Homebrew ROM Hack Defeating Devolution

[bobmcjr]

- Not discussion of the "anti-piracy" (leave the dead horse alone already)
- Not discussion of how to "crack" Devolution - feel free to discuss it elsewhere but keep this thread clean.

Two months of hard reverse engineering and 10 years later than it should've been, Devolution can finally be used without the silly disc validation requirement, and it doesn't even need a backwards-compatible Wii or 1st-party Wii remote to generate DVVs and run on Family/Mini Wiis and the Wii U.

Technical Writeup

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https://github.com/xperia64/unpacking_devolution/blob/master/docs/Defeating Devolution.md

Public Release

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Devolution is copyrighted software, and the author has expressed disapproval at sharing unpacked/modified binaries before, so this is being distributed as a set of tools to unpack and patch an unmodified Devolution for you, like a ROM hack.

Some general notes about this release:

• This generates "legitimate" DVVs that can be used with an unmodified Devolution r266 boot.dol or loader.bin, so you can switch back to those if you want after generating the DVVs
• Devolution appears to be buggy/unstable the first time you boot a game and generate the DVVs for it, especially on the Wii U
  • If games crash or fail to load entirely, turn off your console and try again. The DVV should've been generated at that point and the game should boot the second time.
  • Alternatively, a "keygen" dol is provided to simply generate a DVV and immediately exit before the console can crash
• Besides the above caveat, Devolution appears to generate DVVs correctly on the Wii U, no 1st-party Wii remote required
• This has been tested on two backwards-compatible Wii's and two Wii U's; It has not been tested on Family Wii's or Wii Mini's
• The disk slot LED will not blink 5 times after it has generated a DVV; instead it will do a glow animation that I don't quite understand

For more information about Devolution in general, see this thread and the readme included with Devolution.

Installation/Setup

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• You will need:
  • A copy of the original r266 gc_devo_src.zip with a sha256sum of af8c4c0aa62adb1559c7809180f0d1624fb0094b00c4248b9a9c427555d10971
    • As the author's original website is no longer up, it can be obtained here: https://web.archive.org/web/20191026015213/http://www.tueidj.net/gc_devo_src.zip
  • Docker
    • Docker Desktop for Windows or Mac
    • Regular Docker for Linux
  • A copy of this GitHub repo

1. Ensure your Docker installation works and you have the docker command in your PATH in your command prompt/terminal
2. Locate the GitHub repo folder you downloaded
   • If you downloaded a zip file, extract it somewhere
3. Copy gc_devo_src.zip to the put_gc_devo_src_zip_here folder
4. Run the patcher
   • On Windows, double click run_docker.bat from Windows Explorer
   • On Linux (and presumably macOS), run run_docker.sh from your terminal in the GitHub repo folder
5. Wait
6. An output folder should be generated in the put_gc_devo_src_zip_here folder, and contain an apps folder for you to copy to your Wii's SD card or USB storage
   • Devolution Cracked (in the gc_devo folder) will bypass the disc check for and directly boot games while generating "legit" DVV files for your console
     • As mentioned before, this can be buggy and either fail to boot games the first time (as seen on the Wii U), or randomly hang later. Games should work fine the 2nd time you boot them.
     • A loader.bin is provided for other loaders such as USB Loader GX for convenience
   • Devolution Keygen (in the gc_devo_keygen folder) will bypass the disc check, generate a "legit" DVV, then exit back to the HBC
     • This is recommended for Wii U users and people who encounter random console hangs the first time they boot a game in Devolution
     • Ideally Wii U users should go through all of their GC games with this version one at a time before playing any games to ensure a smooth experience

 

[godreborn]

got it to work. I'll keep this in case I ever need it:

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Is there any reason to use Devolution over Nintendont these days? Devolution had some nice features back in the day that nothing else could offer but is there anything left now that Devolution has and Nintendont doesn't?

 

[JuanMena]

Reading some Devolution features..


Why in the world a backup loader will literally need you to insert the original disc before inserting the backup?
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a backup loader?

 

[bobmcjr]

Is there any reason to use Devolution over Nintendont these days? Devolution had some nice features back in the day that nothing else could offer but is there anything left now that Devolution has and Nintendont doesn't?

Different compatibility. Last time I tried, Nintendont had some issues in some more niche use cases like the Slot B mic causing stability/performance issues in Mario Party 7 and/or not working with memcard emulation. Seems to work fine in Slot B with memcard emulation enabled in Devo for me. On the flip side, Devolution has issues with the frame limiters in a couple games causing a severe framerate downgrade (SpongeBob ROTFD for example)

Also using certain controllers wirelessly like the DS3 is nice (I don't think Nintendont added this or 360 controller support?). Or if you're one of the few people with Ouya controllers for some reason. And Devo supports all sorts of crazy USB/Bluetooth keyboards as well as the X360 chatpad for PSO for some reason.

And there's the web interface if you want to take screenshots.

Additionally, it's interesting to see the entirely different approach Devo uses. Nintendont patches the IOS kernel, while Devo runs with an entirely stock IOS58, doing pretty much everything on the PowerPC instead.

And of course, I've had a grudge against the disc checks so it's nice to get some closure.

 

[godreborn]

I was thinking this was riivolution where you need a legit disc to use patches for the game, some teams used it, since they were antipiracy.

 

[bobmcjr]

I was thinking this was riivolution where you need a legit disc to use patches for the game, some teams used it, since they were antipiracy.

