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!

Before starting

I’m assuming that:

• devkitPro is already installed in /opt/devkitpro with permission changed for the destination user
• Eclipse will be installed in /opt/eclipse

Also for my needs I want to code  an existing SVN project I’m working on: coverfloader.

Eclipse

If you already have Eclipse installed without C++ support, you should download the CDT plugin from Help | Install new software and then select a site (Galilelo is the one of the current release).

Search and install CDT plugin, then reboot Eclipse as suggested.

I didn’t like the default Eclipse (3.2) shipped with Ubuntu so I prefered to grab the latest stable one with C++ support  already in (Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers).

Installing Eclipse is very straightforward, just unpack it and execute it. As I said I put the contents of the directory /opt/eclipse/ one.

At first boot you’ll be welcomed with a screen asking you to select a directory for storing the workspace (where all your project will be saved): default choice was fine for me.

Installing SVN plugin

Next step is installing SVN plugin: we will use subversive, a plugin that can be installed directly from Eclipse.

Go to Help | Install new software and then select a site (Galileo again).

Expand the Collaboration category and select Subversive SVN Team Provider (Incubation), then click Next and follow instructions (reboot is required).

Subversive also need a connector to be installed so open the install software window again, then click the Add button and paste this site: http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/update-site/

Expand the Subversive SVN Connector catergory, and then install SVNKit 1.3.0 Implementation, click Next and follow instructions (guess, what? Reboot!)

Last step is to check that the SVN connector is correctly installed: go to Window | Preferences, expand the Team tree and click on SVN.
Select the SVN Connector tab and check that  SVN connector is SVN Kit. If not, try to install other connectors (I didn’t have problems though).

Eclipse is now ready configured for using SVN… easy uh?

Let’s create our first project doing a checkout from svn server!

Checking out the project from a SVN site…

Go to File | New | Other and then expand the SVN tree, then select Project from SVN, click Next.

Add the url, in my case https://wiicoverflow.googlecode.com/svn/trunk, fill username and password fields if you have any, click No to normalize url question (at least for my needs), and accept the site’s security certificate.

There is a little bug at this step: you can’t click the Finish button even if an option is selected. For fix this just click again to the default option selected (Head Revision), click Finish.

A new window will pop up, use the default option Check out as a project configured using the New Project Wizard, then click Finish to open a Wizard.

Expand the C/C++ tree and then click to C++ Project, Next, choose a name for your project, then expand Makefile project tree, select Empty Project, click Next.

Click on the Advanced settings, expand  C/C++ Build tree, then select the Behaviour tab, remove the “all” word from Build (incremental build).

Click Ok, then on Finish so that Eclipse can check out the project.

…or create a new Wii project

The easiest way to copy the template (shipped with the Wii examples package from devkitPro site) in the workspace directory removing the unused file template.pnproj (used by Programmer’s Notpad).

Go to File | New | C++ Project and then browse for the location where you copied the template directory. If you copied it to the workspace one just type the name of  the project, since the workspace directory is default.

Expand the Makefile Project, select Empty Project and click Next.

Click on the Advanced settings, expand  C/C++ Build tree, then select the Behaviour tab, remove the “all” word from Build (incremental build).

Click  Ok, then on Finish so that Eclipse can check out the project.

Configure paths:

Go to Project | Properties, expand the C/C++ General tree, then select Paths and Symbols. On the include tab click to Add and add the following paths (checking Add to all configurations and Add to all languages each time):

• ${DEVKITPRO}/libogc/include
• ${DEVKITPPC}/lib/gcc/powerpc-gekko/4.2.4/include
• ${DEVKITPPC}/powerpc-gekko/include
• ${DEVKITPPC}/powerpc-gekko/include/c++/4.2.4
• ${DEVKITPPC}/powerpc-gekko/include/c++/4.2.4/powerpc-gekko

Press Apply and answer yes to rebuild the index, then press Ok.

Now auto complete will work for both functions and structs (pressing CTRL+SPACE).

Build our project

We need at least 3 make targets:

1. clean
2. build
3. send dol through wifi using wiiload (optional)

Let’s create them. Click somewhere in the code (or in the makefile), then Make Target -> Create, then click Add button:

1. Target name: clean, click Ok.
2. Target name: build, uncheck Same as the target name and remove the make target field, click Ok.
3. Target name: run, uncheck Same as the target name and type run in the make target field, click Ok.

