Is there an easier way to extract games (NSPs in particular)?

[Nazosan]

So I've been using hactool forever. However, it seems to not have been updated in ages and I'm having more and more troubles with it (and weirdness like it saying prod.keys does not exist when it does and it then proceeds to complain about the lines in prod.keys it doesn't like that supposedly it was going to stop warning about in future versions.) Dealing with the titlekey was always a problem and the best suggestion I ever got was to repack the file using NSCBuilder (which is obviously a messy and tedious process that doubles storage requirements) since that would remove the crypto -- or it used to. Unfortunately, NSCB hasn't been updated in a while and no longer is able to update its titlekeys database, so it's time to move on I guess. Trying to extract by getting the title keys manually via the .tik file seems to not be working for me for whatever reason (it says it failed to read the RomFS directory cache) so at this point I struggle to extract most newer stuff. This whole process is very messy going through lots of extra steps and using command line stuff I can't even remember (and I am actually good with the command line) so I had to make batch files just to do it for me so I wouldn't forget. I can understand why we were still using hactool in, say, 2018, but it's now 2022. Surely there must be something better with at least a basic GUI by now? Preferably something that handles titlekeys and etc itself. I know of nxdumptool of course and it seems to generally work for stuff like basic game dumps, but it isn't really very good for extracting and doesn't even like many games like Rune Factory 5 for instance.

There has to be a better way by now.

 

[M7L7NK7]

HactoolGUI?

 

[Nazosan]

Would that not have the same problems as hactool, including the titlekey issue?

Unless something has changed (that the dev doesn't mention) it's just a frontend. (Also, the last update was 2018 with a version 0.2 -- not exactly a major revision there.)

EDIT: Nothing has changed. This is definitely not a solution to the problems I mentioned or an improvement.

 

[MrVtR]

Unless you'll extract a 2 in 1 one or 3 in one game, I guess Yuzu and Ryujinx emulators can handle that, since they can extract the RomFS and ExeFS from .nsp and .xci games. You can use NxDumpTool homebrew on Nintendo Switch too if you want a more complete option, but the emulators can handle almost 100% of the games
Yuzu tutorial
Ryujinx tutorial
NxDumpTool

As for the 2-1/3-1 games, the emulators can't handle since the games have multiple titleIDs on it like 0000,0001,0002 and Yuzu/Ryujinx'll extract only the first titleID

An more practical example:
Super mario 3d all stars have: The game menu, Mario64, Sunshine and Galaxy
Hactools can extract all of them, Yuzu/Ryujinx'll extract only the first ID(the game menu) and NxDumpTool homebrew can extract all of them directly on Nintendo Switch

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

There's the dbi tool that you literally just select the game on your switch when connected to your PC and it views all the files. Simple and no messing around with keys and ticket Id

 

[Nazosan]

Well, I already know about nxdumptool and like I said it can be a bit messy plus doesn't work with everything. I feel like there should be a more proper method than using an emulator to extract. I was really hoping there's something like hactool but more modern. Is there really not after all these years?

EDIT: Yeah, I know about DBI Tool too. I've had troubles with it just not even seeing files for games or something. I forgot which specific ones. Regardless, I'm really looking for something to run on the PC, not the Switch.

 

[MrVtR]

There's the dbi tool that you literally just select the game on your switch when connected to your PC and it views all the files. Simple and no messing around with keys and ticket Id

Forgot to mention it, DBI is also a great extractor

 

[MrVtR]

Well, I already know about nxdumptool and like I said it can be a bit messy plus doesn't work with everything. I feel like there should be a more proper method than using an emulator to extract. I was really hoping there's something like hactool but more modern. Is there really not after all these years?

EDIT: Yeah, I know about DBI Tool too. I've had troubles with it just not even seeing files for games or something. I forgot which specific ones. Regardless, I'm really looking for something to run on the PC, not the Switch.

