Hacking Devolution - Public Release

[NJ7]

Looks like I'm out of luck with 18 wheeler american pro trucker....cleaned disc and that didn't work, and the disc isn't in greatest shape, though it still works in disc channel so.....

 

[JoostinOnline]

Looks like I'm out of luck with 18 wheeler american pro trucker....cleaned disc and that didn't work, and the disc isn't in greatest shape, though it still works in disc channel so.....

Get the ISO "elsewhere" and verify it with your disc.

 

[Cyan]

if he can verify with his retail disc, then he can dump it too.
If the disc is in bad shape and provide wrong data, verifying the good ISO with the bad Disc will not work.

 

[Etheboss]

So I've played around with Devolution (r135) with several of my GameCube games and I'd like to bring up a few things...


0. Could you please at least make a note or something in the first post regarding where the memorycard.bin is located? It took me forever to find out that it was on the same partition as the games but in the Apps folder. (Devolution was on the SD card while games were on the USB drive)
From the 1st page: The memory card file for emulation is /apps/gc_devo/memcard.bin.
1. Now I realize that F-Zero GX doesn't work, but I don't know if the following is known. If you let the title screen song play all the way through, the story mode cutscene doesn't ever play. Not only that, but the whole time my harddrive seemed to not be really loading anything. So to me it looks like the issue is that it won't load anything past the titlescreen music (of course, the trouble is finding out why).
That's correct, it already says so on the compatibility list.
2. Some games (like Midway Arcade Treasures 3) really don't have very great controls (R for gas even when it's just digital in-game?). This got me wondering if it would be possible at all to be able to rearrange the button actions for gamecube controllers? This would also help with games like Medal of Honor: European Assult that lack the "legacy" analog stick arrangement (forward/back & turning on the left stick, look up/down & strafing on the right stick).

3. Once/if wiimote controls ever get added, I hope you'll consider being able to map a combination of buttons to a single button (like Z+L). Spy Hunter in particular had mapped both Z+L and Z+R to seperate functions and were quite a pain to use; they would be so much easier to use mapped to ZL and ZR on the classic controller.

4. Blasphamous idea: support for wired Xbox 360 and wired PS3 controllers! Even crazier: wireless bluetooth support for PS3 controllers! (I don't even own those systems, I just think it'd be cool). And just totally unrealistic: support for DirectInput PC controllers AND Xinput PC controllers!

5. Turns out that you really do need a completely clean rip of a game. I used GCRebuilder to replace a few music tracks in Rush 2049 on Midway Arcade Treasures 3 by putting in some of my favorite songs from the N64 version of Rush 2049, but nope! Devolution would have none of it - just constantly gave me the 5-blinks over and over. I'm honestly surprised since I only replaced a few .BIK media files and none of the game code, but alas...

6. If you sucessfully verify a game, then replace the ISO file with a different file, as expected it wants you to reverify. But if you then replace that with the original ISO you already successfully verified, Devolution will want you to STILL reverify. What gives? This unfortunately prevented being able to play a specific game when I was out of state visiting family for Labor Day weekend...

7. With the sample Devolution loader, once you successfully mount a partition, you cannot press 'B' to go back to the Homebrew Channel. You're only able to load a game and then press the power button on the Wii to go back to the Homebrew Channel.

8. Wifi for normal Wii things didn't seem to want to work after using Devolution and required rebooting the Wii.

9. Not sure if this should go here, but in Configurable USB Loader MOD (r46), Devolution keeps wanting me to verify the disc even if it's already been verified in both the sample Devolution loader and in Configurable USB Loader. It'll run fine if I put the disc in and eject it while the game is running, but it still wants me to reverify every time I launch via Configurable USB Loader (everything works with the sample Devolution loader though).
Yep, for that you have to go to the CFGloader GBAtemp topic.

Ok, i answered some questions, the rest i don't know the answer to, but if you find more games that have problems be sure to check the compatibility list first and the report it provided with a log, if possible even add it to the list.
A link to instructions for logging are on the first page of this topic too.

