Hacking Nintendont

[GreyWolf]

Isn't the GameCube's, Wii's and Wii U's CPU a PowerPC CPU?

The main processor is. IOSes (and Nintendont) run on the Starlet, though. It's the gatekeeper between the PPC and IO hardware.

 

[uyjulian]

Isn't the GameCube's, Wii's and Wii U's CPU a PowerPC CPU?

Wii and Wii U have two CPU:
ARM is used for I/O to device like USB, controller, CDrom, sound processor, etc
The main game logic is run on the PPC
The graphics are rendered on the GX for the Wii or the GX2 for the WiiU

 

[FIX94]

just updated the first post to include links to triforce-iso-extract and triforce-hdr-patcher, cant believe they werent mentioned yet

 

[GerbilSoft]

The main processor is. IOSes (and Nintendont) run on the Starlet, though. It's the gatekeeper between the PPC and IO hardware.

Offtopic, but it should probably be noted here: There's some supposed "game developers" spreading rumors that a bunch of Wii U games, including Sonic Boom, are terrible because they're written for the ARM CPU, because among other things, CryEngine "doesn't run on PowerPC". And, since ARM CPUs are also used in phones, any game written for an ARM CPU is automatically a "smartphone game". Never mind the fact that CryEngine runs on Xbox 360 or PS3, or that 3DS also uses ARM.

Of course, anyone who's actually done Wii/Wii U programming knows that the ARM CPU is basically off-limits for licensed developers, and is only useful for specific purposes for hax, like Nintendont or custom IOSes.

 

[FIX94]

Of course, anyone who's actually done Wii/Wii U programming knows that the ARM CPU is basically off-limits for licensed developers, and is only useful for specific purposes for hax, like Nintendont or custom IOSes.

on top of that the arm processor is REALLY slow anyways, just the nintendont kernel itself works it up pretty hard as anyone can hear on stuff like memory card access sound issues so if you wanted to run a game on that it would be maybe be at ds level at its best

 

[sonictopfan]

Offtopic, but it should probably be noted here: There's some supposed "game developers" spreading rumors that a bunch of Wii U games, including Sonic Boom,...

Like we needed another Sonic game to hate in this topic, at least this is one game I agree with the majority that sucks, though I may be in the minority who hated the 3DS game even more.

 

[froggestspirit]

Alos what would you gain in having nintendont in wiiu mode that you dont on vwii mode? if we ever get iosu we can free vwii and it will give everything we ever needed to vwii nintendont in terms of power and memory and probably gamepad acess.

i mostly want gamecube games to run in 1080p. Would this be possible with isou?

 

[GreyWolf]

i mostly want gamecube games to run in 1080p. Would this be possible with isou?

It wouldn't rewrite the games.

 

[Tomobobo]

Wow don't tease about stuff like Wii U mode gc.

 

[ccfman2004]

i mostly want gamecube games to run in 1080p. Would this be possible with isou?

All GameCube games are not written in 1080p only 480i or 480p so there would be no benefit. Wii games on the other hand were written in 720p or 1080p even though the Wii only had a maximum output of 480p.

 

[pedro702]

i mostly want gamecube games to run in 1080p. Would this be possible with isou?

no, not even wii games on wiiu menu get upscalled to 1080p they just play in 480p, just check any wii game on wii u e shop.

 

[GerbilSoft]

Wii games on the other hand were written in 720p or 1080p even though the Wii only had a maximum output of 480p.

Where exactly did you get this information? Wii's internal framebuffer is the same as GameCube's (640x528); why would Wii games be "written in" 720p or 1080p?

 

[ccfman2004]

Where exactly did you get this information? Wii's internal framebuffer is the same as GameCube's (640x528); why would Wii games be "written in" 720p or 1080p?

