A blockout in game dev terms is a rough design of a level containing no detailed models, just blocks to show the general layout and design. they are good for testing the flow of the level before adding environmental details.
I used to play Hawken on PC and we had blockout maps a few times. They were very fun and a great way to provide feedback to the devs and for them to see what does and doesn't work
4:00: the Wii retailed with 512mb of storage, not 256mb, so it was not the double, but the same. Love to see these videos of dev kits, but what I love more is this segue, to our sponsor!
YES!! I lent this kit out to LMG a few months back, and it was great talking with them to coordinate that. I really like how this devkit series is going.
@@fish3977 i don’t think it happened, i assume that train stopped when Linus said he didn’t want to in the video. We’ll take a look at it when DeadlyFoez receives the kit, i told them to ship it to him.
@@caelblanch2737 I was told by DeadlyFoez that it was supposed to be only an easter egg for me. If he knew I was lending the kit to LMG he would've asked me to remove the decals. :p
He told me that but then just now changed his mind. He thinks that everyone who opens the kit should tag the inside, including Linus. I'll have to talk about that. EDIT: The email's been sent.
How is this a stance against it? I mean at most they are risking Nintendo taking this down too. But that's hardly a stance. Just the title ain't enough, the video did not discuss any stance against Nintendo. The WAN Show actually takes a stance on Nintendo.
Nintendo will have a hard time trying to screw Linus. The man and his team know what they do. Im sure they can fight well and they fanbase alone is enough to shake nintendos core. Linus has been such a wonderful youtuber. I really believe everyone will come together and fight. He has only given us entertainment and quality content.
@@emanuelperez3595 "Linus has been such a wonderful youtuber. I really believe everyone will come together and fight." Oh well that's nice and dandy... last time i checked many smaller creators still can't show an emulator running because nintendo will destroy them. Good for LMG that "they can take it".
@@chrisakaschulbus4903 And that's why it's good Linus and people with large channels do stuff like this that dances on Nintendo's thin line of copyright in order to try to set a precedent and push it a bit forward each time.
@@yerielzamora They get the topic a bit more attention, that's good. But many in this comment section are praising them like linus and co are heroes. When they are just using their damn freedom of expression. That shouldn't be "brave"... that shouldn't be something that earns you respect or anything.
-A trimmed 4 layer Wii (later 65nm revision) draws about 5-6 watts (half an amp at 12v) -A trimmed 6 layer Wii (earlier 90nm revision) draws about 8.5 watts -The NDEV uses a different GPU than the retail unit, and I have not measured its power consumption. These numbers include CPU, GPU, RAM, Flash Memory, and Video Encoder/DAC. The rest of the power consumption of the Wii is the disc drive, regulator inefficiencies, and peripherals. So yea, the console is wicked easy to cool. The stock fan/heatsink on retail Wiis is completely overkill.
@@CouchPotator You could use a USB hub. It was easier to move an SDEV with the plugged-in hub than otherwise. The 4th hub port was taken up by the USB-serial adapter (for the serial debug output).
About Goldeneye; It's a "gate deliverable." Could've been for a Kick-Off, First Prototype, Alpha, etc. David is pretty much correct; it's the package you show to editorial about the progress of the game and make sure things are still going as planned. Sometimes they're "vertical slices" of the game, where it's a short part of the actual full game. Sometimes they're tech demos and prototype showcases like in this case.
4:56 This comment is gonna get buried, but in 2017 DeadlyFoez personally repaired my childhood Wii that had a super rare issue with the NAND flash. He’s the only person that could’ve done it. Seeing his name in an LTT video was certainly surprising! Not sure where he’s at today, but he was a pretty cool dude.
First DevKit I had the chance to work with when beginning my career at Ubisoft back in 2009. I felt so privileged working on stuff under NDA back then. With hindsight its just a funny piece of hardware hastily put together.
the eject button is probably detectable by the game, and the physical eject button gave game devs a way to test if the game disc was being ejected mid-game
Seeing this video of someone using Windows XP just brought back so many memories of simpler times. It may not have been the most advanced OS, but there was something charming about its familiar startup sound and colorful interface. Nostalgia hits hard when I think about all the hours I spent customizing my desktop and playing classic games like Minesweeper and Solitaire. Thanks for taking me down memory lane!
I used Windows XP in 2006*-2013 until I switched to Windows 7 which I used until late 2020. *On my mom's laptop which was basically the family computer. My own PC ran Windows ME until 2009
I still end up using Windows XP a few times a year. I have an old scanner that doesn't have drivers past XP and doesn't work properly under Linux (everything comes out pink), so an XP virtual machine keeps it in use.
As far as the Wii Mini goes, it has the hardware for at least half of the GC compatibility, that can be modded back in. I did some light diving into the idea when some channel was doing Wii mods, and found this out, I'm not sure if the other half of GC compatibility exists elsewhere on the board, or if there was a chip change that sacrificed compatibility, etc., but there's at least pads for two controller pinouts and a memory card pinout. The wired WiiMote thing is also a bit weird. I went patent diving at one time and there was a full wireless variant based on the GameCube, controller port wireless module and a full WiiMote. IIRC this was also during the middle of the GC's lifecycle, wireless was _super_ early in development and probably an extension of the WaveBird's wireless, so these wired WiiMotes must've been super early, and for some reason retained throughout the devkits. It also has nothing to do with the IR, as tracking is internal to the WiiMote themselves, the sensor bar was just an emitter with standardized placement of the LEDs for the WiiMote's tracking triangulation. Assuming GC had the API overhead for motion tracking (which realistically was just a stick replacement in most uses), motion could've existed on the platform, given how the dev cycle for the Wii played out; which also means those GC-Wii dev units had updated firmware to allow for this, which makes me curious how forward-compatible the GC could've been with updated firmware.
