[Mr_Alert]

I'm working on porting MegaZeux to the Wii. So far I have basic platform support and a text console renderer (using the text console from libogc.)




SVN source code diff for anybody interested

This post has been edited by Mr_Alert: 11 June 2008 - 11:30 AM

[ajs]

Great start, it's amazing how little code was necessary to get it that far. Keep us posted wrt the renderer.

--ajs.

[Exophase]

So you can easily get a text console for a gaming platform but you can't as easily get a >= 640x350 framebuffer?

[Nightwatch]

Exophase, on Jun 11 2008, 08:25 PM, said:

So you can easily get a text console for a gaming platform but you can't as easily get a >= 640x350 framebuffer?

Probably easier to use a text mode library for tiles (at least as an early prototype) than it would be to write a tile engine yourself or port SDL.

Kudos to the OP, by the way

[Mr_Alert]

Alright, here's your framebuffer renderer. This is also temporary though since I want to use hardware acceleration for rendering, as well as scaling so that it fits in the TV safe area.




Also, the Wii's framebuffer is in YUY2 format, so I had to pull some code from the YUV renderer.

Source code diff

[Spectere]

Yikes. Nice work, Mr_Alert!

What kind of control style is currently in place?

[Nightwatch]

Hmm, what's with the color bleed? Is that a photo of the screen or is it something with the scaling or...?

[Exophase]

Nightwatch, on Jun 11 2008, 03:43 PM, said:

Probably easier to use a text mode library for tiles (at least as an early prototype) than it would be to write a tile engine yourself or port SDL.

Kudos to the OP, by the way

MZX has software renderers that just draw to a framebuffer, nothing that uses SDL's tile blitting (which wouldn't work for it).

[Mr_Alert]

Nightwatch, on Jun 11 2008, 05:32 PM, said:

Hmm, what's with the color bleed? Is that a photo of the screen or is it something with the scaling or...?

It's an NTSC signal, so the colors get weird at the edges. I take screenshots using a digital camcorder directly connected to the Wii.

[Mr_Alert]

Wii binary package (debug build)
Source package

Finally coded most of the input handling code, so here's an alpha release. It supports the Wiimote with the Nunchuk, Classic Controller, or even the Guitar Hero 3 controller. It also supports the GameCube controller, and USB keyboards. See pad.config for information regarding the key mappings (default mappings only for first Wiimote without extension controller and first GameCube controller.)

To do:

• Support analog sticks on extension and GameCube controllers
  
• Do text conversion on keyboard input for typing (currently shift, capslock, etc. don't work)
  
• Audio support
  
• Hardware-accelerated scaled video renderer
  
• On-screen keyboard?
  
• Various little things

Known bugs:

• Typing is a bit sluggish for some reason
  
• MegaZeux crashes immediately on opening help
  
• Save files are corrupted

EDIT: Be sure to back up any important data off of your SD card, since there's been evidence of filesystem corruption resulting from saving games.

This post has been edited by Mr_Alert: 14 June 2008 - 10:53 AM

[ajs]

It's funny because Kev had a similar issue with SAV file corruption in the NDS port. I guess this is a libfat bug. Actually a change went into the save_world function to work around it, but maybe it doesn't work for Wii.

--ajs.

[weasel]

Uh-oh, looks like we've got some bad news on this front...considering how forward Nintendo is about their firmware updates, who knows how long it's going to be before the Wii community comes up with a way to run homebrew on the system (short of totally unplugging it from the internet and simply not buying any more games for the thing)...

[Spectere]

Not so much, weasel. This is just like the PSP hacks in a way -- namely, the Lumines save exploit -- only a bit less volatile. All this does is provide an OS workaround for the save file exploit. Other games will be exploited, no doubt about it, not to mention that one can always throw a mod chip in the works (which, in the case of the Wii, is ludicrously cheap and easy to install).

Also, if you've already installed the Homebrew Channel, you're in the clear.

Edit: Yikes, I just read that Nintendo prevented users from using edited save files, period. Bullshit, much? Sony didn't even take that absurd of an approach to fixing their issues. If Nintendo thinks that's going to help the situation they clearly don't know who they're dealing with.

This post has been edited by Spectere: 17 June 2008 - 05:08 AM

[Mr_Alert]

PWND

Wii binary package
Source package

Coded text conversion and audio, and fixed a few things in the process. For some reason, the help system works now, even though I didn't do anything with it, really.

To do:

• Support analog sticks on extension and GameCube controllers
  
• Hardware-accelerated scaled video renderer
  
• On-screen keyboard?
  
