Topic: Wii Homebrew Channel

[shammack]

The Homebrew Channel has been released; allows you to easily run stuff from your SD card without having to rearrange your files and do the Twilight Princess trick every time, and has quite a nice interface.

I have to wonder, though, about the wisdom of making a special channel for this that shows up in your play history and everything.  We know Nintendo is spying on us; seems like calling attention to it like that will only expedite their attempts to disable it.

But that didn't stop me from trying it out.  Finally I can accomplish my lifelong dream of playing SCUMM games with the Wiimote.

[BranDonk Kong]

I have it installed on my Wii. The only bad thing is, currently, since you install it via a .elf, there's no WAD to use an uninstaller for. I don't have any of the pirated WiiWare or VC games (VC is useless now, FCEU Wii and SNES9x are amazing), just homebrew.

[NWR_insanolord]

Game emulation and ROMs is off limits in these forums.

~Pale

[BranDonk Kong]

Game emulation and ROMs is off limits in these forums.

~Pale

[BranDonk Kong]

This thread in general has tons of apps, with nice icons and descriptions, for use with the Wii Homebrew Channel. Keep in mind for most apps that use the Wiimote, you have to wait about 10 seconds after opening the program, then press 1+2 on the Wiimote to enable it. It's instant on the HBC itself, however.

[Morari]

I had just finished reading about this on Slashdot. Now if only I had a modchip or Zelda to install and try this out with. I have been thinking hard about those Argon modchips...

[BranDonk Kong]

No need for a modchip, there's even (free) homebrew for booting out-of-region games. You can boot any Gamecube or Wii homebrew without a chip now. Also, you can just rent Zelda, since you only need to run the exploit one time.

[DAaaMan64]

This interests me, but only cause I'm a nerd for teh hax. I'm not sure exactly what this would get me besides emu.  Which I don't care about.

[NWR_insanolord]

I was all set to do this but now I'm scared of this screwing up my Wii. If I want to play Genesis games I should probably just get a PSP, if I screw that up it won't be that big of a deal.

[BranDonk Kong]

There's pretty much zero chance of messing up your Wii if you just use the Homebrew Channel and go from there, also, one of the creators (I believe) named bushing has made a disc to fix bricked Wiis, though you may need a modchip for that. It's pretty basic stuff though.

[NWR_insanolord]

I'm still considering it. I'll probably wait until the Wii Genesis emulator allows for saving games.

[Pale]

Hey guys.  Homebrew talk I'll let slide, but direct discussion of ROMs is off limits.  So please be careful so I don't have to lock this thread.

[Spak-Spang]

The only thing I would be worried about with a program like this is Nintendo figuring out a means of blocking it...or even bricking a system that installed the channel.  It is one thing to use an exploit of Twilight Princess that but another to actually install a channel that Nintendo may be able to moniter and determine a means to block the application or brick the actual Wii.

I also do not personally support pirating of any kind, and even an innocent type that helps Wii functionality has its darker side already being mentioned here with downloading (stealing) ROMS. 

[shammack]

I'm pretty disappointed with the applications available so far, to be honest... it seems to be pretty much just emulators.  I was hoping to see some cool applications of the Wiimote... but I guess people would rather just write PC software for that stuff, since the hardware of the Wii console isn't anything special.

[ATimson]

I'm pretty disappointed with the applications available so far, to be honest... it seems to be pretty much just emulators.  I was hoping to see some cool applications of the Wiimote... but I guess people would rather just write PC software for that stuff, since the hardware of the Wii console isn't anything special.

I'm not entirely sure that they've got Wii-side access to the fun Wiimote bits (accelerometers, pointer) yet; they probably have to go through the Wii's OS for that, whereas there's a well-documented driver PC-side for it (GlovePIE).

[stevey]

I'm pretty disappointed with the applications available so far, to be honest... it seems to be pretty much just emulators.  I was hoping to see some cool applications of the Wiimote... but I guess people would rather just write PC software for that stuff, since the hardware of the Wii console isn't anything special.

