Homebrew We NEED a Re-Launch

[LightyKD]

SERIOUSLY! This scene seems dead. There hasn't been a major homebrew release that made anyone go "ZOMG" since... Um.... WiiMC and Wii64 1.1. Yes Wii64 is still being worked on and WiiMC gets is regular updates but like I said in a thread a long time ago, where are the apps??? Maybe it's time for a Android marketplace/app mindset when it comes to Wii homebrew.

Maybe the first place to start with is the Homebrew browser. Major props to the people who spent a major amount of time to work on this app. Maybe it's time for a facelift. They could go with a Wii shop like theme or borrow some theme ideas from WiiMC or even come up with a new uniform standard that homebrew apps can follow. Either way, making it more user friendly (simple, neat yet capable) is a top priority. Once again I'm not bashing this app. Actually I believe a new Homebrew Browser can bring about major change for the Wii scene.

Secondly, let's throw out the idea that the Wii can't multitask. Two things I want people to think about. 1) The Home Menu and 2) the trinity, "Facebook, Youtube, Twitter". We all know that the Home Menu can be edited. It's no secret that once a game or app is started it takes up all of the system memory but is it possible to create a "New" Home Menu that could add features that will make the Wii seem more connected. Let's start simple, a clock and maybe some way to call out to the Message Board, check and receive messages. Hell, I'd gladly retrofit EVERY one of my Wii games to have these added features. Sure, it seems like fixing crap that Nintendo should have thought about but trust me, such things would be appreciated to the avid Wii user.

Now for the trinity. While the lack of proper YouTube support could be fixed within WiiMC (by proper I mean easy access to accounts and playlist. YouTube XL from the Internet Channel is complete garbage!) I'm sure that True Facebook and Twitter apps would also be awesome. It doesn't end with those three. People make apps on mobile devices for almost anything. Sure we don't want the Homebrew Browser to be crowded with craptacular apps, we do want to encourage an environment of creativity.

Finally, games games and more games!!! Screw WiiWare and trying to get through Nintendo's BS and trust me, I know (I'm a personal friend of Rekcahdam / rComplex and Celestial Mechanica) It's time we supported our own Indy environment. If you want to try official channels and get you game on WiiWare, more power to you

, I think that's awesome! For the rest of us I think that we should dedicate a section of this forum for "meetups". an area where programmers, story writers, audio technicians and artist can meet and come up with some really great things. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and as a community, we should ban together and help each other.

Nw that I'm done ranting, please everyone, give me your input. I'm sure there will be some bashing, some people telling me to "Do it yourself." but I'm not particularly trying to get an app made. I just dont want to see this scene die off. I wan't to invite my friends over and once again have a reason to brag to them about Wii Homebrew. I want to say, "See? So and so made this app and it does this awesome thing! I bet you didn't think the Wii could do that!" All of you programmers out there, I want to brag about your work! I want to put you on a nice little homebrew pedestal and talk about how awesome you are. I miss those days of having certain people in our group that we would talk about a lot. People like Waninkoko and Bushing. What happened to those days. Let's make some new glory days!

 

[Clarky]

i wouldn't say the scene is so much dead as it has slowed down, but you have to ask yourself where does the scene really need to go now? the wii has seen almost as many emulators as it is likely to see and besides the odd bugfix or update to these current emus i cannot see much need to keep pushing forward. this year we have seen virtual boy emulation hit the wii, emukidd and co are working on updates to wii64 and psxwii, and with each version of gengx plus that seems to be gaining compatibility with new consoles (master system, game gear), if possible the mega cd may rear its head in the next version. Only other thing i can think of was the dreamcast emulator which was talked about but if it turns up i don't expect it to run at great speeds. If you look around there are even indie devs making games for the wii, just look at the news page here for more details.

 

[Magsor]

As much as I love the Wii. it is not the future of homebrewing. But as time goes along it will become the preschool of homebrewing as wiis become more and more affordable. I suggest you learn yourself how to code and invest your own time facelifting homebrew browser and such.

PS3 dev has a much brighter future and xbox360 scene is very active also. Give it some time were getting there.

 

[tueidj]

If you think there's no new homebrew being released you're just not looking hard enough.

 

[LightyKD]

I wish I was awesome at programming but I'm an artist. I especially love creating HUDs and GUIs. I guess I'm that geeky. I had multiple designs and layout for apps Id like to make but its been more than proven to me that these days a project can't be efficiently done with one person. This is why I suggested a place for people to meetup for projects and pool their resources. Either way, I'm just glad that this conversation is happening. Clarky' you are right. We as a community need to ask, where do we want homebrew to go.

