[HN Gopher] Morrowind rebooted the original Xbox
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       Morrowind rebooted the original Xbox
        
       Author : pmarin
       Score  : 56 points
       Date   : 2021-04-15 07:06 UTC (15 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (hackaday.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (hackaday.com)
        
       | varsketiz wrote:
       | Wow, that's a cool hack. I wonder if they did more stuff like
       | that to go around Xbox limitations. Reminds me of Crash Bandicoot
       | hacks for ps1 :))
        
         | ToFundorNot wrote:
         | For those who haven't read/watched it:
         | https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/02/war-stories-how-crash...
         | 
         | It is indeed a story of creativity in design.
        
           | DicIfTEx wrote:
           | Complete with a cautionary tale about the dangers of being
           | _too_ creative: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DaveBaggett/2
           | 0131031/203788/...
        
             | bogwog wrote:
             | Wow. That story is going to give me nightmares.
        
       | hinkley wrote:
       | Presumably then if the game was glitching on you and you did a
       | save/load then the problem would magically fix itself.
       | 
       | (have you tried turning it off and back on again?)
        
       | chews wrote:
       | that was a great post, typical fun exploitation to rid yourself
       | of the problem of memory management. There was a way to force
       | garbage collection in Flash as well that was used by the clever
       | pros at the time.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | kashanjunaid wrote:
       | great hack! thanks for share
        
       | flatiron wrote:
       | His video on Monday was great about this. I like that they
       | checked first if they were running low on memory and then just
       | rebooted the darn thing if it was.
        
       | Impossible wrote:
       | This was common in console games and console SDKs had special
       | APIs to support this. It's a decent solution to memory leak and
       | fragmentation issues
        
       | thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
       | Great to see Morrowind on HN, just sharing my personal story;
       | 
       | I was in highschool living in a trailer park with my mother. My
       | ma ended up getting a pay out from the government for a work
       | related injury. She bought me a PC and we set it up in the
       | caravan and I was able to run Morrowind. It was a great escape
       | from the conditions at the time and I kept learning programming
       | when I wasn't hunting Daedra's.
        
       | geuis wrote:
       | Video from Modern Vintage Gamer walking through the process of
       | how this worked along with a demonstration
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0TKwPnHc-M
        
         | simlevesque wrote:
         | This guy is the best video game tech youtuber out here. He
         | knows his stuff deeply.
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | He was part of the original Xbox homebrew scene.
        
       | corysama wrote:
       | Yep. The function would reboot into a new executable without
       | disrupting what was on the screen.
       | 
       | I don't recall which one, but this was used by an FPS to switch
       | between single-player vs. multi-player exes that were developed
       | by two completely different studios.
        
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       (page generated 2021-04-15 23:00 UTC)