Hacking Coverflow7 USB Loader

[Don Killah]

morning guys... 4 hours of sleep since the release and i'll have to go to bed.
if something is not working, report it here: i've made the package in a hurry coz i had to go to bed so some stuff might have been forgotten in the process (even though i'm sure i didn't).

anyway, give us all the feedback you want.

cd: you should put the disclaimer in the readme.txt on the front page, i forgot to.

 

[thongcao]

helo CD or DON! Can you guyz please explain where to put the folder: assets-extras?

 

[tommyv]

WOW, simply a Mater piece, great job, Don Killah and Cdreams we appreciate your work, this is by far the most beautiful USB loader available and with lots of functions. really great job.

I got a question:

Can I use the 3d covers on the game menu?

 

[Jdbye]

Wow, this looks great. Will try.

 

[m00k]

hey guys, nice job........

however..........

I have found that certain covers (downloaded through coverflow7) turns the screen completly garbled.

the 2 that i have noticed are "house of the dead 2&3" & "lego indiana jones"

Once the screen is garbled you have to reset to sort it out, allthough i do beleive that the program is still running behind it.

should be an easy fix for the Don right

keep up the good work.

 

[katrem]

I'm having a couple of problems using it:

I get code dumps / completely messed up pink scrolling screens (have to reset) whenever reaching these games (not playing, just scrolling to):
- Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Zack and Wiki: Quest for Barbaros' Treasure
I was wondering if this could have something to do with the lenght of the game-names?

When launching from the main menu I do not get prompted (to press A again), I haven't changed any settings in the config file.

I've also had random 'abort called' messages which returned to the homebrew channel.

The new version does look very nice and covers dowloaded just fine (I downloaded them all 'fresh' to avoid problems with old files)

I hope you guys can fix these problems, it does look great IMO.

 

[toni.belangenani]

What a great wake-up surprise!

I've just been playing with alpha4 for a while before I went to work and it looks great! It downloaded all the covers automatically, no problems there. Scrolling works very nice, looks great, feels great, so great work you guys! *applauding*

But you asked for feedback, so:

- as soon as I scroll to "Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games" I get a pink rolling screen and have to hard reset the Wii. No problems with any other covers. As the user above me mentioned, this might be because the long game-name? Or perhaps the unusual characters ( & or : )

- I tried to start up Wii Sports, so I scrolled to it, hit the A-button, and then nothing happened anymore. The screen froze, stuck on the large Wii sports cover and I couldn't scroll or go back or anything, having to perform a hard-reset.. Unfortunately I didn't have time to try other games, so I'm not sure if it's a one-time issue. Whenever I scroll to a game and hit A, I don't get a confirmation screen to load or go back. When I hit A again, the game will just boot, when I hit B I can start scrolling again, so that's not the problem. It's just the graphical part that's missing.

So hopefully you can fix these issues, so far this looks like a very, very promising loader!

 

[Corto]

Et Voila .. I just got home, and of course first thing I did was to get my SD card off my WII, copy across the new files for the Coverflow7, back on to the wi ... ... ...
And then, with exitment and jubilation launch the Coverflow7 ... but but but ...
Pretty much as soon as the background appears, it switches to a pink (and a bit green) flickering screen ... I have to press reset on the console.

I don't even have a chance to scroll trough ...

Anyway, I try different Fix as follow (tested one at the time):

1> disable auto download in config file
2> add adwork already in my possession
3> deleted ALL artwork from folder
4> remove title.txt ( to avoid conflict with already named game I thought)

All of the above without success ...
I'm really sorry I'm reporting this issue, I wish I could have at least see the coverflow in action .... Oh well maybe next version ...

Other usefull information:

First game on my list is

"Agatha Cristie: and then there was none"
-> long title I admit but the games loads fine under Waninkoko loader ... I might try to rename it ... (I've read issue with long title ???)

Wii 3.3E with WiiKey
HBC 1.1
cIOS V10
WD 400G My passport HDD
Games >100 (not to brag but I believe the previous Coverflow had an issue when there was >30 games ...)


I hope this will help you locating the issue, Good luck and keep up the hard work ...

 

[katrem]

- as soon as I scroll to "Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games" I get a pink rolling screen and have to hard reset the Wii. No problems with any other covers. As the user above me mentioned, this might be because the long game-name? Or perhaps the unusual characters ( & or : )

I thought about this too but I have other games with a : in the title and they work fine so think it's the length that is causing the problem.

 

[cdreams]

Morning guys.

OK, lets see if we can resolve some of these issues.

First up, the people having an issue with a certain game when you scroll to it. Can you check and see if it is only that game. So for instance, you will be scrolling fine and then if it crashes every time on that same game or not. If it does, then it could be the issue we experienced in testing ourselves. The way to resolve it is to delete the cover for it and if you can also the game from the USB and re-install it. I personally would recommend you check the actual ISO as well as I had some issues, did a re-download and re-installed the game and allowed it to auto download it's cover and then it was fixed.

If the above does not resolve the issue, then it could be something more, but it does sound exactly like the issue I had myself and it took a while to figure out but once I deleted the game and cover it worked fine and then I just re-did them both and worked perfectly.

Second, I'm not entirely sure about the name size issue, but I will say I have never had an issue with it myself. I know Don included the game list name as a txt file that is saved in the sd:/usb-loaderAB/ folder. So please use that for now as maybe there is some conflict there. If it is the issue, then I think if I recall correctly, that Don included the coordinates and settings in the config.txt and I think it allows you to change the size of either console in case you want to modify it yourselves. SO if it isn't long enough that may resolve that issue. Other than that, Don will hopefully have seen the feedback but I will also mention to him.

