DarkSoft MVS Multi Cart update - hmmmm. Now in HD!

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Razoola

Divine Hand of the UniBIOS,
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I had to do some digging around as when I started watching again on PC its clear this video is clips joined together. The origional videos can be found at;

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtn8oo8kD7FyTOEwOQEWH_IE5olHLo45d

I guess there is alot of viewing to be done before one can comment objectively but it has got to be very worrying for anyone who preordered their product after watching. There is a massive difference between their official video and the live stream in a few areas (like loading times). The issues when they happen in game are not minor and the impression given on their forums was the only issues remaining were frontend related, well at least thats the impression I got reading them. Clearly there are problems actually playing games also.

I'm not sure what happens now for them, I can already see talk of the proto was not running the latest firmware but come on guys how can anyone believe that? You say the firmware can be updated from SD card so why did you not send the latest during the livestream given you were wathing it?

I guess they are going to have to go into censorship overdrive on their forum but you got to feel for the webshop that has taken preorderes for these if they can't turn this situation around quickly.
 
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joala

A Joala is for Life., Not Just Christmas.,
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I guess they are going to have to go into censorship overdrive on their forum

I fail to believe that no one has posted anything on their pre order thread since this video was posted. That or...
 

Rot

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I had to do some digging around as when I started watching again on PC its clear this video is clips joined together. The origional videos can be found at;

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtn8oo8kD7FyTOEwOQEWH_IE5olHLo45d

I guess there is alot of viewing to be done before one can comment objectively but it has got to be very worrying for anyone who preordered their product after watching. There is a massive difference between their official video and the live stream in a few areas (like loading times). The issues when they happen in game are not minor and the impression given on their forums was the only issues remaining were frontend related, well at least thats the impression I got reading them. Clearly there are problems actually playing games also.

I'm not sure what happens now for them, I can already see talk of the proto was not running the latest firmware but come on guys how can anyone believe that? You say the firmware can be updated from SD card so why did you not send the latest during the livestream given you were wathing it?

I guess they are going to have to go into censorship overdrive on their forum but you got to feel for the webshop that has taken preorderes for these if they can't turn this situation around quickly.

Man... No one ever listens....

There are 17x 14.53 minute clips... that's over 4 hours of fail...

xROTx

PS. Just hoping none of our memberbase actually pre-ordered this...

EDIT. As for Darksoft going into uber forum censorship mode... I'd just like to point out... some folks accuse me of that here...
 

oliverclaude

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7,688
One doesn't necessarily have to say 'B', if one noticed that 'A' was already wrong. This "in spite of everything" release is different, and yet, the consequences will be the same. The name implies darkness. It's rather choice blindness.
 

neosd

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I had to do some digging around as when I started watching again on PC its clear this video is clips joined together. The origional videos can be found at;

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtn8oo8kD7FyTOEwOQEWH_IE5olHLo45d

I guess there is alot of viewing to be done before one can comment objectively but it has got to be very worrying for anyone who preordered their product after watching. There is a massive difference between their official video and the live stream in a few areas (like loading times). The issues when they happen in game are not minor and the impression given on their forums was the only issues remaining were frontend related, well at least thats the impression I got reading them. Clearly there are problems actually playing games also.

I'm not sure what happens now for them, I can already see talk of the proto was not running the latest firmware but come on guys how can anyone believe that? You say the firmware can be updated from SD card so why did you not send the latest during the livestream given you were wathing it?

I guess they are going to have to go into censorship overdrive on their forum but you got to feel for the webshop that has taken preorderes for these if they can't turn this situation around quickly.

This twich stream is going to change nothing, the ones who want to believe will believe.

There were enought facts to get a conclusion about theyr poor man selling / " i am a hacker" claims.

You just have to see how many watches the twich stream had (49) to realize there is no way those guys sold 200 preorders of 470 euros each for something they don´t have a picture for. Wouldnt you be interested to watch the twich stream that was anounced on theyr forum if you would have purchased one ?