For build the project, click on the Make Target tab on the right side of Eclipse, then double click on the make target you wish to execute.

Start coding!

As you have seen, it is not difficult to configure Eclipse for Wii coding, just configure some path and install some plugin, now it’s all up to you!

Since I’m not an experienced Eclipse user, all suggestion are welcome for improving this guide

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?

The origin of the game

Wiicross is game based on a popular puzzle game I played on Nintendo DS. It is an electronic version of a puzzle born in 1987, called “Nonogram” whose Wikipedia definition says:

Nonograms or Paint by Numbers are picture logic puzzles in which cells in a grid have to be colored or left blank according to numbers given at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden picture. In this puzzle type, the numbers measure how many unbroken lines of filled-in squares there are in any given row or column. For example, a clue of “4 8 3″ would mean there are sets of four, eight, and three filled squares, in that order, with at least one blank square between successive groups.

It’s easier playing with game directly than understand the rules at first

Why now?

I admit, I’m not a skilled coder, but before everything I’m lazy. Coding Wiicross didn’t took 6 months, but if I could count the effective days of coding it would reach about 2 months. It was abandonded for a period of time, then I October I decided to finish it.

How to play?

You can move the cursor pointing the wiiremote on screen, or using the d-pad usint it “NES” position, or with the gamecube controller.

Every controller option has his button schemas.

You can color a cell with the DRAW button, or mark it (with the MARK one) for helping in remembering that that square shouldn’t be drawn.

There are two game modes:

• Normal mode: If you try to colour a cell that can’t be coloured, an error penalty is shown. Puzzle is solved when the image is correctly drawn.
• Free mode: there is no error reporting when you colour a wrong cell. Puzzle is solved when you hit the check button and the image is correctly drawn, otherwise an error penalty is shown.

Every error make the timer increase of a certain amout of time.

What Wiicross offer?

Let’s start saying what Wiicross does not offer:
the main difference beetween Wiicross and the original Picross is that in Wiicross you only have grids of the same size (15×15).
This because originally this game was just a test with only a grid in mind; also a bigger grid requires zooming, feature not present in my image library

Excetpt that, the game includes:

• Different controller type for the main game
• 59 levels (not so much but it’s an homebrew afterall )
• Levels, scores and options are saved in the sd card
• Multiple graphics themes
• Custom music: you can add your own music in the game if you don’t like the default ones (not supported on GC version)
• Custom themes: you can create your own themes and share them with friends

How I add my custom music / themes?

Music

Put your favourite songs in the “res/music” directory (for example if you use the homebrew channel it is apps/wiicross/res/music), then select “Custom” from the options menu.

Note: Music must be in ogg format! No, I’m not an opensource devote: simply sndlib does not support MP3, and libogc support for them is screwed. Also res directory on GameCube must be put on the root of the SD!

Themes

A theme is composed by the following images

• background.png (640 x 480 pixels)
• filled.png (image to show when a cell is drawn)
• marked.png  (image to show when a cell is marked)
• title.png (the title to show in the option screen for selecting your theme)

All themes must be put in a directory called with the name of your theme, and this directory must be put in “res/themes” . If you follow these rules, you’ll find you theme in the options screen.

For helping in drawing a theme, there is a template on the project page. It also contains a psd (photoshop) and a xcf (gimp) containing layers, helpful for drawing the background, since some part of it are used for painting the timer and the preview.

Thanks

• Spriteattack for stunning graphics (and for patience to work with me)
• Cyan & Liz from gbatemp.net: for impressive work on bug testing, fixing bugged levels and sorting by difficulty: the game couldn’t be here without them
• MrNick for massive testing on the Gamecube version
• Aaron Williams for the nice “level cleared” jingle
• All the users who sent their level (using the online level editor)

Yes, this game is also different than others because ALL levels were made by users submitting their images.
I received about 500 levels, but a very minimal part of them was usable (and still needed some fix).
This because each level must have a unique solution, and I didn’t added any type of check, sorry.
There is also a funny list of categories I discarded for obvious reasons, thanks anyway to authors!

