Godot for Nintendo Wii

Relevant Skills

• C++
• Game Engine Backends
• Graphics API Programming
• Game Console Programming

Development Timeline

• August 20, 2020: Development began
• August 24, 2020: GDScript interpreter functional on Wii
• September 6, 2020: Began writing Godot video driver for Wii’s GX graphics system
• September 11, 2020: Successfully showed splash screen

Description

In August 2020, while messing around with various console emulators, I found out that many Nintendo consoles have many community toolchains for building programs to run on them. After seeing that the Wii had a GCC toolchain, I joked with some friends about porting the Godot Game Engine to the Wii. After sleeping on it, I decided that it would actually be a fun project, and that it would teach me a lot about both Godot’s platform-abstraction and graphics code, and give me experience with developing code for non-desktop platforms.

Currently, the engine works with most extra modules disabled. It is capable of interpreting GDScript, and I am working on a video driver for Godot to use the Wii’s GX graphics subsystem. After that, I will need to add an audio driver, and configure the Wii’s TEV unit for 3D shading. It’s a large project and I don’t expect I will be able to fully complete it, but it has been a fun and interesting experiment.