Homebrew I permanently gave Wara Wara Plaza life again, injected it full of my personality, and you can too

MikaDubbz said:

all credit for this being possible at all goes to CaramelKat on Github, if they're here on GBAtemp, they appear to go by another name

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MikaDubbz said:

No, I do not know how the Mii data is stored, that's why I recommended using CaramelKat's provided .xml file as he figured out how to change the standard boring Miis into actual Miis that people actually had made at some point (and by extension you could use my .xml files too since I straight up used his and didn't touch any of the Mii data).

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MikaDubbz said:

Thanks dude, and thank you so much for all the work and research you did, I was so happy that your information existed out there. I had been curious where the Mii data came from, but I'm very happy to just use the Miis your file provided.

I have a question for you while I've got your attention though. I noticed that the last subject in the .xml file you had created only has one post under the last subject (I believe it's the Discord app), while it seems that all other icons have 20 or maybe 25 posts under each one. Were some posts deleted? And is it possible to add more posts under that last one?

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MikaDubbz said:

Oh very cool. Do you know the dimensions of the pictures that can be used as posts for the Miis?

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MikaDubbz said:

So I'm loving the end result of what I've done here. Took a risk or two in doing it, but the results paid off. This is for anyone that has CBHC installed on their Wii U and wants their Wara Wara Plaza to no longer be the boring default theme it's been stuck as since the Miiverse shut down. I'm not the first to take a look at this, and what i've accomplished is largely thanks to others, but as far as I can tell, I'm the first to put all these pieces together in a way where you can get your Wara Wara Plaza up and alive again and customize it how you desire, from the titles the Miis talk about, to the things every Mii says.

First and foremost, all credit for this being possible at all goes to CaramelKat on Github, if they're here on GBAtemp, they appear to go by another name. Regardless, thank you for you work with Wara Wara Plaza, all the tools and the base file come from you, so thank you so much for that.

Here's a few screenshots of what I'm talking about:

As you can see, I chose to focus my Wara Wara Plaza on the emulator channels on the front page. This is because I can have the Miis give helpful pieces of information about how each emulator functions. But once you've covered all of that, there is still a lot of Mii posts to fill information with, so I made lots of Mii posts that were tangentially related to each device, talking about particular games on each emulator, and random gaming facts. The end result in action is surprisingly satisfying. What I have is a menu that reflects so many of my gaming related thoughts. Mii's will say something like, "Symphony of the Night is the best Castlevania game. Fight me!" And I love it. This gives my Wii U so much more personality, that it was really lacking ever since the Miiverse died, but what's really cool is how it's personality is a reflection of my own.

This is what the bottom screen looks like for context:

If you're curious, The DS Channel is Loadiine filled only with DS games since I reached the 300 title limit in the reall menu. Arcade+ is Retroarch, which I know I could use for stuff like NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. But I prefer the individual emulators that still have all the Wii U functionality like VBA GX, FCEU GX, Genplus GX, etc. etc. The Wii channel is USBLoader GX, and I'm sure you can figure out the rest.

But enough showcasing my stuff, you probably wanna know how to do this yourself.

1. Download this 1stNUP.xml file as a base: Download
You could opt to grab this file from your own Wii U, but if you do, all the Miis will have the same basic names and looks as the default Miis that populate the plaza.

2. Open 1stNUP.xml with a program like Notepad++

steps 3-5 can be completed in whatever order you prefers
3. Change the 10 main subjects being talked about in the Plaza by finding the <name></name> tags and adding the name of each topic being addressed. For example <name>Nintendo 64</name>

4. Change the thing every Mii says by changing the text between every <body></body> tags. Note which topic these posts are under and if you wish try to relate the content to the subjects dictated in the third step. Please note, posts longer than 70 characters will not display in full and end at the 70th character or so with ... I didn't take this into account, so I have a lot of posts too long to read in full, I'm going to go through and shorten a bunch of posts later probably. This will take awhile, there are like 250 or so Mii posts to edit.

