Nearly a year ago I announced I was going to work on porting the RealityBoy emulator to bring Virtual Boy games to be playable on the Wii. At the time, RealityBoy was the best Virtual Boy emulator as well as being the simplest to port in my opinion. It wasn't going to be easy; RealityBoy was based on the ALLEGRO library and it wasn't written with PowerPC nor big endian architecture in mind. For the most part it was going to have to be completely rewritten. In order to make my work better benefit the Wii homebrew development community I was able to (with the help of "DarkNation") bang out a simple port of ALLEGRO to Wii. Coupled with this and a lot of reworking on RealityBoy I was able to get emulation going but I was unable to receive any sort of sound or video output. I assumed this was because the ALLEGRO port was still rather incomplete. A lot of work lied ahead of me. And with school, work, and other personal pressures building up I had very little spare time to work on this.
Around this time, the mednafen emulator released a beta build which included virtual boy support. Mednafen contains arguably the most powerful, optimized emulators for each of the platforms it supports. Furthermore, mednafen is based upon SDL and OpenGL, the former of which we have a port for on the Wii and the latter of which can be easily rewritten as GX (the Wii's video hardware API). Ryphecha, the lead developer behind mednafen, actually contacted me personally to let me know. She really wanted me to drop my RealityBoy port and turn to mednafen (which had previously never even been looked at as a possibility to be ported to the Wii by anyone ever). I played with mednafen for a little bit. At the time I was so distracted by so many different things I didn't get very far beyond compiling the emulator on Linux and playing with the source to see how it works and what could be cut out for a port of only the VirtualBoy component to Wii.
Then a month ago, during my last week of finals, a developer named "raz0red" contacted me. Apparently I wasn't the one who had taken an interest in mednafen. raz0red had done what I had sought out to do by using mednafen to get Virtual Boy games running on the Wii. I accepted his offer to join forces and do a proper Virtual Boy emulator for the Wii. My work was mainly done in optimizing the emulated hardware (which, by the way, Ryphecha was infinitely helpful for by answering all my questions and even going so far as to send me some snippets of code). I really think the emulator turned out pretty well. It's not perfect, but it's about as close as we can possibly get.
Take a look:
Working on this emulator was a great experience and it taught me a lot. After a rather long hiatus it was great to finally start making progress with Wii homebrew software development again. This reminds me that I need to thank everyone for putting up with my "off and on" sprees of development and for supporting me through all of it.
If you haven't yet already, you can grab Wiirtual Boy here.
I've got more plans for this summer. I've had an infinitely popular shooter ported and running on Wii since October that I need to finally finish. I've also been toying with the idea of porting another part or all of mednafen to Wii (for fun, I have emulation of something else in it mostly working). Not to mention I have several old projects that need to be cleaned up and finished. As always, I'll keep my blog updated to the latest.
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Showing posts with label news. Show all posts
Friday, June 24, 2011
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Everything
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.
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.
Monday, December 27, 2010
DOP-Mii v15,WiiBrew Edition v15, and Library v1.3 Released
Update: Some users were having issues which appear to be caused by me building the project incorrectly. I've re-uploaded the releases on Google Code which are now built correctly. If you were one of the majority whom had problems downloading from NUS, please go re-download DOP-Mii. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Some last minute testing delayed the release a day longer than I wished but at least I'm confident in it enough now to finally release it.
Here's the changelog:
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college. Christmas donation anyone? (:
Some last minute testing delayed the release a day longer than I wished but at least I'm confident in it enough now to finally release it.
Here's the changelog:
- [Main and WBE] Fixed a bug caused by libogc 1.8.5 causing syscheck to crash. This was fixed mostly by compiling under libogc 1.8.6 and so far no crashes from syscheck have been spotted by lukegb, myself, or several testers.
- [All Builds] Fixed a bug caused by libogc 1.8.5 which disabled our Wiimote LED blinking.
- [All Builds] Fixed a bug causing some SD/USB WAD installations to fail.
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college. Christmas donation anyone? (:
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.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
SuperTux 1.2 for Wii Released
SuperTux is one of my favorite projects. It's seriously a great little game and it's been a joy to work on. I think this will probably be my last release of the application though, because I've finally finished it off as a complete port without anymore bugs in it.