 

[Dogway]

tueidj is right, you maybe didnt look hard enough. There are many projects alive and kicking, for instance; Wiirtualboy, Swiss, Yabause, the nice cover mods updates from Wiimpathy, and very active genplusgx updates as well. The only thing I really miss for more development, is sdlmame, but that's another story... oops, and mplayer ce (I hate wiimc)

 

[sputnix]

what do you want exactly homebrew games cause to be honest there and almost no "good" games besides emulators [I'm certain I could be proven wrong] so really unless you can "create" something for this re-launch your just someone with no programing knowledge who want's people to make free games for yourself to play

 

[StupidGamer1]

Not going to happen,sorry to upset you.

 

[Snailface]

Another homebrew bounty would help things.
I don't see why it can't be started now, that would give more time for devs to make homebrew that is truly special.

 

[tueidj]

what do you want exactly homebrew games cause to be honest there and almost no "good" games besides emulators [I'm certain I could be proven wrong]

I don't consider emulators to be games, since they're just a means to run other things.
I think there are a lot of homebrew games that people don't even hear about because they're too busy looking for hacks/apps/warez. For example:

Wiitris - Ok it's just tetris, but it's 4 player and it's rare to see miis in homebrew.
OpenTTD - I know people who used to take sick days just to play Transport Tycoon (long before WoW was around).
Mr. Sitwell in Turbo WC Magical Adventure - Uh, it's a fun game with some original features. You really have to see for yourself.
The Ur-Quan Masters - This game is massive. It also did inter-species sex long before Mass Effect.
The Prophecy - A castlevania style side-scroller, made from scratch.
Freespace 2 Wii - Another port that slipped under the radar.
QuakeGX - Quake + rails shooter-style aiming = teh awesome.
Desert Bus - Best game ever. Enough said.

I think all of these (with the exception of the last, it's a joke) are probably better games than the crap that gets put out as wiiware each month.

 

[Cyan]

The Prophecy looks really nice, I'll try it. thanks for listing it.


The bus has direction problem lol.
Too bad, there's no rear mirror on the left to see (hypothetical) cars who want to pass.

 

[tueidj]

The bus doesn't have directional problems, it's designed that way - constantly moving the steering wheel helps charge a battery that runs the super efficient (although very noisy) engine. How else do you think it could drive 350 miles with an empty fuel tank?

 

[shortz1994]

I will agree with you. there could be more done with the wii i'm sure.
Me i would like to see some blank menus done. then the user can make his own.. alot easier then it's done the current way. ( diddy an the team are great).. but a blank would give the user more of a custom choice of his/her wii..as far as "games/apps" i think most are done with, just updating. wiimc, need to let us use themes inside wiimc. not just the mod i found, that works some times(doesn't load music). but as everyone has said. it's close to being dead. everyone is focusing on the fail that is called wii u.. yes i do belive it's going to fail just as 3d's has been a flop..

 

[Jacobeian]

I think that most people complaining "the scenz is dead" have actually very little idea about what coding and publishing an application involves, as well as the reasons why a developer suddenly decides to spend his free time on something and shares it with people he doesn't even know.

Ask yourself what you are spending you free time on and what motivates you to "work" on stuff;

What we need is more generous, talented and motivated people, not people bragging about how "slow" and "inactive" the scene is or trying to push or gather devs to do what they want them to do, because from what I have seen for all these years, this NEVER worked like that ... Those stuff come in cycles, sometime there are lot of stuff released because someone released something and started the hype then after a while things get less attention or people move on to other things they feel more important. But there is NOTHING you can do about that unless taking some initiative and tacke some (serious) work yourself.

 

[newo]

I've said before; there are certainly less "people" doing stuff, This might be because there are more homebrew-able consoles now than there were 2 years ago - the hombrews are split behind all these platforms - some of which you can actually make money on. Added to that the wii scene may have just stablised/matured to the point where we already have everything we "need", lots of information can be found easily and in general its easier to homebrew now than it has ever been. Also check out my game

- not sure if its under the radar or not.

 

[Fishaman P]

The reason there's nothing innovative anymore is... we've run out of ideas.
The only thing I can think of would be a GC USB Loader, which is impossible.
GC SD Loaders have already come, so...

 

[Jacobeian]

The reason there's nothing innovative anymore is... we've run out of ideas.

people actually have plenty of "cool" ideas, they even share them all the time on forums like this one, thinking this is going to make them happen
but really, this does not work like that, just look at the Wiibrew "Ideas & Request" subforums, it's pathetically useless and nothing really serious ever came from this.

 

[Taleweaver]

SERIOUSLY! This scene seems dead. There hasn't been a major homebrew release that made anyone go "ZOMG" since... Um.... WiiMC and Wii64 1.1. Yes Wii64 is still being worked on and WiiMC gets is regular updates but like I said in a thread a long time ago, where are the apps??? Maybe it's time for a Android marketplace/app mindset when it comes to Wii homebrew.