• X
• “Test”
• Various random cells
• Svastikas
• Various messages (“U R the best”, my favourite)
• Alien / Robots
• Every sort of dick you can imagine (20+)
• Faces
• Mazes

Mandatory screenshots!

Wiicross - title screen

Wiicross - default theme

Wiicross - Woody theme

Wiicross - space theme

Wiicross - candy theme

Wiicross - blue theme

Wiicross - spooky theme

Wiicross - paper theme (custom theme by Scognito)

Wiicross - options screen

Wiicross - level select

Wiicross - pause screen

Ok ok but where can I get the game?

The project page is hosted on drunkencoders.
Wii version available here.
GameCube version here.

What’s next?

After some year in developing simple games for consoles, I decided to take a break.
Lot of things are happened (and stil happening) in my personal life, and I don’t know if I am still motivated in coding games just for fun.

Is it a chance to finally doing something else?

Thanks all for support and helping in making what I wanted to do since I was kid (no, not the pornstar): being a game developer was a dream since I’m a videogame addicted!

After downgrading Windows Vista to XP the only driver I didn’t have success to install was the webcam one.
On my dv6299 ea (dv6000 series) the webcam is identified by the 05CA&PID_1810&MI_00\6&1F6A7C80&0&0000 string.

There is no webcam driver for XP looking on HP site, so I made many tries before gettings the device work.

The solution is pretty simple:

• download the drivers for Vista from HP site
• unpack with WinRAR or other compression tools
• go to the sp34746\WCAMR\driver\ directory
• doubleclick on DPInst32.exe and install the drivers
• reboot

It worked on my pc, hope it will be useful for you too

Despite the actual release date, this game was actually finished in april, months before the wii/gc release.

It was coded in few days, without knowing much about j2me.
Since I lost interest too early I didn’t added support for sounds and music so it is just a “mute” game.

Actually, the real challenge wasn’t coding for a mobile platform, but configuring Eclipse and Netbeans in conjunction with the S60 sdk! If I remember correctly i switched off and compiled it for standard j2me platform.

It shouldn’t have been coded for the public, but just for my cellphone (Nokia 6120 Classic, MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.1 profile), so resolution is hardcoded for this type of device (320×240).

Thanks Kenney (www.kenney.nl) for graphics!

How to Play

The goal of the game is to make the frog jump over all the tree trunks using the arrow/menu keys of your mobile phone.

The only avaiable direction the frog can move are forward, left and right (no diagonals), with no jump distance limit!

Remember that the frog cannot jump backward, and pressing Fire/Center button restart the level!

Download & Installing

Download the package from here, and unpack it then install jar + jad your usual method for installing applications on the phone.
For Nokia devices I suggest to install through the Nokia PC Suite, that once configured for your mobile, will install application just doubleclicking on the jar file.

Please note I’ll do not provide any installation help nor support as I have removed the toolkit and don’t know how install jar/jad other than using the PC Suite!

Screenshots

Compatibility List

Currently reported working devices:

• Nokia 6120 Classic
• Nokia N95

If you succesfully installed on your device please add a comment, and I’ll add to the list.

wiicross editor

Finally today I decided to write a post for my next upcoming homebrew game for the Nintendo Wii and Gamecube: it is called Piero’s Wicross.

As the name suggest it is based on a popular puzzle game Mario’s Picross, a game based on an existing puzzle game called Nonogram.

For those who don’t know what game I’m talking about, here it is a brief description of the original game, from wikipedia :

Nonograms or Paint by Numbers are picture logic puzzles in which cells in a grid have to be colored or left blank according to numbers given at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden picture. In this puzzle type, the numbers measure how many unbroken lines of filled-in squares there are in any given row or column. For example, a clue of “4 8 3″ would mean there are sets of four, eight, and three filled squares, in that order, with at least one blank square between successive groups.

I swear it is simpler than expected!

The development of the game is nearly done for both platforms, so what the game really needs are the levels.

Since I’m too lazy to create them, I decided that levels will made by YOU!

Yes, I wrote also an online level editor for the purpouse, where is possible to easily create puzzles throught a simple interface, so what expect to write your own one?

The best 50 levels will be put in the game as official ones, so head over and write yours!