Third, someone mentioned that they wanted to know where to put the assets folder. You do not need anything other than the following:

sd:/apps/usbloaderDK/boot.dol - This is your main application
sd:/apps/usbloaderDK/config.txt - This is where you can change settings

sd:/usb-loaderAB/covers - This is where your main 160x225 images go or use auto-download and it will install the images there itself

sd:/usb-loaderAB/covers/3d - If your using 160x225 images you already had and just copying them over, then you will also need to get your 3D covers manually and add them to this folder. make sure they have the transparency. However if you prefer, delete all your covers and just leave the covers and 3d folders empty and turn auto-download on and it will install the correct images into the correct folders for you. Only really usable with smaller libraries otherwise will take ages.

sd:/usb-loaderAB/main.png
sd:/usb-loaderAB/config.png
sd:/usb-loaderAB/titles.txt


That is the folders and directories they need to be in including how they should be used. Hopefully that helps some people out.

 

[Corto]

Well, I don't want to jump the gun, but it looks like an issue with the game title length ...
I've shorten"Agatha Cristie: and then there was none" to "Agatha Christie" et the launcher launch fine !!!

Hope that helps guys ...

(What about setting the title on 2 lines as a quick fix ??)

Sorry Cdreams, we posted in the same time ... but you were faster ...

 

[katrem]

First up, the people having an issue with a certain game when you scroll to it. Can you check and see if it is only that game. So for instance, you will be scrolling fine and then if it crashes every time on that same game or not.
Hi cdreams, for me the crahses (whcih exit to HBC) are completely random. It sometimes crashes at certain games and will scroll past them the next time without problems. It doesn't have anything to do with how long I'm scrolling either, I've had crashes at the third game in my list and have scrolled back and forth for longer periods without problems (except for those files with long file-names, these always cause a crash, I skip those while testing).

QUOTE(cdreams @ May 5 2009, 01:42 PM) Second, I'm not entirely sure about the name size issue, but I will say I have never had an issue with it myself. I know Don included the game list name as a txt file that is saved in the sd:/usb-loaderAB/ folder. So please use that for now as maybe there is some conflict there. If it is the issue, then I think if I recall correctly, that Don included the coordinates and settings in the config.txt and I think it allows you to change the size of either console in case you want to modify it yourselves. SO if it isn't long enough that may resolve that issue.

Changing the console width in the config file does not resolve the problem, it still crashes at the long file names (the titles file is included in the folder and my Twilight Princess iso is named exactly as in the titles file).

Edit: edited after testing with different settings for console width...

 

[zidane_genome]

I'm getting the specific game crash...

Resident Evil The Umbrella Chronicles

Thought maybe it was the cover, since it won't crash unless I have the cover downloaded... so I went onto my SD card, and deleted the cover. went back, redownloaded it... crash...

so it's either the place it downloads, or just the dimensions of the download. Tested it on 4 cards (1gig, 2gig, 1gig micro, 4gig micro)

ps. I also have a game with a longer name - ToS : Dawn of the New World, so I know that's not it...

 

[katrem]

ps. I also have a game with a longer name - ToS : Dawn of the New World, so I know that's not it...

If Tales of Symphonia is written as ToS than Resident Evil actually has a longer file name.

I have this problem with three games (mentioned earlier) and when I rename the iso-files the problem disappears for all three of them so it is definately the name of the iso file.

Edit: Resident Evil The Umbrella Chronicles will even run if you only drop 'The' from the name. I would guess the limit for the iso-name is 36 characters (some WBFS-managers use the same limit)

 

[johny48]

hi
just joined the forum as i have been watching this thread with great intrest and felt i needed to give some feed back to DK and CD on the crashing loader isue,
using a 500gb HD with over a hundred games on it i continued to get crashing ( red +green distorted screen) so changed to 16gb pen drive one of the games (World Series Of Poker - Tournament Of Champions.) that i got the crashing with i changed the name to (World Series Of Poker) this stoped the crashing for me anyway going to check the games on the rest of hd to see if i can sort any more out
hope this helps resolve the issue.
cheers johny48

 

[cdreams]

OK the size of the game name seems to be re-occurring so I will get Dn to check it out and increase it if he can. Please re-name any titles like that for now though to avoid that particular issue.

Regarding the crashing of a particular game, sometimes it is the cover and sometimes the ISO itself. I know it might work on other loaders but for some reason it still causes an issue with Rev9 - Alpha4. Don is checking that though so a fix may come. Until then try the deleting of the ISO and the image for it and try again.

So basically for now, try re-naming the actual names to shorter lengths. I know its a pain but if it stops the crash till a fix is found then you can at least enjoy the loader till then. If the renaming doesn't fix it and it still crashes, try method two if it's a particular game. If it is still crashing, please double check directories and set-ups and at our end we will look at resolving the technical problems we can.

Thanks for the feedback everyone it's appreciated and helps us fix niggly issues.

 

[cdreams]

How do you hide text when posting it so you can expand it if needed? I have a large piece of text but want it minimised normally and people can expand it to read it if they want.

 

[cdreams]

Doesn't matter, just used Code-Box for now.

I have updated the 1st post with a slightly modified change log, that documents some bugs and stuff like that. It's re-arranged at some parts to hopefully make it a little clearer.

Cheers.

 

[cwstjdenobs]

Hi, I've had one random crash with Alpha 4 on the first run (mainly green screen, when I got to Twilight Princess on the list), but after that no problems at all. I bet that's no help at all but you never know.

 

[DoctorWhosThat]

I have a problem with coverflow

Please, could you help me with this!