Stephen's Weblog

Hi again, I’m looking forward to E3 with great anticipation (leaving here in roughly 24 hours…. wheeee!)

Anyway, I thought I might mention that I’ve put some thought into the new DSTunnel protocol, and have written up some basic documentation on how I want the protocol to work, what kind of messages will be present, and how the system should behave.  When I get some time I’ll be properly putting this into code, and hopefully getting a bug-free implementation going this time ;) – some of the premises of the protocol have changed since last attempt, this one will act as a cross between a true p2p udp network and a server-client network, based on configuration and network ability… it will determine whether a p2p or client/server system is more effective based on connection speeds and lag times, and configure the network in an attempt to create the best performance for an arbitrary group of peers. 

Additionally, since I know a bit more about what I’m up against now, I’ve designed some mechanisms in the protocol that will make managing some aspects of timing a lot easier… no idea if they’ll work as well as I hope, but they should at least work better than last attempt (which uh, really screwed a lot of timing stuff up) – Also I’ve designed the interface between the transport protocol and the hardware interface to be a lot more streamlined, and I will probably introduce a simple plugin system so people can write their own custom servers easily.

All this when I have time….

Now, more about E3:

I’ve already been contacted by a few people who want to meet me; needless to say I’m thrilled – whereas last year I didn’t meet many people at all, this year I hope to be able to meet a lot of people in the DS homebrew scene and otherwise – like I’ve said in my previous post, I’ll be either running around E3 or hanging around the nintendo booth wearing a white “dswifi” shirt – see my cafepress store for info on it, or I’ll be wearing a black “reverse engineer” t-shirt from thinkgeek. If you run into me and want to say hi, please do :)

I’m also going to be visiting the 4colorrebellion meetup on thursday, so you can catch me there if you don’t feel like chasing me around…

And, people inevitably ask me about capturing demos…. well, I suppose I am the one to ask about that – I don’t really have any plans to capture at the moment, things have been too busy lately for me to prepare the requisite apps… but I’ll look at what I have when I get into LA and make a decision on what to do.

Anyway, I’ll be ecstatic if I get the chance to meet some of you people at E3! If you can’t go this year, that’s too bad – keep watching as I’ll be posting news and pictures from E3 on my blog when I get the chance :)

*One Last Thing* – I will be on IRC and teamspeak (if bandwidth allows) if I have time in the evenings, so if you wanna bug me, I’ll be in the usual places (#dsdev and #dswifi on EFnet for IRC – I have a personal teamspeak server I will reveal the info for if I decide to use it)

This came up in #dswifi, so I feel obligated to now post it somewhere more public so people have a good feedback path.

At present, the list of known issues for the dswifi library is In my checklist on the wiki [wiki.akkit.org]

If you find a bug that’s not on the known issues list, or want to request a feature that isn’t on the list, please do report it! I don’t really mind you reporting issues that already are listed, but it is a bit counterproductive. About reporting issues, you can bug me on IRC, send an email, or alternately Add it to the talk page for my checklist on the wiki [wiki.akkit.org] – I’m partial to the wiki option cause wikis are cool (and mine doubly so :P)
Anyway, don’t feel like you lack the ability to strike back about features missing or being incorrectly implemented, do bug me about it :)

Ah E3… I’m going to E3 this year, it will be my second time :)
That being said, I’m more than happy to meet any of you people who aren’t too scared to meet me. I’ll be staying at a hotel a few blocks from the LACC, and I’ll be hanging out in the Nintendo booth monopolizing their machines quite a bit I think… I’ll probably be wearing either a dswifi shirt, or a thinkgeek “reverse engineer” shirt, and should be pretty easy to spot ;)
If you do want to meet up with me or anything, feel free to email me (see here for the address) or just leave a comment in this thread – I’m not planning much at the moment so I’m more than happy to meet anyone who wants to bug me.
(I might post a picture later but for now I’ll spare you ;)

Alright, about DSTunnel – I’m promoting it to active status in my checklist. In reality I probably won’t be able to touch it until after E3.

The last attempt at dstunnel was a partial success but never actually managed to successfully tunnel any games (contrary to [prior] popular belief). It did however do a lot of things right, and brought much hope to the testing team.
However, there are some serious bugs in the current version and some protocol oversights that have caused a lot of problems; to remedy all this, the dstunnel system will be completely rewritten.

I’ll be posting here in my blog when I get the time to start the rewrite, and will update the checklist with a breakdown of tasks; so bear with me here, I’ve got way too much other stuff to do in the interim.

Yup, that’s right.
Version 0.3 is out at last!
A huge number of improvements and features have been added since the last version, making this finally a library you can *do something* with.
An abbreviated list of improvements goes like this: WEP, DHCP, TCP, ICMP, DNS, WFC data, but all those are just the major points, there’s a lot of work that’s been done under the surface and the internals will run much more smoothly too.

Anyway, please read the readme included for vital information about naming conventions and installation… and Here are the links!
Downloads:
dswifi_lib_v0.3_lib.zip (181k) – Minimal package includes debug and release libraries and include files
dswifi_lib_v0.3_source.zip (188k) – Full Library source release, does not include any examples
dswifi_lib_v0.3_examples.zip (243k) – Examples release, does not include library – includes wifi_lib_test and a minimal demonstration example

I wish you all much luck and look forward to seeing what comes of this!

Well, I’ve been adding things to the lib left and right today, check out The working version (wifi_lib_test_.nds) [and of course the wifi_lib_test_.ds.gba version for whoever needs it]

Presently additions as of the time of this post include DHCP support (yay!) and the ability to connect from the WFC information in the firmware. I’m not done yet; just taking a break for the present time, so more will be done soon (see [this page on the wiki] for an up-to-date breakdown of what I’m working on.)

I might also add that some of the inner workings of the lib have been *greatly* improved since the last time I’ve talked about it, so overall the lib should be faster and easier to use :)

Ok, time to get back to work…

[Update, some 3 hours later: Eh, I'm not going to be completely done tonight; spent some time mucking around with DHCP on a crazy AP. Tomorrow though - it's close enough]

Ok, I’m proud to now publicly unveil My Wiki

This wiki has been put into place to make it easier for me to create and maintain documentation on a number of subjects that I have worked on in the past and will work on in the future. This wiki is a little different than normal, only a select few will be allowed to edit main pages but anyone is free to modify the discussion pages and provide feedback :)

As of right now there is very little on the wiki, but it’s going to expand very rapidly soon, as I transcribe my current documentation into it.

(And for those of you waiting for the ds wifi lib, it is still coming, but it’s not ready yet.)

Yeah, I know, I’ve promised a new wifi lib soon and it hasn’t materialized yet….
FYI, progress is being made (often on a daily basis) but I’ve promised other things lately too, so my time is being quite thoroughly eaten.
Here’s hoping for a release soon though :)

*hides from the internets*

Hi, I’ve not forgotten about the ds wifi lib, I’ve just been busy with other things, and working on the features for the next version of the lib. Next preview release should have a number of small fixes and speedups, and will also have a complete TCP implementation as well as possibly DHCP.

Hello again, the test app has been updated to allow outoging TCP connections to be made! There are still a few bugs and things not 100% implemented at the moment, but you can connect to servers and download webpages! Still some work to be done but very exciting :)

The lib test is in the usual place at wifi_lib_test_.nds and wifi_lib_test_.ds.gba

I’m also updating the 1emulation.com thread.

And for all of you sissies out there who don’t know how to make a valid HTTP request, connect to a site and type the following in (sans quotes):
“GET / HTTP/1.0″ followed by tapping CR and CR

:) enjoy