Go to Wiicross Level Editor!

mozilla weave logo

Mozilla Weave is an experimental project from Mozilla Labs aiming to synchronize information of Firefox browser (like bookmarks, saved passwords, tabs, history…) across different computers using a simple extension.

Once installed and configured on each browser it automatically synchronizes these metadata offering the same personal data among different computers.

Since it is still experimental it suffers of some issues, like the most popular at the moment: the authentication problem. I don’t know if it is a server issue, but I can’t authenticate myself using the default settings.

Searching on forums I found a solution provided by some users: use a different server for storing metadata information. The fix suggested explain how to setup a weave server on myDisk.se (a very useful free webdisk).

Simply create an account on myDisk.se, create this directory structure: “user/youruser“, where youruser is your login name, then update the server URL on the advanced tab of the weave options (https://mydisk.se/youruser).

Sign in, synchronize et voilà, you can login again!

An extra advantage of this solution is that synchronizing is a lot faster than the overloaded (for now?) Mozilla default server.

Give it a try!

Scogger for Wii is a porting I made of the “famous” Nintendo DS and PSP game Scogger I wrote a months ago.

The game is almost identical to the original, with same levels (10 random out of 100 avaiable, so each new game you get different levels!), except here you cannot use the stylus for obvious reasons, but it can take advantage of the wiimote!

Download & Installing

Note (30-oct-08): The Homebrew channel beta 9 requires .dols (or new compiled elfs), so I’ve recompiled Scogger to work with it. All downloads starting from today are Homebrew channer b9 compatible.
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Download the package from here, and unpack it. There are 2 versions: gamecube and wii.

• The Wii version is ready for use with the homebrew channel. Just put the scoggerwii-0.2 (you can rename it) directory in the apps directory of your SD card, otherwise boot it with the Twilight Hack or other boot methods.
• The Gamecube dol can be booted it using SDLoad or other boot methods.

How to Play

The goal of the game is to make the frog jump over all the tree trunks.

You can use the Gamecube pad, the Wiimote, or the Wiimote d-pad.

The only avaiable direction the frog can move are forward, left and right (no diagonals), with no jump distance limit!

Remember that the frog cannot jump backward, and pressing B on the Wiimote (or A in the Gamecube pad) to restart the level!

Clean the stage to go to the next level (they are 10) or press (+) or START to go to the next one.

This trick is only avaiable if you make the so called “konami trick” (you know what is that, don’t you?) at the titlescreen, (with the exception “B” and “A” button are mapped to (-) and (+) on the Wiimote).

Screenshots

Click the images for full size:

Video

This video is courtesy of wiinintendo.net:

Credits

• Shagkur for libogc
• Wintermute and other for Devkitpro and devkitPPC
• Frontier for libpngu
• Kenney for the graphics
• Muzer and Minishlin for heavy testing

Notes

Plese report bugs and suggestions and stay tuned for other ports

Scogger is also available for Nintendo DS, Sony PSP.

Scogger for PSP is a porting I made of the “famous” Nintendo DS game Scogger I wrote a month ago.

Since my girlfriend Valeria (L) gave me a PSP for Christmas, what a better chance to coding for it?

So Scogger was born, after just a couple of days for convertion.

The game is almost identical to the original, with same levels (10 out of 100 avaiable), except here you cannot use the stylus for obvious reasons, but it can take advantage of the larger and brighter screen to show how cool is it

Installing

Download the package from here, and put the Scogger directory in the memory stick, under the directory PSP/GAME/.

How to Play

The goal of the game is to make the frog jump over all the tree trunks.

You can use the D-Pad or the analog stick.

The only avaiable direction the frog can move are forward, left and right (no diagonals), with no jump distance limit!

Remember that the frog cannot jump backward, and pressing X to restart the level!

Clean the stage to go to the next level (they are 10) or press START to go to the next one.

This trick is only avaiable if you make the so called “konami trick” (you know what is that, don’t you?) at the titlescreen, (with the exception “B” and “A” button are mapped to “square” and “triangle”).

Screenshots

Video

Thanks

• Valeria, for giving me a PSP
• Kenney (www.kenney.nl), for making the graphics
• Brunni, for his OSLib
• All PSP hacking team