Compared to IOS I found Android more complete…at first sight I found Android better because without tweaks I can:

• delete iTunes
• use the device external drive
• use Blueetooth for everything (file transfer among others)
• download files
• use it as modem/hotspot wifi
• [other things to add]

The bad thing for us poor Linux users is that the device doesn’t seem to to work out of the box with Banshee, so I decided to write an article that I’ll update every time I found some useful way to use it on Ubuntu.

Let’s start with…

Use Banshee/ Rhythmbox

Tested with: Android 2.3.3 stock Samsung, Ubuntu 11.04

First thing to do is enabling USB debugging: go to Settings –> Applications –> Development –> Allow USB debugging, then connect to PC.

Second step: go the notification menu, click on the USB entry, then push the “Connect USB storage”: the phone will be mounted as an external device.

So the last step is create a file called “.is_audio_player” (without double quotes, but with the dot before the name) and put this content on it:

audio_folders=media/
folder_depth=2
output_formats=audio/mpeg,audio/mp3,application/ogg

“media” is where my MP3 collection is stored, your may vary.

Ok we did it! Now just launch Banshee / Rhythmbox and your device will be read without any problems! Also you can sync just like other devices

Banshee, I prefer it over Rhythmbox

Enjoy!

Original article here.

First frog in High Definition

Long time has passed since first DS release, so this port was a chance to celebrate a new version with updated graphics

The game was ready since March, but I’m so lazy that only moon eclipse changed my mind

If not interested in nerd stuff jump over to screenshot section otherwise continue reading…

Some “tech” speak

Despite my usual coding practice (code on pc, compile, run on console) it was faster for me to port Scogger Wii version on PC, make all modifications (gfx mainly), and finally re-port on PS3.

This way helped me to make all changes (even small ones) without move the executable to USB stick, install on PS3, run, for each time I make a modification on the code.

Old Scogger ported to SDL in few hours

Thanks to SDL library I ported the original game on PC in a breeze, then I started changing every single image, add some sort of animation and writing some sort of animation code, tweaking with frames, rewrite menu code, polishing the trash code… so I did 90% of the work PC side. Porting it over on PS3 was (almost) straightforward.

My development workspace

What I used on PS3 side was initially SDL for PS3 but it was software accelerated and  (at time of writing) extremely slow to render images on a 1280×720 screen.

I decided then to change the graphic code to use HermesEOL’s tiny3d lib, just one day before he decided to leave the scene

SDL Mixer was used for sound, and it works great, except I had some issues with sound some effects that I solved with some dirty hack.

About the release

Seems that almost everyone having a PS3 “hacked” was interested only in piracy, and just a little percentage of homebrew that isn’t the XXX loader, was an emulator (and I like them!).

I didn’t see many homebrew…and a site like wiibrew doesn’t exists, not counting I didn’t find any support on IRC channels (#ps3dev/#PSL1GHT are dead/don’t have support) or a useful forums like the wiibrew one.

Fortunately situation seems to be changing, thanks to people like @KaKaRoToKS and his humblehomebrew site (sign/donate!), but I think this is my only PS3 homebrew

Anyway here is the last incarnation of the frog, I hope you’ll enjoy the game!

Mandatory screenshots!

Click to enlarge (doesn’t work with your penis):

Downloads

Head over my drunkencoders page, but please report bugs here

Thanks

As usual, in random order:

• ooPo, Aaron, Seigher, and others for ps3toolchain, ps3chain and ps3libraries
• AerialX, phiren, MattP and others for PSL1GHT and suggestions
• zeldin and cebash  for SDL_PSL1GHT and  SDL_PSL1GHT_Libs
• HermesEOL for tiny3d
• SpriteAttack for awesome graphics
• Gianptune for suggestions and first testing

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 26,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 3 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 30 posts. There were 27 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 1mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was June 6th with 343 views. The most popular post that day was Streaming movies and music from Ubuntu to Xbox 360.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were wiibrew.org, hwupgrade.it, scognito.drunkencoders.com, psx-scene.com, and stumbleupon.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for minidlna ubuntu, driver usb vista, leggere partizioni linux da windows, r5u870, and vista non riconosce usb.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Streaming movies and music from Ubuntu to Xbox 360 November 2009
6 comments

Windows Vista non riesce ad istallare i driver USB August 2007
108 comments

Syobon action (しょぼんのアクション) for Wii released! January 2010
22 comments

Setup a build environment for compiling and running homebrew for PS3 November 2010
17 comments and 2 Likes on WordPress.com

Disabilitare il controllo degli accessi in Windows Vista August 2007
1 comment

PSL1GHT is a fantastic SDK, growing day after day thanks to help of talented developers like phiren, MattP, AerialX and others.
What I need to start porting Scogger is to print some debug information (like screen size, sprites information and such), but unfortunately for me STDOUT and STDERR are redirected to the lv2 TTY interface.

