Hacking Cover Flow USB ISO Loader by Beardface

[afour98]

Here's my feedback on the latest build: 71

It no longer hangs during the "loading, please wait..." screen. It just takes forever to go through the cover loading process (can that be speed up?). Thanks to Scognito for adding some debug output, so I can at least see what it's doing.

After the loading screen it does one of two things 1)core dump or 2)returns to HBC screen... no joy.

 

[Nullkill]

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.

I added some threading code to hopefully do this to my svn repository.... if you get a sec; let me know what you think.

http://wiicoverflow.googlecode.com/svn-his...source/buffer.c
http://wiicoverflow.googlecode.com/svn-his...source/buffer.h

It will be interesting to see your thread code (no prob if you want to wait for your big unveiling

)

 

[djtaz]

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 ?

Disc covers use either 3 or 4 digit ID's to download - it depends on how specific you want to be with regions.
http://www.theotherzone.com/wii/diskart/160/160/RJ2.png works
http://www.theotherzone.com/wii/diskart/160/160/RJ2P.png also works
the site picks the highest quality most accurate disc art for the ID supplied - there is a discussion on this on the thread for Covers.

If any coders need the links just PM and and i can give the format , though they are on the site as well.

 

[cdreams]

Djtaz, just want to say well done one the site for the covers, you have been brilliant with that and it's helped everyone. So cheers mate

 

[pretender13]

what i mean is, i already have disk covers in the disks directory with a 3 digit id, but the newest loader is downloading covers with a 4 digit id, disk covers already exist for those games, but now loader is downloading additional disk covers but with a 4 digit id.

 

[Nullkill]

what i mean is, i already have disk covers in the disks directory with a 3 digit id, but the newest loader is downloading covers with a 4 digit id, disk covers already exist for those games, but now loader is downloading additional disk covers but with a 4 digit id.

Please add any issues like this you find to http://code.google.com/p/wiicoverflow/issues/list

 

[kyogc]

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!!!

This has been discussed sereval time and some Mod-Loaders even had done this. However, some coders mentioned that if you changed from one loader to another, your data may crush. That's why this function then had been taken away....

 

[djtaz]

Djtaz, just want to say well done one the site for the covers, you have been brilliant with that and it's helped everyone. So cheers mate

Its not really my site - im just hosting it and did up the framework, theres a lot of others chipped in as well and the site really belongs to the community as they all helped build it.
As ive always said , theres some amazing lads on this site and they make the whole coimmunity shine with the work and help they throw at projects, the thanks goes to all of them really, but i appreciate the comment.

QUOTE(pretender13 @ May 1 2009, 06:38 PM) what i mean is, i already have disk covers in the disks directory with a 3 digit id, but the newest loader is downloading covers with a 4 digit id, disk covers already exist for those games, but now loader is downloading additional disk covers but with a 4 digit id.

Please add any issues like this you find to http://code.google.com/p/wiicoverflow/issues/list

Nullkill , im not sure if it was yourself or someone else who made this open source , but whoever decided on that , well done on opening this up to everyone for them to chip in.
I kind of depended on the help of others for the cover art place and gave a few 100% full access to the site as i said above , and they have outdone themselves with some of the help they have given - im sure that you will get assistance with pretty much everything on that project and i think its coming along nicely. Well done to yourself and the rest of the team on a great project.

 

[gloscherrybomb]

Good work so far guys!

Could we get either a recent precompiled .dol or a new video?

Thanks

 

[Nullkill]

Good work so far guys!

Could we get either a recent precompiled .dol or a new video?

Thanks

v3.0 link on first post.

http://wiicoverflow.googlecode.com/files/W...ow-BetaV3.0.zip

See first post for changelog.

Also, anyone with 50+ games available to test?? Interested to know how it handles that many images. I have another fix i can drop in to definitely handle any number of images; but am curious what it will handle now.

 

[Sanoblue]

Good work so far guys!

Could we get either a recent precompiled .dol or a new video?

Thanks

v3.0 link on first post.

http://wiicoverflow.googlecode.com/files/W...ow-BetaV3.0.zip

See first post for changelog.

