Hacking WiiFlow - an open source GUI USB-Loader

[fledge68]

okay, only two people liked it so it's a no go. Glad I asked. But I have to admit I'm a little surprised ... I thought for sure more of you would like the idea of making it faster. Thanks again.

 

[Etheboss]

Am i too late to like it?

Anyway...as long as its not to hard to follow (for users to set it) i like it either way

 

[MassiveRican]

Hey man wait I liked it but u didn't give us enough time to comment XD

 

[drakorex]

My preferred setup is to autoboot wiiflow, with emunand set to autoboot neek. That way when I launch a wiiware game and return, it goes right back to real nand wiiflow.

With that in mind, I'm having an issue getting wiiware to boot with neek, using the newer revs (712+, maybe a few earlier, whenever it was that wiiflow started using neek2o r93+) I updated from 699, tried 713, using r90 neek. I launched a game, and all I get is a flashing light and a black screen. Ok, so I upgrade to r93 neek (replacing the kernel and di on my usb (I assume that's how you do it.)) and the game boots fine, but when I try to return, I get a black screen. So I launch the game and hold reset, taking me to emunand priiloader. I try to launch the installed file, and it freezes.

My best guess is that it's a priiloader issue, but I'm not sure. I'm going to try building a new nand with whatever the latest priiloader is and see if that fixes the problem. Could someone else test this setup and let me know what the problem is? Thanks.

it's not a priiloader issue.
It's neek2o 93 beta 1, 2 and 3 bug
corrected yesterday in beta4

here's the ultimate pack for you: WF-712_Neek2o-93b4_ultimate_pack.rar (9MB)

http://www.mediafire...ss4oh6ek4rce8ib

Content:
WiiFlow 712
Neek2o 93-beta4 + extras
two v14b channels + wiiflowloader hidden channel
two Neek2o channels

Thanks Abz, Hopefully this does it. Also noticed when trying to launch neek2o in neek mode, it blackscreens after attempting to boot. I guess that was part of the problem that got fixed?

@[member='fledge68'], Awesome job on the categories. I'd still like to see separate categories per plugin, or at least for mplayer. If that's too difficult for you, would it be any easier to enable the user to change the title and/or background per category page if we must? (i.e. Page 1=emulators, page 2=movies, page 3= homebrew, etc)

 

[MassiveRican]

ok for all you category users here's the deal.

I have figured out a way of replacing all the strings of 0's and 1's (except the one categories= under GENERAL). I use ASCII characters 33 on up to represent the number of the category the game belongs to. So if you have a game in category 1 and you have 20 categories, instead of 110000000000000000000 all you will see is ! (ASCII character 33) which is way shorter and will take wiiflow much less time to read. Also if a game isn't in any category there will be nothing after the = .

Another example: game in cat1 and cat4

rzde01=110010000000000000000
rzde01=!$

I've already coded it and it's working just fine. I've even made another dol app to convert your current cat ini to the new format. But here's the deal.

I know we just had a big categories change and Maxternal took the time to make pc apps to convert the last cat ini to v4 and i figure you guys are getting tired of the changes. So i thought I would ask if you guys feel up to the change or just want to stick with what you got? If you 'like' this post I'll assume you are ok with the change.

P.S. this would be the last change I make to the cat ini format. what you have now works just fine but might be a little slow if you have a lot of categories and a lot of games. The new change would just clean up cat ini and speed up wiiflow loading the covers. It's no big deal to me if you like the change or not.

Well were at 6 likes and hopefully we get some more. Who doesn't like the idea of a faster, more efficient feature. My only concern being what [member='maxternal'] mentioned in regards to ASCII characters that are problematic for WiiFlow to interpret properly.

 

[Maxternal]

Yeah, I'd add the "like", too, if I was sure WiiFlow was going to read it right (Like automatically adding an escape character for sensitive characters if they exist ... / or \ maybe? ... and it already may do that ... Just don't know)

Speaking of escape characters (on a side note) ... if it does already use them it would be the perfect solution for [member='jiiwah']'s problem with the French translation file (and I think Italian, too)
if it already works that way, just adding the right / or \ before all the ' would make them show up correctly.


EDIT : @[member='fledge68'], a simple test with the converter DOL you've made for your proposed new format (since it's presumably based on WiiFlow, it should have the same INI handling.):

create an old categories_v4.ini entry that would use a know problem character in the middle of the string like the apostrophe.
If I'm guessing right how your system works then a 10 category entry included in all categories
GameID=11111111111
would internally (in RAM) be translated to this before being saved
GameID=!"#$%&'()*
If it actually gets saved exactly like that in the new categories_v4.ini file (or _v5 or whatever) the # and the ' might cause problems
BUT
If the INI handler that WiiFlow already uses automatically adds a \ (or whatever escape character it recognizes) before sensitive characters and in the new file it's saved something like this
GameID=!"\#$%&\'()*
Then you're good to go so I'd say just basically run it and open the file and see if it's already safe.

 

[shortz1994]

change the title and/or background per category page if we must? (i.e. Page 1=emulators, page 2=movies, page 3= homebrew, etc)

i had that idea once,( e ach coverflow having it's own background.) i would like to see that added to the themes, an you sorta can already. most of the other parts of themes have in the line, were you can add.( texture=xxy) i had it set up on multiflow, but could make it look right.( settings background,coverflow background,olugin background,an exit to background.( but dml/plugins,as far each having there own for coverflow, it would need to be coded in.) like this one found on piffy for gamecube.(wode background.)