I'm not entirely sure that they've got Wii-side access to the fun Wiimote bits (accelerometers, pointer) yet; they probably have to go through the Wii's OS for that, whereas there's a well-documented driver PC-side for it (GlovePIE).

No they had that from the very start (thread), it going to take some time before there something cool on it though.....

I just wish they didn't go over board and just named the channel data "other" so logs of it wouldn't be sent to Nintendo channel and get hidden with cube games, anyone have any ideas how to change it??

[animecyberrat]

so the first time I had any noticeable problems with my PC was immediately after I clicked on that link, any body else have any problems after clicking the link? Just trying to solve a major problem that started yesterday thanks bye.

[BranDonk Kong]

As long as we don't discuss where to get ROMs, it's all good, right? There's lots of non-emulation stuff, like Wii Linux (very, very early), MFE (media center program), Wii Paint (basically a demo), I believe a port of Quake (might be 2 or 3), and quite a bit more. It's hard to find a site that focuses on all of the homebrew stuff, it's usually one thing or the other. Nintendo can potentially block this from working, but they certainly will not brick your Wii (they even repair Wiis with modchips in them that have the SSBB problems, for free, and send you back your chip [and a note telling you that you're a dirty pirate], with a new DVD-ROM). Most of this stuff is available do to something call the Trucha Signer, which allows you to sign content with a bugged "common key" so it will run on the Wii without modification. If homebrew using Trucha ever does get blocked, then it's 100% Datel's fault (boycott this company), because they used the Trucha exploit for the Wii FreeLoader.

[Mario]

Datel let me play Brawl months before release here (it STILL isn't out) so I love them no matter what.

[BranDonk Kong]

You could have done that without Datel's help though. Datel has always cheated their way onto game consoles. They've never been officially licensed to sell products on any console (I believe), and would use the boot sectors from retail games to boot their discs, from what I've read at least. Crazy Taxi was commonly used for PS2 and Gamecube Action Replay discs.

[BranDonk Kong]

USB support is on it's way. This guy named Sven has been working on it for a while, and now he's releasing the code so other authors can incorporate it in their own homebrew programs. It's only USB 1.1 support, but it's a limitation of the IOS on the Wii, not because of his code. This is great for people who want to use the Wii as a media center (I do, then I can throw my Xbox in my car, though it does upscale DVDs beautifully). Anyone, there's quite a bit of techno-mumbo-jumbo, but it's good news. Note: this has absolutely nothing to do with loading ISOs or anything like that, and hopefully it stays that way.

http://svenpeter.blogspot.com/

[Pale]

Would it be theoretically possible to write a homebrew app that loaded channels off an SD card?

Say you made a channel that "claimed" like 300 blocks of the Wii's internal memory.  You click on that channel.  It loads a list of the channels stored on your SD card.  You pick one of those channels, and the homebrew app automatically clears its 300 blocks, copies the chosen channel to the wii memory, then prompts it to fire up.

Obviously, this wouldn't be super fast, but I bet a lot of people would appreciate it as it would be more convenient than copying it yourself.

Heck, you could make different versions of this channel that "claim" different amounts of memory tied to the max size of a particular type of VC game.  Put a pretty graphic on it to represent the system, and we'd even get the organization we'd be wanting.

In my experience, the time sink of copying channels happens when copying TO the SD card.  This system could always leave a copy of the game on the SD card so that step would be gone.

Hell, why doesn't Nintendo implement this?

[animecyberrat]

or you could just keep all your games on the SD card to begin with, and only copy them one at a time as you play them.

[ATimson]

In my experience, the time sink of copying channels happens when copying TO the SD card.  This system could always leave a copy of the game on the SD card so that step would be gone.

It seems to me that it's pretty much the same amount of time both ways; maybe if you have a really slow-writing SD card, it'll take noticeably longer to write than to read, but my cards don't seem to.

Nintendo probably doesn't implement it because they don't want people bitching about how long decryption load times are.

[animecyberrat]

A channel like what Pale is describing would be best left up to Nintendo themselves.