I'm assuming power and security were probably the main factors. Wii Motes are generally pretty good on batteries but they won't last all day under heavy testing. The wired controllers would also be just about useless if someone tried to walk off with them since retail units only supported wireless.
@@grn1 its also just.... better to have it wired if you have like a dozen Dev units in the same building to ensure no mixup happens between what kit had what set of controllers, also it would complety remove any potential interference by other wirelesse sourcse
You could also use the SD slot with the photo channel. And because Nintendo put in some fun "tools" I actually liked doing that from time to time as a kid. Go through our photos on the TV and maybe doodle something on it, do a sliding puzzle of one of the photos. 'twas good fun.
I remember doing that for a short while but having a ton of issues with it not recognizing files. Turns out JPG is not an actual file format but rather a container format and the Wii could only handle certain actual formats (pretty much just JFIF I think) under a certain size (don't remember the limit) and had no correction capabilities (JPGs were easily corrupted but most software could correct the files on the fly). A lot of newer hardware uses the EXIF format (still JPG files) which are much higher resolution though even a "lossless JPG" format isn't truly lossless due to the quantization methods used by all JPG formats (it's actually pretty neat how it works and definitely worth a trip down the image compression rabbit hole). PNGs are truly lossless but can't be compressed as small.
The controllers were removed due to the hack that allowed you to use a wii with an external HDD that contained all the games and would be fine unless you tried to play any title that connected up to the net. I knew some of the guys in the CS dept of uni where I was at the time who successfully did this. They bought units that had a broken CD drive and got them "Working" again.
I have a soft modded Wii with DI support (my brother uses it to play and practice competitive Melee). Don't remember ever having issues back in the day with online games, the only thing I had to be careful on was making sure I didn't update the official way (and even then it didn't take long for a new exploit to be found). Perhaps there was an even older hack that used GC controllers but by the time the Mini rolled out soft mods with DI support were quite robust so I can't see that being a reason to remove controller ports, it was almost certainly to cut cost.
8:34 reason this didn't do anything is because the HOME MENU screen is actually embedded into the game, not the console itself. Then, the "Return to Wii Menu?" prompt that would appear was made by the OS, which I am assuming it didn't have.
I got to round Eurocom (the Goldeneye reboot Dev) in Derby, UK, right after they closed down. They had piles of Wii U dev Kits in the main corridor (I assume Dev kits, they had the same controllers but different chassis). One of the coolest things was the MoCap studio to the rear of the site, a big warehouse lined with black sheeting. The cameras had been removed but all the mounts were still in place. A lot of the art dept was still full of sketches of the Tarzan game they did from the late 90's, a massive Batman stature, and a post it Pikachu. Shame they went they way they did, went from a 250+ employee company to bust in a year.
I'm not so much of a console person but the Nintendo Wii was easily the peak of consoles. The fact that it used barely any power, the games ran pretty much perfectly and the wireless motion controllers somehow worked flawlessly is really impressive.
DI is Disc Interface, COM is communication, OSReport/Panic or MetroTRK would print to it using the SI (serial) bus, DEBUG would interface with CodeWarrior, the IDE that was used, and breakpoints were handled by the aforementioned MetroTRK (Target Resident Kernel)
Am I missing something? Emulate a Wii devkit? We have Wii emulators and modding a Wii is simple today, I’m sure there’s still a small homebrew community even if many have moved onto other consoles
I've played through the entirety of the goldeneye 007 story mode and it was super cool to see what the levels looked like during development. I have to say it was surprisingly close to the actual game as far as level layout goes. It would be amazing if someone some how got the early development copy to run on a emulator or something.
The dev kit booting up reminds me of that wii menu uninstaller channel that resulted in a similar screen and was apparently used by developers as they didn't need the wii menu when developing games saving them time.
I remember using this when i helped build guitar hero games back in the day. Pretty cool to see it again. Thanks for the video and a trip down memory lane! 😊
The software for the ndev is online thanks in part to me. I shared the software to some homebrewing circles years back. And it's a good thing you all did choose xp, cuz it requires XP Service Pack 2 won't work on anything else
At least this was before you needed an online verification to use the dev kits. Really cool stuff. I love seeing early progress of games. Very cool to see.
@@lieutent2654 Linus didnt even show any of their copyrighted stuff? He specifically said no Nintendo games. There was not as much risk here as he wants you to think there is.
Sometimes, I feel like Linus is just ready to challenge Nintendo, full force, and is just waiting for them to strike first. xD Always love a look at a devkit, those things are true gems!
@@ev6910 Have you met Nintendo? They are super sue happy even when they have no real case. Many smaller creators have had to take down similar videos because they can't afford to fight.
Nintendo is... weird. They seem to attack at random, however fan games and people that make console mods are absolutely high priority. It is interesting that nintendo hasn't gone after LTT for videos like this, but i highly doubt Linus is actually looking for a fight- moreso just playing a cheeky game of cat and mouse. It's more likely that these videos rank in views and he himself probably just has an interest in this type of tech to make them worth it.
