So the last time I released anything was back towards the end of the December. Probably the last time I coded anything Wii related was about the middle of January. So it begs the question: Where have I been? And where am I going?
I actually never left. My blog and my repos have run a bit dry of updates but I've been on IRC the whole time and I've still been answering all of my e-mails and I've even checked into the forums once or twice when both of those fronts slowed down. I've just been too busy to do anything interesting enough worth noting here. So I'm sure the few of you that remain (the daily number of hits on my blog as lowered from almost 2,000 to less than 300 since December) deserve to know so I'll tell you.
The first semester was a joke for me so I really went out of my to do everything I could to get more out of my time here for the second semester. I'm working three jobs so I can pay for college now without taking out a loan. One of them is hourly computer lab proctoring for my campus, another system administration over the entire network for my campus, and the third is commercial Android software development. Aside from this I've also put a couple freeware apps on the Android Marketplace I developed just for fun. In regards to my actual academia I convinced my computer science department to let me jump into their third and fourth year courses. I've been studying embedded hardware development with PIC Microcontrollers, x86 and MIPS assembly, Java, C#, lisp, computer architecture, and much more. I've filled many holes in my knowledge as a developer and I'm a lot better as a developer now than I was in August. Between what I take in school and what I'm doing for work this semester I can't even begin to express how much I've learned.
My semester ends in May and I'm going to be out of work when that happens. I'm currently looking at applying for Google's Summer of Code 2011. If any mentors are reading this and would be interested in having me work under them then please contact me ( email: castlevania7689@yahoo.com ). I would be willing to try anything.
Whether or not I do find a job this summer I am going to return to coding for Wii. scanff and I talked two days ago for the first time since October. We reevaluated the state of DeSmuME and a port we were doing together. We plan to finish our port and work on improving DeSmuME this summer. As for nulldce, it's in far better hands than mine now (including those of some popular Wii homebrew developers). I've left the project because it's evolving so rapidly that I can't keep up with it. I was about 60% done rewriting the syscheck implementation for DOP-Mii in January. Finishing that off as soon as possible will be one of my very first priorities. DOOM needs to be released. Sound support is in. The next build has one bug in loading save files as a result. I'm pretty sure I know what it is. This is another top priority for me. I plan to try hacking HHeretic and HHeXen so you can strafe and turn at the same time. The engine wasn't built to allow this but hard can it be? No guarantees on this one though other than that I will try. A few people have asked me to look at my Powder Toy ports and see if I can give them a better resolution for Wii. I plan to take a shot at it. And above all else, some way, some how, I am going to finally achieve Virtual Boy emulation on the Wii before the summer is over. I promised this almost a year ago and I intend to finally live up to it (ironically, it also took me almost exactly a year to get DeSmuME working). I'm considering hacking it out of (SDL based) Mednafen rather than finish my port of ALLEGRO and RealityBoy though (ALLEGRO is really, really, really difficult to finish) and the latest build of Mednafen is really, really, really nice.
I'm picking up a 3DS this Sunday. I really don't have time to play with it nor the hardware available to dump anything to reverse. But if anything happens with it I'll be sure to at least write something for fun for it. It looks like an awesome little system and I can't wait to get my hands on it.
Also, you may not have noticed but I removed my donations awhile ago. This was prompted both by that I'm on a Wii hiatus and that I'm finally making enough money that not only can I afford school I have just enough extra too. So if I don't need it, why ask for it? If you've got the money, please donate to geohot or graf_chokolo who really do need it right now.
Things are going to continue to be quiet for a little while now. And I apologize in advance if this summer doesn't turn out to be quite as successful as I'm hoping it will be. But rest assured, whether it does or it doesn't, I'll still be here. I'll still live up to my plans one day. Thank you very, very much to everyone who has stuck with me for the three years I've been writing Wii homebrew software. And everyone who has stuck through my occasional idiocy and failed ambitions. This community made me who I am. I love this community and the work I have done for it. I will never abandon it.
Showing posts with label arikado. Show all posts
Showing posts with label arikado. Show all posts
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Happy Holidays
Just wanted to say happy holidays to everyone reading this. It's been an incredible year and as it comes to a close I realize that it's all of you that have made the year so incredible. With your support I've brought DeSmuME, Hexen/Heretic, and soooo many other projects to the Wii homebrew table this year as well as greatly improving projects I had already been working on. In the almost three years I've been working on Wii homebrew (wow, it's really been that long?) I've noticed that each year tends to be more productive and exciting than my last. I intend to uphold that tradition in 2011 :-)
I had hoped to release some things today but it's not working out due to a number of factors involving that I didn't think my holiday would be as busy as it turned out to be and that I'm trapped with a Wifi connection that keeps timing out preventing me from uploading binaries. Once the latter is resolved (tomorrow) you'll see a new release of DOP-Mii fixing it's biggest issues and (if time permits) at least one other thing followed by hopefully a few more things over the course of the next week in the spirit of 27c3 (wish I was going btw :-( ).
Happy Holidays to everyone, it's going to be a great new year.
I had hoped to release some things today but it's not working out due to a number of factors involving that I didn't think my holiday would be as busy as it turned out to be and that I'm trapped with a Wifi connection that keeps timing out preventing me from uploading binaries. Once the latter is resolved (tomorrow) you'll see a new release of DOP-Mii fixing it's biggest issues and (if time permits) at least one other thing followed by hopefully a few more things over the course of the next week in the spirit of 27c3 (wish I was going btw :-( ).
Happy Holidays to everyone, it's going to be a great new year.
Monday, December 13, 2010
Update Sporadia
Well lets get this out the way first: I've become a bit of a busy dood lately. First semester of college will be over in a week (wasn't that rough, fairly pleasant overall but the last few weeks haven't left me with much free time). I'm working two jobs now. Neither is particularly well paying but I have to do what I have to do. I've noticed my uni has a lot of empty unused classrooms so I'm trying to convince them to let me use one as a "Hackerspace" ( http://hackerspaces.org ). So far they seem pretty on board with the idea but it's taking up a lot of my time trying to get it underway. Suffice to say: I have not had much time to work on my Wii projects which we all love.
But I'm also not content with leaving everyone in the dark on my projects (whats open source for after all?) so I'll run through some quick updates for each after the break.
But I'm also not content with leaving everyone in the dark on my projects (whats open source for after all?) so I'll run through some quick updates for each after the break.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Handful of Updates
I know my last blog post got a few people interested in the specifics of what I've been up to lately so hopefully this post will answer all of those questions and more. I have some very exciting stuff to talk about :)
First on the list: I've finally gotten around to giving the main branch of DOP-Mii a true update so it should be working with all of the latest Nintendo updates. Also new: I've rewritten the boot2 install code with the help of lukegb to clear up a small controversy and updated the USB Storage code so that it is compatible with the new libogc 1.8.4. I haven't made an official release yet because I haven't put the new USB code through it's paces yet and because there are a few small changes and additions I still want to make but we are once again making progress. Sorry for the delay in getting around to it, I had handed off development duties to Lunatik and lukegb but they've both been very busy lately so it took some time for me to get back into development of it. Hopefully we should have a new official release of DOP-Mii by the end of the week.
Now onto DeSmuME Wii: Yes we are still working on it even though the SVN hasn't been very active lately. I've been working with Dancingninja to help him rewrite our 3D Renderer in pure GX (Wii video hardware calls). Even though it's not working completely yet, the speeds I am seeing now make Super Mario 64 DS and the Castlevanias more than playable. Hopefully they will remain at these speeds as the renderer is completed. Thank you very much for patience regarding this project. I would like it to have at least one major release by the time November hits.
Now onto nulldce: Nulldce is a version of the Nulldc dreamcast emulator designed to run on low power systems. About a year ago drkIIRaziel got it running on the Wii but never did anything with it beyond an initial port. A few chance IRC conversations about a week ago landed me the source code to it and I have been working very hard on it and have already made some progress. Some very well known emulator developers for Wii have recently signed on to work on it too. The project is progressing very nicely. Work now is being done towards getting it emulate accurately (getting all the colors right for example) and building a dynarec core.
