Hacking Configurator for Configurable USB Loader

[Dr. Clipper]

Right, stupid question here ...

Can someone explain to me how I use configurator to set up two profiles in my Cfg Loader; one (the default) profile for my son which has some games hidden and the other profile which shows all games.

Alternatively, is there a way of hiding games automatically based on their PEGI (?) rating ?

You can't hide by PEGI rating, but you can choose manually when you add each game to make it hidden or not. I suggest you actually use the hide options for this rather than profiles. That way, you need to enter a password to access the other games. The password is controllable via the admin_password option and the default is BUDAH12 (B, Up, Down, A, Home, 1, 2).

Use the Manage favorites/hidden button on the Game Settings tab to edit settings.cfg to set your initial list of hidden games. The hidden ones will not display until you enter the password. You enter the password by holding down the 1 button by default, but you can use the button_* options to map password entry to a different button if you'd like.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

v62.1 of the Configurator is out

Download here or use online update (via Actions menu)

Changes:

• Added options for compatibility with 62b2 of Cfg:
• gui_title_area, gui_clock_pos, gui_page_pos
• Moved the gui-based options to Theme page 3.

Sample cdbs have been updated (configurator.cdb only).

 

[DarkMatterCore]

v62.1 of the Configurator is out

Download here or use online update (via Actions menu)

Changes:

• Added options for compatibility with 62b2 of Cfg:
• gui_title_area, gui_clock_pos, gui_page_pos
• Moved the gui-based options to Theme page 3.

Sample cdbs have been updated (configurator.cdb only).

Spanish language files updated to v62.1. See my post.

 

[tHeWiZaRdOfDoS]

First of all: thx for your work - the configurator is a great tool and very easy to use

I found a little (GUI) bug in cover download: while downloading and when selecting a different item in the games list, the icons aren't updated immediately. That causes the next item to show the covers of the old item until they get replaced. You can easily reproduce that bug by adding 2 files to the list, download the covers for one file and then clicking the next one.

Another thing is that the covers are downloaded in the preferred language and if they aren't found you switch back to English. That is fine so far but what if the PROPER language covers are added later? There's no way to determine the covers' language and thus one has to delete and re-download all of them - is there any way around that? Maybe adding the lang-ID to the image filename?
Besides, are there any proposals for additional cover URLs?


EDiT: And a bug report: this reproduceably makes USB-Loader crash:
I downloaded the covers for Metroid Prime Trilogy (R3MP01) via configurator which uses the same URLs as conf. USB Loader. After doing so, my Wii crashes when trying to update the covers for that game (or all games) using conf. USB Loader. One of the retrieved images is corrupt but I can't find the reason, they look fine on wiitdb.com. Up to now MP-Trilogy is the only game that has that issue, so maybe you can reproduce it.
EDiT2: I verified it: it's the DISC image.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

I don't understand your first bug. Are you saying the covers come up, but not straight away? How long are they taking for you?

The second option is sort of doable by replacing the {CC} tag in the WiiTDB URL with the specific country code. Then it never downloads EN images. Perhaps oggzee might want to change the image naming scheme, but I doubt it. You can ask in the Cfg thread if you really want it.

As for the corrupted image, did you try downloading it again? This might have been random happen stance.

 

[tHeWiZaRdOfDoS]

I don't understand your first bug. Are you saying the covers come up, but not straight away? How long are they taking for you?
They will never come up if you follow my "step-by-step" guide:

You can easily reproduce that bug by adding 2 files to the list, download the covers for one file and then clicking the next one.
In batch mode it will show the images of the last file while processing a file. Images get replaced after they get downloaded but that sometimes looks weird, i.e. by showing front and disc images of one file but the full image of the last one.

QUOTE

As for the corrupted image, did you try downloading it again? This might have been random happen stance.

Yes, that's why I'm reporting it. It happens EVERY time I try (10x up2now) with configurator but it downloads fine with conf. USB Loader.

 

[AdamBrunt]

Right, stupid question here ...

Can someone explain to me how I use configurator to set up two profiles in my Cfg Loader; one (the default) profile for my son which has some games hidden and the other profile which shows all games.

Alternatively, is there a way of hiding games automatically based on their PEGI (?) rating ?

You can't hide by PEGI rating, but you can choose manually when you add each game to make it hidden or not. I suggest you actually use the hide options for this rather than profiles. That way, you need to enter a password to access the other games. The password is controllable via the admin_password option and the default is BUDAH12 (B, Up, Down, A, Home, 1, 2).

Use the Manage favorites/hidden button on the Game Settings tab to edit settings.cfg to set your initial list of hidden games. The hidden ones will not display until you enter the password. You enter the password by holding down the 1 button by default, but you can use the button_* options to map password entry to a different button if you'd like.

Thanks Dr. Clipper, I'll give it a try.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

They will never come up if you follow my "step-by-step" guide:
I can't repeat this. Your instructions are a little vague so maybe I am not understanding them correctly. What I have tried is:

Having two games in the list without covers (added via a custom .txt file), I select one, click the Download selected game's covers button and then click the other game. The images change to the blank no-image placeholders as they should. Clicking between both games seems to work fine.

Now, sometimes when switching between selected games, it takes a little delay for the images to show up and they may appear in different orders each time, but the delay is hardly noticeable (a fraction of a second). I'm not interested in adding a synchronisation to the images in cases like this.

Perhaps your problem has something to do with disc caching issues... do your images happen to be stored on an SD card?