@@thatoneannoyingtornadosire8755 Also likely Linus has a better defense than say the modders or people literally modifying and distributing fna games that use Nintendo assets.
the gamecube + wii remote was actually used by the third party developers. The internal stuff done for the wii pre-NDEV was on a bunch of custom boards connected to 2 laptops and a gamecube.
5:35 that's not CPU + GPU. Those are two different CPUs. Early Wiis contained the Gamecube CPU and they didn't emulate Gamecube, they just used the Gameboy CPU to run the game
Wish they showed more of the software side of things (other than games). I get the wii menu wasnt in the firmware they were running. But maybe more on the windows xp side of things?
13:23 There's a possibility that, the USB DI port of the NDEV unit is USB 1.1. That's slower than the DVD drive of the retail unit. It's trying to stream that video from the computer and it's just not fast enough. When USB loaders for the Wii first came out, some people tried them with their old, dinky USB 1.1 flash drives (I know I did), and had issues just like these.
I would like to see you guys collab with a game development company to see the insides of game development and how the next gen hardware effects their processes. I'm not sure what it would look like but these are always neat to see.
Quick comment on the "not yet wireless" for the controller. Actually, this is a sought-out feature that you'd pay extra. Imagine you have 12 close-by desks of developers and testers all around different Wii dev kits (or test kits - closer to the actual hardware) with 1-2-3-4 bluetooth wireless remotes. All those Bluetooth wireless signals would interfere together. At one point, you need to be empirically developing without fear of actual signal interference and degradation. So developers would end up purchasing mostly wired kits and wired controllers at a premium, and have 1-2 official test kits for demoing game or testing game in a faraway room.
Adding one more comment on this, we would also purchase a Bluetooth multiplexer box, where you'd plug this in the dev kit, and have 4 different outputs for the 4 controllers.
@@RomansFiveDotEight not false, and maybe early on in the lifetime of the device, it’d be a concern. But even in the first dev kits, you could purchase either models for dev and test kits. And the later model has a switch to choose which output to have. Honestly, for larger companies used to them, FCC and other spectrum allocating bodies are mere paperworks not worth mentioning.
@@toonpik7 yeaaaah… but then, that’s Linus geeking out, and showing the wares. And he didn’t complain much, he merely gave an uninformed first impression. I’m not exactly surprised.
As a former QA. Thank you so much linus for showing the world what people suffer through to make games. Games take a lot of development and that development starts with worlds of garbage
The GameCube TDEV was not a development unit. It was for QA for testing games. The GameCube devkit was GDEV, which looked similar to the NDEV (big metal box) but was blue. And while the NDEV used several USB connections to the host PC, the GDEV used a SCSI cable. As developers, we thought of the Wii as a GameCube with extra audio RAM bolted on. And the NDEV was not an early dev kit. It was THE devkit through the whole life of the console.
Nintendo didn't use the eShop branding back then, it was called the Wii Shop Channel. I know that Wii Shop sounds an awful lot like eShop, but Linus did clearly say "eShop" at 2:37. I know, I'm an awfully picky person. But otherwise, fantastic video!
Fun Fact: The Wii’s actual widescreen aspect resolution is just short of 16:9 in horizontal length, the Wii just stretches the image to fit the display. If games were made with this aspect ratio in mind depends on the developer. That said, the Wii had some really cool games. Sure, Brawl is still the worst in the Smash series up to this point. But we got bangers like Galaxy 1 & 2, Xenoblade 1, and even Rhythm Heaven Fever.
"Brawl is still the worst in the Smash series" No, Brawl has Subspace and Project M patch, meanwhile Smash Wi U has nothing, it's the beta of Ultimate.
probably true that the wiimote was wired because they didn't have wireless support yet, but you'd also want a wired controller in a dev kit, so you don't need to bother with charging or batteries dying.
"power" in the board name doesn't mean power supply. It means the POWER(PC) architecture also used in PowerMac computers and one PlayStation generation. So all those pins are probably a complete bus connecting the two halves of the computer, in particular notice where the WiFi adapter is connected to the computer. That coiled up black cable is probably the same coaxial cable that connects Laptop WiFi to the antenna in the lid, only folded up due to the short distance.
5:20 Yes. You do have a laser engraver on the other side of that wall. However, dropping something is a far more apropos way for Linus Sebastian to identify himself for posterity.
"block out" refers to making the bare minimum to make the map playable, so it can be tested and refined for gameplay. Generally the "art pass' which pretties it up won't be done until the gameplay is satisfactory, since it's a lot easier to adjust the blocked out version of the map repeatedly and afterwards do the art pass once afterwards than it is to repeatedly adjust the map after the art pass has been done.
I remember when the Wii came out. Lots of people complained about how it was underpowered, and basically last-gen hardware. It then proceeded to beat the tar out of Sony and Microsoft, because Nintendo understood that games are supposed to be fun above all else.
I'm pretty sure that the non-deliverables were meant to be presented by someone who was intimately briefed with where they could and could not go. They'd have a standard script that they play through and if someone asks them something, they'd know if they could deviate from it and how far. Showing the sub-ocean to the investors doesn't go over too well.
