Hacking Devolution - Public Release

[Maxternal]

Just a small question: Imagine you have a new Wii without GC-Support. You said you'd add WiiMote-Support, means one could still buy and play GC-Games on his/her Wii, without having to buy an older Wii or GC. So... but how will that work with the verification thingy?
Not that I have such Wii, so I'm fine with that anti-piracy thingy as I can simply insert my discs. Sometimes I wish USB-Loaders would have smthg like that, too.
Either way, I'm just wondering.

Some new Wiis have the drive that WILL still let you pop the disk in. Others will just spit it out. (I guess sometimes they run out of the anti-GC drives and have to use the other ones). If you're lucky enough to have a drive that won't reject them you can still verify it. There's a possibility [member='tueidj'] has plans for some other verification method for new Wiis and, eventually, the Wii U but no one really knows for sure what that would be ATM.

 

[GameGeek]

Why should i play my games via USB if my dvd drive is working, aside from getting rid of the discs?

I like not having to get up off my butt and look through my disks, open the case and put it in. A click of the Wiimote is much easier.
Also, just FYI, they just locked a thread someone tried to to dedicate to just this topic, so it's probably a subject best to leave alone.

That thread was locked because it was created for people to debate about how to crack Devolution. Expressing one's opinion about the app's AP is fair game.

 

[wiismodrome]

I know GC games have an internal checksum in them, anyone know a good tool to verify my dump so I can see if it's really a bad rip or if I'm being rejected for another reason?

AFAIK, if the checksums from CleanRip match the values in the database, the rip should be valid. That said, I have what appears to be a good 1:1 rip of Star Wars Rogue Leader, and Devolution cannot verify it and locks up.

 

[SifJar]

does Devolution's payload do anything to keep hdd from sleeping? I know DM doesn't yet

I believe it does. tueidj mentioned that before it was released.

>Disc verification
That's a crying shame. A loader that would ordinarily let you avoid using the disc drive frivolously requires you to use the disk drive. This'll work brilliantly on my Wii's failed disk drive.

It requires you to use the drive just once per game, and only to read 8 bytes, as opposed to reading thousands of bytes each time you want to play. Yeah, it's no good for Wii's where the disc drive is gone already, but it DOES allow you to "avoid using the disc drive frivolously". In future, there may be other ways to verify discs (tueidj has mentioned there is planned support for the Wiis without GC compatibility, some of which at least cannot read GC discs at all, and will therefore require some other method). At that time, this could become useful to you. In the mean time, you'll have to make do with other options (i.e. DM[L]).

 

[Maxternal]

-Yeah, you'd have to re-rip your games unless you have a really good un-trimming program.
-No one really knows about the 2 Wiis sharing the drive thing. You'd have to test it. (could help dead drive people)
-Nope, you can't move the DVV's or they don't work anymore.

Well I do not have a good untrimming program and when I was talking about two Wiis I meant each Wii have it's own drive, not both Wii having one drive. My question was that I was certain you could use the same cleanrip on both hard drives but you'd have to verify the game on both Wiis as you couldn't copy the dvv files from one hard drive to another because if this worked then that would render the AP stuff useless.

Lastly, what I was asking is say for example, WiiFlow (not that I am saying it does!) stores the dvv files in a folder called WiiFlow on the root of your hard drive. This would be different than how the sample loader does it by keeping the dvv files in the same folder as the .dol file itself. My question is could I move the dvv files from the one folder to the other without having to reverify or would I have to reverify again. I'm not going from one hard drive to another or from one Wii to another. It's the same hard drive and the same Wii just relocating the dvv files on that hard drive.

Basically, you even look at the DVV files the wrong way and they stop working. If you just leave them where they are they should be fine.
I kinda think Devolution itself decides where to put the DVV files but I could be wrong.

Nice, so we can play GC iso without the need of a disc? I'm still confused as to how this emulator works.

You make a disk image first.
The first time and only the first time you run that game you have to verify the image (show it you have the original disk) after that you can take the disk out never have to put the disk in again (unless you edit, move or delete the files for the game). You can play it as many times as you want after that.

Think of it as you have to "install" the existing disk image in order to play it and devolution refuses to "install" it without seeing the retail disk first.

 

[wiismodrome]

Perhaps a minor point... however, it would be worthwhile for Devolution to eventually support compressed versions of Gamecube games. Why? Because there are many games which are very small in size (some well under 100 MB), making it wasteful to store a whole 1.35 GB ISO full of garbage data. All that wasted space quickly adds up and fills up hard drives! One notable exception would be games which use audio streaming, where the full ISO may be necessary in order to ensure no errors in audio playback.

 

[Taleweaver]

The first time and only the first time you run that game you have to verify the image (show it you have the original disk) after that you can take the disk out never have to put the disk in again (unless you edit, move or delete the files for the game).