Saving the best for last onto RealityBoy Wii: I promised back in August that I would get this running on the Wii eventually and as of today I'm closer than ever to finally fulfilling that promise. RealityBoy is written in ALLEGRO, a popular cross platform game programming library somewhat similar to SDL. Before developing Wii homebrew I was an ALLEGRO game programmer so I figured porting RealityBoy wouldn't be too hard. It's a painstaking, slow process but one that I've found to be rather enjoyable overall. I've done so much work toward this port that I decided I might as well just port ALLEGRO to Wii. I never considered actually 'putting my money where my mouth is' so to speak until just recently a gentleman named DarkNation was looking to port ALLEGRO to Wii so he could port his ALLEGRO based game to Wii. To make a long story short, we've each plugged in about 50 hours on the project and have some fruit to show from our labor: http://code.google.com/p/allegro-wii/ . There's a still a lot to do but the port is extremely functional. I believe it to be both my most difficult and my most important work yet. Anyone who can help out should get in touch immediately.
Lastly, before closing this post, I've gotten a few extremely generous donations this week and I wanted to say thank you. You all really help me out a lot more than you know and it truly means a great deal to me. I will be coding overtime for you all.
First on the list: I've finally gotten around to giving the main branch of DOP-Mii a true update so it should be working with all of the latest Nintendo updates. Also new: I've rewritten the boot2 install code with the help of lukegb to clear up a small controversy and updated the USB Storage code so that it is compatible with the new libogc 1.8.4. I haven't made an official release yet because I haven't put the new USB code through it's paces yet and because there are a few small changes and additions I still want to make but we are once again making progress. Sorry for the delay in getting around to it, I had handed off development duties to Lunatik and lukegb but they've both been very busy lately so it took some time for me to get back into development of it. Hopefully we should have a new official release of DOP-Mii by the end of the week.
Now onto DeSmuME Wii: Yes we are still working on it even though the SVN hasn't been very active lately. I've been working with Dancingninja to help him rewrite our 3D Renderer in pure GX (Wii video hardware calls). Even though it's not working completely yet, the speeds I am seeing now make Super Mario 64 DS and the Castlevanias more than playable. Hopefully they will remain at these speeds as the renderer is completed. Thank you very much for patience regarding this project. I would like it to have at least one major release by the time November hits.
Now onto nulldce: Nulldce is a version of the Nulldc dreamcast emulator designed to run on low power systems. About a year ago drkIIRaziel got it running on the Wii but never did anything with it beyond an initial port. A few chance IRC conversations about a week ago landed me the source code to it and I have been working very hard on it and have already made some progress. Some very well known emulator developers for Wii have recently signed on to work on it too. The project is progressing very nicely. Work now is being done towards getting it emulate accurately (getting all the colors right for example) and building a dynarec core.
Saving the best for last onto RealityBoy Wii: I promised back in August that I would get this running on the Wii eventually and as of today I'm closer than ever to finally fulfilling that promise. RealityBoy is written in ALLEGRO, a popular cross platform game programming library somewhat similar to SDL. Before developing Wii homebrew I was an ALLEGRO game programmer so I figured porting RealityBoy wouldn't be too hard. It's a painstaking, slow process but one that I've found to be rather enjoyable overall. I've done so much work toward this port that I decided I might as well just port ALLEGRO to Wii. I never considered actually 'putting my money where my mouth is' so to speak until just recently a gentleman named DarkNation was looking to port ALLEGRO to Wii so he could port his ALLEGRO based game to Wii. To make a long story short, we've each plugged in about 50 hours on the project and have some fruit to show from our labor: http://code.google.com/p/allegro-wii/ . There's a still a lot to do but the port is extremely functional. I believe it to be both my most difficult and my most important work yet. Anyone who can help out should get in touch immediately.
Lastly, before closing this post, I've gotten a few extremely generous donations this week and I wanted to say thank you. You all really help me out a lot more than you know and it truly means a great deal to me. I will be coding overtime for you all.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Heretic Wii 0.5 Released
I've been so busy lately that I missed posting the first release of Heretic Wii on my blog. I'll make up for it by extending this post a bit to talk about the project as well as a few other projects I'm working on.
When everyone first saw the Wii, one of the first things that came to mind was playing first person shooter games with it. Developers have given us great games such as Metroid Prime Trilogy and Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex which have shown that a first person shooter game on the Wii can in fact be superior (at least as far as the controls go) to the first person shooter games on other consoles. With Wii homebrew, this door of opportunity is opened even wider as homebrew developers such as myself are able to take old first person shooter games that everyone loves and modify their source code so that they can be played on Wii. Ports of Quake, DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D, and others have now shown us that the Wii controls are so precise that they can actually rival the keyboard and mouse. Furthermore, by playing these old games on a video-game console, users also find them easier to install and generally play them on a bigger screen with a better sound system.
To this end, Wii homebrew developers should take it upon themselves to bring every open-source first person shooter that they can to the Wii. I personally decided to contribute to this endeavor by porting Raven Software's Hexen to the Wii. Unfortunately, I got stuck while porting it and Hermes beat me to it. Using Hermes code to solve the problem I had, I was able to quickly port Raven Software's other popular shooter, Heretic, to Wii.
Since the initial port of Heretic to the Wii I have continued to add many features to it (all of which are not present in Hermes port of Hexen) that make up this new 0.5 release: Full USB Support, Classic Controller Support, GC Controller Support, and a Wiimote and Nunchuk control scheme which uses the Wiimotes IR.
My port of Heretic to Wii is now fully featured and truly a 'complete' port. In upcoming releases, I will expand the game by adding a cheat menu which allows enable and disable a variety of different cheats for the games. However, I am going to take a break from working on this project for a bit in order to pursue other projects. Right now I am looking into both doing an original port of the HHexen engine to Wii (I hate Hermes sound engine and control scheme) and porting an entirely new first person shooter to the Wii. But first, I have to give DOP-Mii a little attention to address some recent (non-harmful) complaints with it and expand it with more features (more on this later).
Download Heretic Wii 0.5: Google Code
Get the source code to Heretic Wii 0.5: Google Code
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you'd like to donate money to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund . Donations are used to help get me through college and are used to fund new projects. By adding a message to your donation, I promise to spend significant time working on whatever your message asks me to do.
When everyone first saw the Wii, one of the first things that came to mind was playing first person shooter games with it. Developers have given us great games such as Metroid Prime Trilogy and Call of Duty Modern Warfare Reflex which have shown that a first person shooter game on the Wii can in fact be superior (at least as far as the controls go) to the first person shooter games on other consoles. With Wii homebrew, this door of opportunity is opened even wider as homebrew developers such as myself are able to take old first person shooter games that everyone loves and modify their source code so that they can be played on Wii. Ports of Quake, DOOM, Wolfenstein 3D, and others have now shown us that the Wii controls are so precise that they can actually rival the keyboard and mouse. Furthermore, by playing these old games on a video-game console, users also find them easier to install and generally play them on a bigger screen with a better sound system.
To this end, Wii homebrew developers should take it upon themselves to bring every open-source first person shooter that they can to the Wii. I personally decided to contribute to this endeavor by porting Raven Software's Hexen to the Wii. Unfortunately, I got stuck while porting it and Hermes beat me to it. Using Hermes code to solve the problem I had, I was able to quickly port Raven Software's other popular shooter, Heretic, to Wii.
Since the initial port of Heretic to the Wii I have continued to add many features to it (all of which are not present in Hermes port of Hexen) that make up this new 0.5 release: Full USB Support, Classic Controller Support, GC Controller Support, and a Wiimote and Nunchuk control scheme which uses the Wiimotes IR.
My port of Heretic to Wii is now fully featured and truly a 'complete' port. In upcoming releases, I will expand the game by adding a cheat menu which allows enable and disable a variety of different cheats for the games. However, I am going to take a break from working on this project for a bit in order to pursue other projects. Right now I am looking into both doing an original port of the HHexen engine to Wii (I hate Hermes sound engine and control scheme) and porting an entirely new first person shooter to the Wii. But first, I have to give DOP-Mii a little attention to address some recent (non-harmful) complaints with it and expand it with more features (more on this later).