Its clear they asked to the guys that got this prototype to not show pictures of it, but failed miserably on controlling the content that was going to get out.

Cmon, how some one in their senses would send this to anyone ? or how anyone would pass from testing stage to production stage with this ?

The ones who can´t see the dissaster passing from testing/prototyping stage to production with this, or expecting this getting fixed next month have serious mental issues.


Good luck to anyone putting theyr money there, atleast this video will give them a chance to maybe get something in a better working way latter.





BTW just to be clear, we are open to competition on anything, but this is a different story what those guys have been doing among the last year.

This is called A SCAM, don´t look for other words.

Remember this video, and compare the load times on it from 7 months ago and the real ones now.

We still don´t know the real kof2k3 load times on theyr half working prototype, but i don´t think those are under 2 minutes after watching the twich stream

 
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Razoola

Divine Hand of the UniBIOS,
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I agree with you neoSD thats its not good. Not good at all....

Personally though I don't like to base a conclusion on something which is simply a mash up of all the bad things of a longer video. I need to watch the entire thing, not just because I'll have a better overview but also because there could be issues I spot that others including the makers have not. That said, even from the shorter video its clear there are things going wrong inside their cart itsself not related to how the cart is connected to the neogeo. Alot of this I could speculate is probably down to their poor design in the way they are joining the CHAR and PROG PCBs together (if they are still using the same design as their first PCBs).
 

neosd

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I agree with you neoSD thats its not good. Not good at all....

Personally though I don't like to base a conclusion on something which is simply a mash up of all the bad things of a longer video. I need to watch the entire thing, not just because I'll have a better overview but also because there could be issues I spot that others including the makers have not. That said, even from the shorter video its clear there are things going wrong inside their cart itsself not related to how the cart is connected to the neogeo. Alot of this I could speculate is probably down to their poor design in the way they are joining the CHAR and PROG PCBs together (if they are still using the same design as their first PCBs).

There are a lot more things on the original stream that are hard to notice for a non deep neo geo user.

Just have a look about backupram gets corrupted, just to mention one

Whats a fact is that those guys have been having audio issues for so long and they weren´t able to get those fixed in the last 7 months, telling "this is just software issues" is hard to believe as today based just on the audio issues windjammers was having on the video from 7 months ago.

Something really wrong happens on theyr prototype on this subject. I can´t imagine what would happen if 200 guys get this as a final product.

Can´t even understand why they opened sales with THIS ? was this a desperate move to get chrismas sales or they needed money to pay coders and finish the device ?

Whatever it is, they have been lying everyone for the last year.

They need to reconsider the way they threat theyr customers, if they would be a company they would have a lot of reasons to get sued by. They just hide under a grey zone
 
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neodev

Neosd Tech
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256
Well, I don't think that video will last too long, as they will ask their followers to report it but well, was worth watching. If DS is reading this, I just want to be constructive.

The good part is that it shows some improvement from the previous videos, especially in the game slot change. It doesn't glitch and have broken audio for a seconds, that's good, they probably aren't using the reset line anymore, probably because they noticed it doesn't work on all boards.


I've watched the twitch stream (not the entire stream, I don't have over 5 hours to spend on that) and although that video mainly summarizes the biggest ones, there are others that can be seen there, some are more subtle, like wrong instruments playing sometimes, that could be issues with PCM2 multiplexing.

Also, having the highscores corrupted is not good, you can't ask the users to periodically reset the highscores because they sometimes break when moving games around, and I think it's not hard to have them properly working.

I also noticed long blank screen times when exiting the menu, probably because it's still loading data to ram. I'd suggest to add some kind of progress bar, because people may think the cart has crashed and reset, especially if resetting causes the slots to have half loaded data and then cause issues in game, that's going to be a support nightmare.

Then, I have been reading "the other forum" and mitsurugi seems to suggest that the cart this tester has is still the early protos that had contact issues, so, that means that they don't have a "final hardware" prototype, and just decided to produce 200 untested boards with lots of hardware changes? that doesn't sound like a good idea. I think the preorders were just rushed to try to (unsuccessfully) avoid NeoSD black friday and xmas sales.

