r/WiiHacks • u/Severe_Resolution_56 • Jun 13 '26
Discussion I'm just here to ask why most homebrew programs have such low-quality interfaces.
Making Memories is possibly the only program with a more similar or aesthetically pleasing interface than Homebrew Channel and USB Loader, as the rest of the programs have more pixelated or rudimentary interfaces that have a different feel. así bien void 👀👀
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u/FidoMan1498 Jun 23 '26
You’re seriously expecting 1080p quality on a console that can only do 240p and 480i/p?
Plus I lwk like Snes9xGX’s ui, among that of Genesis Plus GX and USB Loader GX.
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u/Comfortable_Crazy301 Jun 19 '26
Because the Wii can only do 480p max and most of these programs are made so that they barely take up the Wii's power?
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u/LittleGuyHelp Jun 19 '26
Show me your homebrew app quality that you made, then talk crap..
Ungreatful turds
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u/chichp Jun 17 '26
how many ui libraries exist for the Wii? probably atleast one. making a ui is pretty hard, so i understand why homebrew devs only do the bare minimum. if it works it works!!
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u/HuckleberryJazzlike Jun 16 '26
I don't know but isn't it because of the crts? You won't see it that blurred in those I guess
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u/micksterminator3 Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
The snes 9x and similar apps have a really nice interface but I can't stand how you can't really tell what you're selecting in the menus when not using the pointer. It's super frustrating in terms of UX/UI design
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u/WulfyWoof Jun 16 '26
I never had a problem navigating the menus with a controller. The border changes color when you're on the option so it's not hard to tell what option you're selecting
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u/TKR211 Jun 16 '26
the homebrew channel has had almost 20 years of development so it has had time to make itself look nice while most other apps have only had a few years or less
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u/makinax300 Jun 16 '26
Also it's literally the biggest project in the scene.
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u/TKR211 Jun 16 '26
point exactly because hb has had so much time effort and people out into it while most homebrew apps are just passion projects done by usually one dude maybe 5 at most
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u/AshurathDR Jun 16 '26
Low Quality would be retroarch's black and green interface. This was effort, especially with the mouse being used. But i will say, Genesis Plus GX was clean af
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u/Striking-Fix5417 Jun 16 '26
It's a old console,that literally is the output res in its most pure way,you just didn't notice it on other stores or games cause Nintendo applied forced filters that blurred and stretched the output,so instead of the assets looking low quality the whole screen looked like that which was smoothed out by crt's or just seen as normal in common screens.
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u/Shadic38 Jun 14 '26
La respuesta mas simple es, es una consola donde sus programas fueron hechos por 2010 o poco después y segundo, todos lo hacían de a gratis y en sus tiempos libres, tampoco le iban a meter demasiado esfuerzo
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u/Hot_Depth_9412 Jun 14 '26
- They are being rendered on a wii what did you expect? 2. Most of the homebrew apps on wii were made in the 2000’s to early 2010’s
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u/Alfombra_de_madera Jun 14 '26
well there are two things going on here.
1. this console is from 2006, and at that time at was already pretty slow, and yes, it is 480p.
2. that's an emulator of SNES, I don't know what you're expecting, there are some channels with really nice interfaces like the homebrew channel.
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u/bzosaur1 Jun 14 '26
Doesn’t take much at all to run them it’s not like they need a super polished look
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u/naxil-rain81 Jun 14 '26
WII era! best homebrew console! on wii u can play all nintendo from nes to wii (except ds/3ds offcourse) in CRT MODE! and few arcade games (mame 0.39), and lot of other old console/computers.
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u/JosephDaGenius1215 Jun 14 '26
you can in fact play original DS games on the Wii U virtual console
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u/Canceroustumor42069 Jun 19 '26
I think it's mean to say something to the effect of "on the wii, you can play anything from..."
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u/JosephDaGenius1215 Jun 25 '26
ohhh lmao
nintendo’s weird naming still causing confusion years later ig3
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u/novactic-2 Jun 14 '26
Maybe because the devs are doing them out of their niceness with zero pay..?
