your...
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We're big fans of retro gaming (which is our way of saying some of us are old fogies), and so we always get a thrill when someone shows off a project that is a throwback to bygone eras, be it the venerable Commodore 64, Amiga systems of old, or whatever else. Or in the case of a recent project shown off in a YouTube video, the IBM PC. For the past couple of years, YouTube user Fabrizio Di Vittorio has been sporadically uploading videos based that are essentially odes to earlier times, often with an ESP32 microcontroller. That is the case with his latest project, which details an ESP32 underpinning a retro project aimed at emulating the IBM PC in all of its former (and timeless) glory. "Emulating...
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A modder has managed to unofficially leverage AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) technology over to SteamVR titles, and while we have not tested it ourselves (not yet, anyway), the early impressions from those who have tried it out generally say it works pretty well. This follows in the footsteps of the Grand Theft Auto V mod, to demonstrate how potentially easy it is to implement AMD's open source upscaling wizardry. To quickly recap, FSR has the same objective as NVIDIA's proprietary Deep Learning Super Sample (DLSS) technology, in that the goal is to render a game at a lower resolution and then upscale it. The upshot of this approach is faster frame rates—your GPU does not have...
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We have seen many cool projects arising from Raspberry Pi boards and other similar SBCs (single-board computers). One that ranks right up there with the best of them is an internet-controlled RC car, by the same person who in December posted a Raspberry Pi 4 mod to stream Nintendo Switch games in real-time over the web. The modder's name is Stan Dmitriev, and he is the CMO and co-founder of SurrogateTV. According to his Twitter bio, he's into robotics, chess, and esports. He is also a talented SBC enthusiast, as his latest project demonstrates once again. For the RC car mod, Dmitriev used a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 4GB of RAM (it sits in between the 2GB and 8GB models), which goes for around...
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When it comes to cutting edge PC hardware, modding is not always for the faint of heart. Or in the case of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3070 series, all of which sell for a mint by marketplace sellers, modding is not for the faint of wallet or purse. Nevertheless, the scarcity of GPUs and jacked up pricing did not stop a Russian modder from carefully peeling off the memory chips on a GeForce RTX 3070 and replacing them with more capacious ones. As we discovered in our GeForce RTX 3070 review, the $499 (MSRP) graphics card is a stout part for gaming, trading blows with last generations GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. That's a win, considering the 3070 is supposed to start at $499 (MSRP), with custom models sporting...
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When it comes to using the internet in any way, a general rule of thumb is that you should never download software from a source that you do not trust. Yesterday, CD Projekt Red Support sent out a tweet to dissuade people from downloading mods for Cyberpunk 2077 because a vulnerability was found the modding system's implementation. CD Projekt Red’s tweet explained the issue occurs when malicious mods are downloaded and modify things that they should not change. The tweet then explains that this vulnerability will be fixed “ASAP,” but it is quite dangerous to players who have already ventured out to install mods. If you plan to use @CyberpunkGame mods/custom saves on PC, use...
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Etch A Sketch is one of those toys nearly everyone had, but almost no one was good at using. Perhaps that was just me, as art is not my forte and it took a lot of coordination to use the thing. Regardless, it seems Reddit user /r/BenB116 was pretty fond of Etch A Sketch back in the day, as he built a massive working one powered by a Raspberry Pi and a TV, and it is pretty awesome. BenB116 seems to be a skilled maker, as he has created his own aluminum long board and an electric guitar as well. His latest creation, the enormous Etch A Sketch, appears to be quite the project compared to the others, though. Ben states that it took around a year and a half of on and off work to complete the...
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The best recipes combine different ingredients that may or may not seem like they go together, and then out comes something wonderful. This does not apply to just food, either. Case in point, a modder/maker found a delightful way to combine retro gaming (awesome), Spotify (also awesome), and alcohol (mmm, booze!) into a single delightful project. Meet the RetroPie Barrel Arcade. This is something we never knew we wanted, but now that we have seen its existence, this will permeate our daydreams until we get the gumption to construct something similar ourselves. Or maybe it's just me (this ranks as my favorite mod/maker project). So, what exactly are we looking at? It starts with the barrel, which...