5. To edit the icon that appears you need to use CaramelKat's python script from his github page here: https://github.com/CaramelKat/WaraWaraPlazaBase64Encoder just hit the green clone or download button, and you'll get the runme.py script you need to encode your icons. Create or grab a .tga icon of 128 pixels x 128 pixels. (Note: for some reason if you grab icontex.tga icon directly from your Wii U with FTPii U, you have to open the image, copy it, paste it in a new 128x128 image and save that as a new .tga icon. I don't know why, but if you don't do that with the official icons, they'll show up as question-marks in the plaza. Save your .tga as input.tga, place this file in the same location as runme.py. Simply run runme.py and it will quickly spit out a file titled input2.txt.
-Copy all the text in input2.txt and in 1stNUP.xml locate the <icon></icon> tags and paste this text in place of the icon text that was there. Make sure you're properly paring the icon with the name you've assigned that subject.

Do this for all 10 icons and you're done creating the content that will fill your personalized plaza. Save 1stNUP.xml and exit

(Note: to give any icon the gold border with the ribbon thing, change the <is_recommended> value in the xml file to 1, and if a file has that and you don't want it to, change the value to 0)

Now to implement this into your Wii U, you have 2 options: to temporarily appear only when you have launched SDCafiine and are in the Wii U menu. If this is what you want, simply take the 1stNUP.xml file and place it in your Wii U SD card's location here:
sd:\sdcafiine\0005001010040100\content\UsEnglish\Olive
Note: I am on a US Wii U, I believe this address differs by region, In europe the start of the address is: sd:\sdcafiine\0005001010040200\content and in Japan it's: sd:\sdcafiine\0005001010040000\content
I do not know what the next folder after content is, whatever it is, it's your language folder, you can locate this address with FTPiiU, simply explore your Wii U in FTPiiU to the location: /storage_mlc/sys/title/00050010/10040200/content for Europe, and /storage_mlc/sys/title/00050010/10040000/content for Japana, find the next folder that should list your language, place that folder name in your content folder on your SD card instead of USEnglish, and then add the Olive folder and place the file in there.

If you want to permanently make this your Wara Wara Plaza. FIRST I MUST WARN that you are altering a file on your Wii U's NAND, if something didn't go right there is risk that you might brick. It'd be smart to first check with SDcafiine that your Plaza appears correctly before doing this. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY IF YOU BRICK! Having said that, if it's working in SDCafiine, you should be fine to go for the permanent solution:
Open FTPiiU and in your computer client, connect, locate the folder: /storage_mlc/sys/title/00050010/10040100/content/UsEnglish/Olive (again, in Europe and Japan, this address is whatever you discoverd as explained above instead), and simply copy over your 1stNUP.xml file and confirm you wish to overwrite the file already there. Your file will be a different size. This is fine, but if the file you're trying to replace with is larger than 1000kb, then look over it again as you may have done something wrong. Return to your home menu and you should now see your new Wara Wara Plaza, and it will stay that way forever unless you ever wish to change it again.

PLEASE NOTE: it appears that this may not properly function if your Wii U never connected to the Miiverse while it was active. I can't verify if this is the case, but one user is reporting that this works for their SDCafiine, but on the sysnand, all icons appear as questionmarks, and they think it may be because it never once connected to the Miiverse when the Miiverse was active. I wouldn't think that would matter, but I also don't know what else could explain it.


Fun thing I've done is changed both the permanent file as well as a different version that shows when I'm in SDCafiine. I like this because it gives a quick visual indication of if I'm currently in SDCafiine or not, in the event I leave my Wii U on in the menu for awhile while I'm busy elsewhere:

I tried to make the icons all be titles that I'd likely have mods for (+the homebrew launcher), which meant I didn't have to change much from the base file CaramelKat had provided (though I'll probably swap out Sonic Lost World at some point soon). I also had some Miis make note that you're in SDcafiine too, I thought this was a clever way to really polish off this hacked beauty of a Wii U.