Download Heretic Wii 0.5: Google Code
Get the source code to Heretic Wii 0.5: Google Code
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you'd like to donate money to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund . Donations are used to help get me through college and are used to fund new projects. By adding a message to your donation, I promise to spend significant time working on whatever your message asks me to do.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
General Update - Priority Readjustment
I'm not meant to be a hacking "scene" news reporter, I just don't have the time. So I'll be closing http://1ntrusion.com in October when the hosting runs out due to a lack of time on my part to maintain the site and due to a lack of user activity. A general hacking site as an alternative to profit-hungry, unmoderated, and incompetent GBAFail is a great idea and one that I fully support. I just don't have the time to do anymore than that. http://www.gc-forever.com and http://rvlution.net and http://pdroms.de are all great sites for general "scene" hacking and cover tons of news and new ideas. I'd like to maybe one day pitch in and help one of these sites, but I am in no way inclined to ever be able to run one.
I'm changing the purpose of my IRC channel, #arikadosblog on EFNET from a chill anything goes channel to a channel dedicated primarily to DOP-Mii, DeSmuME Wii, and libwiisprite support. Of course I'll gladly help people out with their Dingoos, general Wii hacking, and offer support for all my other projects. But those projects will be my main three which will be discussed in the channel. We usually have about 30 members in the channel, so I strongly encourage everyone reading this to stop by. News is usually broken in there before anywhere else ;-)
Regarding DOP-Mii, Lunatik is now the primary developer of that application. I'm taking more of an advising role. Lunatik is extremely talented, hard working, and dedicated and he will take the project to great new heights. I have a few things left I want to add myself (like savegame support functions) but the project is no longer a priority for me.
Regarding DeSmuME Wii, scanff and Dancingninja are rewriting our renderer in GX. It's already mostly completed and games are seeing a 20% (or more) speed boost from it. When they're done, I will work on expanding the emulator with a proper GUI (finally) and finish giving it the 0.9.6 DeSmuME core update (which means another big speed boost). With that in mind, DeSmuME Wii is still one of my top priorities, but, I'm taking a little time off while the other devs work on it so I can do other cool things ;-)
Regarding libwiisprite, I've had an e-mail to chaosteil sitting in my draft box for about a month now discussing the finer points of the changes I hope to add to the library. libwiisprite development is probably my top priority right now and you will all hear more about it very soon.
Some of you may know that I've been working on porting RealityBoy (virtual boy emulator) over to Wii. It's an extremely difficult task to say the least. Since it's written in ALLEGRO, almost every line of the emulator must be completely rewritten. Development is slow and frustrating but I hope to have a first release no later than this Christmas. Yes, that's a bit far down the line, but it will be worth the wait.
I'm still working on porting Hexen to Wii too. Despite some comments I've made claiming otherwise, I'm going to try to rewrite a ton of the engine using the WiiDOOM port. Speaking of WiiDOOM, as I've been playing with the source, I've made a ton of improvements to the app. I'm going to try and contact the authors to see if I can push my changes into their repository. If I can't (I've heard they no longer answer their e-mails) I might branch the project under a new name. I still have a bit of work left to do before either of these outcomes anyways.
Lastly, let's talk about donations. I think it's safe to say there's no way I'll meet my Chip-In goal of $45,000 USD for a chance to go a better school. However, I'm leaving it up since I can't accept PayPal donations any other way (since I'm only 17, I have a student account). Each and every donation is greatly appreciated and will most likely be used to get me through my local college (books are super expensive).
That's all for now. Hope everyone likes the new directions I'm taking :3
I'm changing the purpose of my IRC channel, #arikadosblog on EFNET from a chill anything goes channel to a channel dedicated primarily to DOP-Mii, DeSmuME Wii, and libwiisprite support. Of course I'll gladly help people out with their Dingoos, general Wii hacking, and offer support for all my other projects. But those projects will be my main three which will be discussed in the channel. We usually have about 30 members in the channel, so I strongly encourage everyone reading this to stop by. News is usually broken in there before anywhere else ;-)
Regarding DOP-Mii, Lunatik is now the primary developer of that application. I'm taking more of an advising role. Lunatik is extremely talented, hard working, and dedicated and he will take the project to great new heights. I have a few things left I want to add myself (like savegame support functions) but the project is no longer a priority for me.
Regarding DeSmuME Wii, scanff and Dancingninja are rewriting our renderer in GX. It's already mostly completed and games are seeing a 20% (or more) speed boost from it. When they're done, I will work on expanding the emulator with a proper GUI (finally) and finish giving it the 0.9.6 DeSmuME core update (which means another big speed boost). With that in mind, DeSmuME Wii is still one of my top priorities, but, I'm taking a little time off while the other devs work on it so I can do other cool things ;-)
Regarding libwiisprite, I've had an e-mail to chaosteil sitting in my draft box for about a month now discussing the finer points of the changes I hope to add to the library. libwiisprite development is probably my top priority right now and you will all hear more about it very soon.
Some of you may know that I've been working on porting RealityBoy (virtual boy emulator) over to Wii. It's an extremely difficult task to say the least. Since it's written in ALLEGRO, almost every line of the emulator must be completely rewritten. Development is slow and frustrating but I hope to have a first release no later than this Christmas. Yes, that's a bit far down the line, but it will be worth the wait.
I'm still working on porting Hexen to Wii too. Despite some comments I've made claiming otherwise, I'm going to try to rewrite a ton of the engine using the WiiDOOM port. Speaking of WiiDOOM, as I've been playing with the source, I've made a ton of improvements to the app. I'm going to try and contact the authors to see if I can push my changes into their repository. If I can't (I've heard they no longer answer their e-mails) I might branch the project under a new name. I still have a bit of work left to do before either of these outcomes anyways.
Lastly, let's talk about donations. I think it's safe to say there's no way I'll meet my Chip-In goal of $45,000 USD for a chance to go a better school. However, I'm leaving it up since I can't accept PayPal donations any other way (since I'm only 17, I have a student account). Each and every donation is greatly appreciated and will most likely be used to get me through my local college (books are super expensive).
That's all for now. Hope everyone likes the new directions I'm taking :3
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Failed? Port of Hexen to Wii
As a side project, I've been porting Hexen to Wii. I made a lot of progress getting the program to compile and run on Wii. However, once it began to run, the port had problems reading certain sections of the Hexen WAD. File IO, endianness, and complex data structures really aren't thing so I asked for some help to finish the port in a forum thread here:
http://forum.wiibrew.org/read.php?26,56919
I was able to make some good progress, but I ultimately ended up not too far from where I began. After working on this problem for several days, I'm tired, and I need to go back to DeSmuME Wii and libwiisprite. If this Hexen WAD reading problem was resolved, I could easily have Hexen up and running on Wii within a few hours; It's a rather frustrating thought to say the least :P
I'm hoping that by posting this on my blog someone with the ability to fix the WAD reading problem sees this. If not, I might take another stab at it myself in a month or two.
I only start projects because they're things that I really want to see happen. I really want to see Hexen running on the Wii happen. To that end, I'm rather quite saddened and disappointed in myself with how this is all working out. I'm sure you all are too but I'll kindly ask you to save the hate for somewhere other than these comments - thx.
http://forum.wiibrew.org/read.php?26,56919
I was able to make some good progress, but I ultimately ended up not too far from where I began. After working on this problem for several days, I'm tired, and I need to go back to DeSmuME Wii and libwiisprite. If this Hexen WAD reading problem was resolved, I could easily have Hexen up and running on Wii within a few hours; It's a rather frustrating thought to say the least :P
I'm hoping that by posting this on my blog someone with the ability to fix the WAD reading problem sees this. If not, I might take another stab at it myself in a month or two.
