Talk:Homebrew Channel/Ideas (archive)
UI discussion yet?
Made a sample UI for navigation between channels on various devices. It's a cross between the Wii Menu and the Photo Channel, each device shows up as it's own little tab in the list and you can move up and down with B button, zoom in and out, etc. Like the Wii menu you can drag-and-drop copy between devices with A + B, and hopefully we could be able to have the preview banners animated similar to that of the Wii menu. KMeist Hax 15:51, 20 March 2008 (PDT)
Additionally clicking the channels would be the same as the Wii Menu, giving the full banner and the back/start buttons (if possible). Also maybe we should have some dedicated copy/erase buttons? KMeist Hax 15:54, 20 March 2008 (PDT)
backup/restore
from the article: "(people weren't happy about the lack of mp3 support in the new photo channel and couldn't go back) "
- Bad example, you can just delete the new photo channel from the wii memory, and the old version will pop back up, unless you have one of the new wii that has the new photo channel built in. 24.128.54.77 20:59, 20 March 2008 (PDT)
A few ideas
Since I haven't really put much thought into my ideas, and they are more or less just little blurbs, I decided to put them right here.
- Being able to delete duplicate channels. This may have been fixed in the past by something else, but I always remeber hearing that a lot of people ended up with excess channels when playing games from different regions.
- An option to boot a disc outside of the Wii's default method. Both as a way to not need a Freeloader and to have a backup method in case mod chips get blocked.
- Maybe some method to mount a USB hard drive or an SD card in place of the built in Flash Memory.
- Or mount a USB HDD in place of an SD card or GCN memory card.
- A way to copy Gamecube save files onto the Wii.
- A simple file transfer system, so you can transfer saves to games that don't allow you to transfer said saves.
- A diagnostic tool for Wiimote's, peripherals, and Gamecube Controllers, and maybe the Wii hardware.
- A possible way to get Gamecube games to run with some sort of Simi-Wii mode, allowing the Home Menu and Classic Controller to be used.
- Allow you to mount different controllers logically to the system. Like an example would be making the system believe a Classic Controller is a Gamecube controller (A practical application for this is it would allow you to use the Classic Controller for something like Metal Slug Anthology, which the Developers overlooked allowing players to use it). On top of it, allow button mapping, maybe to the extent of setting the classic Controller to be seen as they system as the buttons on a Wiimote and Nunchuck.
- Allow for Action Replay like codes, and maybe even on the fly game modding. I know I am not the only one who wish you could save more then 3 minute replays in Brawl ;)
- This is probably a limitation of available RAM, but maybe it could save to a hard disk or send the data over LAN instead of keeping it in RAM.
- Allow Access to other regions' Shop Channels.
- Allow backup and transferability of a Wii's person indication and settings, such as allowing you to transfer the Shop Channel records from one system to anther.
- Allow for anther regions BIOS to be installed into the system.
Few of those I know are almost impossible, or don't have much practical use, but I really don't know how doable anything is, so I might as well list all my ideas--76.108.169.38 13:04, 24 March 2008 (PDT)
Multimedia Device
Ultimately, either as 'a' WiiBrew channel or launched via 'the' WiiBrew Channel, one of the most useful additions would be to allow the Wii to act as a multimedia device such as Apple's Apple TV. There are several Linux Media Centre UI's such as Mythtv that can run in the frame buffer, leaving all 88MiB RAM free for running code and the media being streamed/buffered. With front SD support, Wii remote support and preferably USB mass storage support as well there is no reason why this should not function as a standalone multimedia device, however if we are talking about utilising pre-existing Linux tools such as Mythtv and one of the Wii Remote drivers then there is no reason not to include Media Extender functionality for those people who want it and indeed plugins for other media streaming software such as VLC and QuickTime. I say ultimately because this would obviously require quite a lot of work, however such functionality is in no way, shape or form an unrealistic fantasy, on the contrary all the necessary source code is out there just waiting for a skilled person or project team to glue it all together. Even if building a Multimedia Channel isn't possible at the moment I personally would just be happy to see a Multimedia mini-distro that could be launched by [Hack Twilight Hack].
Addendum: Having thought about it there's no reason why the functionality people are looking for from a WiiBrew Channel could not be added to a Linux Media Centre GUI, that's kind of the point of open source software. the further thought occurs that as a Media Centre GUI would include photo viewing, slideshows MP3 playback Etc. it would render the Wii Photo Channel redundant. Therefor it may be possible to add such a channel by identifying it as a Wii Photo Channel update in much the same way [Hack Twilight Hack] identifies itself as a Twilight Princess save file, since Nintendo are unlikely to provide more than 3 - 4 more Photo Channel updates within the Wii's product cycle identifying a WiiBrew Channel as say Photo Channel 6.8 would allow it to be copied form an SD card, just as we copy Twilight Hack from an SD card now. should anyone want to revert to an all standard Wii or indeed should Nintendo block any such WiiBrew Channel via a firmware update a user could simply re-download the last real Photo Channel update/version that they paid for free of charge.