Indie for the Wii

[Jesse Hopkins]

Just played the Wii for the first time. A friend brought it over. I looked at their games channel and there were a bunch of point and click indie games ported over from PC. Anybody know if this needs special programming, or do you just submit point and click games? Has anybody here made one? I played "Horsie Race" or somesuch named game. Its interesting to think of the market this opens up, or does it? It seems they were all advert supported.

Jesse

[mrkwang]

What kind of indie games Wii supports with their game channel, ported from PC?

I don't have Wii by myself, so don't know the list. And even if I have it, I live in South Korea, and maybe not compatible with US Wii game channel list.

[mrkwang]

Maybe you are talking about Virtual Console service with Wii?

http://wii.nintendo.com/virtualconsole_en.jsp

Or something else?

As far as I see, Wii sells some older games from NES - SNES - N64 - Genesis - TurboGrafx-16, through Virtual Console. I can't find some Indie game list from here. So I think you're talking about something else, from which I found from Nintendo USA site.

Could you please let me know more detail? Very interested in listening to that, for a gamer & webzine writer.

[Jim Buck]

I think he's talking about the recently-released Wii Play game, which is not a downloadable but a disk you buy in the store. (It has a "horsie race" game.) The downloadable stuff is all emulated games from older systems. (As an aside, Mario 64 is amazing, and I'm ashamed to say I never played it until I got the Wii.)

[princec]

You might be interested to know that it supports Flash in the Opera browser...

Cas :)

[James C. Smith]

There are no "point and click indie games ported over from PC" available for the Wii.

When Nintendo does start offering original downloadable games for the Wii, I doubt they will be a bunch of PC ports. Other than the emulation of previous generation consoles, everything else about the Wii is very original in an intentional sort of way. I would expect them to demand the same of the 3rd party downloadable game developers. But then again, PopCap will probably find a way to get Bejeweled on there.

I do expect Nintendo to open of the “virtual conole” to independent developers soon. I don’t expect it to be dominated by PC ports of casual and indie games.

[rioka]

Maybe not so soon. I just finished reading this a couple of minutes ago:

"Independent developer Persuasive Games has claimed that, according to information supplied to it from Nintendo itself, Nintendo’s Wii Independent Developer Program is currently “on hold”, due to a lack of available development kits for smaller studios." from Gamasutra (http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=12821).

But yes, Bejeweled will get in there somehow. They'd be daft not to.

[mrkwang]

But yes, Bejeweled will get in there somehow. They'd be daft not to.

And Line Rider will be Wii & NDS soon, as I know.

[Jesse Hopkins]

I think he's talking about the recently-released Wii Play game, which is not a downloadable but a disk you buy in the store. (It has a "horsie race" game.) The downloadable stuff is all emulated games from older systems. (As an aside, Mario 64 is amazing, and I'm ashamed to say I never played it until I got the Wii.)


It wasn't WiiPlay. I played that also. These were indeed flash games, my friend confirmed, but selected from a special menu of free downloadable games that are playable on the Wii. It wasn't out on the web, but a Wii specific menu somewhere.

[Man of Ice]

There are already several sites out there aggregating flash games (and yes!!! the big portals are already there too with shareware versions of their games). Fully playable through the Opera browser.

The most used (I think) is http://www.wiicade.com/

[Jim Buck]

Hmm, I'm *very* familiar with the Wii and its offerings as I play it daily. He must be using the web browser to play games on a website if they are indeed Flash. That or he's some Wii developer that perhaps gets access to things not yet released to the general public? In any case, the only publically downloadable available "apps" on the Wii are the free beta Opera browser, free Everybody Votes app, and the emulated games for NES/SNES/TGFX16/Genesis/N64.

Ahh, I just saw Man of Ice's post. It has to be that website accessed via the Wii's Opera browser. The UI on that webpage looks Wii-like, so I supposed it could easily be confused for looking like a Wii app.

[oNyx]

Opera/Wii forum is over here btw:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/forum.dml?id=2081

Right now there is only flash if you want some sound, but there is a comment, which indicates that that might change with an update:
http://my.opera.com/community/forums/findpost.pl?id=1924219 (WHATWG audio object)

Apart from flash there is also the option to use the usual js stuff or js+svg.

This morning I assembled some rather ugly but functional svg/js demo:
http://kaioa.com/svg/wiimote_test.xmlz
(The keycodes for everything [except A, which is lmb] are included in a comment. Note: You cannot use these keycodes directly with flash (http://www.quasimondo.com/archives/000638.php) right now.)

[mooktown]

PopCap will probably find a way to get Bejeweled on there.

looks like they were too slow! wiijeweled (http://www.wiicade.com/playGame.aspx?gameID=219)

excellent :rolleyes:

[James C. Smith]

I wonder who will send them a take down letter fist. PopCap or Nintendo?

[GameGlyph]

That workaround to get wiimote button input is neat! I tried it out and it was still a little buggy, such as not realizing that I wasnt pressing a button anymore, but Im still amazed that it can be done!

[oNyx]

Yea, JS events appear to be sorta glitchy. Like if you press and release a button quickly, it can happen that they are processed in random order.

Well, if you only respond to down events for example (which is certainly possible for non-action games), the problem disappears completely.

[Jesse Hopkins]

It must have been in Opera, then. Any way to play these games in full screen without Opera controls visible?

[Lerc]

hmmm

Wik and the Fable of Souls .... wiimote.

Might be a thing there.

[cyrus_zuo]

hmmm

Wik and the Fable of Souls .... wiimote.

Might be a thing there.

I think it sounds cool too, but I can honestly state that we are currently not working on Wik for the Wii, neither do we have plans to do so.