The Ignition Project: Tag gaming

Wii Homebrew Channel + Case Is Here

Keith Gable — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 22:02:00 -0500

Also, my Evolve Black Katana case is here. It’s pretty cool looking, but the paintjob looks just a tad better than something I could do myself. It’s still pretty good. I give it 3 out of 5.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl + WiiKey = Bad Medicine

Keith Gable — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:01:00 -0500

I bought Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I expected it to run on my drivechipped Wii (chipped for homebrew btw). Well, it’s the first Wii game that’s dual layer, and the WiiKey incorrectly assumes that all dual layer discs are GameCube multi-game discs. Great assumption, as it was true. Now it’s not. And unfortunately, WiiKey’s Website is showing the default RHEL test page and apparently has been for some time now.

Shit.

So Googling around, I found out that the WiiKey is compatible with the OpenWii firmware. Great! Except the sucky part is that OpenWii requires programming the chip directly rather than using a DVD. Not that big of a problem, I guess. The biggest problem I’m going to encounter in swapping my WiiKey to run OpenWii is the fact I have to solder on SMD chips and I don’t have good enough magnification (I could probably use a jewelers magnification thingy). Also my soldering iron tip is quite large and my soldering iron doesn’t really have a selection of bits for it with a finer point than what I have. Meh. Also I have to take apart the Wii again, which is an adventure in itself…

So… What am I going to do? I could just desolder the WiiKey and say “screw it”, but that defeats the purpose of it (especially since huge strides have been made in homebrew). So, I think I’m going to do this:

Using this guide I’m going to rewire my WiiKey (yes, I’ll take pictures) and put a port on the back of my Wii which will connect to a modified parallel port cable.
While I have the Wii open, I’ll take it apart the rest of the way and put it in a new awesome case.
I’ll also install a switch on the Wii so that I can turn off the modchip if needed (this switch would be required because the diagram shows that the WiiKey requires power from the parallel port during programming, and I don’t want the possibility of shorting the Wii - so I’ll probably install two switches, one for programmer power ON/OFF and one for DVDROM power ON/OFF). This will avoid this problem from ever occuring again.

Though, like an idiot, I “quicksoldered” the thing to my Wii. In hindsight, it would have been faster to actually use wire, since I ended up tearing a trace off the drive and had to solder to the actual drive chip (luckily the “debug port” pins that were left on the drive are just shortcuts to the pins on the actual chip).

I’ll keep everyone posted with updates.

LAN Party Semantics

Keith Gable — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:56:00 -0600

I once assumed that everyone just “got it”, but after last night’s LAN party, I’m not too sure. So, I’m going to go over some of the semantics of LAN parties:

Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC). How could any club afford to get a computer for each member? That’s like, $800 a person. We can barely afford to keep the servers going, which brings me to #2:
If everyone else is on the game server, and you have problems getting on, there’s a 90% chance it’s your problem, and not the game server’s. The other 10% of the time is either the server needing an update that just came out or a configuration problem nobody else sees for some reason.
When you do have these problems, please ask the unpaid sysadmin nicely to help you. Do not insult his operating system choice, his dislike for Vista, and/or his choice of game mode if you intend on asking him to help you to get the game to run on your Vista machine.
OpenGL-based games like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, Quake 3 Arena, and Unreal Tournament 2004 do not run well or at all in Vista due to the shoddy and/or nonexisting OpenGL support (at some point, NVIDIA and ATI added their own OpenGL layer, but hey, it still doesn’t always work, particularly when the game probes for 3dfx features).
If you don’t like the map or mode, tell us, don’t go play something else.
Give the unpaid sysadmin some respect. Use your brain. Read. Don’t be lazy. If the LAN organizers put up documentation, read it before asking how to do something.
Play the same game as everyone else! You can play on a public Internet server any other day of the week.

So anyway. Maybe people will understand this. And yes, I hate Vista. Not because it’s not Linux, not because it’s new, not because I can’t run it. Because every time I use it, something new and exciting pisses me off about it. It can be something simple and dumb, like the fact you can’t right click in (My) Computer and pick “Map Network Drive” (is “Add Network Location” the same thing?).

Also, and this is completely seperate from the rant, but widescreen in Q3/RTCW-based games is actually easy:

Bring up the console (~ key)

Type:

seta r_customwidth "1680"
seta r_customheight "1050"
seta r_mode "-1"
vid_restart

ENJOY!