Also they accuse us of not doing live streams with prototype hardware, well, I haven't seen Nintendo do streams of prototype Switch hardware, and it's way cheaper. It's not a good move to make a live stream with prototype hardware that you know that have issues and they say "it's because it's a prototype", just wait to have the final hardware and ensure there are no big issues. On the other hand, we released long (unedited) videos of gameplay sessions and multiple game changes to show it was working correctly, and when the users received their hardware, they made their own streams.

Of course NeoSD was not perfect, and we are still improving it, but as soon as some bug was reported (via twitter, youtube...) we tried to send them the latest firmware to ensure it was already fixed. If fixing those bugs is as easy as changing some value in a file, or updating the firmware, why not sending him the very latest one?.

Also, he says neosd is much more simpler and so it works fine. That's not right, the complexity is not in the way the data is stored, it can be flash, dram, sram. Having multiple slots is also a matter of switching address lines, as it has been done for years with multi-bios. The main issue is having all timings right, and account for all the board differences. Also having chosen DRAM is a big headache, because the neogeo hardware is not ready for DRAM, that need to be refreshed periodically, so finding the right moment to do the DRAM refresh may be tricky. SRAM (like the PCE Super SD System 3) would have avoided lots of headaches, but there are probably not big enough chips with a reasonable price.
 

fille1976

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Hahahahaha,what on earth have they doing all this time,many resets-crashes-no sound ect...,bwahahaha,DARKCRAP.
This remembers me why i'm a happy customer neosd-neodev,you may be very proud of what you have given us and what be coming up.
Those that have preordered the darkcrap card,how long they have to be waiting for their card?
 

lherre

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Also they accuse us of not doing live streams with prototype hardware, well, I haven't seen Nintendo do streams of prototype Switch hardware, and it's way cheaper. It's not a good move to make a live stream with prototype hardware that you know that have issues and they say "it's because it's a prototype", just wait to have the final hardware and ensure there are no big issues. On the other hand, we released long (unedited) videos of gameplay sessions and multiple game changes to show it was working correctly, and when the users received their hardware, they made their own streams.

Of course NeoSD was not perfect, and we are still improving it, but as soon as some bug was reported (via twitter, youtube...) we tried to send them the latest firmware to ensure it was already fixed. If fixing those bugs is as easy as changing some value in a file, or updating the firmware, why not sending him the very latest one?.

I think this is a very important point to remark. It is better to show a good "finished" product than not working protos. It will help with sales, marketing, reputation, etc.

I can tell that when I received (and posted) the first review of NeoSD I understood the surprise and skepticism of the people since nobody knew about it. It was a nearly 100% final product but still a prototype (my neosd wasn't exactly the same as the final product so it is a lie that they didn't show any proto before). But although it was a proto it was fully functional and not a "work in progress" thing with big flaws.

And I think this helped a lot the product.
 

neosd

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Carlos !!! Trata de arrancarlo Carlos !!!

Por dios Trata de arrancarlo !!!

 

neosd

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Those guys did claims over the video.

But you know, there are "backups"

[video]https://drive.google.com/file/d/12st1XsXPe5swaiS2hEN61Lq3X5yDhGeC/view[/video]

[video]http://streamcloud.eu/kwbon43d35wg/DarkSoft_MVS_Multi_Game_REVIEW.mp4.html[/video]
 
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fille1976

Crossed Swords Squire
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189
What i don't get is that they open preorders when they have not a working product to show.
What they did with these videos is not smart,but those darkcrap followers take everything from them.
The card is absolute far from finished product if i see that video.
 
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neosd

Neosd Developer
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Posts
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It seems Christopher Sandoval sent a youtube claim over the youtube videos :)

chris.sandoval87@gmail.com

Chris, our best hopes about your mom and your meal

with love : Alex,

BTW, you can´t put walls on the field, even Trump told you this is possible

1987, what a great year, big things were done back them !
 
