Hacking USB Loader GX

[ThaCrip]

- memory issue (try to delete lot of games from xml to make it smaller)
- malformed xml (need to find which game breaks the xml, and fix it on the gametdb website)

as for the 'memory issue'... I assume it might be tricky to delete things properly from the xml? ; like is there any specific way you got to delete entries so things work properly? ; but even if I do get that stuff deleted right to remove say a few MB or so, I don't think it's going to help any given my answer below (see my text quote my quote of you below).

as for the 'malformed xml'... I assume finding which game breaks the xml file is going to be quite difficult? ; because even though I was saying things were working months ago, as I know it was okay back in November (and might have been okay a fair amount after that), it might be difficult to find out at exactly which point the issue appeared where it does not show any info when you highlight a game and press 2 on the Wii remote.

Ahh, you have backup with smaller size? did you try it?

Well I deleted the 'wiitdb.xml' and 'wiitdb_offsets.bin' from the general 'usbloader_gx' folder on the Wii's SD card and replaced it with the wiitdb.xml I have from Nov 2018 and it does show info when highlighting a game and pressing the 2 button on the Wii remote. but... the parental controls don't filter properly, or much at all, as I think off the top of my head from messing with it last night, it might have only filtered one game out of the total amount of games I have when I locked and unlocked the USBLoaderGX. so the automatic parental controls are pretty much shot even though this does display the stuff when highlighting a game and pressing 2 on the Wii remote.


EDIT: I figured I would update this post as I updated the wiitdb a moment ago on my main Wii (on May 8th 2019) and it's fixed as the parental controls now work as expected. did someone fix something on the wiitdb side? ; because pressing the 2 button on Wii remote now shows the correct info again and adjusting parental controls now filters the games correctly for each setting as I tested it quickly and all seems to work again as expected.

 

[tswntk]

as for the 'memory issue'... I assume it might be tricky to delete things properly from the xml? ; like is there any specific way you got to delete entries so things work properly? ; but even if I do get that stuff deleted right to remove say a few MB or so, I don't think it's going to help any given my answer below (see my text quote my quote of you below).

as for the 'malformed xml'... I assume finding which game breaks the xml file is going to be quite difficult? ; because even though I was saying things were working months ago, as I know it was okay back in November (and might have been okay a fair amount after that), it might be difficult to find out at exactly which point the issue appeared where it does not show any info when you highlight a game and press 2 on the Wii remote.



Well I deleted the 'wiitdb.xml' and 'wiitdb_offsets.bin' from the general 'usbloader_gx' folder on the Wii's SD card and replaced it with the wiitdb.xml I have from Nov 2018 and it does show info when highlighting a game and pressing the 2 button on the Wii remote. but... the parental controls don't filter properly, or much at all, as I think off the top of my head from messing with it last night, it might have only filtered one game out of the total amount of games I have when I locked and unlocked the USBLoaderGX. so the automatic parental controls are pretty much shot even though this does display the stuff when highlighting a game and pressing 2 on the Wii remote.

To add to your confusion:
I just update Wiitdb.xml to latest (was WiiTDB version="20160107231059" games="9303"; now 20190508033106/9477) and info still shows in the rotating disc menu.
So I don't think its malformed xml or memory issue.
Parental control does work for me. At least when I set Parental control to level 1, the games shown reduces from 220 to 138.

Though: I am still on 1268, Wiitdb at legacy path "sd:\usb-loader".

I guess something is off on your side since you said older ULGX versions also won't show info for you.

 

[ThaCrip]

@tswntk

have you ever tried a clean installation of v1268 or the newest v1271? ; because I did not get into Wii moding until late last year so all of my stuff is recent. I was using v1268 initially but changed to v1271 a while ago.

but apparently I am not the only one reporting the issue I did. so there has to be something going on which can't be exclusive to my systems. both of my Wii's react the exact same way.

if you can... completely remove your USBLoaderGX installation along with it's configuration files and try v1271 (or even v1268 if you prefer) from a clean state. then download the covers for your games and the wiitdb file and play with your parental controls and see what happens.

EDIT: someone must have fixed something on the wiitdb side because after updating the wiitdb again a moment ago on my Wii my parental controls now work once again as expected.

 

[Xaranar]

Just a quick note, I updated wiitdb.xml again yesterday, and it appears to be working fine now. The previous iteration probably had a syntax error or something.

 

[Cyan]

thank you for the report both of you
So, it was really a problem from the xml side. I guess someone noticed what was wrong and fixed it.

it might be difficult to find out at exactly which point the issue appeared where it does not show any info when you highlight a game and press 2 on the Wii remote.

if you had access to gametdb log (I think it's public), you could check last updated games and see if something obvious happened (non ascii character, etc.)
if not, you'd had to split the xml in half, test both, see which version from the two had the issue, and start again, and again on the wrong side until you pinpoint the culprit. lot of work, but possible.


just one thing :
the parental level for the game you manually set a value should retain your own value and not be filled using wiitdb.xml
if you want the default value, choose "reset settings" for that individual game. it might require loader's reboot to take effect though, I don't remember if the parental level is kept in memory after a reset.

 

[Maeson]

Hi, I'd like to make a quick question.

After seeing that USB Loader GX can use custom music, I decided to make a couple of OGG files based on the background music of the NES and SNES Classic, to see how they felt.

Problem is, USB Loader GX crashes after a bit of playing the music, maybe it happens when they have to loop. I've read that the file size shouldn't be larger than 3MB, but here's the thing: their sizes are 400kb~ and 700kb~, they're quite short and way lower than the recommended limit.

