Sunday, February 4, 2007

The WiiMux-WiiLi Situation

WiiLi has been standing as the primary source of information regarding the link between the Nintendo Wii and the GNU/Linux operating system. Unfortunately, there has been a lack of results. I am a channel operator on #wiili on the Freenode IRC channel and have watched weeks of nothing more than GlovePIE confusion and questions about an actual release from anticipated supporters. Hernick (author of WMD, python Wiimote linux driver) and myself spoke with Tuxido (founder of WiiLi) about delegating access to the server to allow for a few necessary changes.

  • Trac -- For their ticketing system and a cleaner WiKI
  • Subversion -- (Will get into that in a moment)
  • Ability to perform general maintenance (Tuxido was often gone for weeks at a time and critical changes have need to be performed)
We spoke to him on the phone via 3way and although he seemed like a great guy, he was very reluctant to distribute any amounts of power to our users. Hernick and I decided to produce WiiMux, an actual product. WiiMux is a distribution of software, libraries, and drivers all bundled into a Linux LiveCD that will allow interoperability between the Wiimote and the PC. (These are the preliminary steps before being able to produce an actual distribution for the Wii). We gained many supporters including those who administrate the forums and IRC channel for WiiLi. We were NOT intending to break away from WiiLi, in fact the name was originally "WiiLi WiiMux". Although Tuxido had nothing to say initially, he still slacked on giving out access to anyone. One time, he read logs where I (Triforce) had made some comments on his handling of the WiiLi project and he banned me from WiiLi.org. Afterwards banning some of WiiLi's top contributers for their simple aggravation with him. It has become almost a dictatorship, where we must sit back and wonder where our donation money has gone, where our leader has gone, and where his sense of judgement has gone! He is trying to declare WiiMux a rival group when all we are doing is producing something that WiiLi is not caring about! We run WiiMux differently, for instance, we delegate power freely, those with merit WILL receive the access they desire. We have meetings, utilizing Jabber VoIP and Gobby collabrative text editing sessions. We get our community involved! It seems as if WiiLi is slowly going to diminish itself to nothing more than an information hub with a database of Windows GlovePIE scripts, but we will move on. I have extended my hand in peace to Tuxido many times! It seems that he has lost his sense of judgement. We all have one common and unifying goal in this community and that is Linux on the Wii! He is banning top contributers and people with potential and great ideas! If you want to come be a part of us, come forward and send any of us an e-mail, reply to this post, join the IRC channel (irc.freenode.net and #wiimux), or meet us on Jabber (triforce.wiimux@gmail.com). Lets do something people, lets produce an actual product!

What is WiiMux?
http://wiimux.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=6

How can I join?
http://www.wiimux.org/forums
irc.freenode.net - #wiimux
triforce.wiimux@gmail.com
Reply to this post.

Thank you.
-Triforce-

Thursday, January 11, 2007

NDS Video Conversion Script for Linux

I have written a simple script utilizing FFMPEG and DPGCONV in order to convert video files (includes FLV flash files) to the DPG format for playback on the Nintendo DS (using a flash cartridge).

Downloads:
DPG Conversion Script ALPHA (Linux)

Sunday, January 7, 2007

TriforceHacks.com Coming Soon...

Starting tonight the domain triforcehacks.com will forward to this blog. It will be the home of my new website dedicated to console modification, hacking, and reverse engineering as well as a continuation of this blog. Stay tuned for more information.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Commodore 64 Emulator for DS

FrodoDS is an amazing emulator for the DS, plays my Maniac Mansion and Boulderdash flawlessly, it requires you fetch a few utilities together to compile and inject your roms. I simply bundled everything needed together and made a ZIP file with all you need.

Downloads:
FrodoDS Complete

[UPDATE #1 This is just the first of many emulators I am bundling together for the utlimate DS Emu pack based off my experience with them all using the M3 Lite Professional, which I assume will be the same for most flash carts unless there are specific builds. I also am considering bundling all together with a neat frontend to handle all your injections and what not, been a while since I fired up that Visual Basic 6 Pro but if anybody else wants to go ahead and help me out, contact me at wii@nathanix.com. Thank you!]

Gamecube/Wii Disc ISO Unscrambler

Chilean engineering student Victor Muñoz has released a Wii ISO Unscrambler.

Using the below tool, we are able to decrypt and unscramble raw Wii ISO images, although there is no method at the moment to dump them. Nevertheless, a great step in the homebrew movement. Hopefully, the ISO structure will be deciphered in enough time to really take advantage of this amazing system. Enjoi!

Downloads:
GC/Wii Unscrambler

My Post-Christmas DS Search!

Unfortunately a few weeks ago I had my DS Lite stolen from me (Yeah, high school students can be cruel and deserving of a slow and painful death). So, after receiving my Christmas money decided to purchase a new DS Lite. I search high and low around Central New Jersey in search for that pearl white box of heaven.

Stores I Searched:

  • Best Buy (2)
  • Target (1)
  • Gamestop (5)
  • Walmart (2)
  • EBGames (2)
  • Planet-X (1)
  • Sears (1)
  • FYE (2)
  • Sam Goody (1)
Okay, that was simply so you can see the dedication I committed to finding this darn thing! So after all of that, I decided to pull over and have a drink (non-alchoholic, still 17 .. damn), much to my surprise sitting on a shelf behind the counter of the customer service area in a Shoprite, a brand new pearl white DS Lite. I was shocked but quickly shuffled the $130 onto the counter and ended my four and a half hour search for this beautiful console. Que Loco!

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Secret of Monkey Island: DS

Well, the subject may be a little misleading as it isn't an actual release of the classic DOS adventure game. Although, you can play it on your DS with the correct hardware using ScummVM DS. The problem is that The Secret of Monkey Island clocks in around ~34mb while the limit on ScummVM DS is 30mb, so I (according to the tutorial) converted the audio files to the specified format and combined it all together into one need ~19mb package readily playable. My test ran perfect.

My Setup:
Nintendo DS Lite
M3 Lite Professional w/ 512mb SanDisk Micro SD
ScummVM v0.9.1 beta6: Get it here
Secret of Monkey Island: Here <--My patched up version.

Thats all, enjoy!

[Update #1: If I am violating any laws by distributing the above game, please notify me at wii@nathanix.com and I will make sure to remove the file as soon as possible.]