Hacking Cover Flow USB ISO Loader by Beardface

[Sanoblue]

i really love this project.... just hope the next release removes the 20 cover limit

 

[Hibern]

Wow if thats the case; can't wait to see it. My animation looks great to me. Do you need some help getting rid of the bouncing in your youtube app?

I don't know what you mean by bouncing, but thanks for the offer anyway. The little demo i released had a tiny display problem due to unpacking PNG files on the fly in the main thread, i've fixed it since then. Wasn't a "youtube app", BTW.
I'm pretty sure the animation should look "logarithmic", meaning fast at the begining and slow at the end, that's all. You don't have to feel offensed.
Your project is great, and it evolves much faster than mine, so keep up and have fun, but i wouldn't get any benefit from joining it instead of finishing mine.
Cheers.

 

[talflanzman]

My covers and disk covers wont show
what am i doing wrong ?
i saved all the covers at sd:\usb-loader\covers and disk covers at sd:\usb-loader\disk and they still dont show.
I have more than 50 games on the USB disk.
any suggestions ?

 

[kyogc]

The covers size must be 160x224, and the disks folder should be "sd:\usb-loader\disks.

 

[mariogirotti]

I'm getting a freeze at the "Loading Please Wait..." screen. I get four blue bars and then

Same for me. I use rev 63 on 3.2E Wii...

 

[talflanzman]

The covers size must be 160x224, and the disks folder should be "sd:\usb-loader\disks.

I did use the rught size covers and the disk cover is at \usb-loader\disks
still does not work.

 

[pepperoni]

I'm having trouble installing devkitpro, otherwise I'd do it myself, but would anyone mind posting the new .dol for 3.0?

 

[gitkua]

beta3.0 has some issues with freezing I think... Not near my own laptop with devkitpro right now, so can't compile a dol

 

[pepperoni]

It sounds like it's trying to download covers and there possibly isn't an internet connection, so it freezes at that, unless you guys changed how the covers are downloaded.

 

[hunter291]

The covers size must be 160x224, and the disks folder should be "sd:\usb-loader\disks.

I did use the rught size covers and the disk cover is at \usb-loader\disks
still does not work.

your covers must be 160x224, png, the id from the game as the name and in the folder covers. not disks, covers ^^ btw can someone please sent me a compiled version of rev 63 ??

 

[kedest]

Loader is not detecting my covers on SD. Does this loader use the full 6 digit game ID or the short 3 digit one?

 

[fishears]

Loader is not detecting my covers on SD. Does this loader use the full 6 digit game ID or the short 3 digit one?

it's 6 for covers and 3 for discs

/images/ for cover art
/images/disc/ for disc art

 

[Nullkill]

It sounds like it's trying to download covers and there possibly isn't an internet connection, so it freezes at that, unless you guys changed how the covers are downloaded.

Good info; I'll let scognito know about the network issue. (This is why i mentioned before that the 3.0 is a test at your own risk release (and I didn't provide a dol

) )

 

[Nullkill]

The little demo i released had a tiny display problem due to unpacking PNG files on the fly in the main thread, i've fixed it since then.

Did you run into any memory limitations for covers? Seems like I hit a ceiling around 20 covers...

My thought is I'll end up implementing a buffering thread to queue up 20 images at a time. And Hopefully keep everything feeling fluid even while loading images.

How did you tackle this problem?

 

[usptactical]

My thought is I'll end up implementing a buffering thread to queue up 20 images at a time. And Hopefully keep everything feeling fluid even while loading images.

How did you tackle this problem?

Heh, I'm curious too as I started doing the same thing as you with a buffer....

 

[Hibern]

Did you run into any memory limitations for covers? Seems like I hit a ceiling around 20 covers...

My thought is I'll end up implementing a buffering thread to queue up 20 images at a time. And Hopefully keep everything feeling fluid even while loading images.

How did you tackle this problem?

Exactly, you need a thread which maintains a buffer, i can't think of any other way.
It works very well, it's fluid, but the cover flow is faster than my SD card and so if i press left or right for too long i see blank covers. Not a big deal as real covers quickly appear when i release the button. To do some multithreading i used the LWP lib.
I have back-to-front covers which take much memory, but i store them in a 16bit format.
I think you can use a secondary partition on the USB drive to access covers much faster. That's one of the things i'd like to do at the end.

 

[djtaz]

There has been a loader released that reads the covers from the fat partition on the usb disc - which i think is the way to go with future releases.

A small fat 23 partition and a wbfs partition on the same drive with covers auto downloaded to the fat partition from the online cover database and as such no more need for an SD card.Text files readable from fat would also allow configs and hacks to be stored there.

 

[usptactical]

Exactly, you need a thread which maintains a buffer, i can't think of any other way.
It works very well, it's fluid, but the cover flow is faster than my SD card and so if i press left or right for too long i see blank covers. Not a big deal as real covers quickly appear when i release the button. To do some multithreading i used the LWP lib.
I have back-to-front covers which take much memory, but i store them in a 16bit format.
I think you can use a secondary partition on the USB drive to access covers much faster. That's one of the things i'd like to do at the end.

Sounds like we're all on the same page then

I was going to try out the SD vs USB loading of images, but I need to dump all my games and repartition first. sigh.

 

[pretender13]

have noticed that in the latest rev that disk covers are being downloaded with a 4 digit id
thought that disk covers were suppose to be 3 digit ids ?

 

[Blue-K]

There has been a loader released that reads the covers from the fat partition on the usb disc - which i think is the way to go with future releases.

A small fat 23 partition and a wbfs partition on the same drive with covers auto downloaded to the fat partition from the online cover database and as such no more need for an SD card.Text files readable from fat would also allow configs and hacks to be stored there.

I'll second that, store all things to the HD would be the best solution for me, and would also be slightly faster...but I don't know if that would work...can the Wii read Informations/Games from both Partitions at the same time? It's hard...damm, WBFS+ would be so awesome and needed...let's see what happens.
Oh, and since we're talking about Covers...would there be the possibility to add a NoCover.png (or something like that) in the Cover-directory? I think it isn't implemented yet...and I would love it...

.

BTW: Many thanks to all who are working on this...impressive what happens on the Googlecode-Page

. Keep it going!!!