Requirements

This page provides a brief overview and checklist of recommended items to begin Wii U development. Required items are marked with an asterisk (*). For more comprehensive explanations, please refer to the Installation section.

Software

Skills

  • Rust*
  • C / C++
  • Debugging 1

This guide assumes a foundational understanding of the Rust programming language. It will not cover Rust basics, as numerous excellent free resources are readily available. However, concepts related to no_std environments will be briefly introduced and explained as they arise.

While the underlying SDK is built upon C libraries, direct interaction with them will generally not be necessary unless you intend to extend beyond the provided standard library-like features and venture into unsafe Rust. Most C functions are bound using extern "C" and can be called directly which requires some understanding of the C calling convention / ABI. This should be mainly relevant for contributors to this project.

Hardware

  • Wii U Console
  • SD Card
  • SD Card Reader

While a physical Wii U console is not strictly required for development, it is strongly recommended. Emulators, while valuable, may not accurately replicate the behavior of all application types or features due to incomplete implementations, inherent differences, or other platform-specific quirks. Consequently, software that functions correctly on an emulator may encounter issues on actual Wii U hardware, and vice versa.

  1. While debugging tools like the Cemu PPC Debugger can be useful in certain situations, the Rust compiler is generally effective at catching many potential issues during the development process. ↩