 

[JoostinOnline]

if he can verify with his retail disc, then he can dump it too.
If the disc is in bad shape and provide wrong data, verifying the good ISO with the bad Disc will not work.

That's not true. I wasn't able to rip Wind Waker because part of it was scratched, but I was able to verify an ISO. Only a few bytes need to be readable for Devolution to verify a disc.

 

[thevoiceover]

if he can verify with his retail disc, then he can dump it too.
If the disc is in bad shape and provide wrong data, verifying the good ISO with the bad Disc will not work.

I actually have a few games that the disc wont play in wii/gc (5 kids ) but the backups from rawdump long ago work with them.. I'm assuming the data on these discs Devo needs is still there and readable, of course if the data it needs isn't readable, it wouldn't work.

 

[Cyan]

I assumed that the full disc was scanned for the first verification, and that only the beginning of the iso was used to create the checksum file.
If only the beginning of the disc is used to verify the disc then it's fine.

 

[tueidj]

Reading the full disc takes nearly 10 minutes.

 

[NJ7]

The disc don't verify anymore for 18 wheel trucker, I did get the iso from somewhere else....I cleaned it and fails, the disc is marked up badly I noticed, probably needs buffering and I'm not sure that would help, I always get my isos from somewhere else and then just verify with disc.....what happens it blinks 4 times, then fails and doesn't quite verify, the data on the disc I can only think is bad....and Joostin, I don't need your advice......

 

[osm70]

The disc don't verify anymore for 18 wheel trucker, I did get the iso from somewhere else....I cleaned it and fails, the disc is marked up badly I noticed, probably needs buffering and I'm not sure that would help, I always get my isos from somewhere else and then just verify with disc.....what happens it blinks 4 times, then fails and doesn't quite verify, the data on the disc I can only think is bad....and Joostin, I don't need your advice......

It means your disc is not retail.

 

[NJ7]

It means the disc verification is messed up somewhere for this game, cause FIX94 just gave me the rev I tested it working in (r128) and the disc verified fine....somewhere disc verification in r135 and r142 is messed up for this game I'm afraid to say, only thing I can think of.....

 

[AppleCrow]

That's a good choice that Devolution only checks the 1st sectors of the disc.
As JoostinOnline or thevoiceover, my Sunshine DVD has unreadable datas on video demo.
If the game is always fully playable (if I don't try to see the demo), rip is stopped at 30%.

Hopefully, tueidj hasn't make the choice to perform full DVD check, nor I would be unable to play Sunshine through Devolution.

tueidj, I hope that one of those days you will implement some "special options" to take account of wii hardware (as new way to control games).

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

That's a good choice that Devolution only checks the 1st sectors of the disc.

I'm not sure I believe this. I replaced only a couple .BIK media files in a clean rip and yet Devolution didn't like it.

 

[Maxternal]

That's a good choice that Devolution only checks the 1st sectors of the disc.

I'm not sure I believe this. I replaced only a couple .BIK media files in a clean rip and yet Devolution didn't like it.

I think it only checks the first little bit of the REAL disk but the checks on the disk image are a lot more extensive.

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

0. From the 1st page: The memory card file for emulation is /apps/gc_devo/memcard.bin.

1. That's correct, it already says so on the compatibility list.

Ok, i answered some questions, the rest i don't know the answer to, but if you find more games that have problems be sure to check the compatibility list first and the report it provided with a log, if possible even add it to the list.
A link to instructions for logging are on the first page of this topic too.

0. It however doesn't say that it is on the same partition as the "games" folder. This is what tripped me up.

1. Actually it just says it "locks up after AV logo". I elaborated stating that it seems to not be able to load anything after the title screen music. If it truely locked up then it wouldn't have been able to play the entire song in the first place. This makes me believe that it's actually not locking up at all but instead is just in a weird state of not being able to load data to actually do anything.

I did read the compatibility list, hence what I said about F-Zero GX. Also I don't own a USB Gecko so I cannot provide any logs unfortunately.

 

[Maxternal]

I don't own a USB Gecko so I cannot provide any logs unfortunately.