I hope you found this interesting and if you like it you give it a shot yourself. Let me know if you have any questions, I'll try and be as helpful as I can. And enjoy!

Click to expand...

MikaDubbz said:

I'm not entirely sure what you mean. Do you mean you want the EUR game icons in the plaza instead? You can change the icons as you please to whatever images you desire including the EUR versions of the icons (if any of them do differ) as explained in the first post. But beyond that, the region of your system/apps makes no real difference to how the Wara Wara Plaza displays.

Click to expand...

MikaDubbz said:

So I'm loving the end result of what I've done here. Took a risk or two in doing it, but the results paid off. This is for anyone that has CBHC installed on their Wii U and wants their Wara Wara Plaza to no longer be the boring default theme it's been stuck as since the Miiverse shut down. I'm not the first to take a look at this, and what i've accomplished is largely thanks to others, but as far as I can tell, I'm the first to put all these pieces together in a way where you can get your Wara Wara Plaza up and alive again and customize it how you desire, from the titles the Miis talk about, to the things every Mii says.

First and foremost, all credit for this being possible at all goes to CaramelKat on Github, if they're here on GBAtemp, they appear to go by another name. Regardless, thank you for you work with Wara Wara Plaza, all the tools and the base file come from you, so thank you so much for that.

Here's a few screenshots of what I'm talking about:

As you can see, I chose to focus my Wara Wara Plaza on the emulator channels on the front page. This is because I can have the Miis give helpful pieces of information about how each emulator functions. But once you've covered all of that, there is still a lot of Mii posts to fill information with, so I made lots of Mii posts that were tangentially related to each device, talking about particular games on each emulator, and random gaming facts. The end result in action is surprisingly satisfying. What I have is a menu that reflects so many of my gaming related thoughts. Mii's will say something like, "Symphony of the Night is the best Castlevania game. Fight me!" And I love it. This gives my Wii U so much more personality, that it was really lacking ever since the Miiverse died, but what's really cool is how it's personality is a reflection of my own.

This is what the bottom screen looks like for context:

If you're curious, The DS Channel is Loadiine filled only with DS games since I reached the 300 title limit in the reall menu. Arcade+ is Retroarch, which I know I could use for stuff like NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. But I prefer the individual emulators that still have all the Wii U functionality like VBA GX, FCEU GX, Genplus GX, etc. etc. The Wii channel is USBLoader GX, and I'm sure you can figure out the rest.

But enough showcasing my stuff, you probably wanna know how to do this yourself.

1. Download this 1stNUP.xml file as a base: Download
You could opt to grab this file from your own Wii U, but if you do, all the Miis will have the same basic names and looks as the default Miis that populate the plaza.

2. Open 1stNUP.xml with a program like Notepad++

steps 3-5 can be completed in whatever order you prefers
3. Change the 10 main subjects being talked about in the Plaza by finding the <name></name> tags and adding the name of each topic being addressed. For example <name>Nintendo 64</name>

4. Change the thing every Mii says by changing the text between every <body></body> tags. Note which topic these posts are under and if you wish try to relate the content to the subjects dictated in the third step. Please note, posts longer than 70 characters will not display in full and end at the 70th character or so with ... I didn't take this into account, so I have a lot of posts too long to read in full, I'm going to go through and shorten a bunch of posts later probably. This will take awhile, there are like 250 or so Mii posts to edit.

5. To edit the icon that appears you need to use CaramelKat's python script from his github page here: https://github.com/CaramelKat/WaraWaraPlazaBase64Encoder just hit the green clone or download button, and you'll get the runme.py script you need to encode your icons. Create or grab a .tga icon of 128 pixels x 128 pixels. (Note: for some reason if you grab icontex.tga icon directly from your Wii U with FTPii U, you have to open the image, copy it, paste it in a new 128x128 image and save that as a new .tga icon. I don't know why, but if you don't do that with the official icons, they'll show up as question-marks in the plaza. Save your .tga as input.tga, place this file in the same location as runme.py. Simply run runme.py and it will quickly spit out a file titled input2.txt.
-Copy all the text in input2.txt and in 1stNUP.xml locate the <icon></icon> tags and paste this text in place of the icon text that was there. Make sure you're properly paring the icon with the name you've assigned that subject.

