Wiirtual Boy

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.

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
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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)

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.

The Universal Scientific Laws of Wii Homebrew or Hacking

There are a lot of interesting Wii modifications out there to perform in the name of Wii homebrew and Wii hacking. There are countless guides to achieving these modifications available to you by simply googling for them. However, how many of these guides are entirely accurate? And how many of these modifications should actually be performed?

This post will present to you a list of proven scientific truths to follow when performing any modification to your Wii. In fact, most of these truths or laws will even apply to hacking other video game consoles and even performing software modifications to your computer you're reading this on.

The less you do, the better off you will be

 Practically every guide out there contains loads of unnecessary steps of supplementary modifications to perform to achieve your goal. Almost always, at least half of the steps in any guide do not need to be performed to achieve your primary target. Always keep your eye on the prize and question whether or not everything you do is absolutely necessary. If you do too many unnecessary things, you are likely going to end up bricking your Wii.

Never, ever, ever, downgrade anything

All Wii homebrew and Wii hacking can be done on any Wii irregardless of the Wii's firmware. There is never a reason to downgrade your Wii. In fact, if you downgrade on a newer Wii, you will brick your Wii. So why risk doing something that is never necessary?

Have a credible reference on hand at all times

Any time you are doing something to your Wii, you should have someone or something to refer to for help at all times. Generally, experienced people and thorough references can bail you out of any predicament and walk you through any intimidating situation. Credible references are WiiBrew and Tehskeen. Credible people are myself, the people at the WiiBrew Forums, the fine folks at my forums, and the gentlemen at the tehskeen forums.  

Never let one person force you to do something

Its your Wii, you can do whatever the hell you want with it. If you don't trust someone or you don't like the advice someone gives you, get a second opinion. This is your Wii that you spent hard-earned money on, so be sure to take as much of your time you want before you do anything.

I truly hope this post will help you in making decisions while modifying your Wii. If you have any suggestions of content to add to this post, please leave a comment below. Also, please feel free to follow my twitter.

Wii System Menu 4.2 Update

ZOMG NEWZ UPDATEZ WIIZ ALLZ GONNAZ DIEZZZZZ!!!

No.

Seriously, there's nothing to worry about in the Wii System Menu 4.2 update.

• All of your deleted homebrew can be reinstalled by running the the hackmii installer 0.5
• Bannerbomb and every other exploit still works.
• You can still get trucha bugged IOSs
• AFAIK, nothing is lost by this update that can't be recovered/reinstalled

So whats the big deal? Right, there is no big deal...

Signs in the stars (the next Nintendo update)

I'm not sure how many of you might have picked this up, but the next Nintendo Wii update is looming over us. In fact, it's coming in late October or early November. It will revitalize the Wii Shop Channel, giving it the functionality to accept a sort of 'Download token/ticket/voucher'. Other online aspects of the Wii may be changed as well. And of course, it will probably attempt to disable some homebrew. My guess is that bannerbomb is next on the chopping block.

But why do I think all of this? Well, the signs are obvious actually.

First, Nintendo gives away a free channel to platinum club Nintendo members. People who were awarded the channel were told that they would not be able to download it until November. Now most recently, people who paid for the internet channel are granted a free NES game. However, they will not be able to download it until late October.

The reasons for the these belated downloads aren't that the awarded content doesn't exist. It's that the functionality for the shop channel to accept or redeem these downloads doesn't exist.

This leads me to believe that a Wii update will come that ads this functionality to the Wii Shop Channel. And since Nintendo's revitalizing their online component again, we will probably see other changes as well like a new category of games to download from the Wii Shop Channel. (Wiiware "Miniis" or a new virtual console console anyone?)

Nintendo has also made strong statements this month that they're stepping up their fight against piracy (which also means homebrew and hacking in general) so we should probably feel a little intimidated. With Bannerbomb being the most common exploit, it's probably going to be the next piece of homebrew to go.

Anyways, this article is pure speculation and my "signs" in the "stars" I'm seeing may very well not come true. So yes, you just wasted your time reading a speculatory rumor mongering rant.

A Simple Explanation of what System Menu 4.1 is for Wii Homebrewers

What it is:

Wii System Menu 4.1 is the exact same as System Menu 4.0 except that there is a bug fix (presumably in the system menu) for Wii Sports Resort. The bug fix corrects the issue of forcing players to watch a video about how to plug in Wii Motion Plus (IMO, it's the same as plugging in the nunchuk :-P) every time they start the game after using a channel in the SD Menu.