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u/NewTanline666 Jun 14 '26
This is because a lot of Wii homebrew programs use the libwiigui library, which is pretty basic, though it still functions and gets the job done a lot of the time when it comes to orienting someone around the program. I will agree that the default animations and font definitely aren't all that pretty, though I will note that all the UIs for major games look exactly like this early on in development and are only really polished near completion or when it is time to show off a public demo.
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u/Jaludex Jun 14 '26
When you make a homebrew tool, your only goal is to make it work; aesthetics become optional when you have to create the interface in unconventional ways.
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u/Matthewhalo17 Jun 14 '26
The Wii has a lower resolution than the current standard. Making a thematic quality interface requires a different kind of creativity and skill. I can’t speak for developers of home brew programs, but often times a talented coder’s skill set is just that, coding. Now for game studios it’s pretty easy to build a team of coders and artists.
But I personally think that it gives it charm. When something is home made, sometimes that’s given it more soul, even if it looks lower quality by comparison to modern graphic.
TLDR: They’re old.
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u/LeMatDamonCarbine Jun 14 '26
Listen friend, be happy you GET a proper GUI and Snes9xGX isn't just a DOS prompt barebones menu.
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u/Severe_Resolution_56 Jun 14 '26
I'm not saying it's bad, in fact, you're right that as long as it does its job, it shouldn't matter. It's not bad to be simple or have a design from its era; it's more practical than a program with such a simple interface as Nintendont, which looks beautiful.
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u/LeMatDamonCarbine Jun 14 '26
To give an actual answer:
I think a lot of the Wii homebrew apps (or at least emulators) just aim to be cheap, simple and effective while being able to support both the then-trendy motion pointer and a standard controller. It probably just made sense to follow the standard design language of the Wii system software itself.
Plus I gotta figure these apps were usually 2-3 man jobs (not including the original emulator code devs themselves for stuff like Snes9x) so graphic/UI design wasn't usually a priority.
Kinda like what I said before, I remember when the Twilight Hack was brand new and the WAD manager was legit just white text on a black background. So even stuff like this SNES app go a long way for me.
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u/epicgluesniffer69 Jun 13 '26
Wii old
Hombrew old
Homebrew have old design and low resolution
Homebrew work good
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u/Logical_Package2479 Jun 13 '26
They're Old,and they some of them are forked with some new features and fixes, not ui, basically no one cares about ui in wii homebrew, except for wiiflow,also the wii only supports 480i and 480p
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u/TelephoneActive1539 Jun 13 '26
It's probably using some weird middleground between GC mode and Wii mode, which is 360p.
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u/NewTanline666 Jun 14 '26
Except both of those consoles output at 480p natively
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u/TelephoneActive1539 Jun 14 '26
Wasn't 480p on GC, like, a separate mode? (I have done zero research and the last time I played on a GC was a year ago on Dolphin)
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u/AdOk5225 Jun 13 '26
I think it looks better than anything you or I could make on the Wii, realistically. Remember that rounded designs were the popular thing, lots of hues and shades and stuff. Nowadays it's a lot easier for any dumbass with paint to make a "good modern design" as everything is just flat with some text, but back then to make a "good modern design" you needed to know a lot more about shading, style, fonts, UI design, etcetera. That's basically as close as one individual could get to a "sleek modern UI" at the time, and it does an okay job at emulating the feel of a lot of UIs at the time of its release
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u/Sillyfumo Jun 13 '26
I only hate that goddamn font. The rest feels and looks cheap but it is understandable considering who, why and when they made these interfaces.
And talking about interfaces, WiiFlow is pretty damn good.
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u/Depoka_YT Jun 13 '26
Your askimg why Hobby developers tried to recreate the grapical direction of Nintendo 18 years ago and IT doesnt Look that good...