Changelog:
Source: http://code.google.com/p/supertux-wii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
I've had a blast working on this game. I hope you will enjoy it.
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
Changelog:
- Fixed USB Support for most (if not all) USB Devices
- Updated CREDITS file in compliance with SuperTux
- Miscellaneous little bug fixes and tweaks
Source: http://code.google.com/p/supertux-wii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
I've had a blast working on this game. I hope you will enjoy it.
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
Monday, November 22, 2010
DOP-Mii v14.2 , WiiBrew Edition v14.5, and Library v1.2 Released
Well this is embarrassing. The awesome people who use DOP-Mii have found one more bug in the program. This time, it's again caused by libogc 1.8.5. DOP-Mii's lovely wiimote LED flashing code seems to crash about 3 out of every 5 times it's ran. So it's been (temporarily) disabled in all builds. I've uploaded new binaries of all the releases with the fix.
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
Now we should finally be bug free. For real this time.
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
Now we should finally be bug free. For real this time.
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
DOP-Mii v14.1 , WiiBrew Edition v14.4, and Library v1.1 Released
So yesterday's three releases of my DOP-Mii program had a few bugs in them. Thanks to the extremely helpful people who use the program I was able to fix each issue and even add in a (sort of) new feature to DOP-Mii.
Here's the changelog:
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
Here's the changelog:
- [All Builds] Fixed a bug caused by libogc 1.8.5 causing network initialization to crash for some users (thank you yellowstar for your support)
- [All Builds] Fixed a bug causing USB drives to not be mounted properly not allowing USB users to take advantage of DOP-Mii's config file
- [All Builds] Added an additional path where the DOP-Mii config file may be loaded from ( /apps/DOP-Mii/DOP-Mii.cfg )
- [Library] Renamed some global variables to something more appropriate for a library
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
DOP-Mii v14 Released
Well, it didn't come out as soon as I wanted it to, but it's finally here. And it finally works on all Wiis.
The actual changelog is too long to write out so I'll just list the big changes:
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
The actual changelog is too long to write out so I'll just list the big changes:
- Proper AHBPROT support which no longer limits user functionality but instead extends it
- [Bugfix] You can now install an IOS that accepts fakesigning on all Wiis (you must have AHBPROT present though)
- [Bugfix] No more crashes from system report
- Compatible with libogc 1.8.5
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
DOP-Mii Library v1 Released
I've been spending a great deal of time of lately analyzing DOP-Mii and thinking about the future of the program. It's grown to be so powerful I'm not even sure what it is anymore. The best description I can come up with for it is "DOP-Mii is a powerful system tool for your Wii which can do almost anything". DOP-Mii is never going to be truly finished, but I know it's going to need to take on a better form to continue to stay at the top.
Thinking about the future of DOP-Mii I looked at three things which seem to occur repeatedly:
1)I get a lot of e-mails from people saying how grateful they are for the program. Not only because of how they've modified their Wii's with it, but because of how they were able to use the source code to expand their own homebrew. I once even got an e-mail from someone claiming to be a licensed developer who used it to experiment with IOS to see how he could enhance his games and to develop external peripherals.
2)I get a lot of e-mails from people asking me to give DOP-Mii a nice, highly graphical GUI. I always neglect these requests because I feel I would be better spending my time continuing to expand DOP-Mii rather than make it graphical.
3)There are a lot of "Mods" of DOP-Mii floating around the net. Some are pretty neat (GUI enhancements, additional features) and others really suck (Like the ones based ones based on unstable builds that were written in C). Either way, I'm always happy to see people play with the source.
So about a couple weeks ago it finally occurred to me that next logical step would be to make a new branch of DOP-Mii. This new branch would remove the front-end (in other words our GUI) meanwhile keeping the powerful base code that powers every mod, every enhancement to every app, and too many other things to list here. It would be DOP-Mii compiled into a static library.
Now, developers have a powerful set of tools (I haven't even brought up yet how nice our USB Gecko or USB Storage drivers are) on hand at any time without any messy source code rearranging. And anyone interested in writing a new GUI for DOP-Mii should be able to do so much more easily with all of the existing GUI removed from the source. It's really a great situation for everyone.
