First Step In DS Wifi Challenge Complete

josath writes "The DS Wifi Bounty Milestone 1 has been completed! (previously on /.) The hardware registers to use the wifi built into the Nintendo DS has been documented. This is a huge step, as this was done with absolutely no documentation on the hardware. Stephen Stair has received ~$1400 for this milestone, and is working towards getting the other half by creating a tcp/ip stack. Once a TCP/IP stack is implemented on top of the hardware layer, homebrew NDS developers can start using the wifi in their own apps/games! This comes before Nintendo has officially released any wifi-capable games."

Comments

In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Stephen Stair must pay Nintendo 1000% of that $1400...

A serious question

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't Nintendo create an amateur game development kit? Clearly there is a market, perhaps small but there none the less. It's money they'd probably enjoy having that they don't now.

Re:A serious question

[DavidHOzAu]

Why doesn't Nintendo create an amateur game development kit?
Because that would be too professional. ;-)
Don't you know that vague APIs and equally vauge documentation is rather popular in amateur circles? You must be new here.

Consider the viewpoint of game companies: If an amateur game development kit is available, why bother paying for the full one when the minimal package will suffice?
Consider the viewpoint of Nintendo: They have to get their money out of third-party developers too.

Also consider the cost of making such a kit and the amount of possible buyers: there would be little return for Nintendo. Very few amateur people would pay for an amateur kit when they can just hack their own as featured in the article. Recall that these developers are labelled 'amateur' because they don't have vast sums of money at their disposal. It's not like we are talking about professional OSS software developers who see no harm in paying for something that's truly worth it and will advance OSS more than it hinders.

It's money they'd probably enjoy having that they don't now.
Considering the expected losses they'd incur making such a kit, I doubt it.

Re:A serious question

[DrXym]

Why doesn't Nintendo create an amateur game development kit? Clearly there is a market, perhaps small but there none the less. It's money they'd probably enjoy having that they don't now.

The same charge could be levelled at Sony and the PSP. The only legitimate reason people have for breaking Sony's copy protection is to produce homebrew stuff. So why not release some APIs that allow people to produce homebrew legally? Hell, they could even release a Linux UMD and let people develop apps to run from their memory sticks. Given a legal outlet, most of the issues with firmware cracks (and people returning PSPs bricked by the process), would go away.

Re:A serious question

[Coeurderoy]

It's the business model stupid!

The gaming consoles are tools to sell games, their costs are subsidised and professional development kits are licenced to "authorized" developpers, this enables the game companies to control the market.
They do not want somebody to make a game that could potentially compete with theirs.

An amateur development kit generates a risk of loss of customer control for the editor, and this is insufferable for them.

Once upon a time I worked with a group that wanted (with the support of a very large UN funded NGO) to develop a literacy program for a cheap gaming machine.

After six month of trying to get to "the right person(s)" it was clear that there was "zero" interest in this, (in all companies).

Actually I personally strongly disagree with the "mod people", from my point of view it is similar to trying to be the slightly independent sidekick of the big bully at school.

If the effort done to enhance "closed" consoles would be put into creating "open platforms", we might have a much more diverse and creative ecosystem for kids (and other gamers) to play with.

Re:A serious question

[MadCow42]

What could Sony possibly gain from opening up the PSP hardware to homebrew apps? Sure, they may sell a few additional PSP's to the homebrew market, but they don't make any money on those anyways (likely they lose money).

They're much more likely to LOSE game revenue to freely available (or cracked) software than anything else.

Don't expect Sony to be happy or helpful with this. They have no reason to.

MadCow.

well?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't Animal Crossing DS an announced DS WiFi game? O_o...

Re:well?

[djsmiley]

Well my GF plays nintendogs wirelessly with her supervisor? Is this some form of wireless which isn't WiFi?

I haven't looked at the specs in the manual or anything, so i have no idea?

Re:well?

[TheStick]

Nintendo uses a proprietary protocol called NiFi, which is different from WiFi (802.11x). But Software's the difference. Future Nintendo games will use Wi-Fi (that is, 802.11b) instead of NiFi. Why? Because you can't connect to a standard router with NiFi, only to another DS. So to play games (such as the upcoming Mario Kart and Animal Crossing) over the internet, the DS needs to use NiFi. The article, however, is about a home-made (unofficial) wi-fi implementation that will certainly be used by DSlinux and such programs.

Re:well?

[TheStick]

Sorry, I made a mistake, you should read "So to play games (such as the upcoming Mario Kart and Animal Crossing) over the internet, the DS needs to use WiFi"

Re:well?

[aj50]

No, the DS uses standard 802.11b wifi with short preamble, see here: http://www.darkain.com/nintendo_ds/nifi.php

Re:well?

[Edgewize]

Ni-Fi refers to Nintendo's protocol on top of 802.11b. In the same context, Wi-Fi is commonly used to refer to TCP/IP over 802.11b. (We could get pedantic about definitions, but try teaching the layer model to an average consumer...)

In that sense, the DS does not use Wi-Fi, but it does use 802.11b.

Profit!!!

[n0dalus]

1. Buy Wifi chips from Company X
2. Save money by not paying for Company X's drivers
3. Wait for someone to reverse engineer Wifi chips
4. Develop games using free reverse engineered drivers
5. ???
6. Profit!!!

