Hacking Devolution - Public Release

[Hozu]

Probably a stupid question, but for 2 disc games, I have to verify them both, yes? Also, what's the naming convention for both 1 and 2 disc games with USB loader GX?

Edit: I'm guessing this is the convention, with the folder name containing the game ID...

 

[ntpsq]

What's better SCHTHACK or Sylverant (for PSO online)?

 

[Etheboss]

What's better SCHTHACK or Sylverant (for PSO online)?

I lol'd, i think you need to open a new thread for that, but i would not be surprised is someone will know and answer anyway.

 

[OriginalHamster]

Probably a stupid question, but for 2 disc games, I have to verify them both, yes? Also, what's the naming convention for both 1 and 2 disc games with USB loader GX?

Edit: I'm guessing this is the convention, with the folder name containing the game ID...

Yep, game.iso (disc 1), disc2.iso (disc 2)
Same folder

EDIT: As Maxternal mentioned, you only need verify disc 1.

 

[Maxternal]

Probably a stupid question, but for 2 disc games, I have to verify them both?

I don't think so. I think the first verification works with both disks if they actually go together. Obviously, if the 2nd disk image ISN'T really the disc 2 to go along with the disc 1 you verified it with, it should be able to detect that and will reject the second disk image when you try to play it.

 

[Etheboss]

I don't think so. I think the first verification works with both disks if they actually go together. Obviously, if the 2nd disk image ISN'T really the disc 2 to go along with the disc 1 you verified it with, it should be able to detect that and will reject the second disk image when you try to play it.

Indeed, no need to verify the second disk...

 

[alienjiz420]

I couldn't help but notice the "GBA connectivity to a GBA emulator via TCP/IP" under things that may be included in the future. Does anyone know the status of this? It would be AWESOME to use GBA emulators on smart phones to play stuff like Four Swords Adventures or Pacman Vs so that you don't need to buy so much equipment. Although the GBA emulator on the phone would also need support for TCP/IP somehow.

 

[GameFreakDude]

Words! Why? Because words.

I recently gave my Wii to my sister, who's finally moved into her new apartment, in favour of using my Wii U for Wii games and an old modded Wii from a friend for GC games. He got it for cheap, but didn't know it was hardware-modded (WiiKey chip I think), or that the games he was given with it were illegally burned; quite despicable practice. He discovered much to his dismay that it can't read dual-layered discs like Brawl, and bought a new Wii later. Now that I have a new console I knew I had to re-verify all my GC discs in Devolution; out of curiosity I checked to see if it had been updated (never felt the need before - games all worked just fine) and now there's bluetooth support, Wii U support, and a widescreen hack! Amazing.

Wii U support isn't so useful to me (though I have one, I have no plans to hack the vWii now). The bluetooth support is welcome, since I only have one GC controller now (gave my sister two), and I have a Classic Controller (Pro, unfortunately) kicking around. I wish it'd be possible to use a Wiimote/Nunchuk; though unorthodox for most things, it'd be okay for Melee using a control scheme like Brawl. Does a Wii U Pro Controller work with Devolution on a Wii?? I'd guess not - not that I really plan to get one anyway, since it'd be a terrible GC controller replacement without analogue triggers (why the hell do none of your controllers have analogue triggers anymore, Nintendo????). On the topic of using the Wii U Gamepad for input (which I'd wager has been asked in this thread a bunch of times), judging by the way the Wii U interacts with the Gamepad in vWii mode (or rather, doesn't interact with it at all), it's impossible to do, unless someone somehow manages to access that wireless chip in vWii mode (hey, it worked for CPU cores), as well as modify the Gamepad's firmware. The Gamepad's vWii mode in its firmware does nothing except decode and display the video stream from the Wii U, turn on its two IR LEDs, and display overlays on the screen if you try to use any buttons (telling you you can't use the Gamepad to control Wii software, or that the power button won't turn off the Wii U).

