Put Your Ideas Here Forward To The Team, Have You Got An Idea For "AvaLaunch" !! Options

[TwisTz]

* Turn PAL60 on and off through Ava instead of MS Dash

that would own

[bernienoel]

hi all,
a little feature request :
as i have 4 versions of halo in the same dir (pal original.xbe, pal trained.xbe, ntsc original.xbe, ntsc trained.xbe, i can't see any of them

so i had added them manually in the game list, but they're not alphabetically sorted.


can you add a tag in the xml like evox's 'sortstart'/'sortend'

or, more likely, a tag to scan xbe files that are not default.xbe in a specific folder
example :

<special scan>
<scan other xbe>1</scan other xbe>
<path>
f:games
</path>
</special scan>

thanks ;-)

bernie

[Jse]

dcc downloads

IDENT

and be able to set up an xdcc

[xionanx]

Well, something that would be nice, and could serve more then one function, would be to add drivers for the Blue Gear bluetooth USB adapter or something similar that would enable the xbox as a bluetooth compatable device. Here is the manufactuerers websight, it is a little more informative.. This websight is for those who might not know much about Bluetooth

Just think about it! Wireless keyboard, mouse, and networking all in the same device. Plus!!! This is the good part!! These little buggers are powered by the USB port, so I could easily see sacrificing one of my superflous controller ports, to install this as a "Blue Tooth Dongle" like the "DVD Dongle"! That would be a great mod!

Heck!! Forget about buying the Blue Gear model.. Just get one of the modchip teams to make a bluetooth dongle and sell it. I mean, we already have USB port mods, so making something that plugs right into the controller port couldn't be that difficult. I think making it at a decent price would be the hard part. Heck, they could even implement the drivers into the BIOS! Of course that would probably require a larger bios... hopefully under 1 meg.. hmm... Maybe I should post this in the modchip and xbox bios forums as well..

This post has been edited by xionanx: Jun 13 2003, 05:54 AM

[Jsmith]

I'd just like to throw in another vote to patch games. Would be so cool to be able to patch default.xbe's from the box rather than ftp'ing back and forth. Not a real biggie for me, but for some friends who aren't at all computer savvy, it would be a huge feauture.

[bb07]

diskdefrager and web browser

[emyst56]

I have two suggestions, and I won't get my hopes up; really it is just a single suggestion in the form of (suggestion 1) XOR (suggestion 2). The first one is really far-off:

Suggestion 1. A whole new NTFS-like filing system for the HDD. This would forever fix problems of long file names. Patching games wouldn't be necessary (save for media checks on older BIOSes). It would also ease the confusion surrounding the FATX3 wrapper. This is an area of computer science I am not too strong in, so I don't know how feasible it is. But I have heard of NTFS implemented for Linux, so the code might already be available. Correct me if I'm wrong, please!

Suggestion 2. (I think this was already mentioned) A game ripper/copier that will auto-patch games (as Px HDLoader) with an integrated long file name fixer. It seems that the process of detecting bad file names, renaming them, and changing the strings corresponding to these file names in the .text (or wherever) section of the .xbe could all be automated. After all, one could just change the bytes of all occurences of the string "longfilenamexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.ext" to "shortfilename.extxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" without overwriting other data, since by nature of the problem the new string will fit inside of the old string. Another problem might lie in file name strings that are generated dynamically, such as a for loop that iterates over 100 files, all of which differ only in a single character. In this case, the string would not be hard-coded into the binary... but it's worth looking into.

I think the ability to back up any game with one, fool-proof method, without having to patch or manually fix, should be at the fore-front of a convenient dashboard. It might never be attained but it should be a feature that is forever sought after. Everything else, to me anyway, seems like fluff.

Okay, I'll step down now...

Thanks for all the great hard work! I would love to contribute to the implementation of the above suggestion if that is allowable.

Mystagogue

[MagamiAKO]

You people just don't understand. There's absolutely no need for 'game patchers', and I would NEVER expect to see that in the Avalaunch dashboard and they better not waste their time on it.

Use the Xecuter 2 bios if you need that feature, it's already been done and handled. Don't give me "BUT I WANT MY EJECTFIX". What's more important?

Anyways, I still think my ideas are better..they're mostly cosmetic, but that's what we need. We need an 'easy to use' dashboard that goes beyond the standard PC mumbo jumbo.


Oh, and to answe the question of NTFS support, not happening. NTFS Write support is still very unstable in linux distributions, so that's not anything close to happening.

[TwisTz]

Just so ^Blazed^ doesn't forget

* Icon Pack interrogation via "Download Icon..." which then shows a gallery of all available icons

[Morglum]

QUOTE (spIdeZ @ Jun 14 2003, 02:19 AM)

Actually, the Xecuter bios doesn't fix Enter the Matrix. You have to patch it.

Long file name patching and media flag patching are 2 totally differant things. X2 never claimed to be able to patch long file names. Heh and if you want to play shit games then thats upto you If you want the patch long file names then do it manually, dont be such a lazy sod, i doubt that Avalaunch will add in a long file name patcher, its too much hassle and not worth making file patchers when for 1, X2 BIOS already deals with media flag patching and 2, you can already download patchers for whichever game has long file names anyway, so why would they waste time making something like that when they could work on bigger and better features.

