Hacking Booting an Extracted Dump of a Wii Game

[Sliraobe God]

The attached screenshot should explain what I mean. The left half shows that I used Wii Backup Fusion (a WIT GUI) to rip a Project M ISO. The right half shows the file structure. Do any homebrew apps support booting this type directly? I'm not interested in launching a normal .wbfs or .iso container.

I've tested USB Loader GX, CFG, and Wiiflow, but no luck. I feel like this should be possible, because (1) Dolphin can start a game in this format no problem, and (2) Nintendont and other loaders can start dumped Gamecube games directly. The main.dol is the crux, I think.

So why should this be different for Wii games on a console?

 

[Stephano]

Are you ripping a Disc or an ISO because Project M only exists as either files or a patched Brawl ISO.
If you are wanting a Project M ISO, then just patch a Brawl ISO and convert it to wbfs. Stick the wbfs files in the properly named brawl folder within your wbfs folder and it should run.

As for dumping games, I've never used Wii Backup Fusion but what i have used is "Clean Rip"
Just put your Game into a your wii and boot up Clean Rip. It will the rip the game into multiple ISO files which need to be combined. When they are combined, just convert them to wbfs and put them on your USB in the appropriate folders.

 

[Sliraobe God]

Are you ripping a Disc or an ISO because Project M only exists as either files or a patched Brawl ISO.
If you are wanting a Project M ISO, then just patch a Brawl ISO and convert it to wbfs. Stick the wbfs files in the properly named brawl folder within your wbfs folder and it should run.

As for dumping games, I've never used Wii Backup Fusion but what i have used is "Clean Rip"
Just put your Game into a your wii and boot up Clean Rip. It will the rip the game into multiple ISO files which need to be combined. When they are combined, just convert them to wbfs and put them on your USB in the appropriate folders.

Appreciate the reply! Yeah, I'm aware of all this. I am perfectly able of playing a Project M iso (or wbfs) on a console, and I know how to do it.
There's a rather complicated reason why I'm trying to boot the DUMPED files directly though:

1) I'm running a major national tournament for Project M. To support this ballroom with hundreds of competitors, I've gathered around 40 setups. There's rows of TVs and Wiis. My team of organizers simply didn't have the budget to buy 40+ Brawl discs and SD cards (or the alternative of 40+ USB drives and SD cards). We DID have the money to buy that many flash drives by themselves. This is why I built the patched Brawl ISO.

2) It's a tradition for these events to have their own custom art in the "build" of Project M. Our designers still haven't finalized it. I'd have to copy the current .wbfs to all 40 flash drives (which will take HOURS, maybe even days), and then once they finish their work, I'd have to delete everything and start over. I really don't want to set up each USB drive twice.

Unless I can find some program or software to conveniently edit and replace the files WITHIN the .iso/.wbfs without having to wait for everything to be re-copied, I'd be preparing all these setups at the last minute. This is why I need to figure out how to launch these EXTRACTED files from the disc image. If I can, then I can just replace the 1MB artwork files instead of re-doing the whole 4GB .wbfs.

 

[Stephano]

Ahhhhhhhhh I see. Well i don't know how to use extracted files with the ISO. Have you tried re-patching each individual ISO with the new art? What i mean is, you put the patch on the USB that has the ISO on it, and you open up the brawl patcher (can't remember program name) and just repatch each ISO. It should not cause any issues with the ISO as far as i know.