• Various little things

Known bugs:

• Save files may still be corrupted
  
• Some file accesses may be off (saw some glitchyness in the Phoenix Wright-type scene in Guy's Last Game)

EDIT: You'll need to set the sampling rate to either 32000 or 48000 as those are the only ones supported by the Wii's hardware.

This post has been edited by Mr_Alert: 17 June 2008 - 02:07 PM

[Pyro1588]

does the wii have anything like the psp's custom firmwares?

[Spectere]

Mr_Alert, on Jun 17 2008, 09:08 AM, said:

PWND

Timed out. =(

wotsit say?

Pyro1588, on Jun 17 2008, 10:14 AM, said:

does the wii have anything like the psp's custom firmwares?

Negative, cap'n.

[Old-Sckool]

Spectere, on Jun 17 2008, 10:33 AM, said:

Timed out. =(

wotsit say?

Quote

[Nintendo] wrote a special-purpose function to try to check for the exact exploit we used — specifically, if a savegame is for Zelda, it checks the length of 6 strings inside the savefile (two of which are the player name and horse name). It repeats this check for all 3 saveslots, and then another three times for all 3 backup slots.

....

Congrats to tmbinc and tehpola for finding a combination of two bugs in the code that Nintendo added that — when combined — allow us to fool their check into ignoring the TP hack. More info will be forthcoming — I still wouldn’t rush to update my system, anyway.

There's more in there, but I can only half understand it =p

This post has been edited by Old-Sckool: 19 June 2008 - 06:14 PM

[Spectere]

Haha, that was awesome. Can't keep the homebrewers down!

I'm kind of surprised that Nintendo didn't try for a more generic fix, though. The Lumines and GTA:LCS exploits for the PSP were similar and Sony's fixes for them were pretty heavy-handed. From what I understand they didn't need to wipe the saved game, they just prevented the issue from occurring. Strange how Nintendo didn't do something like that.

[ajs]

Unnecessary firmware updates scare vendors because they could end up accidentally bricking millions of machines. This kind of downer massively outweighs the "advantages" of blocking homebrew. My guess is that Nintendo went for the smallest specific fix they could to minimise the risk.

--ajs.

[Mr_Alert]

It's a start.

[Mr_Alert]

Wii binary package
Source package
Source diff from SVN r781

The GX renderer's been more or less done for around a week now, but I've run into a bug where it freezes at startup (sometimes before it even has the chance to clear the framebuffer) or at the first load dialog under certain circumstances (such as Wiimote syncing.) I've had a lot of trouble debugging it, but by the looks of it, it could be timing and/or environment-related as adding a half-second delay helped fix it and it sometimes (very rarely) freezes at startup before even clearing the screen. In any case, if MegaZeux freezes for whatever reason, you can press the reset button on the Wii to force it to exit. I've also added analog stick support as well as default mappings for all supported controllers (with quite a few duplicate mappings though.)

To do:

• On screen keyboard?

Known bugs:

• Manually saving games result in (possibly filesystem) corruption
  
• Audio will not work unless sample rate is explicitly set to either 32000 or 48000
  
• GX renderer freezes under certain circumstances

[Spectere]

And, naturally, I left the power brick for my Wii in my Rock Band box, which is not at my house right now. D:

After I get my Wii all hooked up I can help out with testing. Anything I should know before running it?

[Revvy]

So I have several friends in residence with Wiis, and I might be able to convince them to let me try this out. What's required to make it run from a vanilla Wii setup?

[weasel]

I would like to know as well. Also, does MZX Wii support USB keyboards?

[Spectere]

To do the Twilight hack softmod method all you need is a copy of Twilight Princess and an SD card.

It literally only takes five minutes to do everything.

[Mr_Alert]

The Wii port supports the Wiimote with Nunchuk, Classic Controller, and Guitar Hero 3 extension controllers, the GameCube controller, and USB keyboards. It also uses the first Wiimote as a mouse, with the A and B buttons being left and right click respectively. However, it only uses those buttons as mouse buttons while the Wiimote is pointed at the screen, otherwise they're just mapped as specified in pad.config.

[ajs]

Mr_Alert committed the changes to SVN trunk, so this will also be shipped in future versions (as of 2.82b).

--ajs.

[T-Bone]

This is quite the interesting project and I'd love to see how it goes.

[djtiesto]

Yeah, a working MZX port to Wii will certainly be more interesting than anything Nintendo showed at this year's E3...

[nooodl]

I'm sorry for bumping this (it's not that old), but, how is progress on this, and will this work with a PAL version of a Wii?