Other Guidelines Regarding Accessing The Optical Disc Drive; Game Startup Screen; Various Causes Of Changes In Game Disc Access Time; Dol File Restrictions - Nintendo Wii Manuallines

Graphics Library (GX)
5

Other Guidelines Regarding Accessing the Optical Disc Drive

5.1

Game Startup Screen

After the dol file is loaded by the boot program, data and program files are read from the Game Disc. At
this time, in order to shorten the time the screen is blank as much as possible, do not read any data files.
Use only the dol file to display the first screen.
Also, the dol file should use the error-handling routines described in
Type". If there are no error-handling routines (including necessary data) built into the dol file, there is no
way to notify the user if some kind of problem occurs with the read before the error-handling routine's data
is loaded.
Warning: (Not a concern with Wii)
There is a bug in the boot program that causes the system to halt under certain circumstances when the
game program is booted from the Main Menu screen. Specifically, if the Disc Cover is opened just at the
right moment while the screen fades out, the screen will remain faded out and the system will halt. The tim-
ing has to be just right for this to happen, so the rate of occurrence is very low. However, you should be
aware of this when testing the error handling of your game program. It is acceptable to ignore this bug.
Take the following steps if a problem arises and you want to determine whether it is due to this bug or to
some bug in the game program:
1. Try closing the Disc Cover. If the game program boots up, the problem was caused by a bug in the
game program.
2. Wait 10 seconds after closing the Disc Cover and then press the START button. If the game program
boots up, the problem was caused by the boot program bug. (This can be ignored.)
3. If the game program does not start up when you perform Step 2, then the problem was caused by a
bug in the game program.
This boot program bug does not occur when games are started from the Nintendo GameCube
other words, booted up without going through the IPL Main Menu screen).
5.2

Various Causes of Changes in Game Disc Access Time

(Same as Wii Programming Guideline, Version 1.00, paragraph 2.1 "Prohibition of Dependency on Device
Specifications [Information]. Plan to add "Prohibition of Dependency on Device Specifications) [Required]"
to the disc drive chapter, as a disc drive related topic.)
Avoid designing a program with a dependency on the device specifications of the Wii console or its periph-
erals, since this may result in a program malfunction or crash.
There will be some specification variance between devices. Performance will also decrease as the device
ages or a disc becomes damaged.
Specifically, the devices here refer to the disc drive, disc, Wii Remote, Wii system memory, SD Memory
Card, and Nintendo GameCube Memory Card. See the corresponding chapters for details.
If a problem occurs with Game Disc access, the hardware will carry out a retry internally. This means that
even if a read has succeeded, it may have been the result of going through several retries.
Also, the calibration process requires a large amount of time, as mentioned in
gram". Therefore, when a game player opens the Disc Cover while reading, much longer time is required
than just one read.
Furthermore, due to individual differences, the access may be completed slightly faster than with the par-
ticular optical disc drive the developer is using.
RVL-06-0179-001-A
Released: October 4, 2006
Chapter 3.4
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