Hacking Question XCI Explained

The Real Jdbye · Mar 19, 2019

Picalo said:
Hello all, I was wondering if anyone could explain what makes XCI special over NSP, and how is it possible to load the file rather than installing it.
From my understating XCI
-XCI is a dump from from a cartridge.
-XCI can be repackage to include the updates and DLC.
-Sx SO is the only way to load the file.

Is XCI the same size as a NSP (example A.xci vs A.nsp)?
When a nsp installed is it the same size as the actual file?

In order to play XCI is the cartridge software emulated and that is why no other dev want to touch it? / whats stopping other devs from creating a method to install nsp on external storage like a usb stick.

Sorry I am not a dev I am just wondering if there are items that are not talked about or i missed some information.

Once the USB support is finished and working well for homebrew, there shouldn't be much stopping it from being used to install nsps onto. The USB support is being implemented right in fs-mitm which AFAIK is the same thing used to redirect file access for LayeredFS, which to me sounds like installed title access could be redirected to USB easily in much the same way LayeredFS works currently with just some extra work.

Rune · Mar 19, 2019

I get why opensource projects like Atmosphere wont implement it, but why hasnt anyone else attempted it?

duckbill007 · Mar 21, 2019

Bacause of lack of skilled devs interested in it.

For example - I can create XCI loader, but I'd better spend time by playing games.

Picalo · Mar 21, 2019

I thought by now there would be a beta.

FAST6191 · Mar 21, 2019

kumikochan said:
An NSP by itself ain't illegal, if a game is packed as an NSP it is but an XCI is always illegal because it contains headers

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

an XCI is always illegal while an NSP is only when a game is packed as an NSP but an NSP by itself ain't illegal while an XCI always will be

Have we got a reasonable breakdown of how much/what of header is included and what it represents by itself? Possibly also an analysis done/provided for it -- I have seen all sorts of... curious interpretations of law by devs with an anti piracy bent looking to make it to a goal rather than free (as in speech) things for people, and from what I have seen of much of the Switch set thus far... yeah.

There are all sorts of rulings and historical precedents here. Generally trending towards if it is a small portion (though that is not strictly necessary or defined), in and of itself useless to anybody (headers are for the most part just that and don't contain any nice art or full bore creative product) and necessary to act as a launch mechanism for a legitimate/non infringing use (backup, homebrew, possibly ROM hack, region free...) then you are good to go. Various devs tried to work around that by including a trademarked logo in there but that was smacked down for much the same reason.
If something is to be deemed more than just a container I would want something that stands up to scrutiny here.

smf · Mar 21, 2019

kumikochan said:
XCI's are illegal, NSP's aren't. That simple.

Er no. Please stop misinformation thank you.

If you download XCI or NSP from the internet then they are both illegal.

Homebrew packaged into XCI or NSP have the same effect.

FAST6191 said:
Various devs tried to work around that by including a trademarked logo in there but that was smacked down for much the same reason.

That was pre DMCA, so things are slightly different. Also those cases are about creating an individual product, like making a physical switch cartridge. If you ended up in court for making your own game and selling it, then they may find that you are allowed to violate the DMCA.

Something that allows you to load games from disk and pretend to be a cartridge however would be on shaky ground. That would be like selling a 90's style cartridge copier and trying to pretend it was for game developers and people who wanted to backup their games to make them less convenient (like the ones that required multiple floppy disks)

Elalexyzoner said:
It is, Retroarch is also legal if u have the game cartridges

Depends on the country, in the UK we have no legal right to backup anything. There is no exemption in law even for backing up your CD collection to your iphone. The legal system however seems to be able to control itself and act reasonably, rather than trying to prosecute everyone.

I believe in the US you have the right to backup your own cartridge, but if you download an illegal one from the internet then it doesn't matter if you own one yourself & it's still illegal. Not that it matters of course, they don't seem to visit peoples houses to check & it's a civil case and as there is no loss there is no point in taking the case to court.

kumikochan said:
an XCI is always illegal while an NSP is only when a game is packed as an NSP but an NSP by itself ain't illegal while an XCI always will be

You can keep repeating it, doesn't make it true. Copyright law in most countries doesn't protect anything unless it has artistic merit, it certainly can't be relied upon for headers.

blahblah · Mar 21, 2019

There is near zero desire for XCI support among intelligent people. The user experiencing of mounting an XCI is profoundly worse than tapping a installed NSP game on the home screen and having it launch.

tinkle · Mar 21, 2019

blahblah said:
There is near zero desire for XCI support among intelligent people. The user experiencing of mounting an XCI is profoundly worse than tapping a installed NSP game on the home screen and having it launch.