Maybe the first place to start with is the Homebrew browser. Major props to the people who spent a major amount of time to work on this app. Maybe it's time for a facelift. They could go with a Wii shop like theme or borrow some theme ideas from WiiMC or even come up with a new uniform standard that homebrew apps can follow. Either way, making it more user friendly (simple, neat yet capable) is a top priority. Once again I'm not bashing this app. Actually I believe a new Homebrew Browser can bring about major change for the Wii scene.

Secondly, let's throw out the idea that the Wii can't multitask. Two things I want people to think about. 1) The Home Menu and 2) the trinity, "Facebook, Youtube, Twitter". We all know that the Home Menu can be edited. It's no secret that once a game or app is started it takes up all of the system memory but is it possible to create a "New" Home Menu that could add features that will make the Wii seem more connected. Let's start simple, a clock and maybe some way to call out to the Message Board, check and receive messages. Hell, I'd gladly retrofit EVERY one of my Wii games to have these added features. Sure, it seems like fixing crap that Nintendo should have thought about but trust me, such things would be appreciated to the avid Wii user.

Now for the trinity. While the lack of proper YouTube support could be fixed within WiiMC (by proper I mean easy access to accounts and playlist. YouTube XL from the Internet Channel is complete garbage!) I'm sure that True Facebook and Twitter apps would also be awesome. It doesn't end with those three. People make apps on mobile devices for almost anything. Sure we don't want the Homebrew Browser to be crowded with craptacular apps, we do want to encourage an environment of creativity.

Finally, games games and more games!!! Screw WiiWare and trying to get through Nintendo's BS and trust me, I know (I'm a personal friend of Rekcahdam / rComplex and Celestial Mechanica) It's time we supported our own Indy environment. If you want to try official channels and get you game on WiiWare, more power to you

, I think that's awesome! For the rest of us I think that we should dedicate a section of this forum for "meetups". an area where programmers, story writers, audio technicians and artist can meet and come up with some really great things. We all have our strengths and weaknesses and as a community, we should ban together and help each other.

Nw that I'm done ranting, please everyone, give me your input. I'm sure there will be some bashing, some people telling me to "Do it yourself." but I'm not particularly trying to get an app made. I just dont want to see this scene die off. I wan't to invite my friends over and once again have a reason to brag to them about Wii Homebrew. I want to say, "See? So and so made this app and it does this awesome thing! I bet you didn't think the Wii could do that!" All of you programmers out there, I want to brag about your work! I want to put you on a nice little homebrew pedestal and talk about how awesome you are. I miss those days of having certain people in our group that we would talk about a lot. People like Waninkoko and Bushing. What happened to those days. Let's make some new glory days!

My reply would be: a community isn't a company, and you're not its chairman. And even if both of those were true, I wouldn't agree. I hate to tell you this, but you sound like that cliché chairman who has no idea about reality or the work that is going on.

The reality part is simple: the wii won't multitask. Period. Just bringing it up just diminishes your credentials ("you know what would be awesome? If someone could code it so my wii can transform in a miniature car so I can easily transport it").
The "do it yourself" that I'm putting here isn't to shut you up. It's because it's the only way to illustrate why not everyone and their dog releases new, awesome homebrew on a daily basis.

I'm personally annoyed that the wii scene is deemed "dead" while there is work done on multiple fields. Yes, it's mostly updates and bugfixes. So? The activity is still there, and I'd have rather one application that has full stability than a dozen that may crash at any moment.

Besides...checked the forums lately? With all the progress on cIOS, guides and all that jazz, the majority of wii-owners barely know how to handle an out-of-region game. While it's true that it's a bit of a pity that Crediar left the scene, there are still way too many people who aren't using sneek to begin with. In other words: there are still plenty of people to be amazed by what the wii can do.

...and that's not even taking tueidj's post into account (everytime I just try to find a fun homebrew game, I'm overwhelmed by choices. It's a bit greedy to ask for more before checking out what's already released).

 

[Clarky]

much respect there weaver....well put

 

[shortz1994]

I will also side with wever. how can you say the scene is dead. davenbol (damn i hope i spelled that right), not to long ago just got d2x,to were we don't need alt dol to play certian games, then overjoy came along an got joyflow to work on *neek, then the rest of usb loaders followed, scooby????(too many numbers dude,lol) great coder in his own right, working on some great things. i can write a book,on all the great people that have done things for this scene. giantpune, an his mailbomb an other great work, with all his apps.most i have on my computer an use. damn i sit here an play with the apps i have, an just found out i could make channels with crap 3.3, customize mii an showmii wads. so for you to say the scene is dead. is kinda unfair to the ones who keep working at it.