Stamps, Records, Fixes, and More!

Wondering what the next feature in WiiConnect will be? Well if you’ve been looking at the changes at google code, you would’ve noticed a lot of talk about stamps. Stamps, are WiiConnect’s version of achievements. “Stamp sheets” are a collection of stamps saved in a file with a .stamp extension. A stamp sheet contains a header, with the game title, the four letter game ID, the creator, the and number of stamps. Then it goes chronologically through the stamps, until it reaches the footer. The footer than contains extra info about the stamp sheet, the console (either Wii or Virtual Console), the subconsole (if a virtual console game, otherwise this is 0), the genre, the ESRB rating, the developer, and the publisher.

Stamps themselves are made with a short description of what it does, the offset to the place to check for a value, the length of the data, and the value to compare the value at the offset to. Before all of this happens, though, the save file must be decrypted, and unpacked (and stripped of the headers) so that the offset starts at the raw save data. I’ll probably be looking at segher’s wii.git for some help with this.

WiiConnect is also going to partner with Wii-Records. This means that you will be able to view high scores of (almost) every wii game directly from WiiConnect, and (maybe) be able to submit your high scores! I think this partnership will really add a lot to WiiConnect, and once again, bring even more of an XBOX Live feel. Speeking of which, rankings on Wii-Records and stamps accomplished will be accounted for and used to make a “gamer score.” I still need to think of a name for that, so if anyone has any ideas…

Last, a lot of people have been asking about getting gmail to work with WiiConnect. That is currently NOT POSSIBLE. Gmail uses SSL, which basically means things need to be encrypted. I will add this feature soon, so that gmail can work with WiiConnect. I just need to either make, or edit an existing, library that can handle SSL sessions for me. Along with this, there have been a ton of fixes lately that will allow WiiConnect to work with more servers.

Current Projects

Well right now, I have my hands full in Wii Projects. I’ve got ERS, WiiConnect, WiiBrowse, HBPCii, and some memory patches to create for the system menu.

First of all, WiiConnect is going great! I’ve got a working/feature-limited email client made for the Wii. Right now, it is able to correctly send mail over the SMTP protocol and recieve mail over the POP3 protocol. I still need to implement more features, especially on the SMTP side. Because of spammers, there’s a whole lot more security required on the SMTP side of things as opposed to the POP3 side of things. The AUTH LOGIN command may be working, but I haven’t tested it yet. The biggest feature that is missing is the ability to save settings, and save messages to your SD card. So I’ve been doin a lot with this program lately.

WiiBrowse is a new project, that me and a fellow developer, scanff, are working on together. As the name suggests, it is a web browser for the wii, with planned HTML, CSS,  JavaScript, and Flash support. You can visit the wiibrew page, or go to the google code page. Scanff pretty much wrote all of the HTML rendering and parsing. I’m working on the CSS parser for it. I am really enjoying this project, especially since I can easily test/debug it on a PC. You can expect this project to go far, and you just might find it in WiiConnect to render HTML mail.

ERS isn’t doing so hot. After the ball got rolling on WiiConnect, I kind of pushed ERS aside, since WiiConnect is more important to me (and pretty much anyone else). I will eventually get around to finishing it, it will just be a little while.

HBPCii stands for HomeBrew Parental Controls for wII. It is really just an answer to someone’s request for an app that will password-protect the Homebrew Channel. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to “delete” the homebrew channel from the system menu while keeping it in the NAND. My options are to either make a custom Hombrew Channel WAD (and patch out the middle finger which will display using this method), simply use this as the autoboot dol in PreLoader (password-protecting the entire Wii, provided that other people don’t know how to use Preloader), or create my own PreLoader that is password-protected. Easy option would be to use the autoboot, but I want to re-create the PreLoader eventually, so that your Wii is comepletely password protected. I would just have to figure out how to implement a “forgot my password” thing so that forgetting your password doesn’t result in a bricked Wii.

Last, I am trying to find out how to patch the video mode in the system menu for someone on the Wiibrew Forums. I need to make an entry for the hacks.ini file for Preloader. Either this or solve the person’s problem another way.

As you can see, I am doing a lot of dev’ing right now. I am really excited about what will come from all this work. Be looking forward to some great homebrew!

WiiConnect

Well, thanks to JussiPik, I now have a really slick gui concept for WiiConnect. I never pictured the gui looking as good as this concept does. I now need to implement the gui so that I can start working on the more fun things. An image of the concept is below.

Egyptian Ratscrew

Well, I’ve already started another project. This time, I’m making a game, and intend to add an online feature to it. Eventually, it may become part of WiiConnect. The name of the game is ERS (Egyptian Ratscrew) and is one of my favorite card games. You can check out the wiibrew page here.

If you need to know the rules you can just go to its wiibrew page. I may add more to this post later if I feel like it. 😎