Wii is fantastic - thoughts on modding...

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:16 am

Spent all day yesterday playing the Wii with my wife; Wii Fit, and a selection of games like Mario Galaxy. Great console; although harder to use than the old school systems! (takes more to get used to).

One thing is a shame, the inability to make an all-in-one portable with it. I know you can make it and wave about your controller and numchuck as per the regular system, using the system and screen as a base unit, but not to make everything integrated. To me, a portable system is fully integrated, not like the "laptop" trend where you still need to wave your controls about.

Question is this - is it possible to replace the motion detectors in the main controller and make a joystick work as a fully working substitute - after all, the motion detectors act like a mouse on the screen, so if someone worked out how to hack the way it works they might be able to keep the "mouse pointer" on the screen all the time and move when the joystick moves.

If this were possible, it might make the Wii a feasible, but difficult system to make fully integrated into a portable. Probably isn't possible, but worth asking the question.

I know this will restrict the games you play severely as most games require you to wave your controllers about and bring them downwards quickly; or overarm and underarm movements; work numchuck with main controller for distance (like I think Zelda does), but one of the cornerstone games, and an amazing game, Super Mario Galaxy, only uses the joystick on the numchuck for movement (at least, that is I have used for for the first 4 stars I have got in the game), the A button, B button, Z button and the main controller moves the blue star for aiming (hence question about using a joystick as substitute); and of course for selecting the game in the first place from the Wii menu.

Point is that all platforms have many games, most are crap, some good but you only play once or a few times then never again, then there are the true gaming classics that you keep playing over many years (eg Super Mario 64) - Mario Galaxy is fantastic; when the price of Wii's go for a silly price (maybe 2-3 years more), it wouldn't be unrealistic to make a dedicated portable for such a great game - perfectly possible if a joystick can be made to replace the mouse action from the main controller.

Thoughts?

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:39 am

Not gonna say that I have any facts to back me, but I think it plausable to control the IR sensor with joystick. I know you can hook a Wiimote up to a computer and use the pointer as a mouse, so I would assume the opposite idea could be done as well. However, I doubt a simple hardware mod will suffice. It would probably require some kind of micro-controller programmed to emulate the IR camera's output.

Again, I'm just speculating and I'm not exactly an expert on this kind of thing.

perhaps looking at how the wiimote sensor works as a mouse for PC you'll be able to figure a way to work out how to get a joystick to work as the wiimote controls.

Also, I think it would be plausible to emulate the motion controls through buttons as well if you thought it helpful. Most actions are just spikes in Acceleration, which on PCs can be read and translated into a keystroke or something of the like. Perhaps that could also be turned around and take a button press to represent a strong force on the accelerometer. Couldn't tell you how where to start on this one either except to look at how PCs do it. Perhaps looking at the source of CWiiD would be of benefit as it has a program included that only reads and displays data off the wiimote & attachement (be it the nunchuk or classic controller) such as X,Y, and Z acceleration, tilt, and pitch. Cwiid is a program written for Ubuntu, so I don't know if it will be of any use to you.

anyways, good luck with this project, I hope you can find what you need.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 6:50 am

If you can fool the motion sensor into activating a movement by pressing a digital button, that might work - you can get digital joysticks after all (eg used on the GP2x), or joystick cap tops which press onto digital buttons so give the feel of an analogue joystick but in fact are digital; or doing the trick to make an analogue stick react like digital key presses but increases or decreases speed depending on how far the stick is moved.

I don't know what will or won't work, I don't have a lot of experience in this area, I thought as some guys have opened their Wii's they might know some answers?

I don't know if any of these methods will work, I am not even going there until the Wii is so cheap you can ruin them and it doesn't matter (eg like the N64 now - can buy them for about Â£3/Â£4 each now). That means waiting a few years! No rush though!

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 7:04 am

I discussed this subject a lot with a friend of mine. A joystick would probably work very poorly, but what sounds like a good alternative is a touchscreen. This would only allow one player games (unless the other 3 wave controllers around) and has it's limits too - the wiimote not only detects it's position, it also detects motion, thus disabling full compatibility (unless you added something clever like a motion joystick)

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 7:12 am

bacteria wrote:If you can fool the motion sensor into activating a movement by pressing a digital button, that might work - you can get digital joysticks after all (eg used on the GP2x), or joystick cap tops which press onto digital buttons so give the feel of an analogue joystick but in fact are digital; or doing the trick to make an analogue stick react like digital key presses but increases or decreases speed depending on how far the stick is moved.

I would imagine you would want to go the button route rather than the stick route. The kind of games that would need more precision in the motion controls are probably the games that wouldn't be very good on a hand-held Wii. I don't know too many games that have precise motion controls other than Wii sports. Metroid Prime 3 has some relatively precise motion controls, but I imagine that would be a difficult game to play with a joystick instead of IR controls anyways because of how Wii shooters aim and move compared to traditional dual-analog setup (somewhat similar to goldeneye and perfect dark, actually).

But for games such as Zelda, if you just set a button to send a full X force, you'd have yourself a sword-button. set another one to whatever nunchuk axis controls the shield and you've got another function as it would work for the gamecube. For Super Mario Galaxy you could do the same for the spin move. The other motion controls may be harder to emulate (such as the manaraycing and the ball-walking.) but the rest of the game would probably be pretty playable.