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Released way back in 1996 (the year I graduated high school), the Nintendo 64 would go on sell nearly 33 million units, outpacing its predecessor, the GameCube, but more than 11 million units. It was a hit, and it spawned some fun games for its era. Now over two decades later, a modder has laid claim to constructing the world's smallest Nintendo 64 portable game console. Overall, the finished product is about the size of a Nintendo 64 cartridge, just a little taller and a thicker, because there has to be a place to insert the cartridges. That's right, this is an actual original game console that has been meticulously carved and modded, and not something built around emulation—there's no...
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Have you ever wondered what would happen if you paired a Raspberry Pi 4 board with an HDMI capture card and a Nintendo Switch? Nothing, really. But sprinkle in some clever coding and an Adafruit Trinket M0, and you end up with a nifty project that allows anyone to play hosted games in real-time, over the internet. At least until Nintendo sends in its legal hounds. Add this to the growing list of neat mods that are capable with the Raspberry Pi 4. In this case, it is the 2GB version, which The Raspberry Pi Foundation slashed the price to $35 earlier this year. It's a capable board with the following features... CPU: Broadcomm BCM2711 (quad-core Cortex-A72) clocked at 1.5GHz RAM: 2GB LPDDR4 Connectivity:...
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Hallmark sells a rather nifty Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) Christmas tree ornament, complete with sound and lights—pressing the power button triggers the lighting and plays sounds from the classic Super Mario Bros. game. But what happens when you pair the ornament with a Raspberry Pi Zero? You get a working retro console! We have seen some neat mods with Raspberry Pi Zero, and have even done some ourselves. A couple years ago, for example, our own Marco Chiappetta showed how to build a Commodore 64 with a Raspberry Pi Zero, for under $50. It's a small board—half the size of a Raspberry Pi Model A+—yet capable, with a 1GHz single-core CPU, 512MB of RAM, mini HDMI port,...
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By now you are probably aware that there is a quirk in Cyberpunk 2077 that prevents it from taking full advantage of certain AMD Ryzen CPUs, by not properly leveraging simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) support, for whatever reason. As we wrote about over the weekend, there is a fix involving a simple change made with a simple HEX editor utility. Or you can try out a new mod, which has certain advantages over the HEX editing route. The mod is supposed to address multiple performance issues, including the SMT situation on Ryzen processors, as well as "minor performance fixes." In addition, it will still work when the game is updated by CD Projekt Red. If you use a HEX editor to tweak the Cyberpunk...
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We are all doing the best we can to keep our sanity, and maybe even getting to know ourselves a bit better while in isolation. Perhaps you have an undiscovered talent that may have otherwise gone overlooked. Hey, it happens—a clever individual in Serbia found out he could build a nifty RC car that fires Nerf darts using a Raspberry Pi board (one of many neat Raspberry Pi projects to pass the time), despite not being a developer. The details and a few videos were posted to Reddit, with user 'stiw47' explaining this is a work in progress. Down the road, he plans on adding a camera, and "maybe something else." He also intends on swapping out the cardboard pieces with 3D printed parts, which...
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Those who have been waiting for a fresh Half-Life fix can now have it, though only if they own a compatible virtual reality headset. Valve's latest addition to the Half-Life world, Half-Life: Alyx, was designed from the ground-up for VR (and getting rave reviews), so it is not a game fans of the franchise can simply fire up and play on a flat-screen monitor. For now, anyway—it is only a matter of time before modders do their thing, and Valve is aware of this. Game designer Robin Walker, best known for co-developing the Team Fortress mod for Quake before later going on to co-create several Valve games, including Half-Life: Alyx, believes it is only a matter of time before someone mods the...
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Many people who enjoyed gaming during the 2000s have fond memories of the Nintendo GameCube and its best-selling game Super Smash Bros. Melee. The release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Nintendo Switch caused several creators to find a way to smash together the Nintendo Switch and GameCube. Creators Mike Choi and Shank both recently released photos and videos of their own GameCube/Nintendo Switch dock and controller Frankensteins. YouTube Shank Mods was the first to release photos and videos of his “GameCube Joycons”. Shank essentially reconfigured a Nintendo Wavebird wireless controller to pair up with a Nintendo Switch. Some of his biggest challenges included figuring out...
