The Wii Opera SDK

I've set up a blog at http://blog.wiioperasdk.com to focus solely on making software for the Internet Channel on the Wii. The blog will consist of articles that benefit developers.

Many of the Wii Opera SDK demos have been captured to video and placed on YouTube for those who cannot get online with the Wii and who have a Web browser that can't handle HTML5 standards (ex. Internet Explorer). The videos are under http://www.youtube.com/breakdancecrew.

I've been working hard on version 2.0 of the Wii Opera SDK and thought I'd share preview demo at http://hullbreachonline.com/sdk/shooting.html. This demo is a shooting game that makes use of several of the upcoming features of the SDK, including real-time lighting, backface culling, mesh importing, mesh merging, and 3D explosions. To play the game, simply click the spinning object to shoot an arrow at it. The game tallies hits and misses for the duration of play.

During this upcoming week, the new version of the Wii Opera SDK will be released at http://hullbreachonline.com/sdk along with a mesh gallery where developers will be able to import and export premade 3D models or create their own for incorporation into homebrew Internet Channel games. This entire gallery will be rateable by members of the website, and anyone will be able to download the files for projects.

Several functional updates have been made today to HullBreach, each of which is a major step toward the limited beta release. Without further ado, here they are:

Scanning
All locations can now be scanned when the ship is docked at them, revealing different levels of information based on the power of the ship's sensors. This will eventually be worked into missions were data need to be collected to progress.



Shipyards
The shipyard menu allows players to browse ships available for sale at certain locations. Eventually these will be purchasable by earning credits from missions; ship upgrades will be made available as well.



Missions
The mission menu allows players to select missions to take-on from most locations. Mission population is in progress. There will be many types of missions with tasks as simple as transporting goods to very complex scripted missions like infiltrating an enemy planet that can take numerous steps to complete.


Much of the code has also been cleaned up for quicker loading, less memory footprint, and easier future expansion. These backend changes will allow HullBreach to be updated while players are in the game, adding augmentations in real-time. Stay tuned for more updates coming soon!

I know that lately much of the news released about the Wii Opera SDK has been centered around the FPS engine demo. I'm taking a break from that for the moment to resume work on Spacefox: Dogfighting. Yesterday autoroll on banking and a few building structure in scenery were added in a small update that kicks off the start of daily updates that will eventually lead to the completion of the game. Be sure to stay tuned, and check it out periodically.