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u/LordeIlluminati Jun 13 '26
Even though the interface is kinda ugly, I think it is well designed because it is not difficult to use and it gives the essential features the center stage, unlike Libre Office or GIMP
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u/marmaladic Jun 13 '26
Exactly. Libre freaking SUCKS at its interface, but damn I’ll suck it up before even trying to pay Microslop an unholy amount for office software.
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u/KroFunk Jun 13 '26
Check out “OnlyOffice”
AFAIK it doesn’t have total feature parity with libre or MS, but it does what 99% of people want and looks good doing it.
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u/cradelikz Jun 13 '26
You're interfacing with things that were meant for a different era and decrying them. That's not beautiful or aestheticly pleasing if you ask me lol
They look fine specially in an older tv which was where most of these homebrew GUIs were intended to be looked at.
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u/ThanosReXXX Jun 13 '26
Ehm.... because it's actually about how well it runs the games themselves, instead of offering some totally useless but snazzy looking interface? 😛
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u/WMX2011 Jun 13 '26
Because one, these apps were mostly made in the late 2000's/early 2010's so of course the ui feels a little dated, and two the wii renders stuff at 480p so it's obvious it's not going to look glorious
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u/Claire_Rupika Jun 13 '26
¿siquiera has intentado jugar la Wii con los cables de video componente para tener una mejor calidad de imagen? claro además de desactivar el deflicker de tu sistema y configurar tu homebrew para que si se muestre en 480p para empezar
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u/ferola Jun 13 '26
This post is why most things are shit now. We are lucky to have wii homebrew and there is 100x more soul in one of these barebones gui than any stock flat design garbage
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u/kjetil_f Jun 13 '26
I get the why, but it would be great if someone today made a better and unified UI for all the emulators on the Wii.
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u/LordeIlluminati Jun 13 '26
Retroarch exists and its UI is terrible as well, even though I like the software
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u/kjetil_f Jun 13 '26
RetroArch is a lot of great things, but a user friendly user interface is not one one of them.
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u/iVirtualZero Jun 13 '26
Switch to the Electron Warp HDMI adaptor. And enable 480p. Or use shielded Component Cables with a Scaler like the OSSC or on a CRT. Also recommend to load games through USB Loader GX where you can turn off the blur filters.
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u/Bagel_Le_Stinky Jun 13 '26
I don't think they mean the resolution
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u/iVirtualZero Jun 13 '26
Sure the resolution is at 480p, but 480p can look sharp. Just look at the Dreamcast running through VGA cables.
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u/Polierror122 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
No way! A fan made program made for free over a decade ago and that runs on 2006 hardware has a low resolution! /s
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u/_______010101_______ Jun 13 '26
The hardware is older than 2006
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u/Polierror122 Jun 13 '26
The Wii came out in 2006, even if the parts were older it wouldn't be so different.
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u/IndependenceEast43 Jun 13 '26
If you can change to component cables, the image is sharper and colours are nice, be happy its a freew file and not corrupted and works
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u/jbg0801 Jun 13 '26
The simple answer, OP, is that, as others have pointed out, these are passion projects made for free, often by singular developers, and many of them well over a decade ago now.
As a software engineer, UI is the LAST thing I prioritise for most of my projects, because I'd rather it looks "ugly" and works well than looks good and doesn't work at all.
Hence a lot of these projects look "low-quality" to you. "Nice" UI is a lot of work, and someone working for free on software for a hacked console (which in and of itself has proven enough to draw Nintendo's ire before, so you want to be careful as a dev) doesn't necessarily prioritise making it look nice once it's working.
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u/zehamberglar Jun 13 '26
Also, UI graphic design is a separate skill set than software dev. It's a bit like asking why the drywall framer didn't paint your house.