I only start projects because they're things that I really want to see happen. I really want to see Hexen running on the Wii happen. To that end, I'm rather quite saddened and disappointed in myself with how this is all working out. I'm sure you all are too but I'll kindly ask you to save the hate for somewhere other than these comments - thx.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
libwiisprite 0.3.0d Released
I love libwiisprite. I really do. In my personal opinion, it's the only developer library geared exclusively towards game development. It's focus on game development makes it extremely simple to use with a very small learning curve. With libwiisprite, your most complex code will be generated by you, the author. Not by a spaghetti mess of library function calls. No other library can compare to that (of course, no other library is geared exclusively toward game development either).
libwiisprite's grown old though. Recent updates in libogc and libpng have caused it stop working. I took it upon myself to fix these problems and libwiisprite now looks and works as good as it ever did. Since I was rewriting a handful of it to compensate for the compatibility issues, I also fixed a bug in the layer manager and made a few minor "under the hood" improvements to improve the performance of the library.
I showed chaosteil my work and asked him if I could become an official maintainer of the library and he very warmly granted my request.
I am now continuing to work on and improve libwiisprite. I have a handful of ideas including a sound manager that I'm discussing with chaosteil that I'd like to add to the library. libwiisprite is only going to continue to get better and better. I believe that loyal users of the popular library such as myself are going to be thrilled.
Download libwiisprite 0.3.0d: Mediafire
Get the source to libwiisprite 0.3.0d: Mediafire
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you'd like to donate to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund
libwiisprite's grown old though. Recent updates in libogc and libpng have caused it stop working. I took it upon myself to fix these problems and libwiisprite now looks and works as good as it ever did. Since I was rewriting a handful of it to compensate for the compatibility issues, I also fixed a bug in the layer manager and made a few minor "under the hood" improvements to improve the performance of the library.
I showed chaosteil my work and asked him if I could become an official maintainer of the library and he very warmly granted my request.
I am now continuing to work on and improve libwiisprite. I have a handful of ideas including a sound manager that I'm discussing with chaosteil that I'd like to add to the library. libwiisprite is only going to continue to get better and better. I believe that loyal users of the popular library such as myself are going to be thrilled.
Download libwiisprite 0.3.0d: Mediafire
Get the source to libwiisprite 0.3.0d: Mediafire
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you'd like to donate to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund
Saturday, July 3, 2010
SuperTux Wii 1.1 Released
I recently set-up Wii homebrew for a friend of mine. When I was finished, he was asking me about homebrew games he could play for the Wii (unlike most people, he does not care about emulation or piracy :o). So I thought to myself, "Hey, there's gotta be a SuperTux port around here somewhere. That game's a blast to play." And there was indeed a SuperTux port for Wii. I was shocked to learn it was actually written by favorite coding partner scanff.
My excitement quickly waned when I played it though. scanff did a lot of great work and took the port very far. However, the port was still long away from being complete with awkward controls, video issues, a broken save system, and other serious issues making it rather unenjoyable to play. Not one to complain, I spent the last week fixing all of these issues. I also added new things to the port such as USB support and some Wii personalization to make it a little less of a direct port.
Now, SuperTux Wii is a fully complete port that plays exactly as you would expect it to without any problems.
In the not too distant future, scanff and I will probably look into adding support for more forms of control and fixing that annoying static that occurs occasionally during loading sequences. For now though, I'm sure everyone will be more than satisfied with this port.
Download SuperTux Wii 1.1: Google Code Download
Get the source to SuperTux 1.1: Google Code Checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you'd like to donate to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund
My excitement quickly waned when I played it though. scanff did a lot of great work and took the port very far. However, the port was still long away from being complete with awkward controls, video issues, a broken save system, and other serious issues making it rather unenjoyable to play. Not one to complain, I spent the last week fixing all of these issues. I also added new things to the port such as USB support and some Wii personalization to make it a little less of a direct port.
Now, SuperTux Wii is a fully complete port that plays exactly as you would expect it to without any problems.
In the not too distant future, scanff and I will probably look into adding support for more forms of control and fixing that annoying static that occurs occasionally during loading sequences. For now though, I'm sure everyone will be more than satisfied with this port.
Download SuperTux Wii 1.1: Google Code Download
Get the source to SuperTux 1.1: Google Code Checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Follow my Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you'd like to donate to me, please use the ChipIn widget on the upper right hand corner of this blog or follow this link: http://arikado.chipin.com/college-fund
Monday, June 14, 2010
/join #wiideve3 on EFNET
Last year at E3 time, the people in #wiidev on EFNET were getting a bit upset at all of the talk over E3 interfering with discussion. So I set-up #wiideve3 on EFNET to filter it out. Much to my surprise, we ended up getting more than 100 members in the channel. Discussion was surprisingly technically oriented and unique to that which you can find anywhere else on the internet. We culminated the event with a rather large Mario Kart Wii tournament.
This year, I've restarted #wiideve3 in the hopes to do something similar. 15 minutes away from the Microsoft Press Conference, we have a little under 20 members in the channel. I've also started an online database here http://1ntrusion.com/wiideve3.html as preliminary set-up for an online tournament.
#wiideve3 on EFNET is going to be a ton of fun to hang around in during E3 and everyone reading this should join. You can join from your internet browser by clicking here.
Update: We've got a solid 30 members in the channel now at the conclusion of EA's press conference. Still trying to get to a solid 100 like last year.
This year, I've restarted #wiideve3 in the hopes to do something similar. 15 minutes away from the Microsoft Press Conference, we have a little under 20 members in the channel. I've also started an online database here http://1ntrusion.com/wiideve3.html as preliminary set-up for an online tournament.
#wiideve3 on EFNET is going to be a ton of fun to hang around in during E3 and everyone reading this should join. You can join from your internet browser by clicking here.
Update: We've got a solid 30 members in the channel now at the conclusion of EA's press conference. Still trying to get to a solid 100 like last year.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
General Update
No, I'm not dead and neither is DeSmuME Wii. Nor are any of my other projects.
In no particular order, here are the updates everyone is starving for:
First off, I'm at the end of my senior year in high school. I don't have nearly as much time to devote to programming as I wish I did thanks to end of the year exams and prom.
Secondly, I finally bought a USB Gecko. This is helping me debug and more quickly develop homebrew Wii software. I'm also doing a few cheat code requests in my spare time which is a lot of fun.
Next on the list, http://1ntrusion.com is finally picking up in traffic a bit. Thanks to everyone joining and participating in the site as well as giving it a daily read. (We've had enough traffic that I'm being sent a Dingoo A330 to review for the site :) )
Now onto DeSmuME Wii: Recently, the DeSmuME Team released DeSmuME 0.9.6. It is a huge improvement over 0.9.5 which DeSmuME Wii is based on. So we are updating the DeSmuME Wii core to 0.9.6. The process of doing this is similar to porting DeSmuME from scratch except for the fact that we have a road map to follow from the 0.9.5 port and a working front-end.
It's going to take some time to finish the next DeSmuME Wii update. We are not going to make any commits until it is better than what is in the SVN now. Most of it is ported now. All that remains is to upgrade the saving system and the GPU (the old 0.9.5 ones are now mostly broken due to updates in other aspects of the emulator).
So in short: Things are going good. More cool stuff soon. I've just been quiet because I've been working so hard.
In no particular order, here are the updates everyone is starving for:
First off, I'm at the end of my senior year in high school. I don't have nearly as much time to devote to programming as I wish I did thanks to end of the year exams and prom.
Secondly, I finally bought a USB Gecko. This is helping me debug and more quickly develop homebrew Wii software. I'm also doing a few cheat code requests in my spare time which is a lot of fun.
Next on the list, http://1ntrusion.com is finally picking up in traffic a bit. Thanks to everyone joining and participating in the site as well as giving it a daily read. (We've had enough traffic that I'm being sent a Dingoo A330 to review for the site :) )
Now onto DeSmuME Wii: Recently, the DeSmuME Team released DeSmuME 0.9.6. It is a huge improvement over 0.9.5 which DeSmuME Wii is based on. So we are updating the DeSmuME Wii core to 0.9.6. The process of doing this is similar to porting DeSmuME from scratch except for the fact that we have a road map to follow from the 0.9.5 port and a working front-end.
It's going to take some time to finish the next DeSmuME Wii update. We are not going to make any commits until it is better than what is in the SVN now. Most of it is ported now. All that remains is to upgrade the saving system and the GPU (the old 0.9.5 ones are now mostly broken due to updates in other aspects of the emulator).