I don't know what will or won't work, I don't have a lot of experience in this area, I thought as some guys have opened their Wii's they might know some answers?

Can't say I have much experience in the Wii-side of the area nor do I have experience in the development of the PC side of Wiimote controlling, but I figured I might have a few ideas that might spark something with what little I did know.

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 7:17 am

Kyo wrote:I discussed this subject a lot with a friend of mine. A joystick would probably work very poorly, but what sounds like a good alternative is a touchscreen. This would only allow one player games (unless the other 3 wave controllers around) and has it's limits too - the wiimote not only detects it's position, it also detects motion, thus disabling full compatibility (unless you added something clever like a motion joystick)

It probably wouldn't work very well in pointer-heavy games, but for something like Smash Bros where you're mostly using it to choose your character it should be fine. Or in Super Mario Galaxy where you're just shooting star-bits, which isn't exactly in the heat of battle.

as for the motion controls, as I mentioned in my previous post, it wouldn't have to be analog as most games that you'd want to play on a portable Wii would work with digital motion controls.

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 7:22 am

actually, you don't use the wiimote to point in smash bros at all. You use the dpad.

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 7:35 am

Kyo wrote:actually, you don't use the wiimote to point in smash bros at all. You use the dpad.

I've never actually used the wiimote for smash bros, I always used a gamecube controller. do you even use the d-pad if you're doing a wiimote+nunchuk setup or do you only use the d-pad for the wiimote only setup?

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 8:51 am

motion sensing is not used at all in the game. So you'd be able to play that well with a wii portable no matter how you implement the motion sensing. It's worth consideration to do a wiiP that implements the sensor bar so it can be used as wii+tv on vacation or whatever, and as portable for some games (like brawl, anything virtual console, some wiiware games like megaman 9)

JamieK · Post by **JamieK** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 10:20 am

Kyo wrote:motion sensing is not used at all in the game. So you'd be able to play that well with a wii portable no matter how you implement the motion sensing. It's worth consideration to do a wiiP that implements the sensor bar so it can be used as wii+tv on vacation or whatever, and as portable for some games (like brawl, anything virtual console, some wiiware games like megaman 9)

I second this. Another option would be to still include the tilt sensors, so that you could have a mini-laptop and still play stuff like Mario Kart.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:04 am

This is precisely why it would be a case of making a WiiP spefically for a designated game. For example in Mario Galaxy, the d-pad isn't used; the only sweep action needed by the controller is for the attack move, so if a button could emulate left motion movement and another for right, you could work it.

A different WiiP for Mario Kart, using a mini steering wheel would emulate the precise movements needed for steering, no other axis than left or right are needed after all for the actual game.

I propose, as a fun exercise, from people with more expertise in the Wii than me (at the moment, I add

), making a log here per game of if basic control emulation could be done on each game (integrated system), and a bright spark working out how to do it. We could then get WiiP specific to certain titles of great quality. Just a suggestion.

This could be interesting...as I mentioned before, cripples the choices of games playable, but saves using a "portable" as a mobile screen and not actually being a proper Portable (ie one of the requirements being integrated controls...).

Kyo · Post by **Kyo** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 11:57 am

The hardest part would be doing some translation magic between the analog stick/button/touchscreen and the wii. It'd also be a wise decision to wire the whole thing, no need having two integrated devices communicating over bluetooth. I guess the first step would be wiring a wiimote, then you would just have to look into the protocol it uses to communicate with the wii (which is well documented thanks to the pc drivers), and then translate the signal your replacement gives to that using a microcontroller or whatever

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 4:10 pm

The thing is, the Wiimote has an IR camera in it. It'd be very difficult to translate a joystick's movements to a camera's "seeing". An idea I had a while ago was to put the classic controller in the case, you can control the cursor with it.

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 4:19 pm

bacteria wrote:This is precisely why it would be a case of making a WiiP spefically for a designated game. For example in Mario Galaxy, the d-pad isn't used; the only sweep action needed by the controller is for the attack move, so if a button could emulate left motion movement and another for right, you could work it.

I could be wrong here, but I'm pretty sure most games that make use of swinging motions or what-not use absolute-values rather than worrying about whether you're swinging left or right.

grossaffe · Post by **grossaffe** » Sat Jan 03, 2009 4:24 pm

Mario wrote:The thing is, the Wiimote has an IR camera in it. It'd be very difficult to translate a joystick's movements to a camera's "seeing". An idea I had a while ago was to put the classic controller in the case, you can control the cursor with it.

Speculation here again, but I would guess that the IR camera sees two things, sends the information to another part to calculate the screen position, and then sends the data to the Wii. What we would want to do is get in feed our joystick information into the part that sends the screen position to the Wii. And there would be two ways we would have to decide on: position based or acceleration based. position based would take the absolute position of the joystick and put the pointer there (if joystick is at rest, pointer is in middle of screen). Acceleration based would be like a more traditional mouse where how far the joystick is pressed changes the speed in which the pointer is moving. That one would probably be harder to implement but provides for more intuitive controls.