Spoiler

 

[Maxternal]

change the title and/or background per category page if we must? (i.e. Page 1=emulators, page 2=movies, page 3= homebrew, etc)

I had that idea once,(each coverflow having it's own background.) I would like to see that added to the themes, an you sorta can already. most of the other parts of themes have in the line, were you can add. (texture=xxy) i had it set up on multiflow, but could make it look right. (settings background,coverflow background,olugin background,an exit to background.(but dml/plugins,as far each having there own for coverflow, it would need to be coded in.) like this one found on piffy for gamecube.(wode background.)

Spoiler: Fixed

I like the idea but just remember

[spoiler][/spoiler]

 

[fledge68]

Well this is a surprise. seems i didn't give enough time. So yes i'll do a little more testing with it to make sure all ascii characters are fine and if so i'lll commit it to wiiflow mod. Plus drakorex you'll be happy to hear that yes i've coded categories for individual plugins as well. so your movies can be categorized.

 

[seam]

Well this is a surprise. seems i didn't give enough time. So yes i'll do a little more testing with it to make sure all ascii characters are fine and if so i'lll commit it to wiiflow mod. Plus drakorex you'll be happy to hear that yes i've coded categories for individual plugins as well. so your movies can be categorized.

movie categorization would be pretty awesome

 

[drakorex]

Yay. I am happy now. Huzzah! (So that'll be in 716, right?)

So now, if we can just have auto device detection for plugins, mplayer in particular, Everything will flow together quite nicely.

 

[fledge68]

okay category ini update done. see r717

backup your categories_v4.ini before using these.
here's the link for the converter dol app - http://www.mediafire...om9to9n77h2stmf

if you are still on the old old categories.ini (before v4) then use this dol app(below) first to convert to v4 then the one above to finish the conversion.

http://www.mediafire...7fq7fmdbbrw0m49

of course you only need to use these if you are a heavy category user and don't want to lose all your hard work making categories. Otherwise just delete your cat ini file and let wiiflow make a new one.

for the right links see this post - http://gbatemp.net/topic/204106-wiiflow-an-open-source-gui-usb-loader/page__st__9480__p__4387264#entry4387264

 

[Maxternal]

Just a heads-up question beforehand ... Will a converted categories_v4.ini on an un-updated WiiFlow or visa versa code dump?

 

[fledge68]

Just a heads-up question beforehand ... Will a converted categories_v4.ini on an un-updated WiiFlow or visa versa code dump?

no code dump - just may not show checkboxes on cat menu correctly

 

[spacepimp]

Thanks to Fledge for the innovation. There is one small issue in that, unless you're very familiar with ascii values, the common user might have difficulty reading which categories are associated with a title.

To help with this, I'd like to suggest that the conversion software could be modified to change the values between the two formats i.e. back from from ascii to binary, and vice versa.

If the conversion could also include a format readable by spreadsheet software, this would make reading and editing the binary format a lot easier. Especially when editing 20 categories across dozens, or hundreds, of titles.

Just a suggestion, thanks again for the hard work.

 

[fledge68]

Thanks to Fledge for the innovation. There is one small issue in that, unless you're very familiar with ascii values, the common user might have difficulty reading which categories are associated with a title.

To help with this, I'd like to suggest that the conversion software could be modified to change the values between the two formats i.e. back from from ascii to binary, and vice versa.

If the conversion could also include a format readable by spreadsheet software, this would make reading and editing the binary format a lot easier. Especially when editing 20 categories across dozens, or hundreds, of titles.

Just a suggestion, thanks again for the hard work.

here this is what i use - http://www.asciitable.com/

I like your idea but the average wiiflow user shouldn't really have to mess with categories ini manually.

 

[bostonBC]

okay category ini update done. see r717

here's the link for the converter dol app - http://www.mediafire...om9to9n77h2stmf

if you are still on the old old categories.ini (before v4) then use this dol app(below) first to convert to v4 then the one above to finish the conversion.

http://www.mediafire...7fq7fmdbbrw0m49

of course you only need to use these if you are a heavy category user and don't want to lose all your hard work making categories. Otherwise just delete your cat ini file and let wiiflow make a new one.

Something didn't work right. I ran the dol from the 2nd link 1st since I hadn't converted before and then I ran the dol from the 1st one. Got the confirmation note each time.

Looking at the resulting categories_v4.ini file it has nothing on each line after the GameID. Here is a RAR of my original and converted file.

http://www.filedropper.com/categories

I am happy to help debug in any way. Thanks for all your hard work!

 

[kylster]

Where can I find some comatible themes for the latest WiiFlow4.01?

--Thanks in advance.

 

[Maxternal]

Something didn't work right. I ran the dol from the 2nd link 1st since I hadn't converted before and then I ran the dol from the 1st one. Got the confirmation note each time.

Looking at the resulting categories_v4.ini file it has nothing on each line after the GameID. Here is a RAR of my original and converted file.

http://www.filedropper.com/categories

I am happy to help debug in any way. Thanks for all your hard work!

Hmm, do you know if the file right after the first conversion looked okay?

 

[kylster]

Keep getting a code dump if I spend a couple of minutes scrolling through the games. Eventually I'll get a pic lol

Using latest WiiFlow 4.01 on code.google age