Hacking The Great Quest for Wiiflow Plugins™ - A call for adventurers!

[Wiimpathy]

There may be several causes for Wiituka issues.

First, the way the plugin finds partition could be improved. If not mistaken, it didn't work well in mixed setup, usb only is the prefered choice.

Secondly, there have been reports that it doesn't work with large and newer hdd. And not starting in WiiU either. Possibly a too old libfat...

Finally, the move to a newer DevkitPPC may have break some plugins. Specifically the handling of paths. Not sure about dolfile= problem like here :
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wiiflow-lite.422685/post-9066316

But Retroarch, ScummVM, GenesisGX had those type of issues too:

https://github.com/Fledge68/WiiFlow_Lite/issues/276

Eke's fix:
https://github.com/ekeeke/Genesis-Plus-GX/issues/357#issuecomment-809811217

There was a user that forced Fledge to upgrade the devkit constantly, no thanks too him.

Now, possible workaround here is modifying Wiituka's code.
@chrondelta & others:
Look for //Plugin comments to find all the changes. In main.c particularly, where the partition is mounted. What's annoying is that a lot of device prefix is hardcoded with "usb" where WiiFlow may send "usb1:" as arguments.
Good luck!

 

[chrondelta]

There may be several causes for Wiituka issues.

First, the way the plugin finds partition could be improved. If not mistaken, it didn't work well in mixed setup, usb only is the prefered choice.

Secondly, there have been reports that it doesn't work with large and newer hdd. And not starting in WiiU either. Possibly a too old libfat...

Finally, the move to a newer DevkitPPC may have break some plugins. Specifically the handling of paths. Not sure about dolfile= problem like here :
https://gbatemp.net/threads/wiiflow-lite.422685/post-9066316

But Retroarch, ScummVM, GenesisGX had those type of issues too:

https://github.com/Fledge68/WiiFlow_Lite/issues/276

Eke's fix:
https://github.com/ekeeke/Genesis-Plus-GX/issues/357#issuecomment-809811217

There was a user that forced Fledge to upgrade the devkit constantly, no thanks too him.

Now, possible workaround here is modifying Wiituka's code.
@chrondelta & others:
Look for //Plugin comments to find all the changes. In main.c particularly, where the partition is mounted. What's annoying is that a lot of device prefix is hardcoded with "usb" where WiiFlow may send "usb1:" as arguments.
Good luck!

I'm using an SD-only setup, do i replace "usb" with "sd"? is that it? I'm poking around but have no idea what the problm could be, maybe i'll look again after sleeping. thanks for the pointers!

 

[Wiimpathy]

You'll have to debug Wiituka and check at which step it's crashing exactly. What's received in argv[1] etc. I suspect the expected device prefixes (sd: & usb in Wiituka being a problem. And you'd have to find a more general way to handle both devices. Not sure it's the real and only issue but try to check the 'usb:' & 'sd:' in code, the fatMount and other file functions...
Good night!

EDIT
Now that I re-think about it maybe it'd be better to make the changes @fledge68 suggested by removing the partition suffixes in Wiiflow plugin loader as we discussed here:
https://github.com/Fledge68/WiiFlow_Lite/issues/276#issuecomment-924389631
This is what ekeeke suggested too instead of trying to fix all homebrews. No idea how that would affect multi partitions disks and the few homebrews that support such a setup.

What do you think @fledge68 ? Is it feasible and a good solution?
That will require serious testing if done though.

 

[chrondelta]

You'll have to debug Wiituka and check at which step it's crashing exactly. What's received in argv[1] etc. I suspect the expected device prefixes (sd: & usb in Wiituka being a problem. And you'd have to find a more general way to handle both devices. Not sure it's the real and only issue but try to check the 'usb:' & 'sd:' in code, the fatMount and other file functions...
Good night!