Well riivolution is open sourceish: https://github.com/AerialX/rawksd/tree/master/launcher

 

[Jayro]

The need to verify the legit disc first is just douchey. @JuanBaNaNa is right, it's just nonsense to require the original disc to boot the backup... Makes the homebrew only useful as a proof of concept tech demo, at best. Glad someone finally reverse-engineered it. Anti-piracy homebrew devs are a cancer in the homebrew scene.

 

[bobmcjr]

I should also mention, this appears to work with at least some shrunken/modded ISOs.

I was able to boot a few small ISOs as well as a Melee 20XX mod.

 

[pedro702]

Different compatibility. Last time I tried, Nintendont had some issues in some more niche use cases like the Slot B mic causing stability/performance issues in Mario Party 7 and/or not working with memcard emulation. Seems to work fine in Slot B with memcard emulation enabled in Devo for me. On the flip side, Devolution has issues with the frame limiters in a couple games causing a severe framerate downgrade (SpongeBob ROTFD for example)

Also using certain controllers wirelessly like the DS3 is nice (I don't think Nintendont added this or 360 controller support?). Or if you're one of the few people with Ouya controllers for some reason. And Devo supports all sorts of crazy USB/Bluetooth keyboards as well as the X360 chatpad for PSO for some reason.

And there's the web interface if you want to take screenshots.

Additionally, it's interesting to see the entirely different approach Devo uses. Nintendont patches the IOS kernel, while Devo runs with an entirely stock IOS58, doing pretty much everything on the PowerPC instead.

And of course, I've had a grudge against the disc checks so it's nice to get some closure.

there is no mic performance issues on nintendont lol the most it can happen is you dont start the game with the mic attached to slotb, becuase for some reason some mics make nintendont not start the game, you attach it after the game has started and it works fine.

Also all games work fine with memory card emulation.

the only advantage devolution has imo is more wireless controllers and such because the rest is just meh.

Also many games were never tested on devolution because people didnt had the discs, so the compatibility on devolution could be a surprise on some problematic games that were never tested.

Also does devolution make games have less framedrops, not sure how devolution runs but nintendont can get you a very good boost on more demanding games, not sure if devo locks the processing power or something.

 

[bobmcjr]

there is no mic performance issues on nintendont lol the most it can happen is you dont start the game with the mic attached to slotb, becuase for some reason some mics make nintendont not start the game, you attach it after the game has started and it works fine.

Also all games work fine with memory card emulation.

the only advantage devolution has imo is more wireless controllers and such because the rest is just meh.

Also many games were never tested on devolution because people didnt had the discs, so the compatibility on devolution could be a surprise on some problematic games that were never tested.

Also does devolution make games have less framedrops, not sure how devolution runs but nintendont can get you a very good boost on more demanding games, not sure if devo locks the processing power or something.

Nope, the mic doesn't work in Nintendont at all when memory card emulation is enabled. Devolution supports an emulated memory card in Slot A while delegating Slot B to the real slot for the microphone.

I don't have a memory card on me at the moment, but I recall when I did, Nintendont also had an issue where it would occasionally freeze when using the real memcard and the mic (this was a large 16MB memory card, but it's what I have).

In general Devolution's compatibility seems to be pretty damn good, and by default it runs at Wii frequencies so I'd assume you'd get a similar performance boost in those games. It has a compatibility toggle to run things slower, but most games don't need that (iirc it hardcodes it on for Luigi's Mansion and a couple others). In my testing so far I've only seen Devolution struggle with a couple games that use some weird internal frame skip.


But of course, it's a lot easier to test compatibility now.

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

Is Devolution better than Nintendont? I gotten comfortable with Nintendont and I don't wanna change to Devolution unless theres a benefit to it.

 

[bobmcjr]

Is Devolution better than Nintendont? I gotten comfortable with Nintendont and I don't wanna change to Devolution unless theres a benefit to it.

If Nintendont is working fine for you there's no reason to switch over. Of course it's easy enough to try out in something like USBLoader GX.

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

Maybe if Devolution allows you to disable alpha dithering.

 

[trogdon]

Incredible job with this, I’ll have to look into this more. Extrems has recommended Diivolution

 

[vinzanity]

I installed Docker but was unable to run it on my ancient PC, would it be possible to have someone PM me the modded binaries? Thank you so much

 

[PacBunnyXV07]

I don't understand why you did this seeing theres a good reason why the creator made Devolution with anti piracy?

 

[bobmcjr]

I don't understand why you did this seeing theres a good reason why the creator made Devolution with anti piracy?

Because Wii disc drives last forever and never break and all Wii U or Family Wii owners have a backwards compatible Wii on them at all times.

And it's not like GameCubes can dump GameCube games.


The creator of Devolution is extremely talented and I have nothing but respect his knowledge and abilities, but I do not respect his attitude or imposition of "morals" via silly technological measures and DRM.

 

[FAST6191]

Missed this the other day. Nice work. I have most of the gamecube games I would want (had a gamecube before the wii exploded with no games so picked up what is silly money today for £10 a pop at worst) so never really delved into this side of things but knew of it and yeah did not sit the best.

 

[XDel]

I always thought the author's choice was silly, as if his and an army of software pirates were going to be responsible for taking Nintendo down... None the less I respect his choice as an author, but I'm glad someone finally came along to remove that silly limitation.