What this means for Wii Homebrewers/Hackers:

• Preloader currently doesn't work on 4.1 This has been fixed by homebrewers/hackers
• Themes no longer work
• Copy protected save files moved to the SD Card before updating cannot be moved back to the Wii (Use Waninko's Save Manager to counter this)

So should Homebrewers/Hackers Update?

If you're on 4.0, and the things above don't bother you, then I honestly don't see a reason not to update. Especially if you're planning on picking up Wii Sports Resort. If you've never upgraded to 4.0 yet, there's really no reason to now. Just use GeckoOS to launch Wii Sports Resort if you buy it to continue to avoid updating.

Wii/DS Friend Codes Archive

I'd like to try to get some sort of a biweekly or monthly "Nintendo WiFi Game Night" set up for readers of my blog and myself to kick back and have a little fun. The first step though, is to have an archive of the friend codes of everyone who would like to participate. So please post as many of your friend codes as you can in comments and I will add them to this post.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

• Arikado - 1590-9179-2409

Mario Kart Wii

• Arikado - 1934-5158-0687

Mario Kart DS

• Arikado - 502573-760316

Tetris DS

• Arikado - 281687-337150
  

Recovering the Homebrew Channel with Bannerbomb

Many of you accidentally lost the Homebrew Channel after updating your Wii to firmware 4.0 You lost the Homebrew Channel because you accidentally deleted it, or because you placed it on your SD Card only to realize that you were unable to launch the Homebrew Channel or move it back to your Wii from your SD Card. This blog post will show how to recover your no longer doomed Homebrew Channel. At least 75% of you reading this will be able to get at least one of these methods to work.

The first thing to do is to download Bannerbomb. It can be downloaded by clicking here.

Recovering a deleted Homebrew Channel

This is pretty simple to do. Just launch the 3.4 Homebrew Channel Installer (it can be found here) with Bannerbomb. For most of you, this will reinstall the Homebrew Channel on the System Menu of your 4.0 Wii.

Recovering the Homebrew Channel from your SD Card

To do this, you must patch your Wii's IOS 60. There are a couple of methods you can try to do this:

1)Run WiiSCU with Bannerbomb and tell it to install a patched version of IOS 60 (AKA IOS 60 +Trucha).

2)Download my patched IOS 60 WAD and install it by running WAD Manager with Bannerbomb.

After patching IOS 60, you'll be able to run the HBC from the SD Card Menu and you'll also be able to move it back to the Wii System Menu.


Hopefully, at least one of the methods listed above will recover your Homebrew Channel. Again, for most people, they will work. I know a number of people who have had success with these methods. Good Luck :D

(If you were able to successfully recover the Homebrew Channel thanks to the methods listed in this post, please pass around the link of the this post so that others may be able to do the same as well. And, if you're feeling generous, donate a little money ;) )

Comex's Exploit (AKA Bannerbomb)

Hm. A quick read through forums related to Wii Hacking or Homebrew anywhere shows repeating topics. "When will it be done?", "Where is it?", "Is it real?", "I said where is it?".

Hopefully this post will enlighten you and clear the air of ubiquitous rumors, speculation, and unreasonable hate toward Comex.

First, I wonder if any of you even know what an exploit is? On the Wii, an exploit is a file or program that crashes the Wii, and then loads and runs unsigned code. Unsigned code is basically our code. Its those boot.dol and boot.elf files. To give you an example of an exploit, lets look at the Twilight Hack. It was a save file that crashed the Wii and then loaded and ran a boot.dol or boot.elf file in the root of your SD card.

In case you haven't realized yet, Bannerbomb is only an exploit. It loads a corrupted banner, crashing the Wii, and then loads a boot.dol or boot.elf file off of your SD card. On its own, it will not install the Homebrew Channel. The unsigned code that it runs will have to do that. Who will have to write that unsigned code then? Most likely, it will end up being Team Twiizers again.

So with all of this in mind, exactly when will Bannerbomb be released? While I don't know for sure, (I'm not Comex after all :P) I do know that it would be pointless to release Bannerbomb now. Sure you could all use it to play Wii Shooting Gallery and WiiBreaker again, but it would be annoying to have to crash the Wii everytime you want to run a piece of code. So I'm sure Comex will release Bannerbomb as soon as there is something worthwhile to release it for. After all, it would be fairly trivial for Nintendo to push out a new release a quick firmware update disabling Bannerbomb soon after it is released. So you might as well use it to install Bootmii or the Homebrew Channel before you lose the ability to use it at all.