The Wii Opera SDK

Since I have not posted to this blog in a while, it may seem like my projects have sat dormant. Since that is far from the case, I felt that I should give an update on the status of a few projects:

HULLBREACH ONLINE
For the most part, HB has seen little more than bug fixes over the past two months. For what the game does, no technology supported by the Internet Channel will allow me to push the bounds further without considerably hurting the framerate. In the HB forums, several gamers have mentioned that they'd like to see a WiiWare version. Well, I'm already one step ahead of them. I've applied for developer status to Nintendo with a local software company. That was in late January, and warioworld.com says to expect a fee months to hear a response. I'm just playing the waiting game now.

WII OPERA SDK
For the past month, I've been dabbling in raytracing in both JavaScript and C++. Although raytracing itself is very slow (yet produces graphical results well beyond traditional rasterization methods), I am going to attempt to incorporate a hybrid engine into the SDK's flat shading functionality. I believe that I will be able to add realtime shadows to meshes. The possible speed is unknown but will obviously be slower than using just realtime flat shading. I have some other plans for the SDK in the pipeline as well. And of course I keep tweaking it for speed on a weekly basis.

Stay tuned for more upcoming news...

The Bynar system consists of two planets, which are exact mirrors of each other. Missions and goods are already populated. You can read about the backstory to these planets in the blog at hullbreachonline.com.

Some players have been asking about the special Christmas "present" that was hinted on the homepage of http://hullbreachonline.com. I won't tell specifically what it is, but let's just say to check the in-game credits.

Also, NPCs are starting to populate the game world. They will mainly be in the form of stationary ships docked at locations. Due to the speed of the Wii's Internet Channel, I cannot create the advanced AI that I had hoped. Still, seeing a few extra ships while playing is a nice addition. Oh yeah, try hailing the NPCs.

The popular Wii Opera SDK has been opened to the general public by popular demand, allowing anyone with knowledge in HTML and JavaScript to take on the task of creating homebrew games and software for the Wii's Internet Channel. Previous to this release, the Wii Opera SDK was only available by request.

For the past eight months, this software library has grown from a simple Wii Remote reader to a full-blown package that allows 3D and texture-mapped graphics and multiuser communication in the Opera-based Web browser known simply as the Internet Channel. In addition, the Wii Opera SDK was the first such software library of any type which read from all four Wii Remotes and the Nunchuk attachments for the second through fourth Wii Remotes. It was also the first to include limited motion sensing based on the pointer control.

Although its main focus is the Wii, everything in the SDK, with the exception of the Wii Remote interaction, will work in any modern Web browser that supports the canvas tag, meaning games and software can be developed and used by millions more!

The first game playable by the general public that makes use of the Wii Opera SDK is HullBreach Online, which is showcased at http://hullbreachonline.com , the SDK's home site. Several viewable demos and the SDK itself can be found at http://hullbreachonline.com/wii/sdk.html .

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It has been two weeks since the open beta launch of HullBreach, and there are now 1175 members. Much has happened since the alpha became an early open beta. Players can now text chat, buy ships, complete missions, trade goods, engage in combat, scan planets, dock at numerous locations, hyperjump between 576 sectors, and more! By December, the full release will be coming with NPC interaction, ship upgrades, more content, asteroid mining, and bartering between players.

HullBreach can be played on a Wii in any region (formatted for NTSC, PAL, and SECAM) with a Wii Remote and, optionally, a USB keyboard. It can also be played on a computer with Opera 9.0+, Safari 1.3+, and FireFox 1.5+ (not the Windows version due to Gecko bugs). Graphics are created using the canvas object, placing them at roughly SuperNES-quality. Until this point, most Internet Channel games have been nothing more than mini-games, generally in Adobe Flash. Hopefully HullBreach will influence a change and lead the trend toward more full-length products.

Try HullBreach for free at http://hullbreachonline.com.

-Daniel Gump, Lead developer

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