Official Gamecube IDE/USB interface thread (PROJECT BEGUN!)

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 4:03 am

I approve of your approval of this thread!

Yes, the code is pretty "beta" ATM, but I've been trying to get Marshall to play with it and see if he can clean it up, pretty up the interface and maybe figure out how to fully implement audio streaming. (Can someone tell me what this is?

) I think I finally convinced him to take a look at it just today, actually.

I would also love to see the community get together and fancy up this project, but it won't happen if for no other reason than because we don't have enough experienced coders here.

Edit: Okay, so I'm still not sure exactly what audio streaming is... well, I have an idea, but I don't know if it's right. Anyway, I just found something that you guys might want to see. What this means to those of you that haven't made the connection yet, is that the games on that list may not play some of their audio (probably background music) when streaming from an HDD/CF card. As I understand it, audio streaming has been implemented with USB streaming, but the streamed audio will come from your computer's sound card, and will not actually stream to the Gamecube. Hopefully Marshall or someone else that hasn't yet shown their face will be able to figure out how to implement this fully. I personally don't care about nearly every game on that list, so I'm not very worried about it.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 8:24 am

Hey Rain, did you get my last PM? What's the situation? Any other ideas?

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 2:24 pm

khaag wrote:Hey Rain, did you get my last PM? What's the situation? Any other ideas?

Yes, I did. Marshall said he's going to look at the code, but we can also contact blackbox_dev and Skyler to see if they might be interested. Other people I know of that can code C/C++ are joevennix, Limewater (who knows VHDL as well, although I think I already tried to get him to help and he said he didn't have time... or something... but that was a while ago, too) Kyo knows some, legoboy, and totokan knows C (I believe Marshall said destop actually wrote the programs in C, not C++). I just remembered a thread of mine that was very useful in finding this out.

So, do you want to try to spam, er... PM some of them, or do you want me to?

In the mean time, I'd like to see a mock up of your ideas for an interface. We need to figure out EXACTLY all buttons, drop down menus, and other UI controls that we will need so you can lay it all out, though. But, you can get an idea of most of them by checking out that loader program on page 14. That needs a serious UI overhaul. But, I'd like to try to combine that and the USB ISO streaming program into ONE program, so keep that in mind too.

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 6:12 pm

Electric Rain wrote:It has nothing to do with ignorance... it's just laziness.

Yeah...

Thanks again. This is an awesome project!

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:12 pm

Mario wrote:
Electric Rain wrote:It has nothing to do with ignorance... it's just laziness.
Thanks again. This is an awesome project!

You're welcome and thank you... hey, are you gonna be buying one of these or what?

And if so, which version would you want?

Mario · Post by **Mario** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:38 pm

Electric Rain wrote:
Mario wrote:
Electric Rain wrote:It has nothing to do with ignorance... it's just laziness.
Thanks again. This is an awesome project!
You're welcome and thank you... hey, are you gonna be buying one of these or what? And if so, which version would you want?

I won't be buying one soon, they are waaay too expensive. If I were to buy one, though (maybe for a gamecube portable some time from now), I would want the CF one.

Why? CF cards take up much less space and use way less power than any kind of HDD. The only downside is that they are quite slow, so load times might be increased 300%.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Sun Oct 19, 2008 7:54 pm

Electric Rain wrote:
khaag wrote:Hey Rain, did you get my last PM? What's the situation? Any other ideas?
Yes, I did. Marshall said he's going to look at the code, but we can also contact blackbox_dev and Skyler to see if they might be interested. Other people I know of that can code C/C++ are joevennix, Limewater (who knows VHDL as well, although I think I already tried to get him to help and he said he didn't have time... or something... but that was a while ago, too) Kyo knows some, legoboy, and totokan knows C (I believe Marshall said destop actually wrote the programs in C, not C++). I just remembered a thread of mine that was very useful in finding this out. So, do you want to try to spam, er... PM some of them, or do you want me to?