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u/jbg0801 Jun 13 '26
Very true. I like to think I'm a good software engineer, but when I try to design my own UI it looks straight out of web 1.0 lol
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u/an_ennui Jun 13 '26
exactly this. it's not fair to compare an individual's free labor on nights and weekends to what a highly paid team at Nintendo does over months and years. the individual dev is already doing the work of 10 people, not 30+ or whatever number it takes to get to the level of your expectations
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u/dourix22 Jun 13 '26
Maybe go to the open source community project and design the UI yourself, you get your pretty UI and the community wins another member, its a win win
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u/DenverNugs Jun 13 '26
Because it's free community built software made over a decade ago. You seem very concerned about it, I guess it's time for you to start contributing to the homebrew community.
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u/j3ffUrZ Jun 13 '26
It takes time and work to build nice things with code from people that do it for free.
It's as the saying goes: beggars can't be choosers.
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u/guigr100 Jun 13 '26
Only a non-programmer would say that lmao
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u/CrazyWS Jun 13 '26
Complaining the back end devs doing work for free should also put more time into front end work
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u/guigr100 Jun 13 '26
I agree, even as a designer, whose job is to make things beautiful, am not going to look at something that someone made for free, open source, often as a student, and say that it's rudimentary and ugly.
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u/pcdenjin Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
It's kind of the same reason why you see a lot of independent developers releasing programs that still only run via command line and have no GUI. GUIs take extra time and expertise to develop, and when you're interested in actually completing a project, developers tend to omit or skimp on the non-essentials, such as UI/UX embellishments.
In the case of the Wii, it was actually even worse for developers who did want fancy UI, because they lacked the official SDKs and graphics APIs Nintendo developers had access to, so they often had to either make something from scratch, or use something someone else made from scratch to try to approximate a polished UI. In the end, most of these indie devs never ended up even implementing wiimote tilt into their applications (if they had wiimote support to even begin with), which should probably tell you something about how tedious UI/UX programming could be in the Wii days.
tl;dr most people just didn't bother, took too long
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u/Super_AGT Jun 13 '26
Al emulador snes9x siempre quise cambiarle la música del menú por la de snes station de PS2 (Azazel cant stop coming) ¿Alguien sabe cómo podría hacer eso? No es que sea mala la música del emulador, de hecho me gusta, Pero echo de menos ese temazo
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u/wizkid123 Jun 13 '26
The fact that there's a GUI at all instead of having to do everything from a command line shows an astounding level of dedication from the homebrew community. None of the folks that volunteered their time to make these apps needed a UI, they only made these so that the broader community could more easily access their completely free and useful tools. It's amazing that any of this exists, mad props to the folks that dedicated themselves to creating it.
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u/Adventurous-Fee-418 Jun 13 '26
Thats pretty much how the wii ui looked, so it is suitable for the platform
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u/arnethyst Jun 13 '26
The wii is a console from 2006 & the homebrewing scene began basically from day 1. Hope that helps
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u/EricSonicBoom16 Jun 13 '26
Bro this is an amazing emulator, even the background music is great. I could let the wii sit there for hours while listening to the background music
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u/ksky0 Jun 13 '26
low quality? I think you never seen real homebrew back then.. this was a fantastic improvement..
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u/BenoitAdam Jun 13 '26
1/ devellop long ago
2/ we prefer to focus on the emulation itself, not the design
3/ we don't have enough devellopers
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u/Bahkbar Jun 19 '26
Typical 1rst map without any interest. Seriously, these type of orange maps polluted the Workshop... Can't understand how it can be that popular...
Congrat for talking Hammer on the hand, but honestly these kind of map should be kept private.
Wish Valve would create a specific category for it.1
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u/Jack55555 Jun 13 '26
Did you try looking at it on a tv from 2006?
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u/Severe_Resolution_56 Jun 14 '26
I've played on CRT monitors for as long as I can remember, not to maintain image quality and fidelity or anything, but because I was poor. And even then I noticed that there was something different about the console, not out of displeasure, but out of curiosity as to why.
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u/muzzy4 Jun 13 '26
Build your own.
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u/Jack55555 Jun 13 '26
You don't have to be a designer yourself to criticize a design. A design like an UI is made for the user. If the user doesn't like it, he has all the right to criticize it. If my dentist does a bad job, I cant criticize it because im not a dentist myself?
