Wii-U thoughts so far

[fastbilly1]

Can't Nintendo release a Wii U update that would tell the Wii U gamepad to send the standard Classic Controller+Wiimote BT signal to the Wii U when the system is in Wii mode?

I am trying to understand, really.

If I am not mistaken, the Wiiupad uses 802.11n, where as the Wiimotes use BT. Since the Wii mode is an emulator, so it could technically be possible to employ the Wiiupad as a CCP in the Wii mode, but it would take time and money to implement. However this is all based on reverse engineering information that may be completely wrong. Regardless, Nintendo will not release something like that if it is not 99% compatible, so it will not happen. My bet is on hackers making it happen first.

[dsheinem]

Can't Nintendo release a Wii U update that would tell the Wii U gamepad to send the standard Classic Controller+Wiimote BT signal to the Wii U when the system is in Wii mode?

I am trying to understand, really.

If I am not mistaken, the Wiiupad uses 802.11n, where as the Wiimotes use BT. Since the Wii mode is an emulator, so it could technically be possible to employ the Wiiupad as a CCP in the Wii mode, but it would take time and money to implement. However this is all based on reverse engineering information that may be completely wrong. Regardless, Nintendo will not release something like that if it is not 99% compatible, so it will not happen. My bet is on hackers making it happen first.

AFAIK, the Gamepad uses BT for button and touch input and wifi for picture streaming.

[fastbilly1]

AFAIK, the Gamepad uses BT for button and touch input and wifi for picture streaming.

I was going off data from the Dolphin devs who reverse engineered the pad, it may be wrong. Nevertheless, if it does not work perfectly on the majority of games, Nintendo will not do it.

[Jmustang1968]

Dave, you are kind of sounding like those conspiracy theorist gamers that you so often deride when they post in here.

[fastbilly1]

Thanks to DSH, I discovered that you can emulate the Wiiupad on the PC and it can connect to the Wiiu through your network:


Which is pretty awesome.

[dsheinem]

Dave, you are kind of sounding like those conspiracy theorist gamers that you so often deride when the post in here.

I'm not trying to create or suggest a conspiracy theory, I am trying to understand the technical difficulty in getting the Gamepad to work as a classic controller+Wiimote when the Wii U is in Wii mode (and costs). The main question, I think, is this:

Can't Nintendo release a Wii U update that would tell the Wii U gamepad to send the standard Classic Controller+Wiimote BT signal to the Wii U when the system is in Wii mode?

That's not a conspiracy question, it is asking for a technical answer.

[Jmustang1968]

Now maybe you are, but you've been insinuating they could easily do it, and they reason they aren't is to force people to rebuy the games.

[dsheinem]

Now maybe you are, but you've been insinuating they could easily do it, and they reason they aren't is to force people to rebuy the games.

That may or may not be true...it depends on the answer to the question.

In any case, it isn't a "conspiracy". If they aren't doing something simple to make people buy games, that's their choice of a business model. If they aren't doing something complicated, that's also fine - and a choice I think I'd be a bit more sympathetic too on a personal level. Trying to understand the decision isn't "insinuating a conspiracy".

[Jmustang1968]

Now maybe you are, but you've been insinuating they could easily do it, and they reason they aren't is to force people to rebuy the games.

That may or may not be true...it depends on the answer to the question.

In any case, it isn't a "conspiracy". If they aren't doing something simple to make people buy games, that's their choice of a business model. If they aren't doing something complicated, that's also fine - and a choice I think I'd be a bit more sympathetic too on a personal level. Trying to understand the decision isn't "insinuating a conspiracy".

You know what I mean, and are just splitting hairs at this point. Point is, you have derided others for making similar types of comments or complaints.

[Flake]

Flake, to your detailed post here, I don't follow why they'd have to do work for every single game. Can't Nintendo release a Wii U update that would tell the Wii U gamepad to send the standard Classic Controller+Wiimote BT signal to the Wii U when the system is in Wii mode?

I am trying to understand, really.

So you're an educator, right? When every student files in at the beginning of a semester, they're given a syllabus. The syllabus is a broad strokes plan for every student to get to their goal which is obtaining the knowledge they need to satisfy the course requirements and get credit.

Now, if you as an educator handed out the syllabus, gave rote lectures, and never paid any attention to the progress of your students you wouldn't be a very good professor. Different students have different needs, ways of learning, difficulties, etc. To get your class' average performance up, you have to have office hours, answer e-mails, write tests to reflect what's been taught, do reviews, etc. One size does not fit all.

Each game interprets input a little differently. That's why you always select your controller type from within the program instead of at the Wii front menu. Have you ever accidentally held an analog stick to the left or right when you started a game only to notice that now it keeps pulling to the left or right once the software started? That's because the system doesn't send any controller information over to the software once the software starts. The controllers reset to default and the game starts interpreting the controllers freshly.

So first of all, I don't even know how you could re-write the Wii emulator to force the software to interpret the WiiU gamepad as a Wii mote + Classic Controller combo. Let's assume that somehow you could - the WiiU gamepad doesn't encapsulate its gameplay input on the BT connection the same way that the Wiimote does. So you'd have to also have some type of translation software to adjust for that.

The point being, it would be really difficult to apply a 'one size fits all' translation and then reasonably expect the gameplay to be as bug free or accurate as it is with the appropriate controllers. It would be necessary to write a profile for the WiiU hypervisor to consult when you started software to interpret the Wiipad input and relay corresponding Wiimote input to the software. The Wii emulator would have to be re-written to either recognize that the hypervisor is there translating for it (which would be a bad idea for Nintendo because you generally never want to have virtualized software given access to the hypervisor. Hackers love that shit) or the Wii emulator would have to be re-written to recognize the Wiipad and make that translation itself which would only add more and more overhead to simulated hardware that, by all admissions, was already overworked 5 years ago.

Either way, you're talking about reverse engineering. Even if Nintendo decided 'one size fits all' was good enough and didn't bother to test it with most of the software (which they never would), you're still going to have to reverse engineer the Wii emulator to recognize the Wiipad because you'd never let the Wii emulator poll data from the WiiU itself. It's doable. It will probably be done by hackers within the next couple of years. But there's no financial incentive to do the work for Nintendo and it's not even a "we'll make them re-buy our games!" financial reason. It's a problem of limited resources and the need to apply those resources only to causes that will make people by WiiUs.

One last thought experiment: If it is as easy as people for some reason think it should be, then why would Nintendo have neglected to do it when they added the update that allowed off-screen Wii play in the first place? They even went so far as to make wii mote light sensors work with the gamepad, so they obviously put some effort into it.