I've gone through and carefully pruned and modified the library to make sure it's as useful and small as it can be without cutting out any features. This is only the first public release so there's bound to be a lot which can still be improved. Developers, I beg you to keep in touch and let me know about anything I can do to make the library as useful as possible.
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
1)I get a lot of e-mails from people saying how grateful they are for the program. Not only because of how they've modified their Wii's with it, but because of how they were able to use the source code to expand their own homebrew. I once even got an e-mail from someone claiming to be a licensed developer who used it to experiment with IOS to see how he could enhance his games and to develop external peripherals.
2)I get a lot of e-mails from people asking me to give DOP-Mii a nice, highly graphical GUI. I always neglect these requests because I feel I would be better spending my time continuing to expand DOP-Mii rather than make it graphical.
3)There are a lot of "Mods" of DOP-Mii floating around the net. Some are pretty neat (GUI enhancements, additional features) and others really suck (Like the ones based ones based on unstable builds that were written in C). Either way, I'm always happy to see people play with the source.
So about a couple weeks ago it finally occurred to me that next logical step would be to make a new branch of DOP-Mii. This new branch would remove the front-end (in other words our GUI) meanwhile keeping the powerful base code that powers every mod, every enhancement to every app, and too many other things to list here. It would be DOP-Mii compiled into a static library.
Now, developers have a powerful set of tools (I haven't even brought up yet how nice our USB Gecko or USB Storage drivers are) on hand at any time without any messy source code rearranging. And anyone interested in writing a new GUI for DOP-Mii should be able to do so much more easily with all of the existing GUI removed from the source. It's really a great situation for everyone.
I've gone through and carefully pruned and modified the library to make sure it's as useful and small as it can be without cutting out any features. This is only the first public release so there's bound to be a lot which can still be improved. Developers, I beg you to keep in touch and let me know about anything I can do to make the library as useful as possible.
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
DOP-Mii WiiBrew Edition v14.3 Released
I've just released v14.3 of DOP-Mii WiiBrew Edition. For those who may not recall, DOP-Mii WiiBrew Edition is a stripped down version of DOP-Mii which does not contain any functionality relating to patching or installing patched IOSs.
In this release I've worked hard with lukegb (the primary maintainer of the WiiBrew Edition branch) to make sure that you don't need any magic libogc builds to compile the release, that everything is updated to what I use in the main build of DOP-Mii, and to squash every single bug in the program. Like the other versions of DOP-Mii, a lot of hard work went into this build and I hope everyone will appreciate it.
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
In this release I've worked hard with lukegb (the primary maintainer of the WiiBrew Edition branch) to make sure that you don't need any magic libogc builds to compile the release, that everything is updated to what I use in the main build of DOP-Mii, and to squash every single bug in the program. Like the other versions of DOP-Mii, a lot of hard work went into this build and I hope everyone will appreciate it.
Download: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/downloads/list
Source: http://code.google.com/p/dop-mii/source/checkout
IRC Channel: #arikadosblog on EFNET
Twitter: http://twitter.com/OArikadoO
If you can, please support this and my other projects by donating via the Chip-In widget to the right of this page. Donations are used to buy development tools and to help yours truly survive in college.
Friday, November 12, 2010
Instapaper Support for all Future Blog Posts
Starting with this blog post all of my blog posts should have support for use with http://www.instapaper.com . This is a test post. I hope this works. Thank you for the help Xuzz. You are awesome!
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.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
How to Bypass Updating to PS3 Firmware 3.42
As you've probably heard, SONY has made a new firmware for their PS3 called firmware 3.42. THIS UPDATE BREAKS THE USB EXPLOIT FOR THE PS3 (for now at least). According to SONY, this update is mandatory if you want to use your PS3 online and access the PS3 store.
Well, turns out it's not mandatory after all.
Set 67.202.81.137 as your primary and secondary DNS on your PS3 you can still use your PS3 online without having to update. I had a couple friends test it on PSN and it worked - haven't heard if the Playstation Store also works but I would assume it does.
Well, turns out it's not mandatory after all.
Set 67.202.81.137 as your primary and secondary DNS on your PS3 you can still use your PS3 online without having to update. I had a couple friends test it on PSN and it worked - haven't heard if the Playstation Store also works but I would assume it does.
