Initial support for Third-Party Nintendo Network servers : Pretendo

[PoorPocketsMcNewHold]

As you probably know, the Nintendo Network servers for the 3DS, won’t be around for a long time, but the community is at work to still keep it alive, by archiving content, and hosting their Nintendo Network server.

https://pretendo.network

Pretendo is just that, and is currently aiming at restoring support for all Nintendo Network features for both platforms, app & game wise (Including, already removed things like the Miiverse). While it isn’t complete, and isn’t really usable entirely, even with the currently established features (as far I’ve tested, but I need to check with them), the Friends system is nearly complete! https://github.com/PretendoNetwork/friends 

As I’m not knowledgeable with this third-party implementation, I can’t say for sure if it’s 1:1 identical in terms of the API (or even, provide an extended API for those features for that matter). So, this is a bit of a vague suggestion to prepare for such thing, as I also don’t know how future-proof the 3DS Friends system will hold up once the official servers are gone for good.

PS: They also work on Wii U support if you are interested. I’ve rejoined your Support Discord server as well, so you can contact me there too.

[MCMi460]

Thank you for telling me, but I think I've come to terms that, when the 3DS Friends Service gets shut down, I'll just consider writing a single application for providing Discord support for Pretendo instead of re-implementing the entire Friends Network situation that I've got running now.
It's unlikely that, in the state that this project is currently in, it would be worthwhile to convert this repository to work with Pretendo servers.
Unless someone else has already done something with a similar effect (or does so before I do), I'll certainly attempt to dissect Pretendo's API and create a 3DS->Pretendo->Program->Discord application.
Thank you, and have a great day! :)

[jonbarrow]

I just so happened to stumble across this project while poking around some Nintendo related repositories, and found this one interesting!

I happen to be the founder and lead developer of Pretendo 👋 I also happen to be the one who implemented the NASC backend in NintendoClients which is used here :P

I'll certainly attempt to dissect Pretendo's API

There's actually no dissection necessary here! Since the goal of Pretendo is to emulate Nintendo Network, and it's related services, as closely as possible, then any existing clients (namely the real consoles) which interact with Nintendo's servers should Just Work:tm: with ours

In fact, several of us on the team use NintendoClients as a way to debug and run tests on our servers during development

I have not poked around this repository entirely, but from the looks of it the most you would likely need to do is just swap out the url property on NASCClient to point to our NASC server and things should just work as normal here. You don't even have to fork NintendoClients for this, when we implemented the NASC client we made this configurable through the set_url() method

[Preloading]

@jonbarrow Hi there!

I've almost finished adding Pretendo support to this project, but all that's preventing it from being finished, is what we think is a bug in Pretendo. I made a proper github issue PretendoNetwork/friends#16, but summing it down NintendoClients hangs ~5/6 seconds after having connected to the friends server, at the exact same time as some heartbeat ACK stuff. Any idea how I can solve this problem, at least temporary?

Thanks in advance!

[spotlightishere]

This is now deployed in production - we'll make a proper announcement after more testing to ensure everything is working smoothly. Thank you so much for the issue!