Wii Development - Porting Question

[axion.rainwalker]

Hey All,

I have a basic, entry-level understanding of programming (took about 3 years of C++/Java programming in high school) and, depending on my free time in the upcoming couple years, I was kicking around the idea of getting involved in the Wii development scene, though probably not too extensively. Anyway, that's all just to say this question is a legitimate one:

How feasible would it be to port an already-published PC game for play on the Wii?

I hope that's a clear enough question but let me know your thoughts.

Thanks,
-axion

[yaustar]

Depends on the technology of the PC game in question and the libraries involved. A very old DOS game will take a lot of work to get going as the hardware API code would be platform dependent meaning you have to write your own hardware interface to draw graphics, play sound etc.

Games that are based on portable libraries like SDL etc are going to be much easier if they have already been ported to the target platform. All that will really need modification are controls.

There are also a ton of other factors that affect the port so the actual short answer is: It depends.

[axion.rainwalker]

Thanks for the good info, yaustar. Any chance you could also point me to a good website or set of documents to to learn about SDL libraries and all that good stuff? Or should I just wait until the Wii dev kit comes out, cause it'll all get explained eventually?

Thanks again!

[yaustar]

What Wii dev kit? Do you mean SDK or the actual development hardware?

I can point you to a decent SDL tutorial site. Unless you are more specific about the 'good stuff', I can't point you any where else.

In general, porting just usually a matter of understanding code and design, working out which bits are generic/cross platform and can therefore be reused and which bits need to be rewritten to work on the target platform.

Try downloading the source for an existing game and see if you can understand the design of the code.

Here is code of my demo Dance2x which used SDL.
Or you can look at something more complex such as Abuse SDL.