Also, anyone with 50+ games available to test?? Interested to know how it handles that many images. I have another fix i can drop in to definitely handle any number of images; but am curious what it will handle now.

ive got 80 + ill test... brb and ill let you know

 

[jhoff80]

Good work so far guys!

Could we get either a recent precompiled .dol or a new video?

Thanks

There's a beta 3.0 on the Google Code site, but it seems pretty buggy. Disc images stopped showing up for me, and covers sometimes show garbled graphics. When I pressed the button to install, again the graphics freaked out on me.

And personally, I think it looked better (and cleaner) before the "Install game", "Cheats on/off", and "Remove game" (assuming that's what the bucket that showed on the launch game screen was for) buttons were added.

Edit: And also, I get 33 covers showing properly out of many more than that.

 

[Nullkill]

Good work so far guys!

Could we get either a recent precompiled .dol or a new video?

Thanks

There's a beta 3.0 on the Google Code site, but it seems pretty buggy. Disc images stopped showing up for me, and covers often show garbled graphics... both for the initial 20 that load, and when I'm scrolling to the side. When I pressed the button to install, again the graphics freaked out on me.

And personally, I think it looked better (and cleaner) before the "Install game", "Cheats on/off", and "Remove game" (assuming that's what the pail that showed on the launch game screen was for) buttons were added.

lol about the graphics... yes agreed. Those where put in for functionality and won't be around for long

As for disc images not showing up and garbled graphics; good to know. How many games do you have?

 

[jhoff80]

Added to my previous post but I've got 33 covers showing properly, and 85 total.

The first time I loaded it, 3 textures had errors, but after a reboot only one had errors. All are the correct dimensions though. I wonder if the disc images aren't showing because they're 3-letter codes as the earlier version required?

And, while the images are no longer too skinny, now my widescreen TV is stretching things too wide it appears. I'd expect that because that's exactly how it's being made widescreen, but I wonder if it's possible to correct for that in future versions (without needing different sized images or anything).

If it isn't, that's no big deal, just pointing it out.

 

[DSlnik]

On my Wii, no covers are showing up at all.
Just some weird grabled colors.
So, The app starts, everything looks smooth, and about a second later, the screen flickers once, the progress bar turns blue, and everything looks horribly pixelated.
Almost can't even read text. No covers are downloading either.

 

[jhoff80]

On my Wii, no covers are showing up at all.
Just some weird grabled colors.
So, The app starts, everything looks smooth, and about a second later, the screen flickers once, the progress bar turns blue, and everything looks horribly pixelated.
Almost can't even read text. No covers are downloading either.

It says in the changelog that the auto-download is currently turned off.

 

[Nullkill]

Added to my previous post but I've got 33 covers showing properly, and 85 total.

The first time I loaded it, 3 textures had errors, but after a reboot only one had errors. All are the correct dimensions though. I wonder if the disc images aren't showing because they're 3-letter codes as the earlier version required?

Do the other 52 just say "No cover art" or are they garbled

as for the discs; taht might be right... Though; I didn't change the code that required new pngs.... so dont thank me for that

 

[Nullkill]

On my Wii, no covers are showing up at all.
Just some weird grabled colors.
So, The app starts, everything looks smooth, and about a second later, the screen flickers once, the progress bar turns blue, and everything looks horribly pixelated.
Almost can't even read text. No covers are downloading either.

How many covers do you have?

Also are your images 160x225 or 160x224?

 

[DSlnik]

Sorry, my mistake, I had the bad image resolution. But the app is still horribly pixelated.

 

[jhoff80]

Added to my previous post but I've got 33 covers showing properly, and 85 total.

The first time I loaded it, 3 textures had errors, but after a reboot only one had errors. All are the correct dimensions though. I wonder if the disc images aren't showing because they're 3-letter codes as the earlier version required?

Do the other 52 just say "No cover art" or are they garbled

as for the discs; taht might be right... Though; I didn't change the code that required new pngs.... so dont thank me for that

Like I said, the first run, I got the garbled images 3 times, the second time I had it once, and the third time I had it twice. The others just say no cover art.

And just to show what I mean by garbled images:



Edit: Mario Kart is consistently one of the images that shows like that, using http://www.theotherzone.com/wii/ntsc/RMCE00.png renamed with the correct code and resized to 160x224. And as it turns out, yeah, the disc images now display with the 4-character code.