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Rot

Calvin & Hobbes, ,
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Posts
11,441
The butthurt is DELICIOUS!

...Man... if only Darksoft and his team + supporters had played ball here....

BUT NO....

Welcome to the drama BIATCHES!...

xROTx

PS. 420 Euro PRE-ORDER on a product that DOES NOT FUCKIN WORK... THEN... Have a live twitch feed showing your product THAT DOES NOT WORK...

...is a Great business strategy...
 

Morden

Somewhere in Europe.,
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711
Carlos !!! Change Slot !! Don´t flash big games !! For Gods shake IT WAS WORKING HERE, CARLOS !!

I don't understand the idea of slots at all. If the flashing process is so quick, why have them at all? They need to be flashed at startup, so even if you want to play just one game, you need to wait for all the slots to fill when booting up, granted you had them populated last time. It's the strangest idea, and obviously it's messing things up for them, big time. Certain games will work in certain slots and others won't? I have to flash big games to one slot and two smaller ones to the remaining two? Why? Why have all that, when you can have ONE WORKING SLOT?

I get it. People want teh ROMZ and instant loading, like on their PC with MAME or whatever it is they're using, but I don't mind NeoSD's load times at all. It's a non-existent issue. You're getting a device capable of running whole Neo library, for less than what some games cost.

The slots were a bad idea to begin with. Get rid of them, have the cartridge start empty, which will speed things up, and have manual loading of games after boot-up. If they're adamant about keeping the slots, there should at least be an option of running the cartridge in one slot mode. Have one slot, make sure everything runs and that is that. Multiple slots are obviously causing more problems without offering any clear advantages.

Unless it's a product for people with ADHD, who need to swap games every five seconds. Then all that remains is getting those damn slots to work, but that's an easy software fix. Ugh. Good luck.
 

mistahsnart

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The slot thing is a holdover from early voting days of their forum. It's tied in with the logic of why they need 'instant' loading: a bunch of people on there fancy themselves as 'arcade operators'. So they look at it from the standpoint of 'well when I have friends over to play games on my machines, having to wait for their game to load kills the fun'. I know people like this. They'll have like 7 cabinets in their basement, and when people come over they demand that games shall be played. It's some weird Willy Wonka fantasy/power trip.

I dunno: I'll take games that need a few minutes to load, and work perfectly. But people like me are some kind of dying species and plays one game for a while, apparently...
 

RAZO

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This thing looks rough. From the last video, it looks like they went backwards. From the looks of things this might not be ready till 2019. By that time majority of there pre-orders might ask for a refund and just buy the NeoSd.

That video really doesn't do them any favors lol.
 

Morden

Somewhere in Europe.,
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they look at it from the standpoint of 'well when I have friends over to play games on my machines, having to wait for their game to load kills the fun'.

That's the thing, though. They were bragging about how much faster their loading is when compared to NeoSD, especially with bigger games. From what I've seen in their videos, those loading times were fast enough. I mean, come on. Someone tells you they want to play a different game, and the time it takes for their cartridge to re-flash a title is the time it would take you to grab a different cartridge, dive into the cabinet and swap the games out. How goddamned fast do people want this to be, anyway?
 

RAZO

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That's the thing, though. They were bragging about how much faster their loading is when compared to NeoSD, especially with bigger games. From what I've seen in their videos, those loading times were fast enough. I mean, come on. Someone tells you they want to play a different game, and the time it takes for their cartridge to re-flash a title is the time it would take you to grab a different cartridge, dive into the cabinet and swap the games out. How goddamned fast do people want this to be, anyway?

The most annoying part is the loading in the beginning. I guess I've become spoiled with the NeoSd and jumping into the last game I flashed.
 

Morden

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The most annoying part is the loading in the beginning. I guess I've become spoiled with the NeoSd and jumping into the last game I flashed.

Exactly ... That's why I said they should get rid of the slots. With their quick loading, there's no point in having this feature at all.
 
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