DS sending code to the Wii

Hello. I have a design idea that really needs an answer to this question. Can a DS send code to a Wii and have it executed. Also, can a Wii send & execute code on a DS (or GBA via cable). I want to know if a game could be purchaced on DS and played multi-player across Wii & DS. I know that the DS cable fits into the Wii, so I'm pretty sure that Wii can make a GBA execute, but I dunno about the GBA booting Wii code either.
Basically, I want to write a simple puzzle game that can be played across all the Nintendo consoles from a single disc or gamepak. Has this already been done?

Many thanks for reading this. My entire design pivots on this concept.

If you can help, I promise I will be there to help YOU when you need it.

Best wishes to all,
Sean ;-)

 

It would most likely be possible, but there is no available ready-made solutions for it in any of the homebrew libs afaik.

 

I won't be using any home-brew kits when it comes to the Wii version. On power up, does the Wii listen for Bluetooth even without a disc? Since the DS & Wii were designed to work together, I'm hoping that there is a way. Thing is, Nintendo arn't likely to tell anyone unless they have to or people would be launching code to bypass the security or whatever.
Then again, the crucial weakness of Nintendos encryption is that it is symetrical. I saw a conference in which a speaker discussed having cracked some of the security by simply using a timing attack. The Wii does a string-compare so the further it gets, the longer it takes. Turned out the key was 'COPYRIGHT NINTENDO'. When Nintendo found out, they changed it to.... 'copyright nintendo'.
I appreciate good security as much as the next man, but if they chose an asymetrical key (or better, set of keys) so there are maybe 5000 different keys, then the key for YOUR Wii, will almost certainly not be a key for MY Wii...
I wonder, I wonder. I shall have to take a Wii and see if it's broadcasting or listening. The Bluetooth is on a seperate chip isn't it? When my Wii arrives, I shall get my logic probe onto it to see if it's listening. If so, a timing attack might well ensue.

 

NDS have no bluetooth, WIFI would be your ONLY option (unless you build some custom hardware interface) for transfering data (ok, you could do it Bangai-O Spirtis style with microphone/speaker). And if your not going to use any home-brew libs then I presume you're an licensed developer and in which case I would recommend you talk to Nintendo about this instead.

 

Sorry, I thought the Wifi WAS blootooth. I should read more carefully. I'm not an official developer yet. My boss is pitching a design to them soon and if all goes to plan, then yes, I will get (or rather borrow) a kit. I think they are made by Intelligent Systems and a friend of mine, Niyoko Nakani works there.
If you have Tomb Raider 1 for the CGB, press A,B,Down & Right all at the same time. It shows the hidden credits with images of the IS team.

Sean

 

Nope, two different technologies.

 

how experienced are you? in terms of programming etc, since u didnt know the major difference between wifi and bluetooth. or is this more like a hobby-approach?

 

I've been a games coder for 22 years but I've never touched wireless before. It was never something that crossed my path.
If you do the hidden credits I mention above, the first image is of me.
My first game? Tetris on the C64 in 1985...

I'm more of an engine programmer than a gameplay person. I write the utilities, script languages and 2d/3d engines for others to put gameplay into.

 

Yes, I see, it uses 802.11 b/g: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11 which supports both 11 & 54 Mbit/Second. I also note that it supports WEP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wired_Equivalent_Privacy which I note can be cracked in just a few minutes, so not SO secure. US government decided it wanted to be able to read it, hence a 40 bit key.

Well, it's certain that the Wii can download to both the DS & the GBA. I only hope that the Wifi is a seperate chip so I can apply a logic analyser to see if it's listening when no disc is inserted....

 

Though the NDS only supports upto 2.0 Mbit iirc, but that shouldn't be a problem for what you had in mind I think?

 

Wow, well I havn't red the officicial documents, only the on-line stuff. Yes, 2Mbit/Sec divided by 60 frames per seonds mean that 34K per frame. I think I need to send about 32 bytes for the game, but I'm considering using the ARM9 (the game uses the ARM7 alone) to compress CELP speech so players can talk to each other. Head-to-head is obvious, and on team games, maybe all players on on team speak to each other.
CELP offers pretty good quality at 4.8Kbit/Sec so that's a possible. I'm also considering having speech preloaded to give advice & warnings. CELP cannot search the entire codebook because that would entail testing 4096 codes to choose the best one, but if real-time decompression is not a problem. I'm wondering just how low I can go if it's perfectly selected coded. Waveshape and gain are coded seperatly so it's quite trivial. I'm thinking CELP, but if anyone can suggest a good codec that is heavy to encode but cheap to decode, I'm interested.
I considered LPC10, but the quality is just pants. I would decode all speech into then IMA-ADPCM since it is designed to use little CPU bandwidth for both encoding and decoding. I could even prevent overflow so that the decoder doesn't have to check for it. I also remember than one of the coded is unused (it's 1 bit sign, 3 bits index) so that both positive & negative 0 do the same thing. I was thinking of using that code to tell the decoder to just set the decoder to the maximum/minimum values (ceiling and floor). Oh, and the decoder can run off the end of the lookup tables (like adding a 0 at then end of the scale-index table so it goes no further. Again, this can maybe be avoided so that the decode loop doesn't have to test for it. Basically, the decode loop should be 20 ASM lines or less. An ARM9 should be able to decode a frame of speech using about 5% of it's power. Encoding the CELP will take a lot longer, but should be fine since US cellphones use CELP and 66MHz ARM9s and I assume they had some CPU width left...

Anyone like to comment on my ill-founded hopes and dreams.

 

All I can say is I got a nice hair cut as that went over my head (Zoom!) :lol:

It sounds like you've got a voice chat enabled dual platform game. There are only two game genres that I can think of ATM that would utilize something like that, a racing game or an FPS.

Whatever it is, best of luck! :thumbsup:

 

Cool, I love developer easter eggs like this. Unfortunately this doesn't work for me... tried it in vba and kigb to no avail. :/ When exactly do I have to press them?

 

i think u cant press 4 keyboard buttons at the same time. Try using a controller.

 

Oh right, limited rollover... heh thanks for the hint Barc0de. Although it didn't work out for me with a controller or on hardware either. Meh :shrug:

 

It's in there. We just used up the remaining ROM space with a lot of hicolor images. As well as Core. IS (who made the CBG devkit) are in there & so is Manfred Linzner. Oh, and Jeff Frohwein as well..

 

I now have a copy of the Wii SDK so I'm trundling through that as we speak...

 

Yes, it *is* possible. You want to look at /dev/net/wd* stuff. Report back if you reverse engineer anything useful about this, the info is currently lacking.

 

I really just need someone who can put a logic-probe on the Wifi within the Wii. I don't have the pin-outs but I THINK one of them is 'listening active'. If they used some asymetric cypher (one-time pads would be good, but no, Nintendo suck at encryption).