So in short: Things are going good. More cool stuff soon. I've just been quiet because I've been working so hard.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Done Hacking Twitter - Source Released to all Twitter Hacks
If you've been reading this blog for a bit then I'm sure you know I was able to successfully write bruteforcers and a dictionary attack for Twitter allowing anyone to be able to retrieve the password of any Twitter account. While they were not perfect (you'd have to read the output LOG file to see when it hit the correct password, the programs couldn't stop themselves) they worked and were to my knowledge used to successfully retrieve the passwords of more than a few Twitter accounts.
However, Twitter eventually took action (I actually find this to be a good thing and am disappointed it took so long) by blocking an IP that unsuccessfully logs into an account 10 times in succession from attempting to log into said account for 60 minutes. I was able to come up with a workaround to this. My workaround was to, after 10 logins, connect to a proxy, try to login in 10 more times, connect to another proxy, try to login 10 more times, and so on and so forth. This actually works.
To get my Twitter password grabbers working again I would have to retrieve create a list of roughly 2,000 different proxies to log into. This is extremely tedious to say the least and I was not able to find any pre-compiled list. So rather then waste my time continuing working on my Twitter attackers (I think we all know I have better things to do ;-) ) I'm releasing making them open source.
They are written in C++ and set-up to compile under Dev-C++ under cygwin in my environment. However, they should be able to compile under any OS and under any IDE with a little bit of rearranging. The libraries I used (libcurl and twitcurl) all claim to be completely platform independent. I also neglected to use any platform dependent code of my own beyond what I hope would be completely cross-platform calls to the C++ Standard Library.
Here are the Download Links:
Sequential Ascending Bruteforcer
Sequential Descending Bruteforcer
Randomized Bruteforcer
Dictionary Attack
If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com
However, Twitter eventually took action (I actually find this to be a good thing and am disappointed it took so long) by blocking an IP that unsuccessfully logs into an account 10 times in succession from attempting to log into said account for 60 minutes. I was able to come up with a workaround to this. My workaround was to, after 10 logins, connect to a proxy, try to login in 10 more times, connect to another proxy, try to login 10 more times, and so on and so forth. This actually works.
To get my Twitter password grabbers working again I would have to retrieve create a list of roughly 2,000 different proxies to log into. This is extremely tedious to say the least and I was not able to find any pre-compiled list. So rather then waste my time continuing working on my Twitter attackers (I think we all know I have better things to do ;-) ) I'm releasing making them open source.
They are written in C++ and set-up to compile under Dev-C++ under cygwin in my environment. However, they should be able to compile under any OS and under any IDE with a little bit of rearranging. The libraries I used (libcurl and twitcurl) all claim to be completely platform independent. I also neglected to use any platform dependent code of my own beyond what I hope would be completely cross-platform calls to the C++ Standard Library.
Here are the Download Links:
Sequential Ascending Bruteforcer
Sequential Descending Bruteforcer
Randomized Bruteforcer
Dictionary Attack
If you have any questions regarding the content of this post, feel free to leave a comment, join me in #arikadosblog on EFNET, post in our forums, tweet to me, or send me an e-mail at castlevania7689@yahoo.com
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Round 2 Against That Pesky Scam Site
Im sure most of you read when I decided to do what I could to take down http://myhomebreware.com . If not, click here and read it.
Today, I woke up and my RSS reader was filled with new comments on my blog posts from almost a year ago to the post made just before this one (all in all, it was about 20 comments on 20 different posts). Each of these new comments that appeared overnight all had the same message and were all left by the same person. They were advertisements telling readers to visit MyHomebreware.
With a little help, I traced the IP and MAC Address left by these comments and it turns out that they were left by the person running MyHomebreware.
I have only one thing to say in response to this:
Pathetic
Today, I woke up and my RSS reader was filled with new comments on my blog posts from almost a year ago to the post made just before this one (all in all, it was about 20 comments on 20 different posts). Each of these new comments that appeared overnight all had the same message and were all left by the same person. They were advertisements telling readers to visit MyHomebreware.
With a little help, I traced the IP and MAC Address left by these comments and it turns out that they were left by the person running MyHomebreware.
I have only one thing to say in response to this:
Pathetic
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Now affiliated with http://www.wii-homebrew.com/
In today's age of the Internet, it is very hard to find reputable sources of information. It is even harder to do so when English is not your first or dominant language.
I am pleased to announce that myself and this blog are now affiliated with http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ .
http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ offers great and comprehensive news, guides, and tutorials for Wii Homebrew in German for it's users. It has a very large and intelligent user base and I welcome members from its site to mine while meanwhile encouraging members of my sites to check out their website. What this means is a larger network of users between both sites which is good for everyone.
http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ really is a great site and I strongly encourage everyone reading this to pay them a visit.
I am pleased to announce that myself and this blog are now affiliated with http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ .
http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ offers great and comprehensive news, guides, and tutorials for Wii Homebrew in German for it's users. It has a very large and intelligent user base and I welcome members from its site to mine while meanwhile encouraging members of my sites to check out their website. What this means is a larger network of users between both sites which is good for everyone.
http://www.wii-homebrew.com/ really is a great site and I strongly encourage everyone reading this to pay them a visit.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Attempting the Impossible: Raising $45,000 USD for College
Well, to be blunt, I've spent the last two years since I emerged onto the Internet as Arikado trying to do the impossible. And this is the most stupid or brilliant thing I've ever attempted yet.
It's my dream to become a great programmer. I find video-game programming to be the ultimatum of programming. You must know more to write a video-game than to write any other program. It's take high level math, physics, science, and the most random trivial factoids in existence memorized to be used at any time.
In fact, were it not for my knowledge of video-game programming, DeSmuME Wii would have never happened. And neither would have DOP-Mii. Only because of the knowledge I've gained through video-game programming was I able to bring these projects to where they are today.
So what I'm trying to say is: I want to become a video-game programmer. That's my career choice. It always has been, and it always will be. I was born to do it. I've been programming since I was 12 starting in Liberty BASIC and graduating to markup languages (HTML, CSS, javascript) and then finally to C/C++. Every step of the way I challenged myself to think: How can I make a game out of this? It took lots of research and teaching myself advanced concepts but I've always been able to complete whatever I set my mind to. And through this, I've been able to branch off and create other related projects. Yes, I'm saying that, in some sense, DOP-Mii and DeSmuME Wii were easier to write than WiiBreaker and Wii Shooting Gallery and my other games.
This June I'll finally be out of high school. Finally. Of course I'm choosing to get a degree in computer science. However, there is once school in the world that offers a bachelors degree specifically in video-game programming and then allows you to achieve a masters in computer science. That school is the holy grail of colleges for me to attend. That school is DigiPen ( https://www.digipen.edu/ ).
DigiPen is located in Washington State. I live in New York State. I live in a deeply financially troubled family and thus I have almost a full ride in financial aid to a local school for a degree in computer science. DigiPen offered me next to no financial aid whatsoever. After talking to parents and figuring everything out, we've come to the conclusion that I will need $45,000 USD to make it to DigiPen for the first year (I will be working two jobs this summer and getting as much scholarship money as possible but its still $45,000 USD :( ). My parents told me that this is way too high an amount and that I should just take the local school.
I dont believe in the impossible. I believe that I can raise the money via the awesome people on the Internet. By May 1st, I have to make a decision on which college to attend. If I can get $10,000 USD by then I can probably convince my parents that I can raise the rest (if I can get all $45,000 USD by May 1st though that would be ok too ;) ). If not, well, the money you send will make my crappy local school experience at least a little less harsh.
You can donate via the ChipIn widget on the right-hand side of this page. Or the same widget right here:
I will be taking programming and blog and other requests if you are willing to donate if I complete them.
Thank you to everyone for reading this :)
It's my dream to become a great programmer. I find video-game programming to be the ultimatum of programming. You must know more to write a video-game than to write any other program. It's take high level math, physics, science, and the most random trivial factoids in existence memorized to be used at any time.
