VOGONS


Wii Port

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First post, by CarlKenner

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I've ported DOSBox to the Wii now. It is based on the latest CVS.

http://code.google.com/p/dosbox-wii/

The code still compiles to all the other platforms, in the hope that one day it will be included in the main DOSBox code.

It's working reasonably well so far, although there is the occasional crash and some advanced features are missing.

There are a few strange bugs.

Firstly, writing extended ascii characters with WriteOut() isn't working. It prints the string up to the extended character and then finishes, as though the extended character marked the end of the string. Strangely holding down alt and typing extended characters works fine, and I can even use the dos echo command to display them. And games seem to have no problem with them.

So I had to work around that bug by removing all the extended characters from the shell's introduction messages.

Another bug is that the joystick doesn't seem to work right. In commander keen 4 for example, the joystick is always registering as up and keen is constantly looking up when not walking. I think there are issues in our SDL port's joystick handling, but other games, such as alleycat, don't have that problem.

Aside from that, it is working pretty much OK. It's a bit slow though since there is no special core for PowerPC CPUs.

Reply 1 of 16, by Dominus

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nice, I've been waiting for that 😀 Is there a binary yet?
As for the joystick code, just maybe the work done by the frodo porter can be of help, since for him the SDL works fine, but then again, he is porting something different 😀 http://code.google.com/p/frodo-wii/

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Reply 2 of 16, by wd

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Thanks for your work.

I've looked over the changed files, and it seems fine so far. Some parts may
be useful for inclusion, some could be generalized (forcing scalers to some
bit depth for devices that "need it").

If you have some insight/need help for that extended char thing, let us know.

Reply 3 of 16, by CarlKenner

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OK, we fixed the Joystick problem. Our SDL was just reporting the Y axis upside-down. Nunchuk's have "North" as +Y, unlike the standard -Y.

I've been having some problems with the mixer crashing though. I don't know if that is a problem with our DOSBox port or our SDL port or something else.

I'm not sure if forcing everything to 16-bit was the right way to go, but it seems to work (credit to Tantric for that). Our SDL port currently uses 16-bit internally.

Anyway, people can download it now:

http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/DOSBox_Wii

It is still buggy, but usable enough for a first release.

By the way, if you updated your Wii to version 4.0, you can now install homebrew software again using http://www.wiibrew.org/wiki/Bannerbomb and you don't even need Twilight Princess anymore. I recommend installing homebrew channel first, then homebrew browser.

Reply 4 of 16, by wd

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I don't know if that is a problem with our DOSBox port or our SDL port or something else.

Can you narrow this down a bit, like a backtrack would be handy
(or some "this worked with 0.72 and is broken in the cvs).

I'm not sure if forcing everything to 16-bit was the right way to go, but it seems to work

Maybe Harekiet is interested in checking this out.

Reply 5 of 16, by DOS4dinner

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If you use the bannerbomb, does that do any permanent changes to the wii? Or does it just allow DOSBox to run off the SD, and then act as if nothing happened once it removed? I wanna try it, but I don't want to hurt (or cause Nintendo to hurt) my wittle wii 😀

That, and I'd kill for Jazz Jackrabbit with a gamepad on my TV.

Reply 6 of 16, by jal

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DOS4dinner wrote:

If you use the bannerbomb, does that do any permanent changes to the wii?

Yes. It will explode (it's a bomb after all) and not only the Wii, but also all innocent bystanders end up dead.

Ok, that's too silly, I know. Reading the Bannerbomb instructions, it seems there's no permanent damage.

JAL

Reply 7 of 16, by DOS4dinner

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Tested...kinda. It works! Unfortunately, I don't have a USB keyboard... 🙁

Awesome work though!

Reply 8 of 16, by Dominus

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yeah, copying stuff over to my SD-card right now and am anxious to try 😀

Edit: first test run, was not as exhilarating as I hoped it would be but not to worry, that was mostly my fault 😀
I tried with Ultima 7 (Serpent Isle), Worms and WfW 3.11.
Serpent Isle, the Wiimote controlled the cursor, but I couldn't "click" on anything, no right/left click. Maybe I should use an uSB mouse, instead 😀

Worms, behaved like it was listed on the compatibility page

WfW took too long to load, I wasn't patient enough and always ended the loading 😀

I also tried an old Dos4GW benchmark (pcpbench) and it showed only 0.7 fps (current CVS of Dosbox reaches around 30 fps on my PC - but don'T get me wrong, I'm really not comparing the Wii port to my PC 😀).
The pcpbench program can be found in that thread Re: Benchmark Programs: Some suggestions please?

Reply 9 of 16, by DOS4dinner

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Tested Tyrian (Doesn't need a keyboard 😀 ). Set graphics to lowest; First try, wiimote as mouse was working okay in the menu. However, when choosing an episode it crashed; Second try, disabled all music (via game's setup), and it crashed after clicking on new game.

Edit: This seems to happen on all my games...I'm thinking I need more than a 16MB SD card.

Reply 10 of 16, by CarlKenner

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BannerBomb and Twilight Hack don't make any changes to your Wii, they just run one program once.

However, I recommend making a change to your Wii by installing the Homebrew Channel, and DVDX. It will void your warranty and Nintendo will fine you if you take it in for repairs and they catch you with it, but it won't harm your Wii.

Once you have the homebrew channel, you can run applications much more easily. That is how DOSBox Wii is intended to be run.

Reply 11 of 16, by MusicallyInspired

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Or if you don't want to void your warranty you can use LoadMii or something similar. You'd have to run BannerBomb/Twilight Hack all the time to run it but it will launch other homebrew applications similarly to how The Homebrew Channel works without installing itself. The Homebrew Channel is the better choice, though. Doesn't hurt your system.

I've successfully run DOSbox Wii and played a few games (Tandy 3-voice sound is the best choice so far for games). I tried to get Windows 3.11 working like some others have but it wouldn't work. I guess it doesn't work with the SVGA drivers I had installed that work on my PC.

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Reply 12 of 16, by franpa

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Yep Bannerbomb simply executes the Boot.DOL file on your SD card (DOL files are like EXE files). You can have it launch whatever homebrew you want, just name the DOL file "boot.dol". Sensibly you would use some kind of a launcher/browser like the Homebrew browser or Loadmii as that allows you to have access to multiple programs and switch between them without re-managing files on the SD card each time.

I assume this DOSBox port won't run games like Blood smoothly? 😁

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Reply 13 of 16, by CarlKenner

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DOSBox Wii 0.73.01 has been released.

Reply 14 of 16, by swaaye

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Considering there isn't a dynarec core for PowerPC, it will probably be limited to 386 and below performance. It's the same on Xbox cuz they didn't port the dynamic x86 cpu core. I coudn't get X-Wing quite smooth on there.

Reply 15 of 16, by wd

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Porting the dynamic x86 core would be really tricky, all the non-x86 recompilers
are using the dynrec core which is specially crafted for easy porting (the actual
backends are small compared to what would have to be created for a full recompiler
like a dynamic x86 porting).

Reply 16 of 16, by MusicallyInspired

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When I use the Wii-mote as a mouse the cursour doesn't like to go all the way up the screen. Most of the time it stops half-way up the screen and won't go any higher. After repeated attempts it gets a little higher up the screen and if I'm lucky it manages to make it all the way to the top. Is this normal?

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Roland SC-55 Music Packs - Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, and more.