[leftyfb]

QUOTE (bernienoel @ Jun 12 2003, 06:02 AM)

hi all, a little feature request : as i have 4 versions of halo in the same dir (pal original.xbe, pal trained.xbe, ntsc original.xbe, ntsc trained.xbe, i can't see any of them so i had added them manually in the game list, but they're not alphabetically sorted. can you add a tag in the xml like evox's 'sortstart'/'sortend' or, more likely,  a tag to scan xbe files that are not default.xbe in a specific folder example : <special scan> <scan other xbe>1</scan other xbe> <path> f:games </path> </special scan> thanks ;-) bernie

QUOTE (DukeHeart @ Jun 5 2003, 02:34 AM)

I would like to be able to setup icons for the high level menus. For example I would like to seperate all the emualtors and have a picture of each machine being emulated beside each menu item.

I would like to see the two of these ideas implimented. I too have 2 versions of Halo and some other games for the trained versions. I have renamed the default.xbe and have another game_trained.xbe. It'd be nice if Avalaunch could detect these and/or allow me to setup a submenu under the list of games that will both be auto sorted alphabetically with the games in there (submenu called Halo comes after the game listing frogger and before Kung fu chaos) and allow me to specify an icon for the submenu. Maybe another good idea would be to allow us to specify a different icon for individual xbe's.

[emyst56]

What's such a hassle? It wouldn't be that hard... And what "bigger and better" things? IRC clients? Here's an obvious fact: fewer people use their xbox as an means of connecting to IRC servers than to play games. So, I'll say it one more time, convenience and functionality in backing-up and playing games should be at the fore-front of any project of this kind.

[mxlegend99]

Ok, from the long post, IMO these seem the best to me

* Mouse support
* DVD Ripper (But rip into Xvid, and allow keyboard to enter in a directory/filename)
* Also A Live Text Editor Would Be Nice Too, So You Could Edit Your .ini Files In Real Time.
* Calibrational screen (for people with older tv's that cut off the edge of the screen)

[COLOR=red] How about a cool "freeze/unfreeze" feature? ( zip down unused games ++ ) [/COLOUR]
*How about an Xbox Scene news viewer?
*a hard disk defragging utility
*Since most HDD support S.M.A.R.T and you can read temperatures with it -- could it possible added to Avalaunch?
* The Mp3 feature, let it play random
*It would be great if you could add external USB hard drive support.

There my fav so far. I think it would be really sweet if there was a DVD Ripper included, that put them onto your Hard Drive in Xvid. I rather Xvid to DivX....... Have it goto F:Movies by default or something (thats my movie folder LOL).
And that compression of unused games is brilliant, i know i haev some games i rarely play, but dont have the heart to delete (DOA XB nude LOL, my tricked out Thps3 and a few otehrs).
Dunno why i like mouse support, but i do. I think its coz i got one hooked up, and i like for it to be of use

This post has been edited by mxlegend99: Jun 14 2003, 07:22 AM

[mxlegend99]

My Number 1 Dream Inclusion

USB adapter support for devices like USB CDRWs. Maybe not to be able to burn (would be a cool way to back up your games though ) but more for the fact of reading normal CDRs in my Thompson Drive. I am not sure how you would go about it, but make it similar to reading ISOs and immitating D: Drive. Just read the contents of the CDR in hte Drive, and make it a virtual D: or something. I know that people with Thompson drives, and any USB CDs of any sort would Love this.

I know its a big ask, but it would be the coolest thing IMO. Especially if it had the ability to burn files too LOL.

[MagamiAKO]

Usability is key. You cannot tell me that having to modify the damn XML on every install, everytime something new gets put on the xbox, is not a hassle. Don't give me that "Auto Search" BS, because then you're limited to what you can name the Folders to on the menu.

It also seems fairly assenine to have multiple versions of a dashboard ISO created so newbies can have their "DHCP or Static" fix. I really do think that a simple configurator program ON BOOT (for new Avalaunch Installations) would be best for helping people get the dashboard installed and configured.

The other programs aren't really of importance, we've lived without defragmenting the xbox for how long now? Not like it really matters in the end to many of us.

Media flag patching is also not a very important feature, leave that up to Xecuter in the bios since they already have at least a somewhat 'working' version of it that they can modify if need-be. So that cuts that feature out.

Audio File Playback can be done from the Xbox media player, maybe a very *simple* audio playback should be implemented, but not everybody uses mp3s for their music and you're going to find a lot of people saying "well put this support and put this support" until you find that it is ALL you work on for a few releases. Again, this is already taken care of by other programs.

Seeing as how the Avalaunch team actually reads these forums and the like, I believe the dashboard has huge potential if you concentrate on the right features. Sometimes you need to just stop on all the wooing technical shit (OH LOOK, YOU CAN DEFRAG THE XBOX HD), and go back and just re-work some of the usability.