Hacking Coverflow7 USB Loader

[Don Killah]

I'm sure he wanted to but there is a pretty nasty bug which causes it to crash if you scroll to far either left or right and you have to restart your Wii, so I think he wants to eliminate that first.
You guessed right mate. i really want to fix this but i still don't get it because it works fine for me even with 45 games...
I'm currently adding all my +50 dvd games to my 250G hd with the Coverflow7 install method (works great and fast by the way) so i hope to catch this nesty bug pretty soon.

I know that it got you zll excited but please wait a little bit, here's a sum up of what the alpha4 does:
QUOTE- updated to waninoko's usbloader v1.5, so non working games should now be working.
- fixed the "abort called" bug when scrolling through +30 games.
- a faster way to load and display the 7 pictures... i also figured a new way that might even improve it.
- use up and down arrows to scroll through a page (left and right to scroll one title at a time).
- downsized the boot.dol from almost 3M to 474kb.
- use our own artwork instead of the native pictures of usbloader when there's a path error (with a line stating that there's an error with paths not to get confused).
- improved the config.txt with a new arguments:
console_color = you can now edit the text/background colors (to match a theme for example, see the config_sample.txt for more).
safe_mode = you can now prevent the user from installing/removing/formating. All of this is done within the settings screen.
- added the save/discard game settings (video/language/ocarina per game settings).
- now displays the game name/id/size and also how many games are installed on hd with game/free size in the option screen.
- added Force PAL50/PAL60/NTSC [thx to Narolez].
- added more hdd compatiblity fix [thx to Narolez].
- game's name is now centered in the console (main screen only!)...
- game's list are now ordered alphabetically...
- add wiilight snippets to enable the wii's blue light (near the dvd) to glow for specific actions) [thx to Dteyn/Bool].

 

[cdreams]

Hey Don, hope your having a good day mate

I did some testing with alpha4 and I seem to have the same bug in mine too. Not sure why, it loads fine and runs great, just if you push about 6 times either way on mine it does the crash. Your looking at that though so hopefully it's something you can find and resolve.

I tested a few PAL games, tried them as PAL 60 and Pal 50 and they worked fine, no issues. Also tried to force a PAL game to NTSC and it green screened on me, but it is a PAL game so maybe that is normal.I have a HDTV that is connected to an up-scaling amp so I think that may cause discrepancies when I am testing and may not be as accurate compared to normal set-ups. So some things that I get to work might not for others purely due to my amp up scaling through the HDMI.

I'm using a NTSC Wii on 3.2 and through a UK TV, but as I say it has support for most stuff if not all.

 

[cdreams]

Don, see in the Settings page, is it possible to slightly bring the console in from the right a litle bit, I think it looks a little too close to the edge, especially if we go ahead and code it to show the selected game to the left, when that's in place there are much bigger gaps either side of the game image and it makes the console margin look off.

I think if it was in by maybe another 20px, then that would be decent. I have the coordinates just now as X:284 and Y:152, but if that could be changed to say X:264 and Y:132, then I think it will look more balanced. The Y coordinate isn't so bad, if it's left at 152 then there is space in the upper left corner where some information text can be put so maybe it's best to leave that one. But definitely the X coord.

 

[cdreams]

UPDATE

Fooled around with placements on the settings page and this could work out good, I presume you just need to change the coordinates in the loader, if it's more difficult tell me because my brother yesterday reminded me of something, where what I might think something is easy but it may actually be hard to code, so if it is then let me know

CFG_CONSOLE_XCOORD = 264
CFG_CONSOLE_YCOORD = 152


Image Coordinates where selected game box would load to:

X=48 Y=150

Here is the image with those coordinates taken into account:

Let me know what you think

 

[Don Killah]

go on, tell me what did he said. plsu for the coords that might be done.
i'm at work right now so i can't really reply but you could still pm me.
by the way talking about yor pms, i didn't really catch the purpose of the last one... do you mind explaining?

 

[cdreams]

The one from coedshowers?

I think he was having some issue with his HDD and he managed to figure out a fix of some sorts. I thought you would be able to understand it a bit better than I would. So I told him I would forward it on to you and see what you think, if it was something that was needed.

There is a little more details a few pages back where he first mentions it, give me a min or so and I will try find it for you. OK here it is:

I have a 200gb 3.5 hd( powered ) and a 500gb 2.5 ( powered by 2x usb ports ). the 300gb works fine but the 500 gives me a "press any key to restart " like it cannot find the 500gb... the other loader I use ( usbloader my turn release ) which cant touch the coolness factor of coverflow7. but it has a countdown for finding the usb drives and if u hit a when the countdown is going it loads up my 500gb I don't know if pressing a just resets the usb ports or if it sends a initialization command to the external or what but whatever method they use I think dk or someone should try to implement it in this coverflow release please

Not sure if this is even something that needs to be looked at, but he asked me to look into it and since I don't know the coding side I thought you should read just in case there was something there of interest

 

[cdreams]

Regarding what my brother said, it was more just some design stuff and second opinion on the looks and what I was doing graphically.

I like to listen to him when it comes to design and user interfaces, he's pretty good. Means I have a brother that is anal when it comes to design but it's good normally.