Fun fact: The GameCube gecko, the Wii Broadway and the Wii U "Espresso" Broadway are all based on power PC G3 architecture, as they're all based on the PPC 750 core. The fact that breath of the wild could run on the Wii U along with any other 2012 games was ASTONISHING. For reference, the 360 and PS3 used a much more modern G5 core, and due to that, they support true multi threaddimg along with many other essential things. The G3 core was introduced in the late 90s mostly in Macs, and ran the original halo even, but not well. People said that the G3 will never have decent graphics or be a gaming capable core, and hell, even the same was said about the G5, but boy were they wrong. Thanks to Nintendo's Wii U, the IBM Power PC G3 lived for more than 15 extra years.
Only Linus can tap an heavy duty screwdriver against basically every sensitive component in that thing. Guy legit gives me the heebies everytime he disassembles anything.
Wow, this reminded me of the time I was testing WatchDogs on the Wii U. I remember the screen on the controller was used for the in-game map, and that the file extension for the builds was called ".wumad".
VISTA... I love vista... For real it doesn't deserve so much hate. I mean it basically added all the features that windows 7 was loved for, like automatic installation of divers. Windows XP would still ask you for a driver discet for you USB mouse...
I will say. All the 6th gen and 7th gen consoles should have supported VGA out. It's an RGB connection that supported 480p and up providing the best image quality you could have gotten before HDMI was a thing. Bad thing is it didn't support audio but that could have been solved by a headphone jack and RCA audio cables
"blockout" is an industry term for level design that has a "layout only" focus. So no textures, no fancy lighting and particles etc, just the layout and flow and stuff. Artists will do the "making it actually look like the place" stuff after.
A blockout in game dev terms is a rough design of a level containing no detailed models, just blocks to show the general layout and design. they are good for testing the flow of the level before adding environmental details.
Right and sometimes low polly assets or even default cubes as a bad proxy for what npc's and environments will be like.
geometry dash moment
I used to play Hawken on PC and we had blockout maps a few times. They were very fun and a great way to provide feedback to the devs and for them to see what does and doesn't work
Yes, and the first pass means the first iteration the art team completed. A rough draft basically
@@TheSpatialTheory Ayy, a fellow Hawken player! Unfortunate they shut down the game though :(
4:00: the Wii retailed with 512mb of storage, not 256mb, so it was not the double, but the same.
Love to see these videos of dev kits, but what I love more is this segue, to our sponsor!
Why does this not have more upvotes, lol.
Came here to say the exact same thing.
I can confirm because my BootMii Nand backups are ~512MB.
Not to mention calling this some precursor to the wii. This was the main dev kit used throughout the wii's entire lifespan.
also this is why a soft modded wii only usb 2 can be used for disk image ,ssme protocal as the dev kit instructions
Nintendo has been real lawsuity this month
I'm amazed you posted this
They giving all their fans the Ferrari treatment
@@mortiarty7842😂
copyright strike incoming lmao
@@mortiarty7842 even Ferrari won’t send you a cease and desist if you mod your exhaust/body kit lol
Wii would like to play 😅
YES!! I lent this kit out to LMG a few months back, and it was great talking with them to coordinate that. I really like how this devkit series is going.
Did it get tagged?
@@fish3977 i don’t think it happened, i assume that train stopped when Linus said he didn’t want to in the video. We’ll take a look at it when DeadlyFoez receives the kit, i told them to ship it to him.
@@Lethaltail what were your thoughts on the tagging?
@@caelblanch2737 I was told by DeadlyFoez that it was supposed to be only an easter egg for me. If he knew I was lending the kit to LMG he would've asked me to remove the decals. :p
He told me that but then just now changed his mind. He thinks that everyone who opens the kit should tag the inside, including Linus. I'll have to talk about that.
EDIT: The email's been sent.
Nintendo really needs to allow content creators to make content about its games. It's ridiculous at this point.
That company is ran by boomers who know little about the internet lol
ikr
Eh, 'it', and Nintendo at large, has been exactly this ridiculous for decades already.
They also delete people's mario maker levels willy nilly and ban peoples entire accounts. They hate their fans
@@shellderp they do, better keep buying
very brave video considering all the pointcrow drama with nintendo copystriking lmao
fr
when will vince upload??
Nice spam RUclips short lol
And the ridiculous Gary bowser sentencing
@@fenneck9676 "spam" lol
Linus really do be testing Nintendo lately 😂
For real though glad to see a stance against Nintendo’s crazy actions.
How is this a stance against it?
I mean at most they are risking Nintendo taking this down too. But that's hardly a stance. Just the title ain't enough, the video did not discuss any stance against Nintendo. The WAN Show actually takes a stance on Nintendo.
Nintendo will have a hard time trying to screw Linus. The man and his team know what they do. Im sure they can fight well and they fanbase alone is enough to shake nintendos core.
Linus has been such a wonderful youtuber. I really believe everyone will come together and fight. He has only given us entertainment and quality content.
@@emanuelperez3595 "Linus has been such a wonderful youtuber. I really believe everyone will come together and fight."
Oh well that's nice and dandy... last time i checked many smaller creators still can't show an emulator running because nintendo will destroy them.
Good for LMG that "they can take it".
@@chrisakaschulbus4903 And that's why it's good Linus and people with large channels do stuff like this that dances on Nintendo's thin line of copyright in order to try to set a precedent and push it a bit forward each time.
@@yerielzamora They get the topic a bit more attention, that's good.
But many in this comment section are praising them like linus and co are heroes. When they are just using their damn freedom of expression.