Please stop with the FUD.
The "user experience" of 'pick game play game' is akin to putting in a cartridge, and requires no installation or space headaches. If you have the game XCI, you have the game ready to play. Please leave if you cannot be objective, thank you hunny.

On the topic of making a proper XCI Loader, required for there to be any point to USB HDD mounting, the legal issue disappears if you write an app that requires a cart header be provided by the end user - much the same as we allow apps that require the keys file to be used. So it does stink of moral posturing and excuses for lack of skill, that we still don't have XCI support for the unclean masses.

josete2k · Mar 21, 2019

kumikochan said:
An NSP by itself ain't illegal, if a game is packed as an NSP it is but an XCI is always illegal because it contains headers

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

an XCI is always illegal while an NSP is only when a game is packed as an NSP but an NSP by itself ain't illegal while an XCI always will be

And what about my own dumps? They are XCI and I assume that are all legal...

Sharing and downloading IS illegal, XCI or NSP with copyright data of course.

8BitWonder · Mar 21, 2019

blahblah said:
There is near zero desire for XCI support among intelligent people. The user experiencing of mounting an XCI is profoundly worse than tapping a installed NSP game on the home screen and having it launch.

While I agree that NSPs are nicer to work with (personal opinion, I know others prefer XCI and that's ok) and that there's likely few people that would use it in non-SX solutions, I do think more options is always better.
If a patching system was in place (without cart headers) to allow for mounting XCIs in all CFWs that's just one more option for the end-user.

Teletron1 · Mar 21, 2019

The Real Jdbye said:
Once the USB support is finished and working well for homebrew, there shouldn't be much stopping it from being used to install nsps onto. The USB support is being implemented right in fs-mitm which AFAIK is the same thing used to redirect file access for LayeredFS, which to me sounds like installed title access could be redirected to USB easily in much the same way LayeredFS works currently with just some extra work.

that's good to know that at least USB support is coming, the wii didn't have hdd support but that didn't stop modders from adding it, and having that option is more important than XCI loading because I prefer storage over drag N drop convenience, hope to also see a game/file transfer implemented SD2HDD or HDD2SD as well so you can take games on the go

I will sit and wait patiently for HDD support

kumikochan · Mar 21, 2019

Nsp's as a file ain't illegal. It is the data in it mostly that is illegal like games but the file system itself ain't illegal.

Picalo · Mar 21, 2019

tinkle said:
On the topic of making a proper XCI Loader, required for there to be any point to USB HDD mounting, the legal issue disappears if you write an app that requires a cart header be provided by the end user - much the same as we allow apps that require the keys file to be used. So it does stink of moral posturing and excuses for lack of skill, that we still don't have XCI support for the unclean masses.

This would be great and keeps the dev safe as to not touching any codes that would get them in trouble............ something like lockpick?

blahblah · Mar 21, 2019

tinkle said:
Please stop with the FUD.
The "user experience" of 'pick game play game' is akin to putting in a cartridge, and requires no installation or space headaches. If you have the game XCI, you have the game ready to play. Please leave if you cannot be objective, thank you hunny.

On the topic of making a proper XCI Loader, required for there to be any point to USB HDD mounting, the legal issue disappears if you write an app that requires a cart header be provided by the end user - much the same as we allow apps that require the keys file to be used. So it does stink of moral posturing and excuses for lack of skill, that we still don't have XCI support for the unclean masses.

Going into the gallery app to select a game and going back to the home screen to launch it is a worse experience than the NSP experience. Sorry that you disagree, but your opinion sucks and appears to be wrong on several levels. The time it takes to copy a game to a storage medium is the same time taken to install the NSP to the console via USB install.

It's trivial to write an XCI loader. There is just zero desire for one by any of the countless people capable of writing one.

DocKlokMan · Mar 21, 2019

blahblah said:
Going into the gallery app to select a game and going back to the home screen to launch it is a worse experience than the NSP experience. Sorry that you disagree, but your opinion sucks and appears to be wrong on several levels. The time it takes to copy a game to a storage medium is the same time taken to install the NSP to the console via USB install.

It's trivial to write an XCI loader. There is just zero desire for one by any of the countless people capable of writing one.

I prefer XCI loading to be honest. While the time to copy to SD is the same as install from PC with NSP (in fact install from PC with NSP is slightly faster since NSPs are smaller than trimmed XCI's unless you strip the XCI of system update partition files) there's several benefits with XCI's I enjoy.