In fact, were it not for my knowledge of video-game programming, DeSmuME Wii would have never happened. And neither would have DOP-Mii. Only because of the knowledge I've gained through video-game programming was I able to bring these projects to where they are today.
So what I'm trying to say is: I want to become a video-game programmer. That's my career choice. It always has been, and it always will be. I was born to do it. I've been programming since I was 12 starting in Liberty BASIC and graduating to markup languages (HTML, CSS, javascript) and then finally to C/C++. Every step of the way I challenged myself to think: How can I make a game out of this? It took lots of research and teaching myself advanced concepts but I've always been able to complete whatever I set my mind to. And through this, I've been able to branch off and create other related projects. Yes, I'm saying that, in some sense, DOP-Mii and DeSmuME Wii were easier to write than WiiBreaker and Wii Shooting Gallery and my other games.
This June I'll finally be out of high school. Finally. Of course I'm choosing to get a degree in computer science. However, there is once school in the world that offers a bachelors degree specifically in video-game programming and then allows you to achieve a masters in computer science. That school is the holy grail of colleges for me to attend. That school is DigiPen ( https://www.digipen.edu/ ).
DigiPen is located in Washington State. I live in New York State. I live in a deeply financially troubled family and thus I have almost a full ride in financial aid to a local school for a degree in computer science. DigiPen offered me next to no financial aid whatsoever. After talking to parents and figuring everything out, we've come to the conclusion that I will need $45,000 USD to make it to DigiPen for the first year (I will be working two jobs this summer and getting as much scholarship money as possible but its still $45,000 USD :( ). My parents told me that this is way too high an amount and that I should just take the local school.
I dont believe in the impossible. I believe that I can raise the money via the awesome people on the Internet. By May 1st, I have to make a decision on which college to attend. If I can get $10,000 USD by then I can probably convince my parents that I can raise the rest (if I can get all $45,000 USD by May 1st though that would be ok too ;) ). If not, well, the money you send will make my crappy local school experience at least a little less harsh.
You can donate via the ChipIn widget on the right-hand side of this page. Or the same widget right here:
I will be taking programming and blog and other requests if you are willing to donate if I complete them.
Thank you to everyone for reading this :)
Monday, March 22, 2010
Miscellaneous news and facebook fail
So lately I haven't been up to too much publicly. I've been mostly wasting my time trying to get my savegame stuff to play nice (and better) with DOP-Mii. I've also restarted development on DeSmuME Wii (which is progressing at a rapid rate now -- more on that later). So nothing too exciting publicly at the moment with the exception of a a fun little legal battle.
For those of you that don't know, I'll be going away to compete in the Model United Nations competition in New York for the latter half of this week. I really wanted to show off something awesome before then but I realized today that I don't have the time to make it happen. So I thought I'd show off a hilarious tidbit from my personal life instead (plus I've been dieing to make one of these images like all the others I see on the internet - it was a fun little experience). This personal occurrence just happened yesterday between me and someone I thought I was really good friends with and have never done anything to, it reminded me of how I got banned on gbafail.
So ... Yeah. Enjoy. I'll have some new cool stuff real soon after this competition is over. The 'personal occurrence' is after the break (click Read More to see it).
For those of you that don't know, I'll be going away to compete in the Model United Nations competition in New York for the latter half of this week. I really wanted to show off something awesome before then but I realized today that I don't have the time to make it happen. So I thought I'd show off a hilarious tidbit from my personal life instead (plus I've been dieing to make one of these images like all the others I see on the internet - it was a fun little experience). This personal occurrence just happened yesterday between me and someone I thought I was really good friends with and have never done anything to
So ... Yeah. Enjoy. I'll have some new cool stuff real soon after this competition is over. The 'personal occurrence' is after the break (click Read More to see it).
Saturday, March 20, 2010
My Turn: I Try to Stop a Wii Homebrew Scam Site
This was really more of an intellectual experiment than something entirely serious. I was tired of seeing so many people complain about these illegal homebrew selling scams so I decided to see exactly how hard it is to take one down. With Daco's (the guy who made Priiloader) help, we quickly found a site illegally selling an old version of Dop-IOS MOD (now known as DOP-Mii). Our target site: http://myhomebreware.com
Almost never does any one person run a website alone. Usually, they use a service to host the website. And in this case, they also used a service to sell their product on the site. So our plan of attack was simple. Send angry letters to the hosting service, the ClickBank transaction service, and last but not least, the website owner himself. With luck, one of these parties would stop the website at least temporarily.
Almost never does any one person run a website alone. Usually, they use a service to host the website. And in this case, they also used a service to sell their product on the site. So our plan of attack was simple. Send angry letters to the hosting service, the ClickBank transaction service, and last but not least, the website owner himself. With luck, one of these parties would stop the website at least temporarily.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Anyone attending MUN 2010 in New York soon in March?
I'm participating in the Model United Nations competition at St. Bonaventure University in New York March 14-18. Schools from all around America and even other countries come to compete to see which school can best solve the world's problems. I'm told (this is my first and last time competing) there will be a huge number of people (my source claims over two thousand but I find that very, very high).
Anyone else reading this attending the competition? If so, I'd love to meet you!
Anyone else reading this attending the competition? If so, I'd love to meet you!
Friday, January 29, 2010
Now working for http://tehskeen.info
I've been chatting with N0tBrakk3n, the awesome man bringing back Tehskeen in the form of http://tehskeen.info , quite a bit lately and I'm pleased to announce a an exciting decision of his. When the new Tehskeen starts running like the old Tehskeen, I will be reporting news for the site. For those of you who remember, I'm basically going to be like djdynamite123 for the new site. I can't wait! I hope everyone is as excited about this as I am!
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
My experience with Wiigamestudio.com (AKA I almost abandoned my identity as Arikado)
Yesterday was just like any other day/ Aside from me being "Arikado" and doing the things Arikado does, it would've been a perfectly normal day for any teenager teenager. Wake up, high school (Seniors 2010!!!), clubs/activities/sports, come home, do homework - the essentials of any day in the life of an teenager. Every day, the first thing I do when I come home is check my inbox. I was startled and scared when I found this message in there from fatquack, the man who runs http://www.wiigamestudio.com (a site which illegally sells a program that makes unofficial Nintendo Wii homebrew via exploiting devkitPRO and GRRLIB) :
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will Thompson
(Arikado/Cornell)
I am FatQuack from Wii Game Studio and if you try any more funny business, I will press charges for fraud due to your fake email from paypal. After 01/02/2010 you may return to wii game studio (though I cannot see why you would want to) but further offence will cause a perminate ban a legal action against ths paypal fraud.
--
Robert Dixon - FatQuack
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To say the least, I was very shaken up by this e-mail. It seemed to me that fatquack had found evidence that I had sent an e-mail to him pretending to be PayPal and that I had posted on his forum under the alternate name "Cornell" in a manner that seemed unfit to him. He also seemed convinced that my name is Will Thompson and it's certainly not.
A while earlier to receiving this e-mail, the WiiBrew Forums which I help run had been spammed with advertisements for fatquack's Wii Game Studio. A member of our forums discovered that Wii Game Studio was being illegally sold as it fails to include necessary license files in it's distribution. Our forum member (WikiFSX) posted in their forums about it and his post was deleted by fatquack. I was initially under the impression that WikiFSX was also banned but realized later that another member of their forums who posted against the illegal distribution under the name "Cornell" was the one who was banned. Like WikiFSX, all of his posts were deleted.
And now, somehow, it seemed that fatquack had become convinced and had proof that I was Cornell and that I illegally sent him a fraudulent e-mail. I assure everyone that none of his accusations were true and I was extremely confused. I was seriously afraid of a lawsuit and would do everything in my power to prevent, including abandoning my identity as "Arikado" forever.
In my confused and upset state, I quickly sent this response to fatquack:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Robert,
First a quick preface, I certainly do not want any legal trouble or to be challenged in a law suit. As you have generously stated that despite your claims against me you intend not to press a lawsuit, I strongly plead you to keep to that display of generosity. And I thank you very much for your generosity and kindness shown in e-mailing me alternatively to taking a rash action of a lawsuit against me.