That shouldn't be "brave"... that shouldn't be something that earns you respect or anything.
-A trimmed 4 layer Wii (later 65nm revision) draws about 5-6 watts (half an amp at 12v)
-A trimmed 6 layer Wii (earlier 90nm revision) draws about 8.5 watts
-The NDEV uses a different GPU than the retail unit, and I have not measured its power consumption.
These numbers include CPU, GPU, RAM, Flash Memory, and Video Encoder/DAC. The rest of the power consumption of the Wii is the disc drive, regulator inefficiencies, and peripherals. So yea, the console is wicked easy to cool. The stock fan/heatsink on retail Wiis is completely overkill.
Having enough USB ports free for the Wii dev kit was a bit of a challenge at times 😅
The IDE was CodeWarrior (the Code Masters guess was close!)
could you use a USB hub?
@@CouchPotator Yes but for other devices. I vaguely remember that you couldn't use it for the dev kit cables due to some issue.
@@CouchPotator You could use a USB hub. It was easier to move an SDEV with the plugged-in hub than otherwise. The 4th hub port was taken up by the USB-serial adapter (for the serial debug output).
You were a Wii dev?
@@isaac10231 I worked on a couple of cross platform games at EA during the Wii, PS2/3 and Xbox era :)
About Goldeneye;
It's a "gate deliverable." Could've been for a Kick-Off, First Prototype, Alpha, etc.
David is pretty much correct; it's the package you show to editorial about the progress of the game and make sure things are still going as planned. Sometimes they're "vertical slices" of the game, where it's a short part of the actual full game. Sometimes they're tech demos and prototype showcases like in this case.
Linus way of telling companies to do better is just on another level
Edit: Mom I am famous now😂
" Linus does what Nintendon't "
@@fleurdewin7958 genisis denisis what nintendenisisis
@KelBShobra Uncle Yosuke Shibazaki is that you?
i would like to stream nintendo games but i might do it on twitch cause they cant get u so easily on twitch compared to youtube
Its like the Apple Inc., if they stop being so edgy, they'll prob lose a lot of interest.
In this case, Nintendo actually makes good stuff idk
That's us at 1:05! We uploaded a complete-in-box NDEV unboxing.
“Wired wifi” Nintendo is like that
4:56 This comment is gonna get buried, but in 2017 DeadlyFoez personally repaired my childhood Wii that had a super rare issue with the NAND flash. He’s the only person that could’ve done it. Seeing his name in an LTT video was certainly surprising! Not sure where he’s at today, but he was a pretty cool dude.
Guy who made the Nintendo DS Mario party DS anti-piracy
First DevKit I had the chance to work with when beginning my career at Ubisoft back in 2009. I felt so privileged working on stuff under NDA back then. With hindsight its just a funny piece of hardware hastily put together.
the eject button is probably detectable by the game, and the physical eject button gave game devs a way to test if the game disc was being ejected mid-game
Disc eject bugs were the worst too!
Seeing this video of someone using Windows XP just brought back so many memories of simpler times. It may not have been the most advanced OS, but there was something charming about its familiar startup sound and colorful interface. Nostalgia hits hard when I think about all the hours I spent customizing my desktop and playing classic games like Minesweeper and Solitaire. Thanks for taking me down memory lane!
I used XP as my main OS for 11 years, 2001 to 2012, as long as XP has been unsupported now. Strange how time flies...
Yeah, I remember too when Windows didn't suck ass.
Just installed it on my steamdeck lol
I used Windows XP in 2006*-2013 until I switched to Windows 7 which I used until late 2020.
*On my mom's laptop which was basically the family computer. My own PC ran Windows ME until 2009
I still end up using Windows XP a few times a year. I have an old scanner that doesn't have drivers past XP and doesn't work properly under Linux (everything comes out pink), so an XP virtual machine keeps it in use.
As someone studying games development I always love seeing these dev kit videos from you guys.
As far as the Wii Mini goes, it has the hardware for at least half of the GC compatibility, that can be modded back in. I did some light diving into the idea when some channel was doing Wii mods, and found this out, I'm not sure if the other half of GC compatibility exists elsewhere on the board, or if there was a chip change that sacrificed compatibility, etc., but there's at least pads for two controller pinouts and a memory card pinout.
The wired WiiMote thing is also a bit weird. I went patent diving at one time and there was a full wireless variant based on the GameCube, controller port wireless module and a full WiiMote. IIRC this was also during the middle of the GC's lifecycle, wireless was _super_ early in development and probably an extension of the WaveBird's wireless, so these wired WiiMotes must've been super early, and for some reason retained throughout the devkits. It also has nothing to do with the IR, as tracking is internal to the WiiMote themselves, the sensor bar was just an emitter with standardized placement of the LEDs for the WiiMote's tracking triangulation. Assuming GC had the API overhead for motion tracking (which realistically was just a stick replacement in most uses), motion could've existed on the platform, given how the dev cycle for the Wii played out; which also means those GC-Wii dev units had updated firmware to allow for this, which makes me curious how forward-compatible the GC could've been with updated firmware.
I'm assuming power and security were probably the main factors. Wii Motes are generally pretty good on batteries but they won't last all day under heavy testing. The wired controllers would also be just about useless if someone tried to walk off with them since retail units only supported wireless.