Right now there are two ways I know for printing debug informations:

• using Kammy
• using libcairo font support provided by ps3libraries

Altought these are valid alternatives, they represent a complexity level that is too much for my lazyness: Kammy requires PS3 attached to the router via ethernet cable, plus it prints information to a pc, not to the screen. Most important it needs a peek/poke capable payaload, and my PSJailbreak dongle doesn’t have it.

Libcairo is new to me, it has amazing power but for now I don’t want to learn another library, also it is a waste to use it just for replacing printf.

That’s why I created very simple console, called Sconsole, whose job is to print  some text on framebuffer using 8×16 fonts.

Let’s see how to use it:

Using Sconsole

Using Sconsole is very simple: just add the three files included in the zip file in your source directory and you are almost done.

Let’s see an example.

The first thing to do is actually import the header file:

#include "sconsole.h"

Then we need to initialize it, here it is the syntax:

void sconsoleInit(int bgColor, int fgColor, int screenWidth, int screenHeight);

• bgcolor is the background color of the printed string,
• fcColor is the actual font color
• screenWidth and screenHeight are your screen resolution

Colors are in the 0xAARRGGBB format (alpha channel not available). Few colors are defined in sconsole.h but you can use yours. Also FONT_COLOR_NONE means no color (“transparent”),

ScreenWidth and ScreenHeight are actually the screen resolution you get with videoGetResolution function.

sconsoleInit(FONT_COLOR_NONE, FONT_COLOR_BLACK, res.width, res.height);

Printing function needs X and Y coordinates, plus the pointer to the framebuffer where write into.

print(400, 80, "Hello world",  framebuffer);

Or using sprintf before actually print comples strings:

sprintf(tempString, "Video resolution: %dx%d", res.width, res.height);
print(540, 160,  tempString, framebuffer);

Dead simple

Please note: 108 ASCII characters are included (most used ones). They are from 32 (space) to 126 (~) of the ASCII table .  They include digits, uppercase & lowecase letters, pluse other ones like parenthesis, plus minus, commas…

Hope it will help someone, waiting for screen output of STDOUT/STDERR.

Happy coding!

Download

Demo pkg + sources (version 0.1)

Thanks

Bitmaps fonts courtesy of libogc.

This the first of a series of articles I’ll write with the intent of build Scogger for PS3. Hope to finish this work before 2012.

Preface

With the breaking out of PSJailbreak this summer, the homebrew sceene didn’t wait so long to appear on Playstation3.

So we are finally talking about the possibility to run our own unsigned  code, using any of the available dongles  (you can even build one yourself).

Before actually start writing our application it is necessary to build our development envirement. For doing this we need a toolchain and a SDK: I’ll use ps3chain ps3toolchain and PSL1GHT.

The latter one is very young (project started 29-oct-10) and continously mantained, so the are chances that something may not work as you would expect.

Updating git daily, reporting bugs and contributing is appreciated

Prerequisites

First of all we need to set our PS3 dev directory and some system variables, as well as all software needed to build our toolchain.

This guide is written for user with Ubuntu 10.10 32bit, but also other Linux distribution are supported, I think.

Let’s start from software needed to build the toolchain:

sudo apt-get install autoconf automake bison flex gcc make wget
git libppl0.10-dev libcloog-ppl-dev libelf-dev
libncurses5-dev texinfo build-essential libgmp3-dev
python zlib1g-dev pkg-config libtool python-dev

I’ve set my PS3 dev directory to ~/dev/ps3

mkdir -p ~/dev/ps3

Add these lines at the end of ~/.bashrc for setting needed system variables

export PS3DEV=$HOME/dev/ps3
export PSL1GHT=$PS3DEV/psl1ght
export PATH=$PATH:$PS3DEV/bin:$PS3DEV/host/ppu/bin:$PS3DEV/host/spu/bin:$PSL1GHT/host/bin

Update bashrc for apply changes:

. .bashrc

Finish

Installing the ps3toolchain toolchain

Let’s clone ps3chain git repository:

cd $PS3DEV
git clone git://github.com/ooPo/ps3toolchain.git

Execute the automated script frorm the ps3toolchain directory just cloned:

cd ps3toolchain
./toolchain.sh

Have a loooooong break, then if you don’t see any error you can say to all your friends that the toolchain is installed

Installing the ps3chain toolchain (alternative to ps3toolchain, not supported right now)

Let’s clone ps3chain git repository:

cd $PS3DEV
git clone git://github.com/HACKERCHANNEL/ps3chain.git

Execute the automated script frorm the ps3chain directory just cloned:

cd ps3chain
./buildit.sh all

Installing the PSL1GHT SDK

Update: This step is no longer needed, as ps3toolchain install psl1ght also.