Your e-mail has given me a lot of questions which I would appreciate that you would answer so I can get everything straight. If any of these questions offend you, you do not have to answer or even acknowledge them. Again, as stated in my preface, the last thing I want (and I hope you as well want) is a lawsuit.
First, my name is not Will Thompson. If you have been having trouble with someone you know is named Will Thompson, then you have got the wrong person. I am wondering if you would mind explaining to me why/how you believe I am Will Thompson.
Second, I have never used this e-mail under the name "Cornell" nor have I ever connected my internet nickname "Arikado" to "Cornell". Someone on the WiiBrew Forums mentioned that someone named "Cornell" was banned from your forums for issues relating to some recent legality trouble with your WiiGameStudio product. I am wondering why/how you would connect me with "Cornell".
Third, I have been advocating people online to report your product to paypal as I believed it was being illegally sold but I am wondering why/how you would connect me with a fake e-mail you received. There are a lot of angry people on the internet over your product and I am wondering why out of all the people who could have sent you it you connected it to me. Also, may I ask you to forward the fake email to me so I may analyze it myself to see how it could connect to me?
Finally, let me say that I am a rather young person (under 18) and that I can not handle and do not want any legal trouble. I truly appreciate you emailing me before filing a lawsuit in order to talk things over. I certainly agree to not try any more "funny business". I would like to note that I have not confessed to anything in this email but am simply asking for information on how your claims connects to me.
Lastly, if anything in this email, offends, frustrates, annoys, bothers, or contains any other content you do not appreciate, you do not have to respond to it. You do not have to even respond to this email of you dont want to. But whatever you decide to do, please, please do not file a lawsuit against me.
--Arikado
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I spent the time until I received a response nervously considering that this may be the end of me if fatquack had some form of proof I could not disprove easily. All I had ever done to him was speak out against his flaky product on the WiiBrew Forums and on tehskeen (RIP Tehskeen) and now it seemed I may lose everything for my trivial sentences I made publicly viewable. I pretended this was all a bad dream waiting for his response.
Here is the response I received from fatquack:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello. I am sorry if I have wrong person, but a user informed me that you were the Cornell in my forum and after having researched your username in other forums, I thought it is likely to be true as you have said various comments with similar content to what has been said by Cornell about the legality of Wii Game Studio.
I would not take legal action anyway without substatial proof that I had the correct person, and I still endevour to find evidence of who cornell is.
Let me inform you of the offences Cornell has made:
Offensive behaviour to my forum members, including exposing personal information.
Impersonating PayPal in an email he sent to me.
I do not see it as a crime to suggest that Wii Game Studio is illegal (as you have done on some forum posts you have made elsewhere). This is just a matter that needs to be cleared up. I have explained a few times on my forum that it is legal and explained how it does not contradict the liscences of various software on which it relies.
The ONLY basis for assuming that Cornell was you and linking it with the username 'Arikado' is the information I have received from a user. Please forgive me if I am wrong and I am sorry for the misunderstanding.
The reason the paypal email is suspected to be fake is because it was sent though my email subission form in my website, and not from paypal directly to my paypal email, and I contacted paypal who state that it must therefore be fake and it quoted facts about my paypal account that were untrue, such as the fact that it had been disabled.
If you do happen to know of any information about the identity of the 'Cornell' user on my forum, I would appreciate your help.
Once again, sorry for the misunderstanding and if you would like me to explain the legality of my product to you, I would be more than willing.
Any connection I made to you (the email included) was a connection I made to the user Cornell, who I thought was you.
I only connected the name Will Thompson to the name Arikado, from http://facebook.com/Arikado who has joined various game-related pages, so I thought it was accurate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So it turned out that fatquack had threatened me with a lawsuit over some speculation in his undying attempt to get at whoever said things about his illegal product that he didn't like. After spending the worst time of my life thinking my escapade as Arikado was over and that I might be in a jail cell soon, I was (and still am) extremely infuriated that this had all been caused by fatquack desperately going to any means necessary to get the last laugh his spammer. My response to fatquacks email sum's up my feelings at this point very nicely:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Robert,
First, thank you for admitting your mistake. I must say, you really shook me up as I was not expecting this and I certainly am not directly related to any of your accusations.
The name "Arikado" was picked for myself because it is one of my favorite video-game characters in the Castlevania video-game series. Literally everywhere I go online the name is taken. I post under the name "OArikadoO" if the name "Arikado" is taken because the O's emphasize "Arikado" strongly. If I have something to say, I will not hide my identity under an alternative name. So, it is certainly not surprising that someone on facebook stole the name before I could :/
The connections between me and Cornell were probably made because whoever your friend is thought, "Hey look, two people who strongly dislike Wii Game Studio, zomg!!! They must be the same person". Obviously this demonstrates the sleuthing tactics of a two year old and I will thank you to in the future to find some form of proof beyond speculation to before accusing anyone of anything.
I would never, ever send someone a fraudulent email and I would certainly not ever pretend to be PayPal of all people.
If I have something to say, I will never hide under an alternate name nor will I hide behind fraudulent e-mails.
I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection, but to falsely accuse and threaten me upon a basis of speculation is simply inexcusable. You clearly must have some form of mental illness if you want to take down this "Cornell" you don't like so badly that you would go to such lengths as to do what you've done to me.
I'm afraid this whole incident has made me feel rather sour towards yourself, your friend who accused me, and even more so towards your product.
I will thank you never to email me again.
--Arikado
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Unfortunately, he didn't take my advice and he emailed me again :/
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Once again, I am very sorry for the misunderstanding, and I am replying in humility and acceptance of my wrong-doing, but I would like to call upon the offer:
"I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection"
Would you mind telling me what is meant by the post "I'll tear his post apart when I wake up tomorrow :p" (refering to my product) on this page:
http://testing.lukegb.com/logviewer/index.php?action=viewlog&channel=%23wiihelp&datetime=1260918000
I am not asking this in accusative way, but just to settle my mind.
I really would like there to be no hard feelings between us and I hope this 'sour'ness will end (as deserved as it is).
-Robert
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I understood this reply as, "Hi! Just because I have no proof doesn't mean I'm not correct. I bet you can't explain this snippet IRC log from #wiihelp on EFNET from almost a little more then a month ago ;)"
My reply:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That comment was made referring to this post http://forum.wiibrew.org/read.php?20,44369,44446#msg-44446 made by your forum member LordAshes in what appeared was an attempt to spam the WiiBrew Forums with your Wii Game Studio. "Tearing apart" specifically refferred to my style of using quotes to break up the post and respond to each point made individually.
--Arikado
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After sending my last response to fatquack, I have not received another e-mail from him. I'm truly disgusted by the lengths he is willing to go to just to have the final "ha-ha" at someone who posted something he didn't like a week or so back.
Lastly, as I've stated many times in this post, fatquack is illegally selling his product by failing to include the necessary GRRLIB and 7zip licenses in his distribution. They're simply two .txt files. It would take 5 seconds to add them to his distribution. But he refuses to because he clearly does not want to acknowledge their usage in his product.
Please everyone, join me in reporting fatquack's illegal product to paypal and shutting him down once and for all!
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Will Thompson
(Arikado/Cornell)
I am FatQuack from Wii Game Studio and if you try any more funny business, I will press charges for fraud due to your fake email from paypal. After 01/02/2010 you may return to wii game studio (though I cannot see why you would want to) but further offence will cause a perminate ban a legal action against ths paypal fraud.
--
Robert Dixon - FatQuack
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To say the least, I was very shaken up by this e-mail. It seemed to me that fatquack had found evidence that I had sent an e-mail to him pretending to be PayPal and that I had posted on his forum under the alternate name "Cornell" in a manner that seemed unfit to him. He also seemed convinced that my name is Will Thompson and it's certainly not.
A while earlier to receiving this e-mail, the WiiBrew Forums which I help run had been spammed with advertisements for fatquack's Wii Game Studio. A member of our forums discovered that Wii Game Studio was being illegally sold as it fails to include necessary license files in it's distribution. Our forum member (WikiFSX) posted in their forums about it and his post was deleted by fatquack. I was initially under the impression that WikiFSX was also banned but realized later that another member of their forums who posted against the illegal distribution under the name "Cornell" was the one who was banned. Like WikiFSX, all of his posts were deleted.