@@grn1 its also just.... better to have it wired if you have like a dozen Dev units in the same building to ensure no mixup happens between what kit had what set of controllers, also it would complety remove any potential interference by other wirelesse sourcse
You could also use the SD slot with the photo channel. And because Nintendo put in some fun "tools" I actually liked doing that from time to time as a kid. Go through our photos on the TV and maybe doodle something on it, do a sliding puzzle of one of the photos. 'twas good fun.
I remember doing that for a short while but having a ton of issues with it not recognizing files. Turns out JPG is not an actual file format but rather a container format and the Wii could only handle certain actual formats (pretty much just JFIF I think) under a certain size (don't remember the limit) and had no correction capabilities (JPGs were easily corrupted but most software could correct the files on the fly).
A lot of newer hardware uses the EXIF format (still JPG files) which are much higher resolution though even a "lossless JPG" format isn't truly lossless due to the quantization methods used by all JPG formats (it's actually pretty neat how it works and definitely worth a trip down the image compression rabbit hole). PNGs are truly lossless but can't be compressed as small.
@@grn1 looking it up JFIF stands for "JPEG File Interchange Format" in case anyone wants to know
The controllers were removed due to the hack that allowed you to use a wii with an external HDD that contained all the games and would be fine unless you tried to play any title that connected up to the net. I knew some of the guys in the CS dept of uni where I was at the time who successfully did this. They bought units that had a broken CD drive and got them "Working" again.
I have a soft modded Wii with DI support (my brother uses it to play and practice competitive Melee). Don't remember ever having issues back in the day with online games, the only thing I had to be careful on was making sure I didn't update the official way (and even then it didn't take long for a new exploit to be found). Perhaps there was an even older hack that used GC controllers but by the time the Mini rolled out soft mods with DI support were quite robust so I can't see that being a reason to remove controller ports, it was almost certainly to cut cost.
8:34 reason this didn't do anything is because the HOME MENU screen is actually embedded into the game, not the console itself. Then, the "Return to Wii Menu?" prompt that would appear was made by the OS, which I am assuming it didn't have.
Absolutely love these dev kit videos. Great stuff!
I got to round Eurocom (the Goldeneye reboot Dev) in Derby, UK, right after they closed down. They had piles of Wii U dev Kits in the main corridor (I assume Dev kits, they had the same controllers but different chassis). One of the coolest things was the MoCap studio to the rear of the site, a big warehouse lined with black sheeting. The cameras had been removed but all the mounts were still in place.
A lot of the art dept was still full of sketches of the Tarzan game they did from the late 90's, a massive Batman stature, and a post it Pikachu.
Shame they went they way they did, went from a 250+ employee company to bust in a year.
I love seeing all the dev kits
I'm not so much of a console person but the Nintendo Wii was easily the peak of consoles. The fact that it used barely any power, the games ran pretty much perfectly and the wireless motion controllers somehow worked flawlessly is really impressive.
As a Wii modder, This is the best video of Ltt yet. No, I am not biased 😜
I agree :)
Uh oh u r a modder? Better delete this comment before Nintendo sees it
Being a QA tester, seeing you explore early pre-alpha builds is quite fun xD
I wish these videos were way longer and more in depth, love dev kit content!
4:00 The retail console also had a 512MB NAND, but some devkits had more RAM
That is the secret, mates. Nintendo's Lawyers are always ready to go crazy.
3:25 Canadian Linus started talking
7:35
"I was a Vista boy"
We all knew that Linus. You were what mom would've called "special".
2:40 it also was used to view photos from digital cameras. the wii had built in photo channel for that
There is no wii controller, so Linus can't drop him and break the TV
him???
DI is Disc Interface, COM is communication, OSReport/Panic or MetroTRK would print to it using the SI (serial) bus, DEBUG would interface with CodeWarrior, the IDE that was used, and breakpoints were handled by the aforementioned MetroTRK (Target Resident Kernel)
Really like this Devkit series
5:40 Another quality Linus noise.
It'd be sick if we could like maybe emulate it so the Wii homebrew community can continue their shenanigans. They get up to some strange adventures.
I don't think there's much reason to since we can develop Wii games without one
Am I missing something? Emulate a Wii devkit? We have Wii emulators and modding a Wii is simple today, I’m sure there’s still a small homebrew community even if many have moved onto other consoles
Love videos like this, always nice to see a bit of gaming history.
I've played through the entirety of the goldeneye 007 story mode and it was super cool to see what the levels looked like during development. I have to say it was surprisingly close to the actual game as far as level layout goes. It would be amazing if someone some how got the early development copy to run on a emulator or something.
also graphically it's one of the prettiest Wii titles
I worked on it. Super fun to see. Is there more footage from this?
The dev kit booting up reminds me of that wii menu uninstaller channel that resulted in a similar screen and was apparently used by developers as they didn't need the wii menu when developing games saving them time.
I remember using this when i helped build guitar hero games back in the day. Pretty cool to see it again. Thanks for the video and a trip down memory lane! 😊
Wow, what did you do?
@@isaac10231 Did a bunch of the art assets for the UI on Guitar Hero 5 and a bit on Guitar Hero 6.
The software for the ndev is online thanks in part to me. I shared the software to some homebrewing circles years back.
And it's a good thing you all did choose xp, cuz it requires XP Service Pack 2 won't work on anything else
At least this was before you needed an online verification to use the dev kits. Really cool stuff. I love seeing early progress of games. Very cool to see.