Now clone the psl1ght git repository:

cd $PS3DEV
git clone git://github.com/HACKERCHANNEL/PSL1GHT.git

Add these lines at the end of ~/.bashrc for setting needed system variables:

Build and install it:

cd $PS3DEV/PSL1GHT/psl1ght
make
make install

That’s all!

Compiling external libraries (libpng, zlib…)

Update: This step is no longer needed, as ps3toolchain install external libraries too.

We need to checkout another git, containing libs and patches for make them (almost) functional on a PS3 dev environment:

• cairo (COOL)
• fontconfig, freetype
• jpeg
• ogg/vorbis
• png
• xml2
• pixmap
• libzip

cd $PS3DEV
git clone git://github.com/ooPo/ps3libraries.git
cd ps3libraries/

Launch the script libraries.sh

./libraries.sh

And it will download libraries, patch them, compile, then install.

Compiling and running samples

Samples are included in PSL1GHT samples directory:  I suggest to start with VideoTest.

cd $PS3DEV/ps3toolchain/build/psl1ght/samples/video/videoTest
make pkg

This command will compile the application and create a .pkg file that can be installed on your jailbroken PS3.

Copy it over  a USB pendrive, start the PS3 in jailbreak mode, go to “Install package files”, select your app, install and finally run it!

A nice gray to red gradient screen will appear, press X to exit.

Using ps3load

The above process is fine, but a bit slow. There is a smart way though: compile and launch via wifi using ps3load.

Ps3load is a tool like Nintendo Wii Wiiload that let us launch executables over the network.

First of all set this environment variables as we did with other ones, specifying your PS3 ip address (for example 192.168.0.10):

export PS3LOAD=tcp:192.168.0.10

Compile and install ps3load under network/ps3load directory, just like the previous videoTest.

Please note: since it uses zlib you need to compile the above ps3libraries otherwise you’ll get compilation errors!

Once loaded on PS3 you’ll be welcomed (at least for now) with a nice black screen: this is normal.

You can now compile other samples with usual make command, then run over the network with:

make run

A lot easier, uh?

Hello World!

You can start your own “hello world” program using the template under $PS3DEV/ps3toolchain/build/psl1ght/template directory.

Here it is mine (using libpng):

Happy coding!

Thanks

Trap15, ooPo, Aaron, Seigher and others for ps3toolchain, ps3chain and ps3libraries

AerialX, phiren, MattP and others for PSL1GHT and suggestions

Changelog

• 22-jan-11: new paths required by psl1ght, no longer ps3libraries and psl1ght manual compilation, support for new build path
• 13-dec-10: Added python-dev dependence thanks to Cyberw0rm
• 22-nov-10: using ooPo’s ps3toolchain instead of ps3chain: it is updated and let me build ps3load
• 21-nov-10: added other packages to prerequisites, thanks to KDSBest

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

What I  noticed once opened the big main.cpp is that the sources were even more difficult to understand than playing the game itself, so I tried to modify it as less as I can did!

Accepted this challenge, these are briefely the steps I followed:

convince me that is was not possilbe.......................................[failed]
trying to understand how that code works...................................[failed]
trying to indent the code..................................................[failed]
convert the used dxlib functions to call Wii's GX (GRRLib) ones............[ done ]
realize that a proper port can't be done without spending more time I have.[ done ]
add some 'porkaround' in the source code for speeding up coding............[ done ]
boring debugs..............................................................[ done ]
boring tests...............................................................[ done ]

I’m not a master coder but I suggest to everyone to not use this code for educational purpouse! I spent time and time to trying to understand it, there are other projects you can use to start coding with

Mandatory screenshots!

Input and tricks

The game is played with Wiimote used in NES position, with button 2 used for jump and button Minus for suicide (yes sometimes it is needed ).

The original game let you select the starting level just pressing a keyboard key from 1 to 9 at main screen; mine has also a level select, find it out (main screen too)!

Many thanks to…

..in order of “appearance”:

• Author of the game (if you read it please tell me your name, I don’t know)
• PoiSoN for let me know this game
• Njoe,  Sumiguchi, his wife and other people for translation
• GRRLib (my first game using this lib!) and NoNameNo’s suggestions
• LibOGC/devkitPro/asndlib

Important notes

As I said, the game is very very difficult,  so I debugged/tested the game until level 5 or 6, don’t guarrantee for other levels (please test if you are kinda brave).

The original Syobon Action had 4 levels, but I found the sources of (unofficial?) “version 2″ so I used them and ported it:  5 levels more!

Downloads

The game is available here.

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!

sudo /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!