EDIT
Now that I re-think about it maybe it'd be better to make the changes @fledge68 suggested by removing the partition suffixes in Wiiflow plugin loader as we discussed here:
https://github.com/Fledge68/WiiFlow_Lite/issues/276#issuecomment-924389631
This is what ekeeke suggested too instead of trying to fix all homebrews. No idea how that would affect multi partitions disks and the few homebrews that support such a setup.

What do you think @fledge68 ? Is it feasible and a good solution?
That will require serious testing if done though.

Ya know, it's funny you point out this issue, i've been having problems with the Creativision emulator crashing the console when i try to exit. It just hangs at a black screen from what i could tell. I wonder if that's connected? From my entire experience working on this i haven't had th CreatiVision emulator properly close and exit back to WiiFlowLite even once. Maybe it's not connected, but considering the title of the issue you linked, maybe?? Just wanted to point this out.

 

[fledge68]

You'll have to debug Wiituka and check at which step it's crashing exactly. What's received in argv[1] etc. I suspect the expected device prefixes (sd: & usb in Wiituka being a problem. And you'd have to find a more general way to handle both devices. Not sure it's the real and only issue but try to check the 'usb:' & 'sd:' in code, the fatMount and other file functions...
Good night!

EDIT
Now that I re-think about it maybe it'd be better to make the changes @fledge68 suggested by removing the partition suffixes in Wiiflow plugin loader as we discussed here:
https://github.com/Fledge68/WiiFlow_Lite/issues/276#issuecomment-924389631
This is what ekeeke suggested too instead of trying to fix all homebrews. No idea how that would affect multi partitions disks and the few homebrews that support such a setup.

What do you think @fledge68 ? Is it feasible and a good solution?
That will require serious testing if done though.

1. odd that wiituka seems to be the only one with an issue.
2. i get what you are saying about USB1 and USB2, but what about SD. why would that not work.
3. i just tried wiituka plugin on wfl v5.5.3 and it won't show any covers. it says no games found in sd:/apps/wiituka/DISKS even though i clearly have the games there. when i run it via HBC it shows the games and runs them. i know @RunningSnakes changed the romdir so maybe he should view his amstrad covers and go to home menu and select Reload Cache.

 

[RunningSnakes]

@fledge68
The games and covers work with the new rompath, just missing auto-boot.

550 broke auto-boot for Wiituka/Amstrad but whenever @ukigh4ie regex was added is when game DISK detection was broke for at least 3-4 systems I have encountered.

Edit:
Going back to 549 is no solution since ScummVM is broken in that release.


@chrondelta
Yes Creativision has never returned to WFL when exiting. I've always had the same issue as you, black screen hang.

 

[chrondelta]

1. odd that wiituka seems to be the only one with an issue.
2. i get what you are saying about USB1 and USB2, but what about SD. why would that not work.
3. i just tried wiituka plugin on wfl v5.5.3 and it won't show any covers. it says no games found in sd:/apps/wiituka/DISKS even though i clearly have the games there. when i run it via HBC it shows the games and runs them. i know @RunningSnakes changed the romdir so maybe he should view his amstrad covers and go to home menu and select Reload Cache.

Are your games in \apps\wiituka\DISKS? if so, you need to adjust the fileskip regex in \apps\wiiflow\wiiflow_lite.ini, or else it won't display anything because of "DISKS" in the path. I personally recommend ((dis[ck]|tape|side|track)[ _-][b-l2-9])|(dis[ck])[2-9] for the regex, since i haven't seen any ROM collection that DOESN'T put a spacer or something between disk/side/tape/track and the identifier of the track. It also minimizes the number of games skipped over because of a quirk of their own names. It's not perfect, if you find some of my other posts in this thread you can read some of the flaws i've documented about this regex i've chosen, but the flaws can be circumvented with simple renaming of only a few ROMs, in my experience.

