Here are a few thoughts from wraggster, webmaster and news poster at http://www.dcemu.co.uk about the homebrew scene, tho i could not agree with most of it.

First off let me say that i am a 100% Homebrew Fan but at times even the best of us can see that things seem a little stale or stagnant.

Why do i think the Homebrew Scene has become stagnant?

Well firstly the ease to update our systems using firmware updates has made things very hard to near impossible unless you want to own 2 of each consoles. The PS3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox360 are too easily updated nowadays and that makes homebrew a lot harder to get a footing on these consoles. Nintendo even managed to stop people using the Wii for Gamecube Homebrew and Region Free Gamecube Games. Yes you can modchip your Console but if you want to play the latest games then you have to either buy a new console just for homebrew or sacrifice one or the other.

The handheld Market actually fairs much better, the DS, GBA and GP2X once you buy a Flash Card/Mem Card you are resonably safe. The PSP However suffers the same fate as the mainstream consoles in that firmware updates keep killing homebrew albeit not for long.

The Ipod/Iphone seem to be sufferng the firmware update issue too and that makes a homebrew scene very hazardous unless you want an expensive brick every time Apple update.

Sadly a fully legal Xbox scene seems to be one of those dreams that will never happen.

The Gamecube scene whilst small is picking up and theres rumours of a hardware addon that will turn the GC into a very powerful Homebrew console but is it too late in the day.

The Dreamcast community still produce a few gems a month thankfully.

If im being honest then the PSP Scene once an extremely redhot scene seems to have slowed a lot and most certainly become stagnant and mostly due to the Custom Firmwares and endless amounts of homebrew released for them that for me run the risk too easily of bricking your console.

The GP2X has also slowed a lot of late while people wait for the Craiginator the supposed PSP Beater, but we are nearing the end of October and no more concrete news on that console as of this newspost.

Im hoping that all the consoles that havent been fully cracked for homebrew get cracked soon and that on the handhelds we get back to real homebrew instead of countless releases that enhance a custom firmware.

Obviously this is just my personal view and no disrespect is meant at any coders as they work extremely hard to give us the tools to use on the consoles we own. But the recent stagnancy in the homebrew arena has caused me to ask the question in the title.

Am i right, am i wrong, do you agree that a certain scene needs to focus away from certain areas. Give your views via comments, are you bored of homebrew on the console or consoles you own ?

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/has-the-homebrew-scene-become-stagnant--77409.html

I just pick up the chance of the relauch to ask if anyone is interested in advertising here – Unfortunatly the server isn’t free and am I am paying everything out of my own pocket.

The one and only banner location I have is located in the “empty” place next to the logo, on the top of the page. There are NO other options. The banner will be shown on all pages in all categories. I prefer a “fixed rate” so keep your affilation programs away from me 🙂

Contact me for details at kojote1980 @ yahoo . com

After months of silence and recoding, here it is! PDRoms is back – your favorite legal rom archive. Play games or use tools on real hardware or just in an emulator of choice!

The page is not really in the shape we want to have it, but before our coder celeth is getting busy again… here it is!

What is done so far:
* Main News
* News Archive (News before 2002 are lost, news between 2002 and 2006 need a recategorization, because while converting the old database the formatting has been lost! – This is a task which will take some weeks)
* File Archive for many many systems! Around 700 files are up, more to come – This task will also take some time to get back to the old > 2200 Files.
* Three MAIN RSS Feeds – “News” – “Latest Files” – “Last Updated Files”
* Each category has the option of own WWW news along with two feeds, systemspecific news and systemspecific “new files”. If you are not interested in the whole bunch of homebrew, just make sure you visit your favorite system page
* Downloads are FREE and don’t need registration

What needs work?
* Registration system – Sorry it’s not public yet, but if it goes public you will have some “extra features”
* Adding extra features
* Possible display problems in Opera – we are on it!

Thanks to celeth for the new framework and kedo for helping to pull few files up! Kudos to them!

Here is also a special message for my beautiful wife Rabia – Thanks for your patience, I know the work on PDRoms drained our free time 😡 – Without your love it would also not be possible to gather all the energy to run such a project. Thanks for your support!

-Kojote / 12th October 2007

PS: Now it’s back up to you to bring PDRoms back to glory – spread the word!
PSS: If you have a digg account – http://digg.com/gaming_news/PDroms_Back_Online_and_at_Full_Status

http://www.pdroms.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=385

Directly from ZodTTD’s homepage:

Currently 56.52 percent of zodttd.com visitors would like to hear me ramble. This is great news! I love to ramble on. It usually is about something technology related, but this special 56.52% want me to specifically talk about my ongoing development projects. Crazy, I know.

So to please the the majority, I have whipped together this summary of instant gratification.

– PSX4ALL
This is what keeps me active within the homebrew gaming community. I’ve been working on it for years now, and sometimes it gets better. For those of you who are strangely unaware yet reading this, psx4all is a Sony Playstation emulator focused on being portable within a range of low-performance handhelds. The largest community of users of psx4all is the great GP2X handheld community.
Unai has been busy with his day job and has been unable to get much put into psx4all as of late. He’s done so much already, he deserves some rest.
Hlide is currently focusing on figuring out why my crazy dynarec is performing as well as it is. We tried some optimizations to the dynarec where we expected slight, but noticeable gains. We didn’t get the gains. So he is very determined to get this emulator in tip top shape, even if it means we start rewriting this emu from scratch and plug in some existing parts such as Unai’s already excellent GPU. Taking things step by step, Hlide is researching other dynarecs and static binary translation techniques and seeing how they handle things such as register allocation. It’s always good to learn from others who have been writing similar code and have dealt with pitfalls that are to be encountered. If this week of dynarec improvements to the current psx4all ARM Dynarec core don’t shape up, we may consider tearing out a lot of existing framework and using hlide’s work in progress psx emulator sources. This project is being worked on by at least one team member every day. It may be the Craiginator handheld that brings this emulator to life though.