In the mean time, I'd like to see a mock up of your ideas for an interface. We need to figure out EXACTLY all buttons, drop down menus, and other UI controls that we will need so you can lay it all out, though. But, you can get an idea of most of them by checking out that loader program on page 14. That needs a serious UI overhaul. But, I'd like to try to combine that and the USB ISO streaming program into ONE program, so keep that in mind too.

I'll see what I can do about getting a mockup of the interface ASAP. Also, what do you have for interface on the gamecube side of things? I'm thinking a nice, professional-looking interface there will do very nicely for selling the things.

See if you can get ahold of some more coders and let's get a team together.

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:12 am

khaag wrote:Also, what do you have for interface on the gamecube side of things?

Yeah... that's the only thing we don't have source code for, actually.

I assume you mean the bootloader? The menu that chooses what game to play? We would need someone with gamecube homebrew experience. I wouldn't even know where to start looking for that. The current loader program is only available in its compiled ISO format, so we can't work off it I don't think.

I'm sure you saw it, but in case you missed it, a screenshot of me emulating the bootloader program can be seen on page 27. Since there are no games loaded, we can't see how any of that works, unfortunately... it just lists an empty directory. The blue steel frame building background thingy just scrolls diagonally towards the right and sorta "at" the user... that's the only animation on the screen. And there's no sound, unless it didn't emulate properly. I don't know why there would be sound...

It would be awesome if we could find someone capable of decking out the menu interface, though.

A lot of people that were part of the gamecube scene have moved on to the Wii scene, but maybe we could find someone there to help us out. After all, the Gamecube scene kinda lives on through the Wii when it's in Gamecube mode... apps are still written for the Wii that are supposed to be used in Gamecube mode.

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:19 am

Electric Rain wrote:
khaag wrote:Also, what do you have for interface on the gamecube side of things?
Yeah... that's the only thing we don't have source code for, actually. I assume you mean the bootloader? The menu that chooses what game to play? We would need someone with gamecube homebrew experience. I wouldn't even know where to start looking for that. The current loader program is only available in its compiled ISO format, so we can't work off it I don't think.

I'm sure you saw it, but in case you missed it, a screenshot of me emulating the bootloader program can be seen on page 27. Since there are no games loaded, we can't see how any of that works, unfortunately... it just lists an empty directory. The blue steel frame building background thingy just scrolls diagonally towards the right and sorta "at" the user... that's the only animation on the screen. And there's no sound, unless it didn't emulate properly. I don't know why there would be sound...

Could you send me a PM with the ISO of the loader? I'll see if I can have a go at decompiling it somehow. I'll ask around on the various gamecube boards as well and see if anyone has any ideas.

R3ason · Post by **R3ason** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 2:34 am

Once the hardware is done, the coders will step forward

I hate C with a passion, but I will take a look at the code also...

Dark-Aries · Post by **Dark-Aries** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:18 pm

Go talk to Emu Kidd..you hopefully will know who he his...if not google him. He's an expert at GCN coding and he made SD-Boot so I'm pretty sure he could help you out...

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:21 pm

I know who he is... I'll see if I can get a hold of him, but I doubt he "has the time" for something like this. But hey, you never know so...

Dark-Aries · Post by **Dark-Aries** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 1:58 pm

If not try Eke-Eke...he's also real good and he likes helping out others who atleast know somewhat what they are doing...also He would be known as the person who coded up the loader for this project...I think he would be honoured..

Electric Rain · Post by **Electric Rain** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 3:46 pm

Will do. I already sent emu_kidid a PM on TehSkeen, so I'll wait to see if he responds to that first. His last activity there was earlier today, so if I don't hear back from him in a few days, he's ignoring me.

Then I'll contact eke-eke. Not placing him as "second pick" or anything, it's just that I already PMed emu_kidid and I don't want to make it seem like I'm just spamming the good coders all at once, you know?

Dark-Aries · Post by **Dark-Aries** » Mon Oct 20, 2008 6:45 pm

Ya...and maybe they don't like eachother..so better to stick with one right now...