It doesn't really worry me all that much (I don't spend much time on the app itself, I pick a game fast enough), but I wanted to ask to see where the problem is so I can understand it.

 

[Cyan]

where dis you put the music ?
don't use USB to store your homebrew resources (the apps folder, covers, cheats, etc.), always use SD card as it's never disabled and unmount, while USB can be unmount/remount at time, and you'll lose the link to the opened streams, making the loader crash, or worse corrupt your partition.

 

[Maeson]

On my SD card, SD:\apps\usbloader_gx\themes (I'm not using any theme, I just have a folder named like that). I wouldn't think of using a USB for this when the rest of the application's files are on the SD card.

 

[Cyan]

then I'm not sure why it's not working correctly.
I didn't write that part of the loader, nor ever tested it so I can't tell you if it's stable or not.
I know it can be a problem if you place ogg or mp3 on usb for the reason I described, but using SD card should be fine, except at game launch, because apparently there's a bug and the background music is not stopped in time before unloading the loader and unmounting the SD at game launch.

that's a big problem for a "loader" to crash at game loading step :/

Did you experience the problem at specific places in the loader? or with only specific files?
that's just question to learn more, but I don't know how to fix nor if/when I'll do it. Maybe someone else could take a look.

 

[Maeson]

Well, as I said, it's really not a problem at all, I just wanted to know if I was screwing up on my side.
It's a very superficial thing and doesn't matter in the end, so no need to stress yourself!

 

[ca032769]

Does USBLoaderGX support the option to choose which device to start up? Such as "device = ask"??

I have some Wii & GameCube games on both USB HDD & my SD card (for when my HDD is being used for something else the SD card always has a few games for me to play). I'd like to be able to select the device upon entering the loader.


EDIT: Yes, I do understand that I can't play Wii game off SD using USBLoaderGX.

 

[Magnus87]

Time to update the Changelog?

 

[ca032769]

THANKS!
I went through all your steps with my 4 TB drive and it ended up now as a big FAT32 MBR partition with status active and type primary according to EaseUS. Unfortunately I can only try it out on my Wii U tomorrow but I guess it'll work! You deserve some cookies!

An update to our old conversation. In addition to the Wester Digital 8TB original tested I have this working on a WD 4TB Passport and as of today a WD 10TB MyBook. You can follow the link in my signature to find the updated post if interested.

 

[lordelan]

An update to our old conversation. In addition to the Wester Digital 8TB original tested I have this working on a WD 4TB Passport and as of today a WD 10TB MyBook. You can follow the link in my signature to find the updated post if interested.

Pretty cool. That post was a browser bookmark I came back to very often nonetheless. Fine turn that you updated it.

 

[ca032769]

I'm testing a Western Digital 10TB MyBook for use on the Wii and would like to know if anyone here is SUCCESSFULLY using a large GPT NTFS 4TB, 5TB, 6TB, 8TB or 10TB hard drive with USBLoaderGX?

I already have 4TB, 8TB & 10TB drives that are working on all 3 loaders that I changed over from GPT to MBR formatted as FAT32. 4TB is 32k, 8TB is 64k & the 10TB is 256k clusters. BUT, after all these years are any of the loaders working with these larger drives in the GPT NTFS format?

I'm going to run my own tests in the GPT NTFS format through different cluster sizes and if no success will try going through different cluster sizes in the GPT FAT32 format. My goal is to see if I still have to keep changing my drives from GPT to MBR to work.

If you have a drive that's working would you be kind enough to share your drive information with me:

-Manufacturer:

-Confirm it's GPT not MBR:

-Format (NTFS/FAT32/Other):

-Cluster size (4k/32k/Other):

-Anything else you think might be useful:

 

[FanNintendo]

@Cyan you probably forgot me how pain ass I was lol, I want to say thank you again I gave up wiiware on vWii on USB Loader for couple months was feeling helpless to solved it then I went ahead hacked N3DSXL with twilight menu ++ so last night I went back to WiiWare the unfinish job. Did IOS236 and d2x-cios-installer and it finally worked! Im so relieved no more thinking in my head so I can move on other new stuff! Thanks you lot for being patient with me again

 

[JarheadHME]

So I'm having an issue where any time I try to load a game from USBLGX, it increments my playcount and then just boots back to the homebrew channel. I tried at someone's recommendation reinstalling usblgx, that didn't end up doing anything. I'm on 3.0 r1271, which appears to be the latest version on the sourceforge.

 

[Drunk_caterpillar]

So it sounds like this isn't an option but I wanted to confirm:

Is there a way to force a 240p video mode from USBLoaderGX?

There are a few retail games, WiiWare titles, and Virtual Console ports I'd love to run in 240p on my CRT, but I can't find that video mode in USBLGX. I think there was a custom fork of an older USBLGX version that Cyan made for someone, but I'd love to have that feature in the current release. Thanks!

 

[Chris2055]

Hello, I have a few USBLoaderGX questions.

1. Is there a way to get USBLoaderGX to see WiiWare and VC games from the SD card? If I check the box for NAND Channels in USBLoaderGX, it will show me WiiWare and VC games stored on the real NAND, but having everything installed there isn't practical and NAND emulation does not work well with my HDD.

2. Is there a way to remove or exclude channels like Mii Channel and The Homebrew Channel from showing up when the box for NAND channels is checked in USBLoaderGX?

3. Is there a way to launch games for FCEUGX and other emulators from USBLoaderGX? I saw a video of a plugins mod but I'm not sure how up-to-date that version is or where to get it from.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Alexander1970]

Hello.

1. definite NO,i´ve tried that a time ago and @Cyan explained it that is not possible.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/usb-loader-gx.149922/page-1293#post-8602350