In batch mode it will show the images of the last file while processing a file. Images get replaced after they get downloaded but that sometimes looks weird, i.e. by showing front and disc images of one file but the full image of the last one.
I know about this and have no interest in fixing it up. Doing so would just add further delay to the download sequence. It looks a little weird, but it shouldn't cause any issues.

QUOTE

Yes, that's why I'm reporting it. It happens EVERY time I try (10x up2now) with configurator but it downloads fine with conf. USB Loader.

OK, I have confirmed this myself. Somebody has changed the image on WiiTDB to one that includes an Epson colour format. The old file used to work just fine. While the imaging code I am using can display those images fine, it can't seem to save them properly. I will try to work out a solution to this soon.

 

[tHeWiZaRdOfDoS]

Perhaps your problem has something to do with disc caching issues... do your images happen to be stored on an SD card?
Doesn't work for me. Images are located on HDD - maybe the OS (Win7 x86) is the guilty part?

I know about this and have no interest in fixing it up. Doing so would just add further delay to the download sequence. It looks a little weird, but it shouldn't cause any issues.
Alrighty then... it's just a bit weird to see the images mixed up but that's why I reported it as a "small GUI bug"

QUOTE

OK, I have confirmed this myself. Somebody has changed the image on WiiTDB to one that includes an Epson colour format. The old file used to work just fine. While the imaging code I am using can display those images fine, it can't seem to save them properly. I will try to work out a solution to this soon.

Oh great, I was starting to think I'm just too stupid

Merry Xmas to all of you

 

[FIX94]

Hi Dr. Clipper, seems like you forgot to add the video patches sneek and sneek+all in the game settings, I get this error in every game with sneek and sneek+all:

It would be great if you could add it, merry christmas and a happy new year!

 

[tHeWiZaRdOfDoS]

Hey again,

happy new year to all of you

I have a small feature request... would it be possible to include some filter mechanism for the cover downloader? I.e. I want to see only the games with missing covers or one specific missing cover so I can do a manual search for it.

 

[wiixale]

Hey again,

happy new year to all of you

I have a small feature request... would it be possible to include some filter mechanism for the cover downloader? I.e. I want to see only the games with missing covers or one specific missing cover so I can do a manual search for it.

First of all: happy new year to you.

As regards your request: there is no need to add a filter, because... It's already there!

Look at the "Cover Download" section: there you can download all the missing covers for all the games you want. The only difference with your request is that there is no filter to highlight games with missing cover, but there is no need to have this: just select all the games and click on "Download all games' covers", paying attention to have selected the 'Missing' option.

 

[tHeWiZaRdOfDoS]

That's not what I want/need. I want the list to show only files with certain (missing) covers. That would be great if there ARE no covers to download automatically and one wants to search and add those manually... do you get the idea?

 

[wiixale]

That's not what I want/need. I want the list to show only files with certain (missing) covers. That would be great if there ARE no covers to download automatically and one wants to search and add those manually... do you get the idea?

Okay, now I'm in.

But consider that the websites used by CFG Loader / Configurator are the richest as regards images. If you don't find there the covers you're looking for, there are few possibilities you find them in another place.

 

[tHeWiZaRdOfDoS]

Yeah, maybe... but I'm a German user and often there are no images for my IDs while there are for others and very often a simple image search will yield some usable results...
It was just an idea, maybe it's done, maybe not...

EDiT: oh yeah and a small bug report: if you are missing some images and you're downloading and replacing them manually and then re-clicking on the missing entry in cover downloader, it will properly display them but the "missing counters" won't decrease. Let's say I'm missing 1 3D cover and I'm downloading and replacing it, then the Cover Downloader will still display 1 missing 3D cover(s) but once I restart it, the counter is adjusted correctly.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

That bug will be an interesting one to try to fix. The counters are really hard to maintain as it is... I'll give it a go, though. There'll be a new version which addresses many of the recent concerns soon, but I'm enjoying my holidays for the moment.

 

[wiixale]

Yeah, maybe... but I'm a German user and often there are no images for my IDs while there are for others and very often a simple image search will yield some usable results...
It was just an idea, maybe it's done, maybe not...

Me too: I'm Italian, and there are very few covers in my language. This is why I added the option to download the IT covers first, then the EN ones (that are the most present).

 

[oricon]

Hey
i want to request a feature to allow me to switch games to 4:3 and 16:9 widescreen as its annoying to keep doing this for certain games like NSMB wii which are widescreen only and since i have a normal 4:3 sd tv i have them black bars so i need to switch the aspect ration to 16:9, was hoping if you could add this feature to the backup loader and choose which games should force widescreen like how you did for the pal 60 and pal 50 options.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

Hey
i want to request a feature to allow me to switch games to 4:3 and 16:9 widescreen as its annoying to keep doing this for certain games like NSMB wii which are widescreen only and since i have a normal 4:3 sd tv i have them black bars so i need to switch the aspect ration to 16:9, was hoping if you could add this feature to the backup loader and choose which games should force widescreen like how you did for the pal 60 and pal 50 options.

If you have your Wii set to 4:3 in the Wii Settings, then it should display just fine (at least how it was intended by the developers).

 

[oricon]

Oops wrong thread but what i mean is some games like RE4 and NSMB are widescreen only so if you play the game in 4:3 you will get black bars on top and bottom screen so you have to switch the wii diplay setting to 16:9 widescreen to get rid of them.