Updated binaries

As you might now from the BennuGD-mobile blog, my most recent work on BennuGD has been focused on using the monolithic architecture I created for the Wii port to engineer the Android & iOS ports.
While most of the work has gone into those, the Wii port has also received all the updates from upstream BennuGD and the other day I made some test binaries just to check that the Wii code still compiles as it should.

I'm releasing these untested binaries just in case they're useful to anybody, but please be aware that they might expose bugs and eat your homework. Apart from that, they feature the latest and greatest in BennuGD featureness.

Grab the updated binaries from here.

[Update] Ups! Looks like I screwed up something with the binaries! thanks a lot to beredezebe for testing them.

Puzsion for Wii RC1 [Updated with video]

After finding the cause to the FNT load bug, today I'm pleased to finally release Puzsion RC1 for Wii.
I'm calling this RC1 because the game still needs some testing and might undergo some minor tweaking to further adapt it to the Wii but to my knowledge there are no bugs and it's perfectly playable.

Please let me know in the comments section if you find any issue with the game so that I can fix it.

Download Puzsion for Wii RC1

[Update] Cid2Mizard has created this video of the game in action:

Thanks for taking the time :) Also, I forgot to mention Hokuty and Amzg for their job in the game, all credit goes to them.

Hope you like it!

As to give you a small progress update, I'll upload a new binary version of BennuGD for Wii later today, which I'll be calling RC1.
Work on Firewhip for Wii/BennuGD in general is going great; together with the author I've squashed quite a few bugs related to the Fenix->BennuGD conversion and the game feels great in the Wii. Hopefully we'll be able to relesae it soon.

FNT loading seems to be fixed!

With quite a bit of help help from my brother, I've just found what appears to be the cause of the failure in font loading in the Wii!

I will do more testing tomorrow, but if this is really working we've killed the last standing big bug in the BennuGD port for the Wii.
Expect a RC very soon :)

PS: @beredezebe And Puzsion is working great now!!! I'll just make sure the musics are encoded at the right freq and release it in the next few days.

Beta 3 released

I've uploaded some binaries I like to call beta 3. Chnages from previous beta include:

• Proper support for the Wii Balance Board (see here for a usage example). Thanks to the guys from devkitpro for fixing this in the latest libogc 1.8.6
• Default sound frequency has been changed from 32KHz to 48KHz. Had to do it because newer versions of VLC refused to resample the audio to 32KHz. Also many popular audio programs seem to handle 48KHz sound much better than 32KHz ones. Please note that as OGG Vorbis sound playback was failing, you are now encouraged to use MP3 and module music formats instead.
• Updates from upstream Bennu. I've re-sync'ed many things from upstream BennuGD. Please note that this build corresponds to revision 146 from SVN, and not the current one (190). The changes between this versions derive from the SDL 1.3 support I added to trunk to gain iOS compatibility and I most probably broke something so latest code is not working as expected. I'll fix this soon.
• Bennu can now open websites if the user has installed the (free) Internet channel.
• Some other misc bugfixing.

Hope you enjoy the changes and the proper balance board support and sorry for changing the default sound freq. it was just needed.

You can find the binaries here.

Pixbros preview release!

It has been quite a while since I told you I was working with Pix Juegos' Pixel to bring you a preview release of Pix Bros for Wii, but it's already arrived for your gaming pleasure!

As I said earlier today, it's still a preview so be sure to understand that what we're releasing today is only a preview of the game: when the final version is released, bugs will get fixed and the game will look much prettier. It is, however, a very playable version of the game: It's running at 32bpp, with MP3 music and it will even open the designer's group website when asked to! (more on this on a later post. If you want to give it a try, give an eye to the game's code).

Today's preview does have a few limitations, though. Fonts are not working as one might expect them to, so we've released a version of the game that uses the default system font. That font is basically available for debugging purposes, so it is barely visible and looks plain wrong.
This game also showed some issues with the joystick handling routines which might be caused by the SDL port. To avoid them, only one player can play at any given time, sorry for that.
On a final note, the game seems to slow down a bit at certain points. This is caused by it running at 32bpp: looks like we hit the Wii's limit when processing graphics without its GPU. In case we can't solve this, we might have to release the final version with 16bpp mode set by default.

On the bright side of life, you'll enjoy the latest and greatest version of Pix Juegos' game, which has gone through major improvement since its last release. I can promise you the game is really, really entertaining. I've been waiting for it on the Wii for a long time :)

For the rest, the game is completely playable. I haven't finished the game (those Rarutos keep killing me...) but it seem pretty rock-solid. It's really encouraging to see that :)

Both Pix Juegos and me wish you an absurd level of fun, but remember this is only a preview and things might be broken. If that's the case, please let us know so that we can fix them.

The screen grab below shows the state of an early build of the game (it's really the same one as shown earlier). 

Get the game from here.

WIP sign for your games

When we released the EEEEK! EEEEEK! HOOOOOOK!!! preview, many people liked it and took it for what it was with bugs and all.
Many people downloaded it and found it playable to the point that some user uploaded the preview to the Homebrew Browser, the author of the game grew concerned that many people would play a pre-release version of the game that contained known bugs and featured no notification on that regard.

