debug
Latest
Verily's answer to Fresno's mosquito woes is 20 million more
Last year, executives of Alphabet's life science arm, Verily, discussed a project aimed at controlling invasive mosquito populations, the results of which are now going into effect. To combat the mosquito species that carries viruses like Zika and dengue, the company will release a ton of bacteria-infected male mosquitoes in Fresno, California where they should drastically bring down numbers of wild mosquitoes.
See an unreleased 'South Park' game running on the original Xbox
Legend has it that back in the early 2000s, Oregon studio Buzz Monkey was working on an officially licensed South Park game for the original Xbox. The game never shipped, but an incredibly early version appears to have made its way to an Xbox debug console -- and it's now on YouTube. The folks at HappyConsoleGamer unearthed the forgotten South Park game on an original Xbox and they've posted (extremely rough) gameplay, featuring a split-screen mode and Cartman walking around his house, driving a school bus and fighting a pack of dogs. Yep, this game has a combat system. Also included in the video is a taste of an unreleased Happy Feet game, which is appropriately adorable.
Walk through walls, get infinite ammo in The Evil Within on PC
Bethesda doesn't support players using debug console commands to cheat their way through The Evil Within, but the publisher sure is making it easy to do so. In a post on the Evil Within forums, Bethesda outlines how to access the game's debug console via Steam and enable cheats such as god mode, infinite ammo, walking through walls, and a handy FPS lock. Perhaps these cheats will make The Evil Within more fun, or at least not as supremely disappointing. Curious gore lovers, see Bethesda's instructions below.
Xbox One enters internal beta phase, gets GPU clock speed boost
Plain old civilians like us can't buy Xbox One just yet, but some lucky folks who work for Microsoft already have beta units in their homes. Xbox VP Marc Whitten shared that tidbit, among others, with Xbox spokeperson Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb on a recent podcast. Not only do some folks internal to Microsoft have beta kits of final retail units, but many game developers have their hands on final versions of development kits. Given that last bit, Whitten said that Microsoft increased the Xbox One's GPU clock speed from 800MHz to 853MHz, released its "mono driver" to developers -- a DirectX graphics driver "100% optimized for Xbox One" -- and more and more games are inching closer to "final" every day as a result. Essentially, Whitten's signaling the transition for Xbox One from a model seen only at press briefings to a physical thing you can own and use. Though Whitten kept mum about many other details, he repeatedly reiterated that we'd hear more solid detail at Gamescom in a few weeks. We'll of course be on the ground in Cologne, hounding Whitten and co. for more. Today's Xbox One news comes just over a week after Microsoft revealed a more indie-friendly publishing model for its upcoming game console. It was also recently revealed that each Xbox One console acts as debug hardware, allowing developers to run incomplete code on any box -- a concept with major implications. Xbox One arrives this November and, should you be convinced by Microsoft's next-gen game console, it'll cost you $500.
Rumor: SimCity modded to disable disconnection timer, open debug mode
Reddit user AzzerUK claims to have enabled SimCity's debug mode and to have disabled its disconnection timer, both of which imply that there is more to the game's inner workings than EA and Maxis originally stated.Currently, a user that loses their connection to the server during gameplay will be logged out of the game after 20 minutes. This is supposedly because the client must sync simulation data back to the server on a regular basis, in order to ease the computational load on the user's machine and to ensure the simulation as a whole runs smoothly.Though not demonstrated in the video above, AzzerUK claims to have disabled that disconnection timer, and that playing an offline city for extended periods of time resulted in no issues with the simulation itself. Since SimCity does not support local saves in any way, it is not possible for AzzerUK to actually save anything that happens in his offline city, but the important thing is that the simulation reportedly did not come to a screeching halt after being unable to sync with the server.The modder/hacker also claims to have enabled SimCity's debug mode, which allows for cities to be edited beyond their typically imposed borders. Though clipping and texture mapping issues are easily visible in the above clip, the traditionally impossible highways created at least appear to function properly. This supposes that, at least theoretically, the game is capable of supporting city sizes that are larger than what is currently available.
New PS3 models outed by FCC just days ahead of E3
With the big E3 Expo set to kick off in just four days, we must admit to being more than a little intrigued at finding a new PS3 model bumble its way out of the FCC test labs. PlayStation 3 models CECH-2501A and CECH-2501B are both certified for 802.11b/g WiFi and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR differing only in hard disk drive configurations. We're also seeing a pair of PS3 DECH-2500A and DECH-S2500A debugging stations -- interesting since a debug unit is typically only required when there's been a change in the chips on the motherboard. Feel free to speculate as we prepare for E3 to kick off on June 15th.
Terminal Tips: Enable Address Book debug menu
You may recall that Safari has a debug menu that enables some hidden features, but did you know Address Book also has a debug menu? In Address Book's debug menu, you can get options for logging, controls for metadata, printing selections, and removing orphaned images. You can enable this debug menu by typing the following command into Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities): defaults write com.apple.addressbook ABShowDebugMenu -bool YESIf you no longer wish to have this menu hanging around, you can remove it by typing the same command above, but replace "YES" with "NO." Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Terminal Tips section!
MacGDBp Kills PHP Bugs Dead!
