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Evolution OS beta version review!
Post Last Edit by joedanger at 22-1-2010 15:29
Evolution OS release dates/info:
* 12/30/09 First release of the beta, lacks two files so it wasn't working.
* 12/31/09 Added the files that the first release was lacking, so it should be counted as the initial version.
* 01/06/10 Added a new skin (Crystal Blue), fixed rtg (realtime-guide), supports text files, added auto-bookmark for the rtg
* 01/08/10 Improved Anti-Piracy techniques, added & fixed some languages (DE/FR/ES)
* 01/18/10 Fixed incorrect display of RTS, some freeze bugs with some cheat, multi OS support, compatibility of old saves; Added patch database, Japanese language (Thank 少女病), Chinese style theme pack. (By: 人文回归); Optimized codes of Real-Time functions, Ingame menu & RTS speed up!
PLEASE DON'T ASK FOR THE OS FILES, THEY ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC, ONLY FOR SOME USERS THAT WERE SELECTED AS BETA TESTERS.
Well, as you may know, some of the users of this forums got to review the beta of the new Evolution OS that will be on the DS Two card and also on the other slot 1 Supercards (that is DS One, DS One SDHC and DS One i).
First, one of the things that have been asked a lot lately, yes it is faster. I could move through my directories and files faster than before and loading the games seems to be faster too.
The interface is clean, less cluttered and looks a bit better. Also the folders appear on the touch screen by default and the stylus can be used.
I'll be posting screenshots, just give me a bit of time to write/post.
The beta version came with a Christmas themed skin.
Sorry if the screenshots are blurry, it's kind of late here so i'm in a hurry, lol. And as info, i'm using a DS Phat and a Supercard DS One SDHC.
First the Supercard loading image:
The interface, showing the menus and some directories (i have my roms on separate directories). First showing the icon mode (normally it would show the game icons, but since i have all of them in different folders, that's what you see, lol) and next the mode that shows only the names (list mode).
In list mode you can return or advance a full page of roms/folders pressing the LEFT/RIGHT directional buttons, making the navigation a bit faster when you have a lot of files.
When restarting the card it starts with the mode that was selected the last time.
You can switch between modes pressing Select. And also, you can access to the menus pressing Start, pretty convenient if you ask me, lol.
There are a good amount of options in the menus, most of them already known, like the card speed, select the languages, change the theme. There are also some new, like the Run mode option that selects if the game runs patched or in clean mode (it was before on the set patch section), an option to select the brightness, the multi saver section, etc.
The options in the Setup menu, Saver menu and Cheat menu:
Just like with the old OS, when you highlight a rom you can change some rom settings, with the old OS the menu was activated pressing X, but here it's activated pressing Y. The options are Multi Saver (to select which savegame do you want to use for the game, it goes from 1 to 4), the Save Size (same contents as the menu), Enable or Disable cheats and access to the cheat menu, which is one of the most expected things in the new OS.
The cheats are downloaded using the usrcheat.dat instead of separated .scc files (haven't checked if they still work).
Screenshots of the rom settings dialog and the cheat menu (showing the cheats for Mario & Luigi RPG 3, as you can see it is skinned and shows the cheats without cutting the names):
The run mode section in the Setup menu:
The game loads also pressing A, just like in the old OS. After pressing A it shows the load screen again:
And after a bit, the rom loads:
And now, one of the most expected news for the Evolution OS... the ingame menu!
It can be run at any time during the game pressing L + R + A + B+ X +Y (all the buttons, lol).
It has options to Return to the game, Save, Load (realtime save/load, with 4 slots!, right now the menu to select the name of the slots didn't appear, they have a default name of Slot 0, Slot 1, etc.), Slowmotion (0%, 33%, 66% and 100%), Brightness, Turn ON/OFF the cheats and return to the Main Menu (this is used to return to the OS so we don't need to restart the DS).
The ingame menu, slow motion and the realtime save/load options seem pretty stable, i tested it with Mario & Luigi RPG 3 and could return to the game without problems. All of them are working fine in the beta, slow motion showed some flickering but that's related with the nature of that function so it was expected and not an OS problem.
Realtime save menu (showing the 4 slots)
Creating a realtime save
Realtime load menu (4 slots too)
Loading the realtime save file
Things that i haven't figured out (probably aren't implemented in the beta, so they might be considered as things to improve/bugs to solve):
* How to copy, move, delete files
* How to access the slot 2 card (tried L + B but it doesn't work)
* Load some of my old savegames (it's probably looking for a savegame with the exact name of the rom, need to test it) - UPDATE It seems to be that, i'm still testing, but i renamed the savegames of some roms to be the exact one (since it was cut). It probably needs to be a bit less strict when looking for the savegame, like in the old OS, that it could be the cut version or the long named one (after renaming of course) to improve compatibility when changing the OS. It seems that the savegame name must be like this: long name rom.nds long name rom.SAV (the SAV extension must have capital letters)[FIXED IN 18/01/10 BETA].
* Haven't found how to restart the game (it would be a good idea to include it in the ingame menu).
* No realtime cheats (it was mentioned that they had to give up this feature, but who knows). A way to make them work again would be to gave support also to the .scc files, making them have a higher priority than the usrcheat.dat file when the .scc file is in the same directory as the rom so it gets loaded like before.
* There's no way to make guides with images atm.
* Guides need to fixes, like implementing linebreaks so the txt guides are shown correctly.
* There are some games that aren't working right now (specially some of the heavily protected ones).
* Some of the old rom settings are missing, like dma, patch speed, enable reset, some of them might be needed for some games (mainly dma).
* Not sure if the software to avoid anti-piracy measures is active right now.
Other things:
* There are some new files that i didn't see before, not sure what some of them do, there's a file with .ds0 extension and the realtime save slots seem to have the rtf# extension (like rtf1, rtf2, etc). Also the save files created by the multi saver seem to have an extension, like game.1.sav.
* The save games have LONG NAMES they aren't cut like before.
CONCLUSIONS!!!
Overall i think that the new OS is a pretty solid work from the SC Team. Since it's a beta version there are things that still need to be implemented or polished, but i was expecting it to have more problems or things to improve.
It seems to be pretty stable and faster than the old one. Also the interface is cleaner and less cluttered. Amd after checking the some of the files, it seems that there are some big plans for it (more functions and useful things that aren't active in this release).
The rom compatibility seems fine with what i have tested, tough i still need to test homebrew and some more games. But i'm pretty sure it will improve a lot more for the final release.
The new functions like slow motion, realtime multi saver, the ingame menu and so on seem to be working fine. Didn't have any kind of problem while testing them. The option to return to the OS is pretty handy too. |
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Post at 31-12-2009 16:24
| Seul Auteur