The final version of the game for the Wii was released a few days later with many enhancements and all the known bugs fixed, but we were left with the doubt of whether many people wouldn't upgrade from the pre-released version just because they thought it represented the overall quality of the game.

That's why, for the launch of a Pix Bros preview (coming later today) I've created a pretty straightforward sign, which can be seen below:

And here's the original SVG image. It probably won't display correctly in your browser, it works just fine with Inkscape. Feel free to add it to your projects (even if they're not Wii-related) and treat the image as public domain.

For example, here's what Pixel you'll see in Pix Bros when you download the preview:

Enough, will be back with some real news (Pix Bros pre-release, a code status update and I'll tell you how to open web addresses from your games directly in your Wii!) later today.

Preview of EEEEK! EEEEEK! HOOOOOOK!!! released for Wii

[EDIT] This is old, get the final release from here.

I've just uploaded a preview release of EEEEK! EEEEEK! HOOOOOOK!!! for the Wii to megaupload. I haven't yet uploaded it to more proper channels as there are still some annoying bugs to iron out; nothing critical, but the lasers seem to be a little bit out of control. For the rest, I believe it works pretty well.

I've modified the code a bit to detect clicking even when the Wiimote is not pointing at the screen and a remapped a few Wiimote buttons to their respective functions. Which reminds me that I should create a version of jkeys.lib specifically for the Wii :)

You can get your copy from here, and as soon as it's ready, I'll upload it to the Homebrew Channel and to the BennuGD projects page.

PS: If anyone can upload a short video/photos of the game running on his Wii, I'd be really grateful as I don't currently have the means to record the videos myself. Please post them in the comments section and I'll post them :)

Comments on Beta 2 and a refresh to the second beta.

As a first note, I'd like to comment that I've uploaded a beta 2 refresh. This is to solve a very small yet annoying bug I had missed: OS_WII was not being defined (ups!). It also includes small updates to libjoy and mod_joy coming from upstream.

As for the changes included in beta 2 with regard to beta 1, I'll highlight a few:

• Exported mod_wm symbols. These where being compiled, but I forgot to export them, so they were unusable.
• I also touched get_desktop_size() to return the size of the mode SDL has set. I wanted to have this return the Wii's native resolution for you, but this seems to not be easy as of now, so at least you've got a mode you can set_mode() to.
• I also changed the dependency map so mod_mouse and mod_wpad both now depend on libjoy. This is to ensure correct hardware initialization and to improve compatibility with newer versions of the Homebrew Channel.
• Speaking of mod_wpad, I improved it a bit. Now you can check if a particular controller has a Guitar Hero 3 guitar or a Classic Controller attached to it with:
• WPAD_INFO(int channel, WPAD_HAS_GUITAR);
• WPAD_INFO(int channel, WPAD_HAS_CLASSIC);
• A few corresponding functions has been added to query those devices:
• WPAD_INFO_CLASSIC(int channel, int info);
• WPAD_INFO_GUITAR(int channel, int info);
• info can (as of now) only retrieve the battery level from those, with the value:
• WPAD_BATT
• mod_wpad can now also report the acceleration, as read from the Nunchuk. Please remind that the Nunchuk can only read acceleration in one axis, the rest will be 0. To get those readings, use:
• WPAD_INFO_NUNCHUK(int channel, int ACCELX);
• WPAD_INFO_NUNCHUK(int channel, int ACCELY); and
• WPAD_INFO_NUNCHUK(int channel, int ACCELZ);
• We can now also read the orientation of the Wiimote (in thousandths of a degree, I must double check this is coherent with Bennu's way of doing things). This works with WPAD_INFO_NUNCHUK() too but again, the results will only be valid on certain axes. Here are the new functions:
• WPAD_INFO(int channel, int WPAD_GX);
• WPAD_INFO(int channel, int WPAD_GY); and
• WPAD_INFO(int channel, int WPAD_GZ);

I believe that's pretty much it for the changes. Bugs have been solved, and some initial work has been done on integrating more unofficial modules, namely mod_image, mod_iconv and mod_sqlite3. But that's incomplete and has not been compiled into this release.

For a real example on how to use the new mod_wpad functionality, check this examples code.

Also, mod_debug has been left out in this release just because it makes the binaries bigger and I believe it'd be a pain to try to use it in a real Wii. If you need those, please let me know and I'll send you a copy of the binaries with mod_debug integrated.

I believe that's pretty much it, as always, you can get the binaries for the beta from the google code page.

Beta 2 released!

I've just uploaded Beta 2 of the BennuGD for Wii interpreter.

More details&test version using libELM to come soon, please note there's a known endianess bug when using short data types (like BYTE others possibly affected too) in local variables. For the moment, please replace them with INT and things should work fine.

PS: I'll also upload EEEEK! EEEEEK! HOOOOOOK!!! & Puzsion for Wii soon :)

Collision, signal fixed!

Ok, I finally fixed the signal and collision bugs. At some point during the integration of mod_proc & mod_grproc, I had broken a few things. What I'm not really sure of is why signal was working before...

Both 09_mod_proc.prg and 20_mod_grproc.prg work now as expected.

Wow! I did a few things in under an hour of coding today! :)

PS: BTW, this thing is starting to look usable (if you don't take colours being broken into the account) so if you want to start porting your games to the Wii and help test the port, please get in touch with me.