You don't need a special homebrew app or app on your computer to copy the XCI files over to the SD. Some XCI's leak early which happens much less frequently with NSPs. Even if it's a risk, an XCI is CAPABLE of playing online with a valid header. You can easily remove and re-add games to the SD vs. deleting and re-installing them. They don't install fake tickets to your ticket database.

As for a few other things you listed; the homebrew mounter can be tweaked to automatically launch the game after it's mounted, reducing the steps. As it is on the Switch if you want to play a game you haven't played in a bit you need to scroll all the way to the right and activate the "All Software' button, then select your game. Not much different than opening Album and selecting your game.

As for those with the skills having no desire, most software in existence is made by people that had no desire to make that software, they made it because someone else wanted them to make it. Granted those people are usually paid and the only ones paying their devs is TX, so... TX it is.

tinkle · Mar 21, 2019

blahblah said:
Sorry that you disagree

Non-apology

blahblah said:
your opinion sucks

Personal attack

blahblah said:
appears to be wrong on several levels

Regale me of these 'levels' of 'wrongness' on a subjective issue?

blahblah · Mar 21, 2019

AnalogMan said:
I prefer XCI loading to be honest. While the time to copy to SD is the same as install from SD with NSP (in fact install from SD with NSP is slightly faster since NSPs are smaller than trimmed XCI's unless you strip the XCI of system update partition files) there's several benefits with XCI's I enjoy.

You don't need a special homebrew app or app on your computer to copy the XCI files over to the SD. Some XCI's leak early which happens much less frequently with NSPs. Even if it's a risk, an XCI is CAPABLE of playing online with a valid header. You can easily remove and re-add games to the SD vs. deleting and re-installing them. They don't install fake tickets to your ticket database.

As for a few other things you listed; the homebrew mounter can be tweaked to automatically launch the game after it's mounted, reducing the steps. As it is on the Switch if you want to play a game you haven't played in a bit you need to scroll all the way to the right and activate the "All Software' button, then select your game. Not much different than opening Album and selecting your game.

As for those with the skills having no desire, most software in existence is made by people that had no desire to make that software, they made it because someone else wanted them to make it. Granted those people are usually paid and the only ones paying their devs is TX, so... TX it is.

You should be doing USB install, not copying to SD.

Converting an XCI to an NSP is a trivial, impossibly simple task that takes maybe 2 minutes of waiting, followed by a normal USB install.

Yeah, online play is a valid argument, but that's a great way to get banned. The difference in experience quality is that one way (NSP) is the official way to launch games, whereas the other is a weird pirate hack menu thing.

DocKlokMan · Mar 21, 2019

blahblah said:
You should be doing USB install, not copying to SD.

Converting an XCI to an NSP is a trivial, impossibly simple task that takes maybe 2 minutes of waiting, followed by a normal USB install.

Yeah, online play is a valid argument, but that's a great way to get banned.

I edited my post for the copy from SD mistake, it was a typo.
I very much dislike XCI to NSP conversions. I wouldn't touch them with a 50ft pole. Striping the title key encryption, re-hashing, patching the nacp, repackaging and then installing a completely ticketless digital install has so many more things that can go wrong with it and set up red flags everywhere. XCI to NSP installs will never be a valid option in my books. I'd rather prefer pure NSP or pure XCI and none of this Frankenstein stuff.

EDIT: By pure I don't mean only doing one or the other, I mean unaltered uses. I mix NSPs and XCI use all the time.

blahblah · Mar 21, 2019

AnalogMan said:
I edited my post for the copy from SD mistake, it was a typo.
I very much dislike XCI to NSP conversions. I wouldn't touch them with a 50ft pole. Striping the title key encryption, re-hashing, patching the nacp, repackaging and then installing a completely ticketless digital install has so many more things that can go wrong with it and set up red flags everywhere. XCI to NSP installs will never be a valid option in my books. I'd rather prefer pure NSP or pure XCI and none of this Frankenstein stuff.

EDIT: By pure I don't mean only doing one or the other, I mean unaltered uses. I mix NSPs and XCI use all the time.

Yeah, but your XCI conversion stuff is a strange personal view. It's not a widely held one. Most people aren't No-Intro style purists. A proper conversion that works and installs is fine.

Picalo · Mar 21, 2019

Just purchased SX SO to use usb loader. Any suggestion as I wait for activation code? I currently have NSP files.

My 2¢
Overall any external loading would be great whether its xci or NSP for any cfw other than SX SO. It's a step well needed for the cfw scene. I bet SX SO loader is not perfect but due to the lack of competition it's ahead.

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