Go Fish

View blog reactions Written on April 3, 2007 by Chris Heald

It’s a no-brainer that the Wii’s primary selling point is the Wiimote, the remote control-esque wand that is already a symbol in its own right. Beyond being completely different than anything else we’d seen in major consoles to date, it offers hobbyists a lot of opportunity as a standalone device. Notably, it is a standard Bluetooth device, which means that you can connect to it from any Bluetooth-enabled computer.

I’ve already managed to use it to play Chrono Trigger, so given that success, I decided I was ready to tackle my next objective. My desktop wasn’t Bluetooth-enabled so I picked up a Kensington USB Bluetooth Connector yesterday, plugged it in, and connected the Wiimote. Next I fired up GlovePIE and tried a basic mouse script out to ensure that the Wiimote was sending data as expected. It worked flawlessly, so I began crafting my own custom script: a driver to allow me to use the Wiimote for fishing in WoW.

The idea’s simple, and already well-proven - you have a device with binary buttons, and analog joystick, and accelerometers. It’s not hard to translate this into a fishing rod. You need a button (A) and a motion to cast with and another motion to reel in with. In the context of WoW, you need to be able to position the mouse cursor over your bobber in order to reel in a bite.

The project isn’t done yet, but it shouldn’t take much longer. When I’m done, I’ll be able to cast my line with a flick of the wrist, use the nunchuck joystick to maneuver my cursor over the bobber, and then use another flick of the wrist to pull in my catch.

I’ll post results, the GlovePIE script, and maybe a YouTube video when I get it working. Update: It works! Read the details here!

Posted in Gaming, World of Warcraft, Wii, Hacks