Hackosis

Geeks love getting the most out of their gaming consoles. I hope you would agree that the Xbox 360 is the best gaming console on the market. I recently purchased an Xbox 360 so I have been looking into what I can do (I know, kinda late). With that being said, I would like to share my top 10 hack finds so far.

1. Turn your Xbox 360 into a Laptop - Like soldering? Engadget takes us through the steps of turning your Xbox 360 into a portable laptop. How. Cool. Is. That.
2. Flashing the DVD firmware to play game backups - If you have owned your Xbox 360 for some time it is possible to flash the firmware on the DVD drive to play game backups (your own backups of course ;)). WARNING - This could ban you from Xbox Live!
3. Play online without Xbox Live for Free - By using Xlink Kai you can play multiplayer LAN games online for free! MS has put a 30ms ping limit on the Xbox 360, so be sure to close all other internet apps before playing. Check out the wiki for more details.
4. Use Your Laptop as a free Xbox Wi-Fi Adapter and save $80 - Use internet connection sharing to wire your Xbox 360 to the internet instead of buying the $80 adapter.
5. DIY Xbox 360 Wifi Adapter - If you don’t want a cord from your Xbox 360 hanging out of your laptop all the time you can always follow Geeks Are Sexy’s guide to a DIY Xbox 360 Wifi adapter.
6. Stream Netflix Movies - By using vmcNetFlix you can watch all your favorite movies from your Netflix subscription.
7. Use your own HDMI cable and save $40 - Chad shows us how to fit the A/V adapter into the Xbox 360 while using your own HDMI cable instead of buying the $40 official Microsoft cable.
8. Turn your Xbox A/V cable into a VGA Cable for $7 - Once again, Engadget to the rescue with DIY instructions on how to turn your standard Xbox 360 A/V cable into a VGA cable on the cheap.
9. Mod your Case - There are limitless ways you can customize your Xbox 360 case. To start you off you can paint the face plate and the controller.
10. Surf the web - If you have Windows Media Center Editon you can surf the web from the comfort of your Xbox 360. Note that this is limited functionality only - no typing, no sound, etc. Basically just a screen shot from your PC (Good enough for pr0n).

Hopefully you ran into something new and there is still more to discover with your Xbox 360. With such an interesting machine to tweak, no wonder everyone has out-done themselves on hacking/modding the Xbox 360.

Have a hack or mod that we didn’t cover? Let us know in the comments.

If you just can’t get enough out of your graphics card playing any of the newest Valve Source games there is a hidden ‘Ultra High’ setting that you can activate through the console.

The console is normally where you would enter other commands and cheats. You have to active this under the advanced keyboard settings in the options menu.

How to Activate the ‘Ultra High’ setting in Valve Source Games (Portal, HL2, TF2, etc):

1. Active the console under the advanced keyboard settings in the options menu.
2. Hit ‘~’ (tilde) to activate the console and enter ‘mat_picmip -3′ to activate the ‘Ultra High’ setting. Feel to free to go lower if you think your hardware can handle it.

NOTE: If this slows your PC to a crawl then you obviously do not have the hardware to run the ‘Ultra High’ settings.

Comparison between Very high and Ultra high:

A couple more comparisons to look at.

The setting ranges from 4 to (-10) with the higher number being more compressed.

How low can you go?

[via steam forums]

Coming soon is a rad new program called CamSpace that lets you control your games and applications with a web cam and almost any object you choose.

From the FAQs:

1. What is “CamSpace” ?

CamSpace is a program that allows the user to control his favorite games and applications with any webcam. Use your body and arbitrary objects to replace the mouse and joystick!

Currently, CamSpace only works for Windows, but Mac and Linux versions are on the way…

2. What can I do with “CamSpace” ?

With CamSpace, You can do amazing things! You can use a paper plate as a racing wheel, you can control FPS games by moving your fingers, you can control music applications by moving in free space, the possibilities are endless!

CamSpace is an open platform that enables each and every one of us to create his own application in the language of his choice. You can either use CamSpace’s internal Emulation editor to connect it to any game, write a casual game or simple apps directly inside, or create a sophisticated software application that connects to CamSpace Automatically. Use C++, VB, VB.NET, C#, PYTHON or Delphi and get the tracking information easily from CamSpace API.

We here at Cam-Trax Technologies encourage you to create any application you can think about that benefits from the user’s natural movements in free space!

Check out the demo video:

Head over to the CamSpace site to sign up for the beta. Hopefully after it is release it will either be open source or freeware. They now only have a Windows client, but supposedly a Mac and Linux version is coming soon.

Lets hope they send the beta invite to me soon so I can test it out. Now I might have a good excuse to purchase a web cam - go CamSpace!