Bothered with pesky PHP bugs? Grab a can of MacGDBp and exterminate those bugs FAST!18 year-old Beantown open source whiz Robert Sesek has announced that he'll be releasing his MacGDBp project bright and early on Tuesday, June 17 at his Blue Static website.MacGDBp builds on the open source Xdebug application to provide a native Cocoa Leopard-only app for remote debugging of PHP scripts. Connect to your running PHP script and you can do instruction stepping to see how your script is working. You can set breakpoints, view the current function call stack, and look at all local variable values.Robert noted that MacGDBp is designed to be very familiar to anyone who has spent time using the Xcode debugger. He's releasing the app under the GNU GPL version 2, which (duh) means it is available at no cost.If you do any work with PHP (hey, I'm constantly customizing WordPress myself), MacGDBp may be your new best friend. Be sure to set an iCal alarm for Tuesday morning and get your copy of MacGDBp.Thank you, Robert, for telling us about your app!Updated to add correct date
The VC Advantage: Sonic and the Secret
The Internet has made it easy to find cheats for games, but we miss the tips pages from game magazines, when the discovery of a new code could inspire you to go back to an old game. These codes aren't exactly new, but oldness is the essence of the Virtual Console! We're bringing back the classic codes every week on The VC Advantage.There is one major reason that the Sonic the Hedgehog series peaked on the Genesis. It's not Sonic's redesign or the voice actor controversy found later. It's not the move from 2D to 3D. It's not the overloading of "friends" that weighed the series down with superfluous anthropomorphoid mascots. That stuff is all vaguely annoying, but it's not as big a loss as the debug mode.Sonics 1-3 and CD all featured a mode accessible via controller combination that allowed you to turn Sonic into a scrolling cursor who could be moved around the screen unimpeded by objects, enemies, or game rules. In addition, Sonic could be turned into any sprite, which could then be dropped into the level at the press of a button.
Is Bug Bash a game or something else entirely?
Gamingtalkhq stumbled across a person playing Bug Bash while floating around Xbox Live. They were curious to know what game this was and if it is the name of a secret project. The player's gamertag had a Windows symbol in the bottom right corner and informed them he was part of the "G4W Live Beta." So, bug bash, was exactly that -- an attempt to find and bash bugs in the Games for Windows Live Beta.Wikipedia defines bug bash as a time "where all the developers, testers, program managers, usability researchers, designers, documentation folks, and even sometimes marketing people, put aside their regular day-to-day duties and pound on the product to get as many eyes on the product as possible." The term is credited to a Microsoft blog post from 2004. So if you ever run across someone playing "bug bash" they may be Microsoft employees just testing the system. Then again, if you run across someone playing Bug Bash Beta 1337 -- that might be a game.[Thanks Alex]
Puzzle Quest's AI doesn't cheat, but you can!
If the number one complaint gamers have with Puzzle Quest is its limited availability at game shops, then the second most common point of protest would be the Puzzle/RPG's cheating AI. People are just as apt to sing praises about its addictive gameplay as they are to howl over the AI's godlike prescience. We've spent more than a few battles shaking our fists at the game as computer-controlled enemies racked up lucky combos and more extra turns than chicken on a rotisserie.Sensing that the mob was two forums threads away from storming his house with torches and pitchforks, Infinite Interactive's Steve Fawkner made a public statement assuring players that the AI has no unseen advantages. Having worked on the code himself, Steve reasoned that he's too lazy to have programmed anything that advanced.If that explanation isn't convincing enough, there are still steps you can take to even the playing field. You can unlock a debug menu by pushing in a complex set of keypresses, allowing you to activate several hidden features. Check past the post break for more details on the cheat code and a comic about Puzzle Quest's AI.
Ten minute run-through with the Wii interface
Matt must have slept with Perrin or something, because IGN got their grubby mitts on a Wii debugging unit and a few games, to boot. On the latest IGN Weekly, Matt spends around ten minutes going through the Wii interface (mainly, the options menu) in detail. The menu seems to confirm the existence of one Wii code per system, as opposed to per game, which should make matchmaking at least slightly more convenient. He goes through Sound, Screen, Parental Controls, Sensitivity Options, and pretty much everything you'll see come November 19th. It's worth a watch, so check it out.
Quick! Where's the debug menu?
Matt Thomas has a bug stuck in his 23" Apple Cinema Display. Amusingly, the little fella is still alive: check out the video above to see it wandering across his screen. He has absolutely no idea how to get the bug out (although one commentator suggests he should lure the bug out with morsels of food) so at the moment Matt's hoping for the bug to graciously die off screen. The same thing happened to me with my 17" Samsung LCD, I believe it was even the same type of bug! I too waited for the bug to die off screen but instead, the bug decided to lay his grave in the dead centre, right at eye level. Now whenever friends use my screen they instictually attempt to swipe it away. What do I say to them when they ask about it? "Well, I was playing this game called Bugdom - it crashed really bad one day and left one of the bugs behind". Gets 'em every time.
RE4 hacked, hidden features unlocked
A pair of hackers is claiming to have unlocked Resident Evil 4's debug mode. While the duo is unwilling to disclose their method at this time — for fear it would have "possible negative effects" — they've posted a pretty convincing video showing off some of the hidden features, including thermal mission, stealth camouflage and bullet time. It's worth noting that the hackers are using a version of RE4 they're calling, "Resident Evil 4 Trial Edition (GCN)."
