(Dev Talk News) OpenBor on Wii is possible?? Now!!

[krizalid]

Hi! 

OpenBor on wii with Twilight Hack is possible next time?

[moonmaster1]

should the source code be ported to the wii, i would say yes, as every version has been modded for the systems specs. I would just hope who ever ports it doesn't brick their wii in the process. 

I saw something similar to this, the orignal beats of rage mod on the DS, i may have read it wrong but thats what i remember, is such a port of openbor possible for that system as well (as i'm getting an r4 falsh card next week for my handheld  )

i'll have to google these things some more, but bor on the wii is everything but impossible given the specs of the system.

[kbandressen]

Lol, my topic on this a few lines down has been thoroughly ignored but this one gets a reply in less than hour!  Hopefully SX can tell us if this is possible or not; I think it might be more difficult than I originally thought as there isn't a port of SDL for the Wii as of yet.

[moonmaster1]

sorry about that, i saw the topic on the main page and went at it! 

I did find the page where i saw bor for ds, as a matter of fact it was on dcemu forums and it was openbor being played on the ds and a guy had the castlevania mod running on it. unfortunately it hasn't seen an update in the past 2 years. 

I'll keep my fingers crossed anyways as the guy responsible for it has made some cool hombrew stuff for not only ds, but the dreamcast as well. 

[kungpow12345]

The best way to get OpenBoR on the Wii right now is porting it to Wii Linux. We already have the code in Linux but you would need to add some options to support the Wii Linux build so it would compile correctly and it knows where to grab the .pak files. So far MFE (Mplayer Front End) and SDL Mame have been ported to the Wii in this manner and it's compatible with the Twilight Hack. I've even been doing research on just this thing in the hopes that I can lead SX in the right direction (I've already approached him about this method once) but he's already quoted that he doesn't like porting OpenBoR to consoles he doesn't have.

It wouldn't take a lot of work to get OpenBoR working on the Wii though this method...

Now, if you're wanting to port it more natively with the GX library and all of that? ...you could do that too since Gamecube libraries already exist, but this is with devkitpro, not SDL. I'm willing to bet that this is the same library that GPF is using right now on the BoR DS build. With a few minor tweaks to that engine, you can get it ported to the Gamecube and the Wii.

*Edit - Fixed the GC Linux hyperlink, forgot about the hyphen*

[krizalid]

...hopefully in OpenBor on Wii with Twilight Hack( DON'T USE MODCHIP ).

From WAD file is theoretically possible?? 

[kungpow12345]

We have to get it ported first, then the WAD file shouldn't be too far off. 

*For those of you who don't know Wii Homebrew, the WAD file is the equivalent to a Windows Installer, but it installs apps as homebrew channels on the Wii.

[kbandressen]

From what I've heard though, the SDL Mame port on the Wii with Linux loads reaaally slowly.  I wish I knew more about what would be required to port it to the devkitpro setup; I'm pretty good with the code for controlling how entities and stuff interact, but the code for graphics and sound is beyond my abilities.

[kungpow12345]

Well, if we're going to go the GC Linux route, the main thing to be worried about first is the video. Sound would be a little harder to get ported over because of the formatting (ADPCM). Now about the pak loading and other things like that, it would be pretty easy to get it to work with the Wii's front SD loader since you initialize this in busybox. You would just need to write some more code to load from this location.

The SDL Mame port by itself is very very unoptimized. Nuvulo, the person who did the port, talked about making separate builds each optimized for the system it was trying to emulate wither it be vector games, cps-1 games, namco games(Pac-Man, Galaga), etc. The key is you gotta make sure you swap enough memory from the Audio bus to get enough ram for the games to load. The max you can get out of it would be 24mb of ram (just a tad bit more than the Dreamcast). ...but keep in mind, this is all with the GC Linux method.

I think BoR would have a much better shot optimization wise if it was ported with the full GX library and all. KB, I have a good bit of example GC/Wii code if you'd like to give it a shot. Plus, I can show you what I've done so far as far as my research for BoR Wii. Regardless, porting BoR to the Wii would be the biggest accomplishment for the lavalit team and  I can see OpenBoR's popularity jumping through the roof if this was ever done.   

[SX]

To be honest, all that is needed is an SDK for the Wii if you guys want a streamlined version of OpenBOR up and running.  Which shouldn't be hard at all if you know what your doing with the SDK.  But I've found usually running an application on top of linux, the performance is poor if the processor is not powerful enough.

[kungpow12345]

The SDK that's being widely used right now is libogc and libwii in the form of devkitpro. I mentioned the DS Build of BoR because this library set also has libraries for GBA and DS. This would be the first step to getting OpenBoR on the Wii for a more optimized setting.

A lot of DOS based programs have been ported using this library, most noticeably Quake and a long line of emulators. Tehskeen.com might be our biggest help in this affair. ^^ They're already in love with our accomplishments with the PS3 build of OpenBoR. (If I remember correctly, not alot of homebrew has been made specificially for ps3 at the  moment.)

[kbandressen]

Yeah, I've looked into libogc a bit but it would take quite a bit of research for me to get it ported.  I know it's very possible though, so I might play around with it and see if I can if I can make any progress.

[kungpow12345]

To be honest, all that is needed is an SDK for the Wii if you guys want a streamlined version of OpenBOR up and running.  Which shouldn't be hard at all if you know what your doing with the SDK.  But I've found usually running an application on top of linux, the performance is poor if the processor is not powerful enough.

You know, with the resolutions we're running for BoR mods lately, 320x240i and 640x480i (which are both supported by Gamecube and Wii), wouldn't it be so bad for a Wii Linux port of OpenBoR to use the optimization we've already set? You might be surprised.  ...the highest the Wii can go is 480i/p anyways.

[Roel]

Sound would be a little harder to get ported over because of the formatting (ADPCM).

That actually should be insanely easy. ADPCM decoding is fast, memory-efficient and very portable. That's exactly why I decided to use it in Beats of Rage.

[kungpow12345]

Sound would be a little harder to get ported over because of the formatting (ADPCM).

That actually should be insanely easy. ADPCM decoding is fast, memory-efficient and very portable. That's exactly why I decided to use it in Beats of Rage.

I don't think there's a compatible ADPCM library available in libogc yet (although there is one for wav, mp3 and ogg) but then again, I could be very wrong. Now if we're talking about GC-Linux (or in this case, Wii Linux) I think it is possible of adding "foreign" libraries to the actual application. 

I've seen this done in MFE Wii...but it looks like this was already done in the main program. That's where I'm going to have to have someone who knows Linux applications to help me fill in the gaps. I've already documented most of what we need to do programming wise to get Wii Linux running with the right amount of memory loaded and setting the path for the front SD card slot (for BoR paks, menu files, etc.) up to the point where BoR Wii loads then...I'm out of ideas ^^

I've already given my handiwork to SX so I'm hoping and praying that I've convinced him this time to port OpenBoR over to the Wii.