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Do you have an old GameCube console sitting around that you're not using anymore? If that is the case, and you also own a Nintendo Switch, you can literally hack (and saw) your old GameCube and give it a second life as a dock for your Switch, complete with working ports. That's exactly what someone did, and it looks awesome. Image Source: Reddit via Littlewolf128 Sure, it's bulky for a dock. But the fact that the front ports work is what ascends this mod from 'neat' to 'wow, that's really cool!' territory. It's also a well-timed modification, with Nintendo having recently launched Super Smash Bros. Ultimate for the Switch. The alternative is to buy a knockoff GameCube controller adapter and call...
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There's a lot to like about Tesla's Model 3, but as with most things with prepackaged entertainment (or infotainment) systems, even this beautiful electric car leave people yearning for a bit more. In the case of one reddit user, Tesla's infotainment system didn't satiate his/her entertainment hunger, so they decided to do what's perhaps one of the most interesting dual-OS installs ever, installing Ubuntu alongside Tesla's OS in their own car. Explicit details about how this mod was pulled off are not clear, but it's not going to be one for the faint of heart you can be sure. Digging deep into a car's OS means that a breaking something could lead to an essential bricking, although something tells...
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Take-Two clearly doesn't look at the modding scene with the same love as many of its peers. The Grand Theft Auto series has had a rich modding community for years, with its creative fans adding an incredible amount of content to Rockstar's most important series. Sometimes, even new mechanics are added. While most people who pick up the latest GTA don't even have modding on their mind, there are some others who buy the game with only modding in mind. That says a lot not just about modding, but about what a great base for such mods Grand Theft Auto is. And that's despite the fact that the games are in no shape or form designed to support modding....
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Nintendo is not a fan of the modder movement, at least not as it pertains to game consoles. The company has an entire section on its website explaining why it feels using ROMs is illegal and immoral, even if you already own a copy of the game. Nintendo's feelings on the matter aside, modders continue to hack game consoles so they can load up freely available ROMs from the Internet, and this has created a cat-and-mouse game between them and Nintendo. It happened with the Wii U and 3DS, and it will happen again with the Switch. In an effort to make modding more difficult (and its systems more secure), Nintendo launched a bug bounty program with HackerOne, a third-party service that pays out money...
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Well that did not take long. It has been less than two weeks since Nintendo released its hybrid Switch console and already someone has managed to hack the device. That bit is perhaps not too surprising—it was only a matter of time, after all—though the unexpected part is that the inventive hacker used an old WebKit exploit to thwart the Nintendo Switch's intentionally locked browser features. The hacker goes by "qwertyoruiop" on Twitter. If the name looks familiar, it's likely because he is the same one who contributed to the popular PlayStation 4 1.76 jailbreak. He has also post jailbreaks for several versions of iOS, Apple's tighly guarded mobile operating system used on iPhone, iPad, and iPod...
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Last week, Bethesda rolled out the latest patch of many that Fallout 4 has received since its launch last fall, but this one didn't just smooth out lingering bugs. What it did do was completely break the mods that many gamers enjoy, even though the patch included an update to the company's own mod system, Bethesda.net Mods. You can imagine what happened next: absolute chaos! Fortunately, Bethesda clearly recognizes that the last thing that it wants to do is upset its fanbase, and quickly moved to right its wrong. Following the botched update, the company immediately pulled the patch back and let the game ride using its most recent stable version, allowing fans to continue using their existing...
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Not long ago, Amazon showed us how to build an Amazon Echo Smart AI-assisted speaker system with the versatile Raspberry Pi but this beauty of a modding project is a bit of old school goodness that just warms our geek hearts. What do you get when you cross a classic portable gaming system like the original Game Boy with more modern internals from one of the most popular DIY single board computer systems around? Thanks to one rather inventive modder, we now have what is probably the coolest Game Boy on the planet — one that is capable of playing Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, NES, SNES and Sega Genesis titles in full color. The modder, who goes by the name of Wermy, started with a circa 1989...
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