Excellent

[el_munkie]

The DS is the first portable (besides various TI calculators) I've owned since my original Gameboy. I got it even though I assumed it would be mod-proof like the Gamecube, but have been secretly envious of PSP owners that have been playing homebrew (emulated, copywrited, abandonwarez) games. If this thing can be "compelled" to run arbitrary code, it will have been the wisest investment of my life. Props to Stephen Stair.

Re:Excellent

[Anonymous Coward]

It has been possible to run code on the DS for a lot longer than on the PSP...

Re:Excellent

[stonecypher]

Actually, we had code running on the machine through the PassMe (a custom CPLD, though back then it was on an FPGA) about two weeks after the device was released. The short version: put a chip between a legitimate cart and the device, wait for the cart to authenticate, then take over and branch to the GBA slot on the bottom, where an oldschool flash cart works jus' fine.

These days, we use a patched BIOS written permanently to the device through FlashMe (only works on older DSes, though that's almost fixed) which doesn't perform the fingerprint check, and boot our games through the wireless hardware over the built in wireless multiboot system.

The bounty is about deciphering and learning to use the wifi hardware in a typical fashion, so that the device can be used with an access point as a network device. VNC, maybe web browsing, and of course, network games are on their way.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

For all of you that don't know exactly *why* he did this.
Sgstair has reversed some of the present apps and games that use the wifi capability of the DS in order to get a working homebrew tcp/ip for the community's usage. Nintendo has their own wifi code they they will be using with their games (mario kart, animal crossing, etc) which are due to be released shortly.

Re:Why?

[Agret]

I would've said he did it for the money. :P

Explanation for those not "in the know"

[Chapter80]

If you're like me, and not a Gamer, you probably found yourself scratching your head wondering what the heck this article was about (even after reading the links).

The DS is a Nintendo portable game system.

A bunch of URLs...

[aliquis]

Some random urls:
teh skeen
ds dev
supercard (can't find the M3 and G6 pages longer)
wifime
some info about m3
Emulators for NDS
whatever

Doubt it'll be much longer until completion

[ParrotAtSlashdot]

I doubt it'll be much longer until SgStair completes Milestones 2 and 3. See his progress at http://akkit.org/dswifi/. Now I'm just wondering which homebrewer will put it in their game or app.

cheap wifi phone ?

[free2]

I wonder if the DS will be also used as a cheap wifi phone. I will probably buy one.

Ni-Fi is like IPX or NetBEUI

[tepples]

Then someone said that current games use NiFi, but that didn't help much.

"Wi-Fi" is a certification mark for products using IEEE 802.11b, a layer 2 protocol; all multiplayer Nintendo DS games use 802.11b. "Ni-Fi" is the name used by gaming journalism and the DS homebrew community for the non-routable layer 3 protocol that current Nintendo DS games use for wireless communication, as opposed to IPv4. Substitute "IPX" or "NetBEUI" wherever you see "Ni-Fi" and see if things make more sense.

There's still the question as to why it matters that N isn't using WiFi (yet) when they have released wireless games.

Games that don't use IPv4 won't be able to communicate over a network that uses IPv4 for routing.

Awesome News for the DS Homebrew Sites

[Busshy]

Those Slashdotters amongst you and those curious should check out the following sites for the latest in Nintendo DS Emulation and Homebrew news and downloads PDroms.com - Legal Rom Download and news site.
Drunken Coders - DS Homebrew News Site.
Nintendo DS Emulation News - Nintendo DS Emulation and Homebrew News and Downloads Site/Archive.
DS Development Forums - The Hub of the DS Development Scene.
All those sites provide you with everything you need to know about the Nintendo DS and its Legal Homebrew Community.

Re:took FOREVER

[stonecypher]

Three months, actually. The bounty was started in late July. Besides, people have day jobs. The IM clients should be relatively trivial, a port of KHTML would be a few hundred hours, nobody's even vaguely interested in it as a media player, though companies like g6 have had that running since almost month one.

DSLinux with SSH

[Gen. Rasputin X]

Good. With the Wifi cracked it won't be too long til someone manages to get Wifi working under DSLinux. I'm looking forward to being able to use my DS as a portable SSH terminal with a touchpad. It'll come in handy, being able to login at hotspots to get my mail and my servers. Carrying my laptop with me is too much trouble, but I've almost always got my DS with me now.

Re:I was wondering what's the difference...

[cgenman]

Then someone said that current games use NiFi, but that didn't help much. There's still the question as to why it matters that N isn't using WiFi (yet) when they have released wireless games.

NiFi is a latency intolerant local communication protocol. WiFi is a long-distance routable protocol. WiFi is a lot more intelligent. NiFi connects to whatever is around. WiFi games would require a server infrastructure somewhere to route people's games properly. NiFi is local area and forms a game with whoever is handy.

NiFi is a lot simpler for Nintendo. WiFi implies a lot of backend stuff that the didn't want to deal with for the first generation.

Re:apparently the ds can only manage slow wifi

[nekoes]

2Mbit really isn't all that slow. For the tasks you'd put the DS to 2Mbit is a lot more than you'll need. Web browsing, Aim, hell even streaming mp3 can all be done at under 2Mbit, for what exactly would you need more?