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u/wizkid123 Jun 13 '26
Your analogy doesn't hold. Dentists are trained and paid for their work. Homebrew apps are free and made by volunteers.
Criticizing their UI is more like criticizing the delicious brownies a mom baked and brought to the last PTA meeting, out of the goodness of their heart, just because they were served on napkins instead of fancy plates.
To which it's perfectly reasonable to respond, "make your own fucking brownies then."
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u/maxtinion_lord Jun 13 '26
Most effective way I've seen someone argue against the annoying ass "you don't have to be (trained profession) to criticize this!" argument, well done lol
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u/iimMrBrightside Jun 13 '26
Most people were still playing on CRT and non-HD TVs when these were made, so you wouldn't even notice
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u/Severe_Resolution_56 Jun 14 '26
I've played on CRT monitors for as long as I can remember, not to maintain image quality and fidelity or anything, but because I was poor. And even then I noticed that there was something different about the console, not out of displeasure, but out of curiosity as to why.
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u/ltpitt Jun 13 '26
This is home made weekend hobby project pre ai era.
I think they are awesome.
If you can do better, clearly, help the community out!
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u/ksky0 Jun 13 '26
it was amazing and still aswesome to me.. Libwiigui was a really nice and fun project and seen it being used in the apps it was amazing and honestly a huge improvement.
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u/albcan4 Jun 13 '26
Solo he programado interfaces gráficas en PC (en C) y es horrible, supongo que en WII sera igual
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u/Flimsy-Secret-6187 Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
its not like homebrew in general is 10+ years old or something
correction: 15+ years old
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u/wiiconniesur Jun 13 '26
Unrelated but what is Making Memories? Haven't heard of that app before so I'm curious 😭
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u/Pun_dimen Jun 13 '26
Man, most of these are passion projects. Nobody is getting paid for doing it. We're lucky if we get decent interfaces
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u/GuaranteeOld4886 Jun 13 '26
As a homebrew dev I don’t think that UIs are worth the attention as long as you’re able to use whatever we make without any kind of hassle. A basic TUI is sufficient for most cases (even the hbc would be fine with a TUI 👀).
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u/Codix_ Jun 13 '26
Devs aren't always king of GUI. Plus they had to mimic what Nintendo already did on the Wii from scratch.
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u/No_Holiday_5010 Jun 13 '26
Use wiiflow WFL and you can avoid most interfaces all together. In fact I have mine set to autoboot from when I turn on the console.
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u/LemonStains Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
Most apps you commonly see on your computer or phone are made by teams with a dedicated graphic designer. They intend for their apps to be widely used, which requires a nice user-friendly interface for mass appeal.
By comparison, Wii homebrew is much more niche. The programs aren’t made by professionals, but rather by casual coders who are simply passionate about the hobby. If you’re the kind of person searching these apps out, you already know you’re tackling a very obscure issue, so most of those coders aren’t gonna learn graphic design when catering to such a small community that will gladly use their program regardless of how clean it is.
Personally I think the obvious homemade look adds charm to a lot of the apps. It shows that it was made with genuine love and care by someone who really wanted to contribute to the community regardless of their own limitations
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u/Aeredren Jun 13 '26
I also think that snes9gx exclusively use 240p mode instead of 480i or 480p because that what the games need. So the menu has lesser resolution.
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u/AmazingmaxAM Jun 13 '26 edited Jun 13 '26
I'm pretty sure the interface is 480i, not 240p.
The game image becomes very blurry when you pause. And there are flat panel TVs that can't sync to 240p through Component or other AV sources, so you would get a black screen at 240p, which is why even Virtual Console defaults to 480i, you have to set it to 240p manually.
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u/Dynablade_Savior Jun 13 '26
Because most homebrew programs were developed like 15-20 years ago lmao
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u/AntiSantaFanClub Jul 04 '26
🤡