Monday, August 30, 2010
WiiDoom 0.4.5 Released
Back when I was working on Heretic and Hexen I was using the WiiDoom source code as inspiration for doing these ports. WiiDoom always had a number of little bugs with it so I fixed a lot of these while I was working with the source. My ports of Heretic and Hexen to the Wii came out so nice that I felt like going back to WiiDoom and finishing what I started by adding a lot of new features to the app as well. A lot of people really supported me doing this. Eventually, the WiiDoom team heard of what I was doing so they officially made me an owner of the project.
So now, here we are, with a new release of WiiDoom :-D
Here's what's new in this release:
Get the source code to WiiDoom 0.4.5: 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.
So now, here we are, with a new release of WiiDoom :-D
Here's what's new in this release:
- Full SDHC Support
- Full USB Support
- Classic Controller Support
- Gamecube Controller Support
- Changed /prboom/ to /apps/wiidoom/data/
- Various bugfixes and tweaks
Get the source code to WiiDoom 0.4.5: 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.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Hexen Wii 0.5 Released
A lot of people were really happy with how my port of Heretic to Wii turned out. Originally, I was trying to port Hexen but was beaten to by Hermes causing me to turn my attention to Heretic instead. I was asked if I would consider going back and finishing Hexen port because the existing Hexen port had a number of issues with it. So ... Well ... Here we are :)
Here's what you will find in my new Hexen port that you won't find in the other one:
Download Hexen Wii 0.5: Google Code
Get the source code to Hexen 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.
Here's what you will find in my new Hexen port that you won't find in the other one:
- Full USB Support
- Support for the Hexen Expansion WAD: Hexen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel (hexdd.wad)
- Saving
- A wiimote and nunchuk control scheme that uses the wiimote's IR
- GC control scheme
- Classic Controller control scheme
Download Hexen Wii 0.5: Google Code
Get the source code to Hexen 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.
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, 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
Friday, July 2, 2010
Lulz and Newz
First some lulz.
I got an anonymous e-mail the other day pointing me to this page written about the "drama" between myself and fatquack that occurred forever ago. http://encyclopediadramatica.com/fatquack (NSFW) While I don't particularly condone the making fun of pictures of fatquack's family members, the page is surprisingly accurate and relatively humorous so I figured I'd share. At the very least, it's interesting to actually look at the guy who wanted to arrest me on a basis of purely 10 year old speculation six months ago.
Now for some newz.
I've been working on some really big stuff lately. Most of it I haven't ever talked of publicly ever before. I'm finally ready to start releasing some of it. The first of it will be released late tomorrow (later tomorrow on account of I have to work and I need to get someones permission before I release it). You're all sure to enjoy it ;-) (No, nothing regarding emulation this time)
I got an anonymous e-mail the other day pointing me to this page written about the "drama" between myself and fatquack that occurred forever ago. http://encyclopediadramatica.com/fatquack (NSFW) While I don't particularly condone the making fun of pictures of fatquack's family members, the page is surprisingly accurate and relatively humorous so I figured I'd share. At the very least, it's interesting to actually look at the guy who wanted to arrest me on a basis of purely 10 year old speculation six months ago.
Now for some newz.
I've been working on some really big stuff lately. Most of it I haven't ever talked of publicly ever before. I'm finally ready to start releasing some of it. The first of it will be released late tomorrow (later tomorrow on account of I have to work and I need to get someones permission before I release it). You're all sure to enjoy it ;-) (No, nothing regarding emulation this time)
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wii Update 4.3
Im really tired and I have my last and hardest exam in the morning.So I'm just gonna make this short and sweet:
DO NOT UPDATE YOUR WII!!! YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING UNTIL WORKAROUNDS ARE RELEASED!!!
I will have a full report for you tomorrow and an update to DOP-Mii no later than Wednesday so you can safely update your Wii if possible (if not possible, the update to DOP-Mii will be released when it is possible to update safely; ie; when workarounds are developed)
DO NOT UPDATE YOUR WII!!! YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING UNTIL WORKAROUNDS ARE RELEASED!!!
I will have a full report for you tomorrow and an update to DOP-Mii no later than Wednesday so you can safely update your Wii if possible (if not possible, the update to DOP-Mii will be released when it is possible to update safely; ie; when workarounds are developed)
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