Wii support?

[ThomasHineXYZ]

I was wondering if there is a Wii version of the HB App Store in the works, or if it in the pipeline at all. It would be nice to have something that could replace the archaic Homebrew Browser (or even the Open Shop Channel project that is based on it).

I'm asking because I'm a moderator on r/WiiHacks, and if one is released we can help feature it to get the news out about it.

[compucat]

Hey, glad you asked! We have a Wii port in development; it's currently stuck while we finish porting libcurl to the Wii. (Others have done it before, but the source was lost, and we can't compile against 8-year-old binaries with a modern compiler.)

We're actually working with OSC to port their repositories over to the libget package manager; they'll help curate homebrew on the Wii side after the transition is complete. Deprecating their HBB repos/client is up to them, but I suspect the community and devs will prefer an actively-developed client over HBB's one-file unmaintainably hacky codebase :)

We'd absolutely love you to feature this once everything's released! Ping me over at https://discord.fortheusers.org - I'm planning on setting up a more organized way for us to do press releases (oh how formal) and efficiently get info to community leaders and media sources first.

[vgmoose]

libget now supports interfacing with OSC repos, if you create a custom repos.json with an entry of "type": "osc". Example here:

{
  "repos": [{
     "name":"Wii OSC Repo",
     "url":"https://hbb1.oscwii.org",
     "type":"osc",
     "enabled":true
  }]
}

And it results in the following:

Some more work is needed, but I am intending to add support for the OSC repo to the Wii U SDL2 app first, for installing vWii apps. That will then be able to be managed with #14 in the app itself.

As for the Wii port itself though, I know we have some test builds working with mocked network data. If the libcurl and layout problems are both solved, this is still a very doable goal, although I know that a lot of time has passed.

[vgmoose]

With the new release of SDL2 for GC/Wii by mudrik, we've switched over the Wii port to use SDL2, and it is supporting https and OSC repos as well!

The UI though is unfortunately almost completely hardcoded to a 720p resolution (for WiiU/Switch) and still needs changes to support the Wii aspect ratio. We're also separately interested these sizing/scaling changes to support 1080p displays as well.

On top of the UI changes needed, although networking is working, trying to create folders and store files on the SD card returns an error on the Wii build. Probably this needs some filesystem initialization calls or paths to be changed.

To download the latest (very much WIP) .DOL of the Wii port so far, see the nightlies here: https://nightly.link/fortheusers/hb-appstore/workflows/main/main

In terms of priority, I am working on getting 2.4 out to Switch/WiiU with some of the current unreleased features, but after that I would be interested in focusing on getting our Wii client (in shiny SDL2!) more usable and in the hands of testers.

[ThomasHineXYZ]

That's awesome. It's a big jump.

I'm glad to see that this is still under development.

[dhtdht020]

Great news! Very promising.