Just bumping to bring some attention. WiiU is ready for homebrew, but there is not much available at the moment, we have a game loader, a FTP server, a paint program and a few small games. Retroarch would be wonderful, to be able to play advanced emulators with the WiiU’s power on the gamepad !
I don’t think anyone on the team has a Wii U but if someone from the existing homebrew scene wants to take a stab at it, we’re happy to help via IRC. Have them stop by #retroarch on Freenode.
Well that sucks >< Guess we’ll never see a Wii U port then, so much for that. Hell, I doubt any of the RA would want to get a secondhand Wii U just for homebrew development shrug. People have been waiting to hear about a potential Wii U port, but I guess that ain’t happening since none of them have or planning on getting a cheap used Wii U, c’est la vie.
Calm down, my friend. Not all hope is lost:
Quark has been having issues, but I already gave him the info to get in contact directly with the RA developers, hopefully this could help to make a proper port for the Wii U a reality in the near future. 
[QUOTE=ShadowOne333;42225]Calm down, my friend. Not all hope is lost:
Quark has been having issues, but I already gave him the info to get in contact directly with the RA developers, hopefully this could help to make a proper port for the Wii U a reality in the near future. :)[/QUOTE]
Right, but still… sigh hopefully he does get a hold of them, because the Wii U needs better emulation than the Virtual Console. Speaking of which, we never did find out how to add or change the filtering -_- Still, the Wii U scene hasn’t been all that active and I hope that all changes.
Figured I should say hi over here - Hi! Yep, been working on a libretro frontend I’ve dubbed “URetro” (that name will change though, open for suggestions) for the Wii U. It’s pretty simple at the moment - my goal is to get a core running, with all the fancy stuff later. Right now it can load up an ELF from the SD card and pump in various simple callbacks (you can see all that under src/cores/cores.c, check the GitHub link above) but any attempts to run something more advanced than getters and setters on the core end (retro_load_game for instance) results in a crash. I’m convinced that I’m either miscompiling the cores (The way the Wii U’s RAM is laid out makes this all a bit of a pain, and the crashes I’m getting seem to be based around the core expecting the stack to be a way it just isn’t, making me think my linker script might be wrong) or my memory allocation isn’t working (does stella check to see if a malloc fails?) I can post more technical details if it’s needed, but suffice to say all the major issues I’ve had so far are centered around pointers for C++ stuff like lists and strings not being on the stack as expected (Not my element - always been a C person). Anyway, I’ve been pretty busy lately but I’ll soon be able to get back into it and that’s when I’ll start trying to find devs (#retroarch on freenode, was it?) I’m kinda worried about timezones but hopefully it’ll all turn out okay. If I can chat to someone who worked on the Wii stuff (other than memory the platforms are fairly similar) that’d be awesome. The makefile system used for the cores is also completely beyond me.
Also worth noting that no, it’s not OpenGL. How I wish it was… There are two main graphics systems on the Wii U - OSScreen (which gives you a framebuffer, a font renderer and nothing else) and GX2 (I’ve heard it’s similar to OpenGL but I can’t make heads or tails of it). URetro uses OSScreen for now but I consider GX2 an essential for future versions. That’ll come with time, however.
Anyway, I got considerably off-track there but the point is that this is being worked on. It’s not a RetroArch port but it’s close enough, and I’ll be sure to make use of the unique hardware I’m dealing with.
Hey, nice to hear from you!
Yeah, #retroarch (and/or #libretro) on Freenode, and don’t worry about timezones. Twinaphex is a goddamned machine, so he doesn’t need to sleep and is available almost any time. If you happen to be on during the handful of hours he’s no on, others should be able to at least point you in the right direction.
I second this, @Quark, the team here can definitely help you with some insight 
At least would you be willing to accept the RA devs’ help? It will consolidate and streamline the process, you shouldn’t have to do it alone, no one should XD
Well, yes! Sorry if that didn’t come across in the original post (explains a lot about how the Temp has been treating me, actually) but I know that I can’t do this by myself, it’s the major reason I even posted here in the first place. When I get a decent block of time I’ll hop on IRC and start asking around, it’s just that I’ve been quite busy lately.
No worries, and no hurry. We’ll help you any way we can
While a RetroArch port would be great, any libretro frontend grows the ecosystem, and that’s always good for us.
I spoke with Twinaphex about it a little in IRC the other day and he suggested that it might be possible to write a GL-to-whatever-Wii-U-uses-for-acceleration wrapper, after which RetroArch’s fancy XMB menu, etc. should work with little additional effort. OTOH, having a totally native experience could open up some interesting possibilities and maybe energize some other homebrew devs to contribute to your project. Plus, RetroArch is a large, complex codebase, so it may take too much time/effort just to get up to speed with it vs. rolling your own thing.
So, pros and cons either way.
I know it’s been a while, but I wanted to let everyone know that I’ve pretty much given up on the project at this point. Memory management and other things have proven to be well outside my skill range, and interest just faded 
I’ve pushed the last of my code to two locations - an older version here and my attempt at a rewrite of the memory system here. Feel free to continue or butcher that code as you please.
I’m really sorry that I couldn’t finish this off and that I had you all waiting for this long. I hope to see a more skilled developer pick up the idea of libretro on the Wii U and take it to the end.
No problem, don’t sweat it. These things happen
Now that Quark’s not working on it anymore, are you guys gonna pick up the project per chance?
Not unless we get the hardware to work on it, which isn’t very likely AFAICT.
Damn, that’s what I was afraid of. Guess someone needs to donate a used Wii U.
You could try something like decaf-emu, which is pretty good for homebrew development afaik. It’d also be pretty easy to find people (myself included) who’ll try things on-console to make sure the emulator is accurate.
Yes, thats a brilliant idea! You could try it on decaf-emu and if you needed some testers on console just ask in the forums here or on gbatemp, there would be loads of People willing to test (myself included!). The Wii U has so much potential to run retroArch accurate and full-speed, would be a shame not to try porting it over…
Same here guys. There’s always Decaf and Cemu, and if you need tests in a real console, I am more than willing to give it a try! I have a Wii U on a compatible FW to test for you guys, if you do need so.
[QUOTE=ShadowOne333;48978]Same here guys. There’s always Decaf and Cemu, and if you need tests in a real console, I am more than willing to give it a try! I have a Wii U on a compatible FW to test for you guys, if you do need so.[/QUOTE]
Seconded, er, thirded XD I have an exploitable Wii U, willing to do tests as Decaf and Cemu are excellent platforms for development