Do this for all 10 icons and you're done creating the content that will fill your personalized plaza. Save 1stNUP.xml and exit

(Note: to give any icon the gold border with the ribbon thing, change the <is_recommended> value in the xml file to 1, and if a file has that and you don't want it to, change the value to 0)

Now to implement this into your Wii U, you have 2 options: to temporarily appear only when you have launched SDCafiine and are in the Wii U menu. If this is what you want, simply take the 1stNUP.xml file and place it in your Wii U SD card's location here:
sd:\sdcafiine\0005001010040100\content\UsEnglish\Olive
Note: I am on a US Wii U, I believe this address differs by region, In europe the start of the address is: sd:\sdcafiine\0005001010040200\content and in Japan it's: sd:\sdcafiine\0005001010040000\content
I do not know what the next folder after content is, whatever it is, it's your language folder, you can locate this address with FTPiiU, simply explore your Wii U in FTPiiU to the location: /storage_mlc/sys/title/00050010/10040200/content for Europe, and /storage_mlc/sys/title/00050010/10040000/content for Japana, find the next folder that should list your language, place that folder name in your content folder on your SD card instead of USEnglish, and then add the Olive folder and place the file in there.

If you want to permanently make this your Wara Wara Plaza. FIRST I MUST WARN that you are altering a file on your Wii U's NAND, if something didn't go right there is risk that you might brick. It'd be smart to first check with SDcafiine that your Plaza appears correctly before doing this. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY IF YOU BRICK! Having said that, if it's working in SDCafiine, you should be fine to go for the permanent solution:
Open FTPiiU and in your computer client, connect, locate the folder: /storage_mlc/sys/title/00050010/10040100/content/UsEnglish/Olive (again, in Europe and Japan, this address is whatever you discoverd as explained above instead), and simply copy over your 1stNUP.xml file and confirm you wish to overwrite the file already there. Your file will be a different size. This is fine, but if the file you're trying to replace with is larger than 1000kb, then look over it again as you may have done something wrong. Return to your home menu and you should now see your new Wara Wara Plaza, and it will stay that way forever unless you ever wish to change it again.

PLEASE NOTE: it appears that this may not properly function if your Wii U never connected to the Miiverse while it was active. I can't verify if this is the case, but one user is reporting that this works for their SDCafiine, but on the sysnand, all icons appear as questionmarks, and they think it may be because it never once connected to the Miiverse when the Miiverse was active. I wouldn't think that would matter, but I also don't know what else could explain it.


Fun thing I've done is changed both the permanent file as well as a different version that shows when I'm in SDCafiine. I like this because it gives a quick visual indication of if I'm currently in SDCafiine or not, in the event I leave my Wii U on in the menu for awhile while I'm busy elsewhere:

I tried to make the icons all be titles that I'd likely have mods for (+the homebrew launcher), which meant I didn't have to change much from the base file CaramelKat had provided (though I'll probably swap out Sonic Lost World at some point soon). I also had some Miis make note that you're in SDcafiine too, I thought this was a clever way to really polish off this hacked beauty of a Wii U.

I hope you found this interesting and if you like it you give it a shot yourself. Let me know if you have any questions, I'll try and be as helpful as I can. And enjoy!

Click to expand...

MikaDubbz said:

Question, did you ever connect your Wii U to the Miiverse when it was active? The problem you explain has been echoed by someone else who explains that they never connected to the Miiverse while it existed, and that apparently is why they had the same problem. I can't definitively say this is the issue, but if you never connected to the Miiverse when it was around on the Wii U, I'm inclined to say that's the issue.

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