Dsbomb's News, Views, and Shoes

Building a GC/Wii Development Setup

2009-01-14T21:51:00.004-06:00

I have been working on a set of detailed instructions for setting up a development environment for the Gamecube and Wii. One of the main goals I have for this is to be able to compile each library from its source, rather than just extracting an archive full of prebuilt libraries. This will protect the libraries from possible extinction should the original people who port them to the GC/Wii stop. As well, should newer versions of the original library (like libpng for example) become available, it will then be quite easy for anybody to be able to build them again.

You can view the work in-progress via Google Docs. There are instructions for both Linux and Windows. Give it a walk through and let me know if it works for you, or if there are other libraries you can think should be included. It isn't complete yet, but I hope to have it ready to compile the more popular apps (like the various emulators) soon.

Downtime

2008-06-01T05:02:00.002-05:00

To let you all know, I am preparing for some death in the family, so I have been unable to dedicate much time lately to coding. Hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will be able to return to improve these apps.

FCEUGx News

2008-05-15T07:35:00.004-05:00

Okay, since FCEU v1.0.9 was set out in the wild, I've resolved some bugs, added some features, etc. You know, all the usual stuff to make it better and betterer.

First, was a bit of a show stopper, as the emulator didn't even load the files you attempted to load. It went through the motions, but didn't quite finish. So, that was the first thing I had to fix (r8).
Then I found that ZIP reading files from the DVD (in Gamecube mode) wasn't quite working. So I had to quash that bug (r9). To round out the first round of fixes, I borrowed the memory card mounting routine from Crunchy2's Snes9xGx v2.0.1b8 (r10). Hopefully that will help many people that had trouble using their memory cards. If not, remove and reinsert your card and try again.

After a bit of a break to solve Zelda again, I continued to port some of the changes I made to Snes9xGX to this emulator. The list of changes include WiiSD support (r12, r13, r14, r16), a potential fix for those EU folks who need the video to be set to 60Hz (r15), work on easing translation to other languages (r19, r20, r21, volunteer translators needed, by the way), and bringing the VFAT library to the WiiSD card for long filenames.

The last thing I have worked on has been an effort to save and load the various settings in the emulator to any of the devices. For now, when the emulator first starts, it will attempt to load the settings from SD Gecko in Slot A for Gamecube mode or the WiiSD in Wii mode.

That catches me up with the present. The DevkitPro folks have been working towards a newer release of the devkit and libOGC with better Wiimote and WiiSD support. I hope to have one more release of these two emulators before that so I can dedicate more time to added these new features.

Snes9xGx News

2008-05-11T19:35:00.005-05:00

I wanted to post an update to my work on the Snes9x and FCEU emulators for the Wii/Gamecube. First, I'll go over what's been changed in Snes9xGx.

Since Snes9xGx v0.1.1 was released, I fixed some simple oversights in my code. For instance, when you choose to save SRAM or save states to to a GC Memory Card, you shouldn't really be able to choose the WiiSD as your slot (r38).

Then I implemented some crude work to make translating various phrases in the emulator into languages besides English (r41 and r49). I have some documentation on it at the project's main page. With help from other users, we can provide the emulator in Spanish, German, and Dutch. Speaking of documentation, if anyone out there want to lend a hand, just drop me a line. Any help is much appreciated.

The last big update I did was importing the VFAT library from eke-eke's GenPlus project to Snes9x (r62). So, now you can view the long filenames for ROMs in the WiiSD slot. This library only supports reading, so writing (ie SRAM or save states) are still limited to the 8.3 filename format.

Askot has been working a few things for the emulator as well. He finished up the code to automatically save and load the SRAM (r64). The way it works now is it will load the SRAM after you load a ROM image. Then it will save the SRAM (if the game uses it) when you exit the emulator and return to the main menu. It uses the currently chosen device and slot from the save manager menus. You may want to go into those menus and assign the proper device, then hit B (or select "Return to Previous"), before loading the ROM.

That wraps up this update. There is a lot more work to do, of course. A number of people have coded in some support for the Wiimote and Classic Controller. I need to review some of them, and come up with the best way to implement them. I want a better controller configuration screen for selecting what device and buttons you want to use, which will take quite a bit of work. Hopefully I'll get to it one day soon...

Update to the GC DAT

2008-02-10T18:48:00.000-06:00

Well, I was able to put some more touches on the DAT file today. Now I have a working initial version for anyone to try out. Download the zip, and import it into OfflineList. There are CRCs available for a number of US released games, so it should pick up some of those just fine. I need any help locating the info for the other regions, of course. Drop a comment below if there's any problems, questions, adoration, etc.

Gamecube DAT File

2008-02-10T09:35:00.001-06:00

After failing to find any reasonable alternatives, I have started some work on a Gamecube DAT file for OfflineList. Although at this stage it is not quite usable, I have loaded it with a few CRCs and such. I have a spreadsheet available for viewing at Google Docs with the data.

The next step will be to convert all this to OfflineList's DAT XML format. I need to search around a bit more to see if I can find all the details OL uses in their file (things like a list of location numbers, languages, etc). I will also be looking for anyone that can help in testing, verifying, etc. of the data. My GCM tool can spit out most of the needed information from the ISO. Drop me a line if you are interested in either using or helping me with this little project.

GCM Tool

2008-02-10T09:15:00.000-06:00

I've opened this blog to keep news on the various projects I am working on.

First up is my command-line tool, GCM. It will display information from a Gamecube image. It will also allow you to shrink the image to the smallest necessary size, while still allowing it to play fully on a Gamecube or Wii (similar to GCMUtility). You can check out the latest source from SVN at Google Code. I have started implementing the ability to extract files from Gamecube images. It isn't yet in a finished state, but you can experiment with it.

I have found one game that GCMUtility fails to shrink properly. With Super Monkey Ball, it does not reassign the bootfile offset to it's new location when shrinking. So, you end up unable to play it. Thus far, I haven't run into any games that my GCM tool fails to run. If there is any, I'd sure like to know!