This is somewhat of a copy and paste of what I said in my server a couple hours ago, just tweaked to make more sense for the thread.
I made an announcement in my server a couple months ago related to Universal Updater not working with the cheat database. Unfortunately the issue hasn't been fixed, and quite frankly, it doesn't appear to have been acknowledged even from the reports provided by other users. Attempted downloads will yield an incomplete, blank, database download. It has been two months, we aren't too far from three, since I made the announcement about it all. As such, I have decided to pull the plug on the database for Universal Updater entirely. This means downloading from Universal Updater won't be possible anymore.
First, some clarifications.
1.
NO, this doesn't mean the databases are inaccessible. Universal Updater doesn't work well with content outside of GitHub or other miscellaneous repository services from what I could tell. As such, I hosted a copy of a database just for Universal Updater, which is why it was available for the end users when it was working. Despite my efforts leaving up the copy mentioned and even updating it when I released my August update, Universal Updater just wouldn't pick it up properly for whatever reason. The same database can easily be found with the rest of my databases in my download section, so nothing was lost.
2. I never actually intended or wanted the databases to be utilized in tandem with Universal Updater, or really any frontend hub software period. Support for this was rather random during the early days of the software, I wasn't informed about it until last minute, after the fact the developers had already integrated the ability to fetch the needed database. Despite how I felt about it then and even now (more on this later), I kept hosting the database anyways for the end users. This certainly wasn't without its hassles though, prominently related to the repository services being fickle. I should make this very clear as I'm sure some users would jump on the defensive side of things, I have no ill feelings over this, the other developers had their own good intentions related to accessibility, which isn't a bad thing. Things could have ended differently, but it is what it is, I'm not upset, neither should anyone else be.
3. This doesn't mean that TWiLightMenu can't use cheats anymore. Universal Updater itself is not necessary to obtain the cheat database needed for said software. You don't actually need Universal Updater at all for anything, as all the software does is act as a centralized frontend downloader of sorts for various online content, stuff everyone can find easily with some Google searching. Despite what the custom firmware guides tell you,
NO, you do not need the software at all, it's a resource based on preference, not a necessity. This isn't me telling you to delete the software either, if you wish to use it, that's your prerogative, but I feel you should be aware of the reality of what you the respective user utilize and or depend upon. You can easily get cheats working with TWiLightMenu by following the information posted in the
main thread post under the
Cheat Database Setup Guides section. The same information is also provided with the database downloads via the documents directory, that way you have a local / offline reference document to work with.
To elaborate further on my second point about how I felt then and feel now. I personally was never fond of the idea of automating stuff like this. This isn't to say I am totally against automation, but I do feel that some things, there should absolutely be manual intervention. Given how easy it is to set the database(s) up for utilization, I feel that automation is redundant here. It's not only redundant but a rather terrible design choice for the end user. Too many users have zero idea of what happens on their expensive systems, this of course extends in many other ways outside of game consoles too, but in this particular case, the end user learns absolutely nothing on how to set these things up themselves. The convenience seems nice on the surface, but it doesn't actually help you at all whenever the method providing said convenience goes down, or potentially disappears altogether. You are left stranded with no idea what to do next. This in itself is a major problem, and definitely isn't viable long term. I highly encourage people to get more involved when setting stuff like this up, because when all else fails, manual methods have you covered.
With all of this in mind, I have uploaded two additional documents with the databases (see the screen snip provided), specifically
checksums.sha256 and
Read Me.txt. The first document mentioned is pretty self explanatory, it's a document that houses the SHA-256 hashes for all of the databases provided. The read me document contains information on what the the
checksums.sha256 document is for, in the event that the integrity of the content(s) provided are jeopardized for one reason or another (broken download, corruption, etc.), as well as a work in progress list of solutions you can use for yourself to verify your download(s). Both of these documents are easily viewable using text editors on any platform.