I don't think there are any modern solutions, I use Yuzu/Ryujinx for almost all my Romhacking on Switch and when I need it, NxDumpTool. Hactool is too manual for my taste

 

[Nazosan]

I may have to get around to doing the emulator route. It's the closest to the sort of thing I was looking for. It's still very messy. Hactool doesn't have to be so manual though. I made batch files to handle most things. Just it won't handle the title key stuff. I really wish a better solution had been found to that by now. I'm guessing the emulators probably require a NSP to be installed before they can extract. (Eg they would avoid the whole database thing by simply using it internally on their own.) It's weird though because if you really can just get the title key from the .tik file then things should be able to just pull from that anyway (provided you have the prod.keys obviously.) I don't really understand why an external database is needed.

Anyway, I guess maybe the emulators might be the most optimal way. Still super messy though. I really was hoping there was a more modern method or tool that could just handle things with one single tool.

 

[Chaosta]

nutt drivers, tinfoil and switch connected to pc then you can drag and drop games from your switch to desktop.

 

[impeeza]

NxFileViewer:

https://github.com/Myster-Tee/NxFileViewer

it do the work

 

[Nazosan]

Interesting. I'll have to give this NxFileViewer a good look later as soon as I can. From what I can see on the github it looks pretty promising.

nutt drivers, tinfoil and switch connected to pc then you can drag and drop games from your switch to desktop.

We already discussed this sort of thing.



EDIT: Looks like NxFileViewer may be working correctly I think. I was able to successfully extract a game that was giving me troubles with hactool and tested listening to some music to confirm it was decrypted.

 

[Nazosan]

So coming back to this it's starting to become a serious problem. NxFileViewer is good for extracting the base NSP, but it can't handle updates in any meaningful way. Yuzu too seems to extract only the base ROM, not updates. The only way I could figure out to extract stuff with the update before involved using NSCBuilder to repack without a key, but NSCBuilder seems to be abandoned right now and no longer works (in particular it can't update nutdb anymore, so can't get the game keys.) I never successfully managed to extract the game keys the hard way before, so the old hactool method is basically a no-go for newer games now. At this point the only thing that seems to even work at all anymore is indeed installing to the Switch and then extracting on the Switch which is an incredibly tedious (you have to hook up the switch and install or transfer through network which is also slow and install from the card which also takes a while then fire up the dumper and find the game then dump romfs with the update which it does not default to doing,) slow (I have a fairly fast memory card, but it takes at least eight times longer than on my PC,) and resource consuming (it needs twice the space to do it which is a problem on a limited memory card) process. It's just a real mess. There has to be a better way?

 

[fvig2001]

I just install it and use nxdumptool but other option is to use the hactool scripts but it's a real bugger to get them to work sometimes. I usually remove the delete part and try all sorts of things.

 

[Nazosan]

That's why I'm saying that doesn't work out very well and a better way is needed.

EDIT: Ok, I'm confused. Maybe Yuzu was getting the update after all. I'm unsure now because I thought a patched introduced an extra file that wasn't showing up in the extracted romfs, but then I check on my real Switch and I don't see that file after all, so I guess it didn't.

 

[linga]

I had the same problem, although nxdumptool is handy for dumping romfs on the console, but it just handle installed title, not XCI/NSP files
there is no such convenient tool on pc, mostly use hactool to dump files manually

NxFileViewer mentioned in #11 seems good, it can browse romfs and exefs partitions for XCI/NSP files

 

[mrgone]

i would say, romFS access is one of the rare things DBi does not give you access.
but it's great for everything else.

 

[masagrator]

i would say, romFS access is one of the rare things DBi does not give you access.
but it's great for everything else.

What? DBI gives you access to romfs.
But you must mount game as MTP through "Browse Installed applications"

 

[duckbill007]

Or you can open app view, select content record, enter into it and copy-paste needed files to any supported target on console without mtp and PC.

 

[impeeza]

For me, the easiest way is DBI, you connect via MTP and you can dump NSP of isntalled games, or read the ROMFS of titles easy as copy files from console to PC.