The Wiibrew Weekend Warrior: Nintendo responds to bushing, wicked dev tools, and a debate over piracy
Ahoy, Wiibrewers! Exciting times on the Wii homebrew front these days, what with bushing keeping a tight lid on the Wii exploit that he’s discovered. Nintendo finally replied to his emails earlier this week. Bushing’s also released a new Wiibrew program devs might be interested in. That and more in this week’s Wiibrew Weekend Warrior! Let’s get cracking!
Ahoy there, Wiibrewers! We live in exciting times for the Wiibrew community. Last week, Wiibrew developer bushing revealed to the community that he found a yet-untapped Wii exploit, and has decided to contact Nintendo about it. After a period of silence, Nintendo has finally replied. That and more in this week’s Wiibrew Weekend Warrior! Let’s get cracking!
Wiibrew Pick of the Week
Wiibrew developer kriogeN certainly picked a fun game for his first homebrew project. kriogeN has reincarnated the classic card game UNO on to the Wii, complete with online multiplayer that supports up to four players. Nice, eh?
The translation of the readme is pretty rough with your average online translator, but the game pretty much speaks for itself
Link: UNO v4 – graphics improved
Wiibrew Programs
Network Wiibrew programs FTPii and Wii Web Server were both updated this week. FTPii has been kicked up to v0.0.11, with improvements in stability so the program shouldn’t hang as often. Wii Web Server is now on v0.80 of its Alpha stage, with support for threading, and implementation of error pages.
Link: FTPii v0.0.11 – remote authentication administration, USB Ethernet fix
Link: Wii Web Server alpha v0.80: 404 and 500 error pages implemented
DragonMedia Player saw two updates this week. There are a lot of new features added to the program, including a load screen and the ability to change themes. Playing of files from a USB connection should also be smoother now.
Link: DragonMedia Player v0.12 Alpha
Link: DragonMedia Player v0.11 Alpha: 24-bit flac support fix, more
Dev’s Corner
Some wicked dev tools were released this week. First up we have the Wii Update File Extractor (also called the WUFE, which is just catchier) from Nuke, who is also the author of Gecko Region Free. WUFE is a quick and easy way to extract all the update files from a Wii DVD game (system WAD files, IOS files).
Next up is xyzzy from bushing. It’s a quick code that he slapped together in a few minutes, but is nevertheless an extremely useful tool for devs. It returns private key structures of IOS address spaces, and automatically saves them to a text files on the SD card.
Link: Wiibrew program: WUFE, extracts update files from Wii DVD games
Link: Xyzzy Wiibrew program from Bushing: returns encryption keys
News from the Wiibrew Front:
I don’t know what bushing’s reasons are for consulting with Nintendo on the exploit he’s discovered, but as he said on his blog, he’s given it a lot of thought, and I’m sure he has the community’s best interests at heart. After all, he didn’t hesitate on sharing the news of the discovery despite knowing he’ll get a lot of flak for it.
He did get a lot of flak for it – and some hilarious fake emails to boot. You can check out his blog to read some of them. In the throng of criticism and fake emails he’s received though, lay an authentic reply from a Nintendo representative.
Bushing only chose to disclose that Nintendo has received his message, that they replied, and that he will no longer post any other correspondence with them. Will this mean the Wiibrew community will get Nintendo’s cooperation? Or will the opposite happen? We shall have to wait on bushing for further news on this one.
Link: Nintendo finally responds to Bushing about Wii exploit discovery
That’s it for this week, folks. Hopefully, bushing will disclose more on his talks with Nintendo in the following week. I want to direct you guys to some passages on bushing’s blog which you might find interesting. This is a quote from an email he received: “I donÂ’t think youÂ’ll get anywhere by doing dialogue with Nintendo. I just donÂ’t think so..”
Bushing responded by saying: “[…] nobody else has actually tried to engage Nintendo on a mature, professional level, so we feel obligated to try.”
I leave you with this week’s first ever Wiibrew Comment of the Week. You can also follow the link for a rather interesting debate over bushing’s decision to keep the exploit to himself, and the legal repercussions the exploit will present when it opens up the potential of piracy on the Wii.