– DOSBOX
I recently got back in touch with c2woody (“wd”) from the DosBox team. I am getting my Sharp Zaurus C1000 out. Dusting it off, and compiling the 0.72 DosBox build for it. The next step, get an ARM Dynarec running! Simple? No. Fun? Yes!

– CRAIGINATOR
Wouldn’t OpenTTD be really cool on a wide resolution VGA touchscreen? Wouldn’t DosBox be better with a hardware based keyboard and an ARM Dynarec to allow for more “recent” DOS titles? Wouldn’t PSX4ALL be great if it were running fullspeed, sound, and all, and gave me some room to not work constantly on performance but allow me to polish it up as well?

– COMMERCIAL DEV
I’m currently working for a great dev studio on commercial handheld development. While my freetime is limited, I strive to use that little bit to get my projects done. All the while, keeping you, the reader, informed.

http://www.zodttd.com/

A new issue of “Retrogaming Times Monthly” is online!

Topics in this issue:

* Lost Faces of H.E.R.O.
* Nintendo Realm – Late July to Aug 1986
* Old wine in new bottles – Activision TV Games
* NESCade – Mario Bros.
* Apple ][ Incider – EA Sports
* Mastering Sega – Kenseiden

http://my.stratos.net/~hewston95/RTM/RTM_Home.htm

Dear visitor,

For those who know about the current “alpha testing page”, please keep it TOP SECRET. If PDRoms is fully back, then it will be located at http://www.pdroms.de where it used to be.

So far we only have around 700 files back up and we feel it’s not enough – considering we had more than 2000 files, before the file archive disappeared.

At this moment a kudos to celeth, the coder, who is working his ass off again! He was spending plenty of hours the past three days to improve and make the “new” PDRoms release ready.

Currently we expirience layout problems because IE doesn’t follow all standards. What is done so far…

* “Main News” on the front page, which covers all systems
* Three main RSS feeds – News, Latest Files, Latest File Updates
* System specific news page along with homebrew downloads. Including RSS feeds (Latest “insert system here” Files and Latest “insert system name here” news
* Most uploads do have a screenshot and YES, the long requested thumbnail preview has been coded and is beeing activly used!

Time for some sleep now… I might post some more information in the webboard late at night.

Please again, if you know about the “alpha testing page” don’t spread the URL. You have been given this information in trust, any PUBLIC leak of the URL might turn into the page beeing delayed a lot, as everything is alpha and the page could get messed up easily and work of months can be destroyed in no time.

Thanks for your understanding and myself along the PDRoms team can assure you, that the time of waiting will be over soon.

Regards
Kojote

I just wrote an email to the guys at Epitech Game Development Labaratory, read on, it will be self explaining:

Dear Ladies, Dear Gentlemen

I am very addicted to homebrew software, like the ones located on your page ( http://labconsole.epitech.net/index.php ). Due to research I know you had some GBA homebrew’s like

Bibibobo (Alpha) (GBA Game), or
Bomber Royale (GBA Game) on your page (both from 2002).

While checking your page, I can’t localize them anymore – I wonder if there are more “projects” for consoles or handhelds which have disappered from your page or actually never made it to the page itself.

I also recognized there are quite few “Dreamcast” games, which were never released but mentioned as “project”

Could you please assist me in finding such lost treasures, in case they can be made freely available to the public, made by your students?

You would do the homebrew scene a big favor! Thanks a lot and waiting for answer 🙂

Regards
Shahzad Sahaib
Kojote/pdroms.de

The page also contains a hand full of GBA games which I have never seen before, considering I follow the GBA scene since it’s beginning in 2001, it’s pretty crazy 🙂

You can discuss about this in the PDRoms webboard.

http://www.pdroms.de/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=382

Dear visitors,

with the past month, we have broken another news record in the almost 10 year history of PDRoms, this time 488 news items and…

… the seventh coding competition organized by PDRoms has finished – The compo itself was just an average success considering the amount of seven entries only, but hey – seventh compo, seven entries – let’s hope there will be more than 7 entries the next time 🙂

Hopefully the main page with all funky new features will be back online soon – The archive (currently still unaccessable) holds already 600 programs, and before we fully re-open everything should be back to around 2000 homebrew games and applications for various systems – including the iPhone.

Our coder celeth should return by upcomming week and continue his work to bring PDRoms back to it’s old glory.

All things are moving slow, but the main thing is, they are moving!

-Kojote

The results of the recently held PDRoms Coding Competition #3.667 are out, the judges (robocop_ – http://www.c64.ch and Evildragon – http://www.gp2x.de ) have spoken!

Thanks to all sponsors of this competition too! http://www.ngine.de – http://www.kionix.com/gbaccelerometer/ – http://www.rgcd.co.uk/shop/

#1 Codename Hacker GBA by alekmaul, lobo, daydream
#2 Hexavirus GBA by alekmaul, mollusk
#3 Znax by birslip
#4 Jumping Barnabe GBA by alekmaul
#5 Broken ASCII Digger by Sektor
#6 Yet Another SFCave v1.0 by GPF
#7 Paper, Scissor, Rocks 4 GBA by d3x

Follow the link for descriptions, pictures and of course – download!

So that’s it folks! See you next coding competition! Thanks to all guys who parcipated! The winners will be notified within this weekend! Congratulation to the winners!
-Kojote, robocop_ and Evildragon

http://www.pdroms.de/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=381

PAMag is the first brandnew issue from the guys at playeradvance.org.

It deals with homebrew reviews and retrogaming, but in french language.

http://www.playeradvance.org/forum/pamag.php