The Goldeneye Remake on Wii was one of my favourite Wii games back then! The online mulitplayer was amazing! :D
Considering how much lawsuits nintendo's lawyers have done recently, you better be prepared for the worst Linus!
Something tells me he's doing whatever he can to provoke a lawsuit and is just itching to fight Nintendo's lawyers.
Which lawsuits?
@@cubedmelons876 nah that would be a bad bad decision, I don't think Nintendo would strike him
@@lieutent2654 Linus didnt even show any of their copyrighted stuff? He specifically said no Nintendo games. There was not as much risk here as he wants you to think there is.
Linus’s DILF joke is an instant classic. That needs to be memed.
Sometimes, I feel like Linus is just ready to challenge Nintendo, full force, and is just waiting for them to strike first. xD
Always love a look at a devkit, those things are true gems!
There's nothing challenging Nintendo in this video. You got baited.
@@ev6910 Have you met Nintendo? They are super sue happy even when they have no real case. Many smaller creators have had to take down similar videos because they can't afford to fight.
Nintendo is... weird.
They seem to attack at random, however fan games and people that make console mods are absolutely high priority. It is interesting that nintendo hasn't gone after LTT for videos like this, but i highly doubt Linus is actually looking for a fight- moreso just playing a cheeky game of cat and mouse.
It's more likely that these videos rank in views and he himself probably just has an interest in this type of tech to make them worth it.
@@thatoneannoyingtornadosire8755 Also likely Linus has a better defense than say the modders or people literally modifying and distributing fna games that use Nintendo assets.
1:18 im getting PTSD watching Linus holding things like this.
Please stop advertising these PII deletion services. I signed up for the last one and it ended up being a massive headache and not much help.
the gamecube + wii remote was actually used by the third party developers. The internal stuff done for the wii pre-NDEV was on a bunch of custom boards connected to 2 laptops and a gamecube.
audio on this video was a little low, and by a little i mean like 15 difference between video and end ad/other videos
searched the comments for this just to confirm it wasn't just me
5:35 that's not CPU + GPU. Those are two different CPUs.
Early Wiis contained the Gamecube CPU and they didn't emulate Gamecube, they just used the Gameboy CPU to run the game
That’s actually genius
Wish they showed more of the software side of things (other than games). I get the wii menu wasnt in the firmware they were running. But maybe more on the windows xp side of things?
13:23 There's a possibility that, the USB DI port of the NDEV unit is USB 1.1. That's slower than the DVD drive of the retail unit. It's trying to stream that video from the computer and it's just not fast enough.
When USB loaders for the Wii first came out, some people tried them with their old, dinky USB 1.1 flash drives (I know I did), and had issues just like these.
8:15 No wayyyy, F*** sake!
I would like to see you guys collab with a game development company to see the insides of game development and how the next gen hardware effects their processes.
I'm not sure what it would look like but these are always neat to see.
I love how he just tells companies to do better. Thank you for the amazing work, LMG!
12:50 givin me some BIG RIGS vibes where you infinitely go backwards
Very ear-Wii to this video. This dev kit breakdown looks interesting.
12:55 We've got a bad boy
Quick comment on the "not yet wireless" for the controller. Actually, this is a sought-out feature that you'd pay extra. Imagine you have 12 close-by desks of developers and testers all around different Wii dev kits (or test kits - closer to the actual hardware) with 1-2-3-4 bluetooth wireless remotes. All those Bluetooth wireless signals would interfere together. At one point, you need to be empirically developing without fear of actual signal interference and degradation. So developers would end up purchasing mostly wired kits and wired controllers at a premium, and have 1-2 official test kits for demoing game or testing game in a faraway room.
Adding one more comment on this, we would also purchase a Bluetooth multiplexer box, where you'd plug this in the dev kit, and have 4 different outputs for the 4 controllers.
Basically everything he tried to criticize had a purpose he didnt know about.
FCC certification is a factor as well. If the devices aren’t certified by the FCC, they can’t be used wirelessly. Even for testing purposes.
@@RomansFiveDotEight not false, and maybe early on in the lifetime of the device, it’d be a concern. But even in the first dev kits, you could purchase either models for dev and test kits. And the later model has a switch to choose which output to have.
Honestly, for larger companies used to them, FCC and other spectrum allocating bodies are mere paperworks not worth mentioning.
@@toonpik7 yeaaaah… but then, that’s Linus geeking out, and showing the wares. And he didn’t complain much, he merely gave an uninformed first impression. I’m not exactly surprised.
The "Eject" button is a physical button to digitally unmount a disc image.
7:30 DILF ;)
Indeed
Wired WiFi is actually really funny, are we not going to talk about that?
Thought this was going about how Nintendo sued a guy so hard he owes 10 million to them. The guy is 53.
0:23 i enjoyed the TWOWS reference, very nice
As a former QA. Thank you so much linus for showing the world what people suffer through to make games. Games take a lot of development and that development starts with worlds of garbage
love the new mini screwdriver looks amzing
Let's go Linus 🔥🔥🔥
The GameCube TDEV was not a development unit. It was for QA for testing games. The GameCube devkit was GDEV, which looked similar to the NDEV (big metal box) but was blue. And while the NDEV used several USB connections to the host PC, the GDEV used a SCSI cable. As developers, we thought of the Wii as a GameCube with extra audio RAM bolted on. And the NDEV was not an early dev kit. It was THE devkit through the whole life of the console.