Is it? I just renamed Starfox adventures from GSAP01.iso to "Starfox adventures PAL.iso" and removed the .bca the dumpfile files (not needed).

I really thought I had to do the verification again but it wasn't needed. So perhaps it's all fine as long as you leave the .dvv file as it is.


Also: not sure if it's mentioned, but Eternal Darkness: sanity's requiem (PAL) works. With streaming audio.

 

[Maxternal]

Is it? I just renamed Starfox adventures from GSAP01.iso to "Starfox adventures PAL.iso" and removed the .bca the dumpfile files (not needed).
I really thought I had to do the verification again but it wasn't needed. So perhaps it's all fine as long as you leave the .dvv file as it is.

Hmm, that's interesting, I guess changing the name doesn't change the time stamps or anything and it can always pair the right file up by it's GameID. It does look like you didn't move the file so that might still be important.

---

 

[raulpica]

Oi oi, guys - talks and meditations about why Devolution has AP go in here: http://gbatemp.net/topic/330634-why-add-anti-piracy-measures-to-devolution

In this thread it's actually off-topic. Thanks.

 

[BrightNeko]

Do you need the disc to verify each time or just once? Cause I have a few GC games on their last legs and I'd rather not be constantly putting them in and removing.

 

[Maxternal]

Do you need the disc to verify each time or just once? Cause I have a few GC games on their last legs and I'd rather not be constantly putting them in and removing.

Just once

 

[FIX94]

Do you need the disc to verify each time or just once? Cause I have a few GC games on their last legs and I'd rather not be constantly putting them in and removing.

Just once, always would be horrible

 

[BrightNeko]

Thanks both of you for the quick response.

 

[kineticUk]

I have one feature request if i may post it here.

In future versions if any are released, can we choose the device/path devolution uses?

Curently it saves data on usb where I have no apps or devo loader because this is where my games folder is.

Would it please be possible to optionally read/write data to the device the loader gets loaded off, rather than always same device as the iso's?
(only one apps/devo on either sd or usb for devo loader/devo supporting programs data...)

I like devolution as it is (like many others) but I just wish it had this option.

 

[Maxternal]

I think the loaders that incorporate devolution will be able to do that just fine.

 

[daxtsu]

Do you need the disc to verify each time or just once? Cause I have a few GC games on their last legs and I'd rather not be constantly putting them in and removing.

Once, so long as you don't tamper with the verification files in any way, shape or form. You can't move them, rename them, or edit them, or devolution won't accept them anymore, and make you re-verify. I don't think you can even back them up right now.

 

[jalaneme]

Awesome! Thanks tueidj!

Prepare for a lot of complaints about having to use original disks to verify games though. And to be frank it does make the loader a bit useless as it HAS to be a cleanrip.

i couldn't care less tbh, this announcement is a little too late, i have dolphin emulator working at 1080p with high res textures and i love it

 

[lovewiibrew]

As much as I am opposed to the AP measures in devolution, I don't think it's fair to discuss it here. I applaud tueijd for this awesome app. I will be using it for my streaming audio games once its implemented into loader gx and dios mios for the rest.

 

[tueidj]

Yea seen that, so here we go, wiiflow r581:
http://www.mediafire...va962tci3cqc11u
In this rev you can select per game if you want to use its memory card emulator or not

Related: japanese games require a memory card that is formatted as SJIS (aka fancy characters) so you might want to add some code to use a different memcard file for specific games.
(It's great that I can be lazy and just palm this work off onto someone else - I didn't even have to bother supporting long filenames in my FAT code.)

Something I'm considering for the future is the ability to pass the .iso, memcard and .dvv file via their starting sector index instead of their starting cluster index. This would allow the engine to work with any filesystem as long as the files are not fragmented. Does this sound like a good idea or is it too difficult for the loaders to get that information?

 

[Anon10W1z]

Yea seen that, so here we go, wiiflow r581:
http://www.mediafire...va962tci3cqc11u
In this rev you can select per game if you want to use its memory card emulator or not

Related: japanese games require a memory card that is formatted as SJIS (aka fancy characters) so you might want to add some code to use a different memcard file for specific games.
(It's great that I can be lazy and just palm this work off onto someone else - I didn't even have to bother supporting long filenames in my FAT code.)

Something I'm considering for the future is the ability to pass the .iso, memcard and .dvv file via their starting sector index instead of their starting cluster index. This would allow the engine to work with any filesystem as long as the files are not fragmented. Does this sound like a good idea or is it too difficult for the loaders to get that information?

Considering WiiFlow supports game names more than 64 characters (or did?), I think this is a good idea. For example, odd people who have formatted their drives to, say, HPFS, can still use Devo from USB.

Speaking of Devo loading from USB...did you borrow code from Dios Mios?