My apologies; I misunderstood your concept. I thought that you were talking about setting up some kind of central clearing house for funds, but now I see that you’re suggesting more of an automated report which is compiled for each user, locally, for them to act on manually at periodic intervals. That does seem to sidestep most of the legal issues.

Sorry, I don’t have any experience with that. I only played Wii and GCN games on my Wii. I switched to a Wii-U for the convenience of direct HDMI output.

I would also go with a Wii. Just know that you will probably need a Y-cable to use an external drive (even an SSD), since the Wii’s USB ports max out at a pretty low current.

I think that only a small number of Wiis were produced that don’t support GCN games. It should be easy to tell by looking for the 4 GCN controller ports under a side flap.

SATA modded Sony network adapter (it must be an original Sony unit) with a 1TB or less SSD (for compatibility reasons)

Is that 1TB compatibility issue with SSDs or with PSBBN? I’m using FHDB (basically FMCB on internal storage) and OPL with a 2TB SATA HDD without any issues. My understanding is that 2TB is the limit with this setup.

PS2 can only run PS1 games (close to) natively from optical discs. The system that switches the PS2 over to PS1 mode can only be triggered physically by the drive, and once in PS1 mode the console can no longer access most of the PS2 hardware, including any storage attached to the network adapter.

There is a way to “convert” PS1 games to run from internal storage (POPStation), but it actually just wraps the PS1 image in a software emulator for PS2.

Is the main issue really tracking and consolidating microdonations, or is it transferring credit between these donation systems and traditional finance entities like banks and credit card networks?

From what I’ve seen, efforts to develop microtransaction/microdonation systems generally seem to have trouble with regulatory compliance, either through legitimate legal requirements that force them to do things that seem nonsensical to their users (My guess is that the registered servers issue OP mentioned with Flattr came down to this), or due to greedy intermediaries stalling and witholding under false pretences while they hold out for a bigger share of the money, without appreciating the already extremely thin margins involved.

I’ve never had one myself, but a few of my friends have had Crumpler bags for years and they swear by them.

Crumpler is an Australian company started by some bicycle couriers who couldn’t find really sturdy bags that suited them. I believe that the story goes that one of them was trying to carry a slab of beer (24 cans packed in one flat layer) to a friend’s party when his bag broke apart, and that was when they started making bags for themselves.

They’ve been around since 1995, and have quite a range of bags and backpacks now.

SDL is written in C, but bindings are available for multiple languages, including C++ and C#. As it happens I was actually using it with C++. And there are other libraries you could use instead, like GLFW or Allegro.

I’ve never thought of C as being that much lower-level than C++, but I guess everything’s relative.

• You want to make a technically simple game, and want it actually to be able to run on a potato instead of just looking like it should, and you already have the skills or aren’t afraid to take the time to learn.

the cross platform is a pain.

It doesn’t have to be with libraries like SDL. Years ago I got stuck fighting all-in-one game engines that didn’t fit my design choices, precisely because I thought it would be worth it for platform independence. Then I found out about SDL, which was what I actually wanted.

If someone thinks that not using a pre-rolled engine with a full editing suite included is a waste of time, I can respect that. But there are options if you’d rather make your own but still don’t want to have to learn the ins and outs of multiple hardware architectures and operating systems.

Only if what you are printing onto is regular paper. My contention is that since printing itself has become a somewhat niche act for individuals printing at home, they’re more likely to be printing for specific reasons, which means that they’re more likely to want to print things like transfers or other specialized substrates that may not work well with laser printing.

Yes, I believe that laser printer toner lasts longer than fluid ink, although ink can last for years when stored in a properly sealed bottle rather than in a cartridge inside the printer, which is possible with a user-fillable cartridge.

Thanks to the proliferation of portable devices, a lot of people no longer need a printer for “regular” printing at all in 2026, and some of the more interesting printing substrates either don’t accept toner well or won’t survive the heat of a laser printer’s toner setting stage.

Also, while the technology is theoretically simpler, it may be harder for an individual to source or make the physical components like rotating drums and high-res LED arrays.

For me, the cherry on top of this little piece of embarrassing history is something that only a handful of people remember: The PS1 had an official mouse controller, and this was one of the few games that supported it.

I bought the mouse when it came out, and I got a copy of this game about 10 years ago, and I’ve gotta say it works very well. It was also how I played the single-player campaign of Quake 2 back in the day.

Anyone who is already familiar with HSR, imagine seeing this video and having it be the first time you’ve even heard of Homestar Runner.

You’d probably feel like some kind of tapeleg.

The classic adage of “The first 90% of the work takes 90% of the time, and the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time” comes to mind.

Its always all those “little touches” that eat up so much time, because you know that your audience will expect them, and you yourself feel that they should be there; a smoothly-moving cursor for menu selections, playing little sounds when selecting or cancelling, a puff of dust that jumps up when the player character lands (but keeps animating in place rather than sticking to the player), text sliding or fading in and out instead of just appearing and disappearing… All the individual “little” things that add up to quite a lot of work.

I also sympathize with you on a lot of the points you raised about “family-friendly” games. I’m a teacher, and when I make activities and games for my students, I face a similar set of constraints (must be enjoyable for the weakest students but still engaging for the most advanced students, little to no player elimination, high replayability/reusability, has to actually reinforce the target knowledge/skill and not just be fun with the material tacked on as an afterthought).

I appreciate the touch of making this with generative AI. Unless someone went to the effort of deliberately writing “VIbc coam” on the spine.

I have a stupid question: Are you sure you’re not confusing “line out” and “headphone out”? They’re different, and pretty much every desktop supports both these days. But standard PC speakers usually connect to the “headphone” socket.

Private members aren’t actively blocked from external access; they’re passively marked “Access prohibited”.

That means that rather than being unable to find the members of a class, C programmers simply can’t pick up on the signals telling them that they’re not wanted.

(Fellow C programmers: I’m joking. :D)

People can hate on Microsoft all they want, but I use LibreOffice on a regular basis and it does the same thing, for exactly the same reason.

Cheers to the person who linked to the “font - hide” solution. I didn’t know that one and the equivalent works LO as well.

There are even rumors of a Final Fantasy VII reboot!

Final Final Fantasy VII?

The problem I find with many games made for Win95/98/XP is that the game uses one or more third-party libraries that were only “valid” for a year or two. After that, updates to the OS closed loopholes that the poorly-written old versions of the libraries relied on, but the poorly-written newer versions of the libraries released to deal with those issues then break compatibility with the previously-released game, which was never updated or patched.