And now, somehow, it seemed that fatquack had become convinced and had proof that I was Cornell and that I illegally sent him a fraudulent e-mail. I assure everyone that none of his accusations were true and I was extremely confused. I was seriously afraid of a lawsuit and would do everything in my power to prevent, including abandoning my identity as "Arikado" forever.
In my confused and upset state, I quickly sent this response to fatquack:
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Hello Robert,
First a quick preface, I certainly do not want any legal trouble or to be challenged in a law suit. As you have generously stated that despite your claims against me you intend not to press a lawsuit, I strongly plead you to keep to that display of generosity. And I thank you very much for your generosity and kindness shown in e-mailing me alternatively to taking a rash action of a lawsuit against me.
Your e-mail has given me a lot of questions which I would appreciate that you would answer so I can get everything straight. If any of these questions offend you, you do not have to answer or even acknowledge them. Again, as stated in my preface, the last thing I want (and I hope you as well want) is a lawsuit.
First, my name is not Will Thompson. If you have been having trouble with someone you know is named Will Thompson, then you have got the wrong person. I am wondering if you would mind explaining to me why/how you believe I am Will Thompson.
Second, I have never used this e-mail under the name "Cornell" nor have I ever connected my internet nickname "Arikado" to "Cornell". Someone on the WiiBrew Forums mentioned that someone named "Cornell" was banned from your forums for issues relating to some recent legality trouble with your WiiGameStudio product. I am wondering why/how you would connect me with "Cornell".
Third, I have been advocating people online to report your product to paypal as I believed it was being illegally sold but I am wondering why/how you would connect me with a fake e-mail you received. There are a lot of angry people on the internet over your product and I am wondering why out of all the people who could have sent you it you connected it to me. Also, may I ask you to forward the fake email to me so I may analyze it myself to see how it could connect to me?
Finally, let me say that I am a rather young person (under 18) and that I can not handle and do not want any legal trouble. I truly appreciate you emailing me before filing a lawsuit in order to talk things over. I certainly agree to not try any more "funny business". I would like to note that I have not confessed to anything in this email but am simply asking for information on how your claims connects to me.
Lastly, if anything in this email, offends, frustrates, annoys, bothers, or contains any other content you do not appreciate, you do not have to respond to it. You do not have to even respond to this email of you dont want to. But whatever you decide to do, please, please do not file a lawsuit against me.
--Arikado
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I spent the time until I received a response nervously considering that this may be the end of me if fatquack had some form of proof I could not disprove easily. All I had ever done to him was speak out against his flaky product on the WiiBrew Forums and on tehskeen (RIP Tehskeen) and now it seemed I may lose everything for my trivial sentences I made publicly viewable. I pretended this was all a bad dream waiting for his response.
Here is the response I received from fatquack:
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Hello. I am sorry if I have wrong person, but a user informed me that you were the Cornell in my forum and after having researched your username in other forums, I thought it is likely to be true as you have said various comments with similar content to what has been said by Cornell about the legality of Wii Game Studio.
I would not take legal action anyway without substatial proof that I had the correct person, and I still endevour to find evidence of who cornell is.
Let me inform you of the offences Cornell has made:
Offensive behaviour to my forum members, including exposing personal information.
Impersonating PayPal in an email he sent to me.
I do not see it as a crime to suggest that Wii Game Studio is illegal (as you have done on some forum posts you have made elsewhere). This is just a matter that needs to be cleared up. I have explained a few times on my forum that it is legal and explained how it does not contradict the liscences of various software on which it relies.
The ONLY basis for assuming that Cornell was you and linking it with the username 'Arikado' is the information I have received from a user. Please forgive me if I am wrong and I am sorry for the misunderstanding.
The reason the paypal email is suspected to be fake is because it was sent though my email subission form in my website, and not from paypal directly to my paypal email, and I contacted paypal who state that it must therefore be fake and it quoted facts about my paypal account that were untrue, such as the fact that it had been disabled.
If you do happen to know of any information about the identity of the 'Cornell' user on my forum, I would appreciate your help.
Once again, sorry for the misunderstanding and if you would like me to explain the legality of my product to you, I would be more than willing.
Any connection I made to you (the email included) was a connection I made to the user Cornell, who I thought was you.
I only connected the name Will Thompson to the name Arikado, from http://facebook.com/Arikado who has joined various game-related pages, so I thought it was accurate.
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So it turned out that fatquack had threatened me with a lawsuit over some speculation in his undying attempt to get at whoever said things about his illegal product that he didn't like. After spending the worst time of my life thinking my escapade as Arikado was over and that I might be in a jail cell soon, I was (and still am) extremely infuriated that this had all been caused by fatquack desperately going to any means necessary to get the last laugh his spammer. My response to fatquacks email sum's up my feelings at this point very nicely:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Robert,
First, thank you for admitting your mistake. I must say, you really shook me up as I was not expecting this and I certainly am not directly related to any of your accusations.
The name "Arikado" was picked for myself because it is one of my favorite video-game characters in the Castlevania video-game series. Literally everywhere I go online the name is taken. I post under the name "OArikadoO" if the name "Arikado" is taken because the O's emphasize "Arikado" strongly. If I have something to say, I will not hide my identity under an alternative name. So, it is certainly not surprising that someone on facebook stole the name before I could :/
The connections between me and Cornell were probably made because whoever your friend is thought, "Hey look, two people who strongly dislike Wii Game Studio, zomg!!! They must be the same person". Obviously this demonstrates the sleuthing tactics of a two year old and I will thank you to in the future to find some form of proof beyond speculation to before accusing anyone of anything.
I would never, ever send someone a fraudulent email and I would certainly not ever pretend to be PayPal of all people.
If I have something to say, I will never hide under an alternate name nor will I hide behind fraudulent e-mails.
I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection, but to falsely accuse and threaten me upon a basis of speculation is simply inexcusable. You clearly must have some form of mental illness if you want to take down this "Cornell" you don't like so badly that you would go to such lengths as to do what you've done to me.
I'm afraid this whole incident has made me feel rather sour towards yourself, your friend who accused me, and even more so towards your product.
I will thank you never to email me again.
--Arikado
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately, he didn't take my advice and he emailed me again :/
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once again, I am very sorry for the misunderstanding, and I am replying in humility and acceptance of my wrong-doing, but I would like to call upon the offer:
"I certainly don't mind you questioning my activities or pointing out a possible connection"
Would you mind telling me what is meant by the post "I'll tear his post apart when I wake up tomorrow :p" (refering to my product) on this page:
http://testing.lukegb.com/logviewer/index.php?action=viewlog&channel=%23wiihelp&datetime=1260918000
I am not asking this in accusative way, but just to settle my mind.
I really would like there to be no hard feelings between us and I hope this 'sour'ness will end (as deserved as it is).
-Robert
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I understood this reply as, "Hi! Just because I have no proof doesn't mean I'm not correct. I bet you can't explain this snippet IRC log from #wiihelp on EFNET from almost a little more then a month ago ;)"
My reply:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That comment was made referring to this post http://forum.wiibrew.org/read.php?20,44369,44446#msg-44446 made by your forum member LordAshes in what appeared was an attempt to spam the WiiBrew Forums with your Wii Game Studio. "Tearing apart" specifically refferred to my style of using quotes to break up the post and respond to each point made individually.
--Arikado
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After sending my last response to fatquack, I have not received another e-mail from him. I'm truly disgusted by the lengths he is willing to go to just to have the final "ha-ha" at someone who posted something he didn't like a week or so back.
Lastly, as I've stated many times in this post, fatquack is illegally selling his product by failing to include the necessary GRRLIB and 7zip licenses in his distribution. They're simply two .txt files. It would take 5 seconds to add them to his distribution. But he refuses to because he clearly does not want to acknowledge their usage in his product.
Please everyone, join me in reporting fatquack's illegal product to paypal and shutting him down once and for all!
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