Nothing is better than a 3D game, but when you haven’t installed a GUI and have a quick need to play for a bit, here are 4 text based Linux games for CLI:

1. Bastet - Tetris clone:

Bastet ("bastard tetris") is an ncurses Tetris clone which is harder than every other tetris released. It is based on a heuristics engine which tries to detect which block you need or don’t need, and then gives you the blocks that you don’t need. For instance, if you usually play by leaving long "canyons" one square wide and then waiting for the long "I" block, you’ll have to wait till eternity before you see it. The heuristics have been worked on for some time and are quite nasty.

Install Bastet on Ubuntu:

2. Ninvaders - Space Invaders Clone:

nInvaders project is a Space Invaders clone for ncurses.

Ever wanted to play space invaders when you can’t find a GUI? Now you can!

Install Ninvaders on Ubuntu:

3. Moon-buggy - drive on the moon:

Moon-buggy is a simple character graphics game, where you drive some kind of car across the moon’s surface. Unfortunately there are dangerous craters there. Fortunately your car can jump over them!

Install Moon-buggy on Ubuntu:

4. Greed - a puzzle game:

The strategy game of Greed. Try to eat as much as possible of the board before munching yourself into a corner.

Install Greed on Ubuntu:

Hope you enjoy playing these simple, but fun Linux based CLI games. You can play any of these games by entering “/usr/games/xxxxx” with the Xs being the name of the game.

Do you know of any other fun CLI based games for Linux? Let us know in the comments. [via mellowd.co.uk]

Noiz2sa is one of the most insane side scrolling shooter games for Linux ever. Take a look at the video — music and sounds are from original game:

Install Noiz2sa on Ubuntu:

Run Noiz2sa:

I hope you have as much fun with this game as I do.

Original Windows Version | Noiz2sa @ SourceForge for Linux

Leaf Networks private P2P application allows you to create your own private Xbox peer-to-peer network using Windows software (coming soon for Linux and Mac).

And Xbox is not the limit here, according to the site, Leaf Networks creates a secure “VPN” between you and other Leaf Networks Users. Files are shared based on selection.

image via link

Check it out.

So you don’t want to buy an Action Replay to hack your xbox? Lets make our own Xbox USB cable with no soldering required. I will even show you how to use Action Replay software with your USB drive.

Before we go any further take a look here to see if your USB thumb drive is compatible with the Xbox. If your USB drive is not listed, just stick in the Xbox after we make our cable and you will know if it is compatible or not.

What you need:

• USB cable with a female end:



• Electrical Tape:



• Scissors:



• And an extra Xbox controller end (You know the part that plugs into the Xbox that you can detach from the controller?) I don’t have a picture, I just used my last one. :)
• A USB jump drive:



• Action Replay Software
• USB View Software

Ok, lets get started. Prepare your USB cable:

1. Take your USB dongle with the female end and cut it about 5 inches from the female end. If you are new to stripping wires you might want to leave some ample room, like 10 inches.
2. Now strip the USB cable about 2 1/2 inches down from where you cut it, and cut off any shielding, etc.
3. You should have 4 wires. Red, black, white, and green.
4. Strip those little colored wires. I find using open scissors works well.

After preparing the USB cable we need to do the same to the Xbox controller dongle. Cut it just before the black lump on the plugin side. You don’t need the yellow wire so just cut it off. Now, twist the matching colors together. After that, test the cord by plugging your USB drive into the Xbox and going to memory management before you wrap it tight with electrical tape.

Format your USB drive for the Xbox:

1. BACKUP YOUR USB DRIVE. IT WILL BE ERASED.
2. Format your USB drive with the FAT32 file system
3. Open USBVIEW.EXE (Download above). Your USB drive should be showing. Note the following numbers: idVendor, and idProduct. The only numbers you have to worry about is the Zs - 0xZZZZ.
4. Install Action Replay
5. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Datel\Action Replay XBOX\drivers. Edit the xbreader.inf and scroll to the [_Devices] sections.
6. Edit only the first line. Replace the digits next to PID_ and VID_ and enter the ZZZZ digits from above.
7. Now, take your formated USB drive and plug it into the Xbox with your cable.
8. Turn your Xbox on and in the default dashboard navigate to your card from within Memory Management.
9. The Xbox will state that your memory unit has been erased. The Xbox has just formated your USB drive with the FATX xbox file system.
10. Take your USB drive back to your PC, open device manager and right click your USB Mass Storage device and click Update driver. Don’t select automatic and point the driver location to C:\Program Files\Datel\Action Replay XBOX\drivers\xbreader.inf. Run Action Replay. You can now transfer game saves onto your USB drive with Action Replay.
11. Take your USB drive back to your Xbox and copy the save games to the HD. :)

I hope you enjoyed making your own USB xbox cable and hacking Action Replay. Let me know how it goes!

I got me a new rig, put it together and am typing on it now. Got it for a under $900. I am VERY happy with the results. See below:

COOLER MASTER Centurion 5 CAC-T05-UW Black Aluminum Bezel, SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811119068

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