3D Pinball - Space Cadet for Wii

This is a port of 3D Pinball - Space Cadet for Nintendo Wii. It's originally a game that came bundled with Windows from Windows 95 up to Windows XP. This is the current state of the project:

• No menus, options, or results screen.
• Playable with the Wii remote and the GameCube pad.
• It plays sound effects and music (if the player supplies the music in OGG format).
• There are still some bugs here and there, but it's perfectly playable.

It is based on the PC decompilation made by k4zmu2a: https://github.com/k4zmu2a/SpaceCadetPinball

The PC decompilation uses SDL2 to render the game. This Wii port has been changed to use native GPU rendering with the GX library, as SDL for Wii is considered incomplete, doesn't use the GPU too much and it was really slow.

I also made the required changes to make the original game's binary assets work in this port. The Wii's CPU is big endian, instead of little endian like PC x86. These changes could be useful for porting to other big endian devices.

How to build

The main requirement is to have devkitPro.

Follow the instructions to install devkitPro here: https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started You will also need the Wii development package, and also the libraries wii-sdl and wii-sdl_mixer.

If you use Windows or Ubuntu, here are more detailed instructions.

Windows

Even though devkitPro offers a Windows installer, I've had some issues setting it up. It's easier to use WSL. If you want to use the Windows installer anyway, check the link above for instructions.

1. Install WSL. By default it will install Ubuntu, which is fine.
2. Open a WSL terminal and just follow the Ubuntu instructions below. With the difference that, if you want to clone the project into, for example, the C:\ folder, you will need move to that folder inside the terminal with the command cd /mnt/c/.

Ubuntu and other Debian based linux distros

1. Open the terminal in the folder where you want to clone the project.
2. Clone it with the command git clone --branch wii https://github.com/MaikelChan/SpaceCadetPinball. A subfolder called SpaceCadetPinball will be created containing the project.
3. Move to that subfolder with cd SpaceCadetPinball.
4. Download the latest version of the custom devkitPro pacman, that will be used to download the compilers and libraries to build the project. Once downloaded, put it in the SpaceCadetPinball folder.
5. Install devkitPro pacman with this command: sudo gdebi devkitpro-pacman.amd64.deb. If gdebi is not found, install it with sudo apt install gdebi-core, and then try again installing pacman.
6. Use the following command to sync pacman databases: sudo dkp-pacman -Sy.
7. Now update packages with sudo dkp-pacman -Syu.
8. Install the Wii development tools with sudo dkp-pacman -S wii-dev.
9. Install SDL with sudo dkp-pacman -S wii-sdl.
10. Install SDL_mixer with sudo dkp-pacman -S wii-sdl_mixer.
11. Set the DEVKITPRO environment variables so the system knows where the compilers and libraries are installed with these commands:
    • export DEVKITPRO=/opt/devkitpro.
    • export DEVKITPPC=/opt/devkitpro/devkitPPC.
12. Build the project with the command make -j4.

After a successful build, you will get a file called SpaceCadetPinball.dol, which is the main executable.

How to run

Wii with homebrew channel

1. Rename SpaceCadetPinball.dol to boot.dol.
2. Go to the sd folder in this repository, and copy its contents to the root of the SD card you use for loading apps for the Hombrew channel.
3. Copy boot.dol to apps/SpaceCadetPinball/ in your SD card.
4. For legal reasons, you will need to get the original PC game on your own to obtain the assets like graphics and sound effects. Those are not contained in this repository.
5. Copy all PC game's assets to apps/SpaceCadetPinball/Data/ in your SD card.
6. Optionally, since this port doesn't play MIDI files, you'll need to convert the music to ogg format, and call the file PINBALL.ogg, and put it along the other assets in the Data folder. Make sure that the music has a sample rate no higher than 44100Hz, or it won't play correctly.
7. If everything went fine, you should be able to see the game in your homebrew channel and run it.

Dolphin

1. Get the Dolphin emulator if you don't have it.
2. Create and edit a virtual SD card following these instructions.
3. Mount that virtual card.
4. Follow the steps 4, 5 and 6 in Wii with homebrew channel section.
5. Unmount the SD card, as Dolphin won't be able to access its contents while it's mounted.
6. Open Dolphin, go to Config, then to the Audio tab, and select DSP LLE REcompiler (slow). Audio won't work without that.
7. Go to Graphics settings, then to the Hacks tab, and move the Accuracy slider all the way to the left to set it as Safe.
8. Go to the menu File and then Open....
9. Locate and open SpaceCadetPinball.dol (or boot.dol in case you renamed it for the homebrew channel).
10. If everything went fine, you should be able to run the game.

How to play

Wii Remote

A                    :  Launch the ball
Z                    :  Move the left paddle
B                    :  Move the right paddle
DPAD Left, Right, Up :  Bump table
-                    :  Start a new game
+                    :  Pause

GameCube Pad

A                    :  Launch the ball
L                    :  Move the left paddle
R                    :  Move the right paddle
DPAD Left, Right, Up :  Bump table
Y                    :  Start a new game
Start                :  Pause

Screenshots