Author Topic: Neighbors in Namforth - Part 1  (Read 2094 times)

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Offline NdIGiTy

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Neighbors in Namforth - Part 1
« on: August 08, 2012, 12:54:06 PM »

I'm a former resident. He's never played. Now we're sharing a town.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/31261

*Insert town name here*, where everybody knows your name.

Or at least they do once you’ve made the rounds, introduced yourself, and experienced each, uh, creature’s eccentricities. Animal Crossing’s weird that way.

That plain-faced quirk and community-driven design is also what makes the game so appealing, at least to me. I realized this a while ago, when I started contemplating the eventual 3DS entry, and how the shiny new system in my hands would make a great platform for another jump into that second, more colorful life.

Around the same time, I came across a blog set up by game/tech writer Wesley Fenlon. In it, he proposes and carries out a shockingly simple plan to play Animal Cross: City Folk with a few far-flung friends using the file sharing service Dropbox and the GameCube/Wii emulator Dolphin.

Huh, I thought. I bet I could do that, and I could stand to play that charmed little life again. But alongside whom?

Scott was more than willing to satisfy my curiosity (and some of his own, I suspect), and after working out the logistics, we were ready. Our plan: Following this post, we’ll have three other updates—one each to talk about our individual experiences in the game, and a collaborative final discussion on our time in the town, its repercussions, and any stray thoughts.

I was the first to get off the train at the station in Namforth (an abbreviated allusion to our first little game project/introduction to each other). It’s a nice place, with a pleasant stream cutting through the midsection, a quaint island south of our houses, and all the debt you could ever want.

I think I’ll like it here (again).

Scott:

So, I have absolutely no experience with Animal Crossing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I saw my cousin play the original game once for about five minutes.

“So, you just, like, do chores?” I wondered aloud.

“No!” he exclaimed, before hurriedly saving and removing the little disc from the console.

So, yeah, I’m going into this blind, with no real expectations. I’m intrigued by the possibility of sharing a town with Nate. I want to see what little things I can do to muck about and make Nate shake his head in disappointment each time he plays. My ultimate goal is for him to present Tom Nook with the evidence necessary to not only evict me from my home, but to banish me from Namforth all together.

But honestly, I’ll probably just end up fishing a lot.

The How-To

Running and sharing a town in Animal Crossing isn’t terribly difficult. The game itself runs smoothly in the emulator. The only necessary tweak involves changing the location of the memory card file to a shared folder in Dropbox, so both players can read from and write to it in the game.

Running Animal Crossing on the Dolphin emulator is great, but unless you have a PC gamepad, you are left to use your keyboard to complete Tom Nook’s chores for you, which is a real… well, you get it. Dolphin does offer the ability to use an actual Wii Remote and all of its accessories to play games, but, much like playing a GameCube game on an actual Wii, they can’t be used to play GameCube games. But people much smarter than you or I have figured out a solution that will allow you to use your Classic Controller to play GameCube games.

First, you’ll need to buy a USB Bluetooth dongle. This will allow your computer to pick up the Wii Remote's signal. I walked right into my local Best Buy and found one for about $15, but I’m sure you can find one much cheaper than that online. This device alone will allow you to use your Wii Remote to play Wii games on the Dolphin, but a little more trickery is required for GameCube games.

Since your computer can’t make sense of the Wii Remote’s signal all on its own, you’ll need to install a few programs to help it fully utilize the device: PP Joy and GlovePIE. One warning about PP Joy, though: Windows 7 machines have a fit with it because it isn’t “digitally signed.” So, if you don’t already know how to install programs that aren’t signed, I recommend a quick Google search to figure it out.

PP Joy is used to create a virtual gamepad on your machine. GlovePIE then allows the Classic Controller to act as that virtual gamepad. Using this wonderful script, GlovePIE assigns each button on the Classic Controller to a button on the virtual gamepad. Voilá! Windows now understands and recognizes your Classic Controller as a virtual gamepad.

After that, it’s as simple as opening up Dolphin and mapping each GameCube controller button to the corresponding button on the Classic Controller. Plus, as a bonus, you can now use your Classic Controller outside of Dolphin to play any PC game you’d like!