Pretendo: A free and open source server replacement for the 3DS and Wii U | Hacker News Reader

Pretendo: A free and open source server replacement for the 3DS and Wii U

pretendo.network

195 pointsjonny_eh24 comments

Pretendo is super cool! It's awesome to see what people can do with homebrew. I'm hopping that at some point someone creates a equivalent of GBStudio for the 3DS/Wii U (even the Wii and DS would be cool too) so more people can start making homebrew for these devices because there's a lot more to explore with what you can do with the Wii U's controller and the 3DS's dual screens and they're just fun devices.

As an aside I'm still bummed that the Wii U and 3DS didn't do very well compared to the Wii and DS. I totally get where Nintendo was going with the Switch and way they made it but for whatever reason it just doesn't scratch the itch the same way the 3DS and Wii U do. I hope some day that someone creates a another dual screen device (like Panic has done with the Playdate). If there's anyone interested in making a device I'd love making games for it.

The 3DS didn't start great but it sold 75 million units over its lifespan, which is more than the N64, SNES, or NES

Your right the 3DS did great when looking at sheer numbers but when it "only" sold half of its predecessor I have a feeling that this helped Nintendo to end the handheld line.

At some point I need to write a blog post about how weird console numbers are when it comes to deciding what fails and what succeeds because you're a 100% correct the 3DS did great but because it sold less then the last gen it was a "failure".

> I have a feeling that this helped Nintendo to end the handheld line.

I think you might want to reevaluate this position seeing as their current console and multimillion seller is handheld. It CAN dock, but even then there's a no-dock model, the Lite, which is handheld only.

Handhelds, almost as a rule, outsell home consoles. Mostly because they're per-person rather than per-household, and also because they break and get replaced.

The explosion of smartphone gaming was probably the biggest contributor to canning the 3DS.

Anything that enables homebrew on those systems probably circumvents "effective" copy protection under the DMCA and would thus be illegal to use or traffic in.

As far as I can tell homebrew enabling is legal, which is why Nintendo hasn't C&Ded the sites permitting it, and instead kept patching out jailbreaks.

I doubt it; the ability to run your own code is completely different from the ability to copy somebody else's code

People have been hacking their devices to run homebrew since the NES.

Cope.

No good open source tools for the 3DS just yet. However, it's possible to make homebrew with Unity and the official SDK, however, it's nothing you can distribute legitimately, and the tools are hard to find due to Nintendo taking them down

Nintendo really is their own worst enemy here. Fans love their stuff and want to continue to enjoying with it long after Nintendo has abandoned their hardware and their customers, but Nintendo would rather bite the hand that feeds it than tolerate the enthusiasm. A better company would embrace it and release some of their own tools and software for fans to play with instead of threatening lawsuits.

I can't imagine putting a bunch of time and work into a project that will likely be DMCA'd to death.

Nintendo is a capitalist corporation aiming to maximizing profit, and not anything else. Maximizing profit is the true end of Nintendo, and that may be done by several strategies. Maximizing the consumer well-being (i.e. being ''nice'') generally is what we hope they do, but it is not necessarily the most able to profit = profitable thing to make. Nintendo perhaps actually thinks it is horrible that random people will spoil their IP or threaten their sales:

- Spoil their IP → making mods of their games can spoil Mario, Pokémon etc as the child-friendly characters they are, not to mention water down the novelty of a new game, if for instance there would be a ''new'' 2D Mario or pokémon every 6 months (if they released the tools and did not persecute). Or even being straight better received than the official games, which is already the case with several pokémon fans going after hacked ROMs because they hate the current generation's gameplay etc.

- Threaten Sales (main one)→ If fans and the community extend the life of older hardware and games, then the people will consume less new games and even less switches, and it directly replaces their current cloud retro gaming offerings (it is so barebones that anyone could make a better experience of NES SNES etc by just installing an emulator and downloading ROMS, make that automated and Nintendo-aproved retro gaming is over).

Nintendo therefore has a hostile draconian, anti-fans anti community anti ecological and even anti consumer strategy to maximize sales. The fact that there is still people working on stuff on this environment is only due to the strong love the fandom has. I wish they could dedicate this craft to FOSS games, where their contribution would be respected and celebrated.

Take a moment to appreciate how nice of a name that is.

It makes me smile every time I see someone comment on how good our name is :D I'm quite proud of it, thank you! Much better than the projects original name, "RiiU" lol

This reminds me of the guys that broadcast legitimate event pokemon using event cartridges or roms.

Make sure to check out the English lolcat version in the globe menu in the upper right corner.

That's fun! It also likely serves a real purpose. It lets English-only speakers test that localization is working and available for every text element.

I made an account just to reply here to this

Hey there, founder and lead dev of the project here! The lolcat language option was actually implemented just for fun by one of our web developers, however using it as a way to test localization is a very interesting idea! We make use of Weblate to manage our translations, so all strings do get accounted for using the tracker there before anything gets merged

I do like the idea of using a meme translation to test localization though, and if we didn't use something like Weblate I would probably steal this idea xD

Thanks for the reply, and the info on Weblate too. I’ll check it out the next time I need a localized site. Looks like a nice tool.

Made an account just to reply here! I'm the founder and lead developer of Pretendo, thank you so much for sharing our project here! It's been amazing seeing our little community grow over the years, and it's been so nice to see the positive things commented here!

Is this just an analog for wiimmfi?

in the FAQ : Will Pretendo support the Wii/Switch?

> The Wii already has custom servers provided by Wiimmfi. We currently do not wish to target the Switch as it is both paid and completely different to Nintendo Network.

Same idea, different systems. Wiimmfi is for the Wii and DS. Pretendo is for the WiiU and 3DS

Reply on news.ycombinator.com