Syobon action (original title しょぼんのアクション) is a 2D Japanese freeware video game notoriously known as a parody of the Nintendo classic game Super Mario Bros. but with extremely difficult levels (Wikipedia).
The game is available for Windows with source code too, so I wanted to port it over the Wii since New Super Mario Bros was too easy to play for me 
Continua a leggere ‘Syobon action (しょぼんのアクション) for Wii released!’
Xbox 360 multimedia capabilities are very good, with streaming functions available not only for Windows systems (see here for streaming movies using Ubuntu).
There is a caveat though, the lack of subtitles functionality for movies, and the only way to use them is to hard-sub (encoding the movie again applying subtitles on it).
Several tools are available for every operating system, but the easiest one I use is mencoder (part of the MPlayer project), a command line tool for encoding audio and video files.
Mencoder is available in almost every Linux distribution, for install on Ubuntu just type:
sudo apt-get install mencoder
I encode each movie in Xvid format (which Xbox is capable of play), with this command:
mencoder mymovie.avi -ovc xvid -oac mp3lame -xvidencopts fixed_quant=1 -sub mymovie.srt -o mymovie-encoded.avi
where obviously mymovie.avi is the original movie without subtitles, mymovie.srt is the subtitles file and mymovie-encoded.avi is the resultant output file.
The output file will be larger than the original one because I used the fixed_quant=1 option, that outputs larger files but with best quality (you can use 2 or 3 but the quality downgrades).
Encoding may be very slow on older systems, but once finished it can played as any other media…enjoy!
Since Ushare seems to not work with Ubuntu 9.10, I decided to change application, and what I found is MiniDLNA.
The installation process is not automatic, but it is very easy:
Download the package from here, or grab the latest one from the site (current one is 1.0.16-pre7 1.0.16.3).
Unpack it:
tar -zxvf minidlna_1.0.16.3_static.tar.gz
Copy the only 2 files in your system:
sudo cp etc/minidlna.conf /etc/
sudo cp usr/sbin/minidlna /usr/sbin/
Now we need to edit the config file, adding the paths we want to share.
I noticed that parsing a large number of files takes a lot of time, so I decided to share only the directories where I have movies (and not my Music library).
sudo gedit /etc/minidlna.conf
This is my minidlna.conf:
port=8200
media_dir=V,/home/scognito/Video
media_dir=V,/home/scognito/Scrivania
friendly_name=Headache
db_dir=/var/cache/minidlna
album_art_names=Cover.jpg/cover.jpg/AlbumArtSmall.jpg/albumartsmall.jpg/AlbumArt.jpg/albumart.jpg/Album.jpg/album.jpg/Folder.jpg/folder.jpg/Thumb.jpg/thumb.jpg
inotify=yes
enable_tivo=no
strict_dlna=no
presentation_url=http://192.168.0.2:8200
notify_interval=900
serial=111222333
model_number=1
It’s almost the same as the default one, don’t forget to add as many media_dir as you need, set your friendly_name (the name your Xbox will see your pc), and most important, the presentation_url, otherwise pc will not be visibile from the Xbox (set it as your pc ip:port)
Start it and enjoy, your shares will be visible to your Xbox 360!
/usr/sbin/minidlna
It will start in daemon mode (you can use the -d flag to debug if you have issues).
If you need to start MiniDLNA automatically at each boot, do the following:
Go to System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications, click Add, and use these settings:
Name: minidlna
Command: /usr/sbin/minidlna
Confirm, and MiniDLNA will start at each boot 
Update: Version 1.0.16.3 added support for storing the db in a directory different than the default /tmp, so that informations will not be removed after each reboot (variable db_dir in the minidlna.conf)!
This tutorial is intended for intermediate users that are not new in homebrew, so it will not be plenty of screenshots and assumes that devkitPro is already installed and its variables set.
This guide can also be applied for NDS and maybe other platforms supported by devkitPro (not tested), just change the path where libraries are installed when needed.
It can also be used on Windows too (not tested too, but there should be no differences other than changing paths).
Last note: I used Eclipse few times in my life, so probably there are other (and smarter) ways to achieve the goal, but this tutorial was written mainly for myself, since I was not satisfied of current editors/IDEs I’ve tried on Linux for homebrewing.
Suggestions are welcome!
Continua a leggere ‘Configuring Eclipse for Wii development’
Wiicross Cover
The most developed, anticipated, awaited, desidered, hated, …ed homebrew I coded is finally here!
Started in June just for test, it became time to time more oriented to be an officially released game.
But exactly, what Wiicross is?
Continua a leggere ‘Piero’s Wiicross for Wii and Gamecube is out!’
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