pembo.co.uk

TetWiis Update (part 8)

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

It works, it works, it works!!!!

Finally today after some serious debugging sessions, it now plays like Tetris should!  The blocks drop down into place, the rotate works as it should, and as a bonus, it even clears lines when they are full, keeping score whilst doing so, and detects when you hit the top of the screen and ends the game!

There’s still much to do, including

• Improve Block Graphics
• Increase level every ‘x’ number of blocks
• With level increase, increase speed of drop
• Factor scoring system so the higher the level the more score you get
• Factor scoring system so you get more points for 1/2/3/tetris(4) lines at the same time!

Expect videos/screenshots soon!

TetWiis update (Part 7)

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

So tonight I fixed some of the bugs around checking whether the squares were empty or not.

First bug was the array dimensions that hold all the squares – stupid mistake really !  Once I’d done this, and after drawing a grid on the screen, and writing to a debug log file to check, it all seems to be going pretty well, until I tried to rotate a block on the left, and it went outside the grid, then failed the isEmpty check and stopped half way up the screen! DOH!

So I now need to fix this in the isEmpty check.

Also realised I have a memory leak.  I’m still deciding what to do about it.  It exists because I create a block to move around the screen, and a block consists of 4 squares.  Once the block stops, I create a new one, and then redraw using the squares only.

I can’t decide if I delete the block before I create a new one, what this will do to the squares that belonged to that block.  In theory they should be destructed along with it, so I think I need to just keep a growing list (linked list) of all the blocks used during a game, and then delete/destruct them at game over!

Finally, I’ve added in an offset to move the gamefield over, and I’ve also put a background in place!

TetWiis Update (part 6)

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

I’ve finally run a test on the Wii now after the best part of a number of days solid coding (spread over a week)

Surprisingly, things aren’t too bad!

It seems to actually almost play like tetris.

I need to sort out the timer so that the blocks drop automatically, and I need to adjust the offset so it doesn’t start at o,0.  There also seems to be an issue with the redraw function.  I’m not sure what but I suspect it is to do with array counts/sizes.

I’ve had it crash once or twice whilst trying it, so it’s going to take some debugging to resolve all the issues, but hey – it actually works

TetWiis Update (part 5)

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

I’m finally working on the game loop/engine.

I believe all the code is done to move, rotate and drop blocks.  Drop only moves one line down and you have to hold it to make it drop, though I’d like to make up do an immediate drop – shouldn’t be difficult, just something on the todo list.

I’ve just started coding the game loop events, all of which seem to be going well so far.

I expect some pain when I come to test this!

Indiana Pwns

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

Yes – the title is right!

Team twiizers have released a new wii exploit to allow you to run homebrew on the wii.  This is useful if you haven’t been able to get bannerbomb working.

This means that right now we have, in chronological order, the following exploits

• Twilight Hack
  Has been resolved in later releases of the Wii system menu.
• Banner bomb
  Works with v4.0 and v4.1 of the Wii System menu.
• Super Smash Stack
  Beta – Only works with the US version of super smash brothers
• Indiana Pwns

Follow the links for more information and downloads.

TetWiis Update (part 4)

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

All movement code is now complete, and I’m now onto the game engine routines.

All the individual squares of the blocks get added to a 2d array so I can continually draw them.  I’ve not tested this yet and anticipate a few issues around this, but once I’ve got this bit working, I might actually have a ‘prototype’ version that actually plays tetris!

I need to sort out the game states so that there is a start screen/menu, game, paused, and game over states also before I get too far into making it pretty.

This is probably the most complex C++ piece of code I’ve ever done, even beyond all the theoretical C++ crap I had to do at university.  I think years of OO java coding have enforced OO concepts into my brain much more than I understood when I was at Uni, so things are much clearer now I think

SlugOS

Posted by pembo under: Linksys NSLU2.

Following the second failure of my slug debian installation, I couldn’t bear to go through the lengthy 10 or so hour setup process, so I’ve decided to give SlugOS a try and see how I get on with this one.  It’s taken around an hour to flash/format/setup the disk, and install the core packages.

I’ve now got opkg and ipkg working….

Off to play now

TetWiis Update (part 3)

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

The core movement code is now complete, with the blocks being able to move left/right and down.

I’ve started the collision code, and the movement checks this already, but currently the block positions aren’t stopping/being recorded.  This won’t take much to do but it’s still outstanding.  I also noticed whilst testing that I’ve messed up the Line (green) and ‘L’ (yellow) blocks.  I’ve got the rotations wrong on the line so you have to press the button twice to rotate, this should be an easy fix!  On the L block – I’ve messed up the rotate completely and after the first turn, it becomes a ‘J’ block – bugger… still should be an easy fix though.

Tetwiis Update (part 2)

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

I’ve now finally sorted out my pointers/references and I’ve got to the point where I have the code which draws the tetrinos.  A screen shot (photo of the TV!) showing the test of this code is below.

Next thing to do is to code the rotate functions for each of the block types so that I can spin this around, and then start on the moving code!  The blocks are currently just rectangles (squares!) right now but the code is abstracted enough so that I can swap the rectangle drawing routine for an image drawing routine to pretty things up once it all works!

So far I have coded, ignoring the main class the following classes for the game:

• Point (X,Y coords)
• Color (u32 color)
• Size (width/height)
• Square (single square within a …)
• Block (tetrino – all made up of 4 squares)
• Main (currently tests the blocks/square code)

Updated post – I’ve now coded the rotate functions for all of the block types and they all rotate correctly.  The game field and movement code is next!

BootMii – Wiimote/Wii Remote Not Working

Posted by pembo under: Wii Homebrew.

A common search hit I keep getting is something along the lines of “BootMii Wii Remote not working”

To try and help all the people who end up here from a search like that…

BootMii does not work with a Wiimote.

You can control it with a gamecube controller, or the buttons on the console itself (power/reset/eject) but not a wiimote.

It’s documented on the hackmii website as follows:
“Due to architectural limitations, we can’t access the WiiMote. Use a GC controller or the Power/Reset buttons.
See also http://bugs.hackmii.com/index.php?do=details&task_id=21“