 

[fledge68]

Are your games in \apps\wiituka\DISKS? if so, you need to adjust the fileskip regex in \apps\wiiflow\wiiflow_lite.ini, or else it won't display anything because of "DISKS" in the path. I personally recommend ((dis[ck]|tape|side|track)[ _-][b-l2-9])|(dis[ck])[2-9] for the regex, since i haven't seen any ROM collection that DOESN'T put a spacer or something between disk/side/tape/track and the identifier of the track. It also minimizes the number of games skipped over because of a quirk of their own names.

thank you for reminding me, sometimes things are right in front of your eyes but you still don't see it.

ok i renamed DISKS to ROMS and editing wiituka ini romdir and now i see my games.

i see that wiituka boots and tries to boot the game but the autoboot feature of wiituka is not working. i'll look more into it tomorrow hopefully.

 

[chrondelta]

incidentally, if anyone notices any games that get "caught up" in my regex, lemme know. I still know about NBA Courtside 2 featuring Kobe Bryant (for N64), and that can be fixed by removing the space between "Courtside" and "2" in the ROM name, and then it won't get hit by my regex.

Actually, i'm including a couple python scripts that SHOULD work on any computer. One of them generates a list of games that would get caughtup by the old regex pattern that get missed by the new pattern, and the other one generates a list of games that get caught up in the new Regex pattern. I recommend extracting them to the root of your SD and running them, the output is written to "log.txt". This should give you an idea of any flaws or benefits in the new regex and ought to help in testing further refinements to the regex. You could also put them in \ROMS or any other directory where it or a subdirectory has ROM files or disk images or whatever you wanna test on

 

[Wiimpathy]

You can't simply rename the source files. The .o are object files. It's the compiler that generates them. This compilation phase essentially 'translates' the sources(.cpp) to machine code(.o). It precedes the final linking phase that takes all objects and required libraries to produce the executable(the dol file).

Anyway, as you know, this homebrew uses a custom libogc and there are some missing stuff in the makefile.
First, make sure you have installed the official DevkitPPC/libogc correctly : https://devkitpro.org/wiki/Getting_Started
Just compile the wii examples and if all is ok, go on.

You must compile the custom libogc2. Download and extract https://github.com/emukidid/libogc.
Open command line in the extracted folder and type 'make' and 'make install'.
It should be installed in your Devkipro folder now.

Modify wii64 Makefile.base. At the beginning of file, add these lines:

export    LIBOGC_INC    :=    $(DEVKITPRO)/libogc2/include

export DEPSDIR    :=    $(CURDIR)

Now try to compile wii64 with 'make -f Makefile.Rice_Wii --jobs=4' or with build.bat if on Windows. If you use the make command for several builds, remember to clean the project first by removing the .o files!

Note that I have no clue of which DevkitPPC version should be used. I had a ton of warning with r39-2. Zero guarantee the dol will work correctly. You shoud ask emukidid to be sure.

1. odd that wiituka seems to be the only one with an issue.
2. i get what you are saying about USB1 and USB2, but what about SD. why would that not work.
3. i just tried wiituka plugin on wfl v5.5.3 and it won't show any covers. it says no games found in sd:/apps/wiituka/DISKS even though i clearly have the games there. when i run it via HBC it shows the games and runs them. i know @RunningSnakes changed the romdir so maybe he should view his amstrad covers and go to home menu and select Reload Cache.

1. Not the only one. Genesis-Plus-GX, Retroarch, ScummVM had issues related to the newlib changes. Most found workaround. Not sure about ScummVM and others...
eke sent patches @devkitpro but they're not merged:
https://github.com/devkitPro/buildscripts/pull/54
https://github.com/devkitPro/buildscripts/pull/55

2. Here if it's really sd only issue that may be Wiituka plugin's code fault. It was tested in full usb setup not mixed sd/usb.


About Creativision, I just tested again and no issue when pressing Home button twice. It first goes to filebrowser then back to WiiFlow. I must admit my Wiiflow version is a bit old though(5.4.6?).
What's your setup for plugins? SD, USB, mixed?

