As my current video reaches completion, I'm looking at what I should focus my attention on next. I've learned over the past few years that I much prefer doing bigger projects that I can sink my teeth into, and I figure since Patreon is what will allow me to do that, it's only fair that you guys choose what I end up doing.
I'll elaborate on each option so you can better understand what each project is going to entail:
LEGO Island: Investigate "Pick" - I know a lot of people are eager to hear more about the decomp, and I'm happy to say - thanks to the efforts of the fantastic team that has formed since I released my videos - progress has been extremely smooth and steady. However, it's been difficult to make content about it because my videos usually cover completed projects with a beginning/middle/end, and the decomp is still in the "middle" phase.
What I can do is what I did in part 2 - provide a small update on the decomp, and then cover a different technical aspect of the game. In this case, I'd be interested in covering the "Pick" function - a problematic yet very important part of the game that manages to break it on Wine (Linux/Mac) as well as potentially certain graphics cards.
I will be making a video when the decomp is finished regardless, but if this wins, I'll make another video before then covering "Pick" too.Install Windows XP on a modern computer/laptop - Terrifyingly, XP is older today than 98 was when I made the same kind of video for it, and given its iconic status, it would be interesting to give it similar treatment.
That being said, I'd like to go much deeper with it this time. Rather than just try to install it and see what happens, I'd like to use my newer reverse engineering/backporting experience to try coercing it into working more thoroughly . This would likely include, but not be limited to, backporting certain drivers and certain software (e.g. web browsers) to make it viable for daily use.
I'd love to get to a point where I could main it for a week and report the experience of doing so at the end.Write a graphics driver for Mac OS X 10.6 - Snow Leopard (10.6) is widely considered one of the best versions (if not the best version) of Mac OS ever released due to its emphasis on stability and being the last version to support PowerPC apps/games through emulation (Rosetta).
However, currently the only way to run this version "properly" is with old hardware. While it is possible to install and use in a virtual machine, there are no 3D accelerated graphics drivers for it compatible with any virtual machine software. This limits the usefulness and preservation of this era of the Mac, and I would be interested in spending some time changing that.
This would involve reverse engineering the undocumented GPU APIs. While the focus for me would be 10.6, the resulting research may be useful for graphics drivers in newer versions of Mac OS too, and might extend to writing drivers for new GPUs too.Explore an Xbox 360 softmod - Smarter people than me have tried, but with your help I may be able to dedicate a lot more time to it. The Xbox 360 is the only console of its generation to have never had a complete softmod, still ultimately requiring soldering to launch unsigned code.
While I can't guarantee anything here, I have a few ideas that I'd love to spend some time exploring. There's a chance I won't find anything, in which case I will let you guys know and re-run this poll so we can choose something else, but it would be amazing to see a 360 softmod come to life if it is actually possible.Clone the Wii U gamepad/tablet - I've talked about my issues with the Wii U gamepad before, the biggest of which being Nintendo's decisions to both region lock and not sell it as a separate product. Coupled with the fact a Wii U (at least unmodified) heavily depends on a gamepad being connected, this leads to a lot of "consoles without tablets" becoming effectively bricks.
There is a mechanism to emulate a gamepad with a project called drc-sim, but it's a little cumbersome. It requires a computer running Linux with multiple Wi-Fi adapters to act as the middleman between the Wii U and another device (e.g. your phone), and a lot of software setup to get working. However, it should be possible to build a hardware solution that consolidates everything into your phone, allowing it to act as a full gamepad replacement so consoles without one can still be used.
The modern smartphone contains just about all of the technologies the Wii U gamepad had (e.g. touchscreen, microphone, gyroscope, speakers, etc.) which makes it ideal to center a gamepad around, and with our hardware, we can recreate the button layout of the original controller to complete the effect. I would just need the time to put it all together, and my design/software would of course be completely open sourced at the end so anyone could build one.
These are my ideas and I'd be excited to pursue any of them, let me know what you think and seal my fate for the next few months!