I read it somewhere a while ago. It's possible that the Wii was going to do HD but then to make it cheaper they scrapped it. Considering that both the PS3 and Xbox 360 did HD that maybe Nintendo wanted to follow suit. Who knows. I do know that the Movies inside Super Smash Bros. Braw are awfully big to be SD. I think I read some where that someone ran those cutscenes on the computer and they were HD.

It wouldn't be the first time that a console maker downsized something during development.

 

[GerbilSoft]

I do know that the Movies inside Super Smash Bros. Braw are awfully big to be SD. I think I read some where that someone ran those cutscenes on the computer and they were HD.

It wouldn't be the first time that a console maker downsized something during development.

Downsizing is usually done during post-production, not in realtime.

I checked some of the videos in Brawl's "movie" directory:

• 01-00.thp (SSE opening): 576x416, 00:36, 35.3 MB
• 2006_E3.thp: 576x416, 02:31, 124 MB
• HowtoPlay.thp: 640x480, 01:12, 125 MB
• OPMovie.thp: 640x480, 01:59, 133 MB

The reason the movie directory is so big isn't because of "HD" resolution; it's because there's lots of video clips. Each character has their own "ending" video for 1P mode (including separate clips for Samus and Zero Suit Samus), which are around 6-9 MB each; that's 269 MB right there. There's also the bonus movies, including the intros for Sonic and Snake, and there's a total of 127 cutsenes for SSE (2.51 GB).

There's a total of 171 videos in the movie directory, which adds up to 3.35 GB. The largest one is OPMovie.thp (opening movie), which is 133 MB for 01:59.

Incidentally, part of the reason why these videos may seem big for their length is because Nintendo's THP format is basically a wrapper around MJPEG. (Reference: http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=THP) MJPEG isn't a very efficient format, since there's no interframe compression; however, it's significantly easier to decode than MPEG-4 or H.264. (Audio format is 32 kHz ADPCM.)

 

[uyjulian]

I wonder if it's possible to overclock the GX to over Wii levels, give it more ram, etc, and patch games to 1080P framebuffer.
If that isn't possible, at least it's possible to get more FPS out of the Wii U's GX than if we did GX emulation on the GX2 if we just overclocked.

Or maybe we could do multi step rendering where we use both the graphics processors; for example: the GX does rasterization while GX2 does post processing to make image cleaner in 1080p.

 

[GreyWolf]

I wonder if it's possible to overclock the GX to over Wii levels, give it more ram, etc, and patch games to 1080P framebuffer.
If that isn't possible, at least it's possible to get more FPS out of the Wii U's GX than if we did GX emulation on the GX2 if we just overclocked.

Or maybe we could do multi step rendering where we use both the graphics processors; for example: the GX does rasterization while GX2 does post processing to make image cleaner in 1080p.

GX is a C library. You're referring to overclocking the graphics processor. All 3 consoles have similar GPUs but they're not the same. Resolution is dependent on the size of the GPU's framebuffer. Making the GPU run faster doesn't change how much memory it has to compose a scene.

 

[huma_dawii]

If we get IOSU are we gonna be able to use WII U gamepad as a controller? For both Wii and GC games? That'd be so awesome!

 

[ShadowOne333]

If we get IOSU are we gonna be able to use WII U gamepad as a controller? For both Wii and GC games? That'd be so awesome!

That's the idea.
It's just a matter of getting a hand on Cafe2Wii and then maybe something could be done to handle Wii/GC games and apps with the Gamepad as a CCP.

 

[uyjulian]

GX is a C library. You're referring to overclocking the graphics processor. All 3 consoles have similar GPUs but they're not the same. Resolution is dependent on the size of the GPU's framebuffer. Making the GPU run faster doesn't change how much memory it has to compose a scene.

I'm referring to the graphics processor (also may be referred Flipper), not the C library.

 

[GreyWolf]

I'm referring to the graphics processor (also may be referred Flipper), not the C library.

It's just an ATI GPU with an ARM core stuck to it that serves as a hypervisor. GX is Nintendo's graphics library similar to DirectX/OpenGL.