I think they were implying it was the final version before release.
Nintendo didn't use the eShop branding back then, it was called the Wii Shop Channel. I know that Wii Shop sounds an awful lot like eShop, but Linus did clearly say "eShop" at 2:37. I know, I'm an awfully picky person. But otherwise, fantastic video!
seeing the goldeneye part was so cool! Goldeneye on the wii was literally my favorite game as a kid, and got me into FPS games.
Fun Fact: The Wii’s actual widescreen aspect resolution is just short of 16:9 in horizontal length, the Wii just stretches the image to fit the display. If games were made with this aspect ratio in mind depends on the developer.
That said, the Wii had some really cool games. Sure, Brawl is still the worst in the Smash series up to this point. But we got bangers like Galaxy 1 & 2, Xenoblade 1, and even Rhythm Heaven Fever.
"Brawl is still the worst in the Smash series"
No, Brawl has Subspace and Project M patch, meanwhile Smash Wi U has nothing, it's the beta of Ultimate.
probably true that the wiimote was wired because they didn't have wireless support yet, but you'd also want a wired controller in a dev kit, so you don't need to bother with charging or batteries dying.
given how lawsuit happy Nintendo's been, this has some balls to be posted :/ best of luck it stays up for more than a few days!
They don't tinker with Nintendo IPs, so all fine
There were no Nintendo early builds shown. There was never much risk, it was all clickbait.
Tanner smiling at the end is so charming.
"power" in the board name doesn't mean power supply. It means the POWER(PC) architecture also used in PowerMac computers and one PlayStation generation. So all those pins are probably a complete bus connecting the two halves of the computer, in particular notice where the WiFi adapter is connected to the computer. That coiled up black cable is probably the same coaxial cable that connects Laptop WiFi to the antenna in the lid, only folded up due to the short distance.
if anyone is wondering what the background song was for the video, its called "Are You Gunna Sue, Nintendo?" by Jet.
As a GameDev student, and aspiring Level Designer, seeing you and the team figure out the term "Blockout" was cute ;P
5:20 Yes. You do have a laser engraver on the other side of that wall. However, dropping something is a far more apropos way for Linus Sebastian to identify himself for posterity.
I love how every time LTT posts a video millions of people's phones vibrant at the same time 😂😂
english
did he quote the twomad collab 5:48
Linus always finds a creative way to Segway to the sponsors
"block out" refers to making the bare minimum to make the map playable, so it can be tested and refined for gameplay.
Generally the "art pass' which pretties it up won't be done until the gameplay is satisfactory, since it's a lot easier to adjust the blocked out version of the map repeatedly and afterwards do the art pass once afterwards than it is to repeatedly adjust the map after the art pass has been done.
I remember when the Wii came out. Lots of people complained about how it was underpowered, and basically last-gen hardware. It then proceeded to beat the tar out of Sony and Microsoft, because Nintendo understood that games are supposed to be fun above all else.
3:30 love the Canadian "eh"
I'm pretty sure that the non-deliverables were meant to be presented by someone who was intimately briefed with where they could and could not go. They'd have a standard script that they play through and if someone asks them something, they'd know if they could deviate from it and how far. Showing the sub-ocean to the investors doesn't go over too well.
Fun fact:
The GameCube gecko, the Wii Broadway and the Wii U "Espresso" Broadway are all based on power PC G3 architecture, as they're all based on the PPC 750 core. The fact that breath of the wild could run on the Wii U along with any other 2012 games was ASTONISHING. For reference, the 360 and PS3 used a much more modern G5 core, and due to that, they support true multi threaddimg along with many other essential things. The G3 core was introduced in the late 90s mostly in Macs, and ran the original halo even, but not well. People said that the G3 will never have decent graphics or be a gaming capable core, and hell, even the same was said about the G5, but boy were they wrong. Thanks to Nintendo's Wii U, the IBM Power PC G3 lived for more than 15 extra years.
Boycott Nintendo. That's all. Have a good day.
If we do that.. how do you expect us to "preserve their gaming catalogues year after year"?
Only Linus can tap an heavy duty screwdriver against basically every sensitive component in that thing.
Guy legit gives me the heebies everytime he disassembles anything.
scrolled down to find this comment, it HURTS to watch lol
Wow, this reminded me of the time I was testing WatchDogs on the Wii U. I remember the screen on the controller was used for the in-game map, and that the file extension for the builds was called ".wumad".
VISTA... I love vista... For real it doesn't deserve so much hate. I mean it basically added all the features that windows 7 was loved for, like automatic installation of divers. Windows XP would still ask you for a driver discet for you USB mouse...
3:22 it was to test if you'd software handled being ejected properly x
I will say. All the 6th gen and 7th gen consoles should have supported VGA out. It's an RGB connection that supported 480p and up providing the best image quality you could have gotten before HDMI was a thing. Bad thing is it didn't support audio but that could have been solved by a headphone jack and RCA audio cables
"blockout" is an industry term for level design that has a "layout only" focus. So no textures, no fancy lighting and particles etc, just the layout and flow and stuff. Artists will do the "making it actually look like the place" stuff after.
3:49 This "hey" was put by the writers on purpose just to bait us into remarking how Canadian Linus sounds
These were actually some cool leaks of dev builds. Better than some of the others
Honestly the devkits before the final one are more interesting than the final dev kit