He mentioned to me how a lot of companies when they give you a selection of YES/No options, the order is actually the wrong way around a lot of the time. So instead of YES or No it should be No or Yes. He went on to explain why and it turns out that YES is a move forward choice and so should be going forward and No is the opposite so should be positioned back. A lot of companies will switch it around in programs every so often to stop you getting into a pattern of always pressing the same thing and then end up making a mistake by pressing when your not meant to. However a lot of companies just to it wrong as standard. The reason why was some of the products originally came from Japan and so they have their layout a little different when reading text. When the English companies westernised them, they didn't change the layouts so it's shown ans Yes/No.

It's a small thing but subconsciously it makes things more intuitive. Like using colours, Green for go and Red for stop. Thought it was interesting some of the stuff he was telling me and pointing out about what I had done and what to tweak.

By the way the description I gave above is maybe a little confusing, trust me he explained it a lot clearer lol.

 

[cdreams]

UPDATE

OK so I have made both normal and widescreen versions of both the light and dark themes. I have taken note of coordinates for where the images should load to, image sizes for each version and also the console coordinates for the settings page, again for both normal and widescreen versions.

I have kept my template files and added some bits to them so anyone can basically go in and move stuff around, add text or whatever, as long as whatever you change, if it is where the place-holders for the images, then you must check the coordinates and made sure they lie on a X-Coordinate that can be divided by 4, otherwise it won't work. Please note: Altering the image coordinates isn't implemented yet, the loader currently has them fixed so if you change them then your images will be off, this is just so if in future it gets implemented into a future revision of the loader, where you can alter where pictures load to, that you will have to change the settings to match. As of now do not alter the place-holder positions or the console position in the settings page otherwise your loader will look wrong.

I have also made the 4 versions so they can be used as defaults and the only thing you will need to make sure you do is have the text-colour settings to match the background your using, so if it's the Dark theme, then make sure you have white text on a black background, otherwise you will see a white console area and black text on it looking crappy.

I will release this as a package included with the loader when Don is ready and assuming he agrees to the coordinates I posted earlier for the settings. Until then I will not release it to avoid confusion.

Don, can I confirm with you, that if you are able to include widescreen options in the future, that the loader is able to take the new coordinates to match it, it isn't like the loader can only take one set of coordinates. Your able to code into it that if it's for 4:3, then use these coords, if it's for 16:9 use these coords?

 

[Don Killah]

i'm planning to put the coords on the config file (hence the cfg loader mockup...

) like this:
main_console: x,y,width,height
main_colors: text,background

cover_big: x,y
cover_small1: x,y
cover_small2: x,y
cover_small3: x,y
cover_small4: x,y
cover_small5: x,y
cover_small6: x,y

settings_console: x,y,width,height
settings_colors: text,background
settings_cover: x,y,width,height

Well it's only an idea, don't take it for granted.

 

[cdreams]

No, that looks ideal and a great plan. That way it's virtually totally customisable. Looks nice and easy to understand too.

Nice work my good chap

 

[jarod71]

No, that looks ideal and a great plan. That way it's virtually totally customisable. Looks nice and easy to understand too.

Nice work my good chap

cant wait for widescreen version of this laoder, thanks guys!

 

[pepperoni]

I recorded a video of what happens when I try to scroll to the left, if you're interested, DK.

 

[Don Killah]

yep, bring it mate.

 

[pepperoni]

 

[Don Killah]

omg... that's what i call a nasty bug.
hold on.

 

[cdreams]

Yeah that is the same as what happens when I scroll too far left or right. Is that the bug you were talking about, abortfix or something?

I have just made a little logo for the Loader, it's plain but looks nice enough for the loader, so maybe can be used as the homebrew icon or maybe even for a channel at some stage, here it is for you to have a little look:

That is a larger version, on the actual loader screens it's only about 50px wide and 38px tall, just something as a little mark to show you what your using

Here is what it should look like on the finished loader:

 

[Don Killah]

cd: this background is much better. now i understand why you wanted to move the console to the bottom. we couldn't have let it with the gradient. nice work.

pep:
check your pm.

 

[cdreams]

Don do you want me to pm you the widescreen coordinates I have here for the default settings? That way people can get using it straight away when it's implemented.

Or if you prefer I can send you what I have just now with all the image stuff, including templates. You can ditch any image stuff you have just now, this is all the final stuff pretty much.

 

[cdreams]

My brother also had an idea with regards to getting reflections to work. It's a crude but simple solution that shouldn't really affect the loader at all. Funnily enough I actually thought of it already but was distracted with other stuff and didn't pay it more thought.

The idea was to simple alter the game images to have the reflection as part of the image itself. Then just make the backgrounds to fit in and in the loader adjusted to accommodate the slightly longer images, so instead of say 66x93, they would become something like 66x113. That would give about 20pixels of reflection. Dunno how well it would look but it could be worth a shot in future. It should work since the area the extended part would be has virtually no gradient there.

 

[Don Killah]

cd:
nope, not for now. keep them beside you i'll tell you when to send them (maybe by the end of the week).
i'm still puzzled by this nasty green bug. it did happened to me when i was messing with the memory leak but then i did some change to the loader and it never happened to me again, most of the time it happened was because it tried to load a cove which wasn't on the sd...
weird, i hope that pep will tell us more really soon.