 

[chrondelta]

1. Not the only one. Genesis-Plus-GX, Retroarch, ScummVM had issues related to the newlib changes. Most found workaround. Not sure about ScummVM and others...
eke sent patches @devkitpro but they're not merged:
https://github.com/devkitPro/buildscripts/pull/54
https://github.com/devkitPro/buildscripts/pull/55

2. Here if it's really sd only issue that may be Wiituka plugin's code fault. It was tested in full usb setup not mixed sd/usb.


About Creativision, I just tested again and no issue when pressing Home button twice. It first goes to filebrowser then back to WiiFlow. I must admit my Wiiflow version is a bit old though(5.4.6?).
What's your setup for plugins? SD, USB, mixed?

Mine is SD only (NOT mixed) and i plan to keep it that way. Using WFL 5.5.3 for now. When i push the home button it doesn't even show me a filebrowser, i dont think ive ever seen a filebrowser or any kind of emulator menu for CreatiVision. It does play the games at least.

 

[Wiimpathy]

You're right, problem is with sd only. The dol attached to this post has a workaround, not a proper fix. I don't feel like debugging for hours now. Some serious rewrite would be required for this one too...
By the way, it seems the {device} argument doesn't contain the digit prefix(no usb1 etc.) only argv[0] does.
I didn't remember how annoying it can be to compile with that pacman. Latest devkit gave a lot of errors so I wanted to use an older one(the dol is compiled with R36 and latest Tantric's sdl commit).

 

[RunningSnakes]

@Wiimpathy

Confirmed Working. Exiting Creativision game from WFL returns correctly using SD.

I'll test using USB/SD and USB only. If all is good, replace the old.dol with this. Thank You

 

[fledge68]

wiituka update (but no solution yet)
i'm checking wiimpathy's plugin mod.

wiituka plugin ini args line does not send the device. so usb1 is not an issue.
the device is determined by wiituka which first checks for usb:/apps/wiituka. if not found then sd:/apps/wiituka.
so your roms must be on the same device as apps/wiituka and you must have the apps/wiituka folders but your roms can be in a different folder on same device as apps/wiituka

i see that it only accepts .zip files

also i know the {name} arg is sent and accepted because the splash screen is not shown.
right now i'm leaning toward the sd and usb not mounting but it could be something else. when device is not mounted it tries to do via wifi.
i will keep looking time permitting. i really hate to compile because it uses old ppc and libs.

 

[fledge68]

are you guys sure wiituka autorun's the game when using wiiflow v5.4.9?

after more investigation. it appears to me the args are sent to wiituka and received but the game isn't autorun. it never auto types run"1942 or whatever.
if you use the virtual keyboard and type CAT and enter. it shows the game name. then type run"gamename and enter and it runs.

@Wiimpathy any of this make sense?

 

[chrondelta]

are you guys sure wiituka autorun's the game when using wiiflow v5.4.9?

after more investigation. it appears to me the args are sent to wiituka and received but the game isn't autorun. it never auto types run"1942 or whatever.
if you use the virtual keyboard and type CAT and enter. it shows the game name. then type run"gamename and enter and it runs.

@Wiimpathy any of this make sense?

I can confirm witnessing it autorun in 5.4.9 using adf files .... or i think zipped ADFs, either way.

 

[fledge68]

I can confirm witnessing it autorun in 5.4.9 using adf files .... or i think zipped ADFs, either way.

adf? those are for amiga.
wiituka is for amstradCPC. it takes zip file with .dsk games.

 

[RunningSnakes]

I just ran 1943 using 5.4.9 through SD and I confirm it auto-boots correctly. I'll post arguments in a moment.

 

[chrondelta]

adf? those are for amiga.
wiituka is for amstradCPC. it takes zip file with .dsk games.

sorry, meant to say .dsk files, got my wires crossed.

 

[RunningSnakes]

arguments=/{path}/{name}|{name}
dolfile=Amstrad/wiituka.dol
filetypes=.zip
magic=54554B41
romdir=ROMS/Amstrad/CPC

Working on my end.