If you want, there are instructions here (also linked to on the first post )
http://gbatemp.net/t...ost__p__4312061
to use the WiFi connection to get logs instead, if you have THAT available.

EDIT : *ahem*

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

If you want, there are instructions here (also linked to on the first post )
http://gbatemp.net/t...ost__p__4312061
to use the WiFi connection to get logs instead, if you have THAT available.

Ohhh, I see. I interpreted "wifi logging" as, well, logging the GCN modem emulation, not normal Devolution logging VIA wifi!

But even then, what is there for me to log? The F-Zero GX thing has already been logged and the Midway Arcade Treasures 3 thing was due to being a modified ISO...

EDIT: WAIT A MINUTE! I just noticed that it says r128 on the wiki. I wonder if F-Zero GX is actually working (slightly) better than before and nobody had tested it with a newer revision. I'll definitely have to look into that then.

EDIT 2: And what the crap, nobody logged TimeSplitters: Future Perfect? Blasphemy!

EDIT 3: The simplist and most basic suggestion ever for tueidj - could you make the 'short description' in the XML file just say "GameCube Loader"? The title already says "Devolution", so isn't saying "Devolution GameCube Loader" redundant? Also could you have the version number in the XML be the revision number, like r142?

EDIT 4: Regarding Wifi logging, it may be a good idea to specify "Netcat for Windows", since the first result on Google for "Netcat" is purely a Linux-based thing.

EDIT 5: Great, now I can't even get Netcat to work. After launching nc.exe via the command line I typed in the command tueidj mentioned (nc -l -p 64444 -u) and it looks like it accepts it as a valid command, but I keep getting the following:

nc: forward host lookup failed: h_errno 11001: HOST_NOT_FOUND

 

[thevoiceover]

It means the disc verification is messed up somewhere for this game, cause FIX94 just gave me the rev I tested it working in (r128) and the disc verified fine....somewhere disc verification in r135 and r142 is messed up for this game I'm afraid to say, only thing I can think of.....

I noticed this on a title also, worked fine before hand (disc is a little scratched though) but doesn't work at all on r135 and above.

" EDIT: WAIT A MINUTE! I just noticed that it says r128 on the wiki. I wonder if F-Zero GX is actually working (slightly) better than before and nobody had tested it with a newer revision. I'll definitely have to look into that then.

EDIT 4: Regarding Wifi logging, it may be a good idea to specify "Netcat for Windows", since the first result on Google for "Netcat" is purely a Linux-based thing. "

I can't tell you I'm pretty sure the F-Zero still will have issues until he finds a feasible way a round whats affecting these games (I think the triage tab on wiki was added for these, and looks like is being used.)

As for Wifi logging, this app has been (and ported from Linux) primarily used with people in BSD/DARWIN and other Linux environments for YEARS and I figure if people can't get it working it is not his issue and he isn't here to troubleshoot that. It is funny how it always seems to be the "windows" users who has issues with it. In other words, you don't need just windows or USB Gecko to log with Devolution.

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

It is funny how it always seems to be the "windows" users who has issues with it. In other words, you don't need just windows or USB Gecko to log with Devolution.

Did you ever think we use Windows because we cannot handle a command line? I in particular have a horrible time remembering abstract things in general, which causes me a great deal of issues with not just text-based computer things like coding and command lines but with actual foreign language learning as well. That doesn't make me a crappy computer-user however; in fact I've been surprised time and time again by the things other people didn't know about computer-related things even though they knew Linux commands or coding or some other seemingly high-level computer geekery.

And besides, how was I supposed to know that I'm not supposed to ask for help? It's not like other users are having trouble with various other things related to Devolution (oh wait). If this is one of those Linux communities that think "if you can't compile a kernal, then you don't belong here" then I don't even want to be a part of this.

 

[NJ7]

It means the disc verification is messed up somewhere for this game, cause FIX94 just gave me the rev I tested it working in (r128) and the disc verified fine....somewhere disc verification in r135 and r142 is messed up for this game I'm afraid to say, only thing I can think of.....

I noticed this on a title also, worked fine before hand (disc is a little scratched though) but doesn't work at all on r135 and above.

What game?