The widescreen hack is very welcome; none of the GC games I have support widescreen natively, which has always been a pain. Now I don't need to switch my plasma into 4:3 anymore to keep the aspect ratio intact and have to deal with those big grey borders on the sides. The widescreen hack works surprisingly well for the most part; naturally the games weren't built around it, so objects at the sides of the screen outside of the 4:3 field of view often disappear. Skies or backgrounds in Melee don't always really work outside of the 4:3 window either, but characters and things still seem to render in the outer sections. Paper Mario TTYD seems to have no problems, including objects disappearing. Whether or not HUD elements or menus and things are scaled with everything else seems to change from one game to the next, but it's not a dealbreaker for anything. Pikmin 2 manages to scale all menus and HUD elements, but for some reason, two extra bubbles are drawn on top of the Olimar/Louie icons during gameplay, a bit to the left, and only in widescreen. Weird! I don't mind having the HUD drawn in the 4:3 area instead of being unscaled on the left/right sides of the screen; Pikmin 2's HUD isn't really that intrusive in the first place. The widescreen hack does nothing with Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Sonic Heroes, or The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition. LoZ:CE isn't so surprising; it probably does a lot of weird stuff to emulate the N64 games in the first place, but OoT/MM in widescreen would've been cool. Sonic Heroes is only somewhat surprising; it'd be more inaccurate to say that game has a lot of programming failures, but rather that it has very few programming successes. Sonic Heroes also remains the only game to have bitching loading times in Devolution; it takes a good whole minute just for the team selection screen to show up, and loading actual levels takes even longer. Christ. The only one that really confuses me is Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life doing nothing with the widescreen hack, but I don't think I'll ever play that one anyway. Probably just gonna let my sister take that one, since she's the only one who ever played it. Four Swords Adventures is at my sister's house right now, so I can't verify that yet to see if widescreen hilariously breaks it or if it even works at all.

This is my first time trying out memory card emulation since my sister has our memory card now too, and it seems to work perfectly well with the raw backup I made. Doesn't resize it to 16MB for some reason, but it's not a problem at all. I've decided to try out wiimm's wit to compress my ISOs for use with Devolution, by means of wit copy --trunc, but the only game it removed more than a couple of bytes from is Four Swords Adventures (down to only 254 MB!), and I haven't verified that it actually works yet. Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong or if it's just not possible to compress most of my ISOs that way. Shame Devolution doesn't support NTFS either, otherwise I might've been able to save space by using sparse files. Devolution sometimes needs me to put the disc back in one or two times before it actually verifies it; maybe that's because of the modded drive, but frankly I'm thankful it works with the modded drive at all.

Couple of questions for the regulars in this thread. Has anyone recompiled Devolution to use widescreen and/or direct button mapping by default? Direct button mapping might be nice, and it's annoying to bring out a Wiimote and CCPro just to switch it to widescreen. If not, I can always try to muck around with compiling C code again; haven't done that for a long time now. Games don't ask to use progressive scan mode like they used to in previous versions of Devolution - does Devolution now handle this automatically somehow? I can't actually check with my TV if it's outputting 480i or 480p.

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

Does a Wii U Pro Controller work with Devolution on a Wii?? I'd guess not

It actually does work, and AFAIK is the only software on a normal Wii that can even use a Wii U Pro Controller. Also FYI, a PS3 controller works as well - check out the readme.txt in the apps/gc_devo folder for more info.

Sonic Heroes also remains the only game to have bitching loading times in Devolution; it takes a good whole minute just for the team selection screen to show up, and loading actual levels takes even longer. Christ.

Bloody nora mate, I'd hate to think how long they take in native GameCube mode...

The only one that really confuses me is Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life doing nothing with the widescreen hack, but I don't think I'll ever play that one anyway.

Not unheard of, Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike does the exact same thing - the widescreen hack does absolutely nothing.

This is my first time trying out memory card emulation since my sister has our memory card now too, and it seems to work perfectly well with the raw backup I made. Doesn't resize it to 16MB for some reason, but it's not a problem at all.

Take a look at section Part 4b: Upgrading to a Bigger Memory Card in the following guide for Devolution:
http://www.wiihacks.com/other-faq-g...evolution-usb-loading-gamecube-games-wii.html

I've decided to try out wiimm's wit to compress my ISOs for use with Devolution, by means of wit copy --trunc, but the only game it removed more than a couple of bytes from is Four Swords Adventures (down to only 254 MB!), and I haven't verified that it actually works yet. Not sure if I'm doing anything wrong or if it's just not possible to compress most of my ISOs that way.

It only works with some games, and Four Swords Adventures in indeed one of those games that works. Take a look at the following compatibility wiki for Devolution to see if a specific game is known to work with ISO compression:
http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/Devolution_Compatibility_List

Note that I'm pretty much the only person that has been adding those notes regarding if a game works in Devolution with ISO compression; I'd greatly appreciate it if you could help out and add notes to any other games that you know to work in Devolution with ISO compression. Please however do not add notes saying that a game does not work with ISO compression - this is because ISO compression is no officially supported in Devolution. I don't think the creator of Devolution would appreciate filling the wiki with a bunch of notes saying that a game doesn't work with something that isn't officially supported anyway.

Has anyone recompiled Devolution to use widescreen and/or direct button mapping by default? Direct button mapping might be nice, and it's annoying to bring out a Wiimote and CCPro just to switch it to widescreen.

Most of us don't use the sample loader but actually use Devolution via a separate dedicated USB loader, and these loaders contain the options you're looking for. Take a gander at that Devolution guide again, but this time pay attention to Part 3: Picking a Loader (the creator of Devolution recommends either USB Loader GX or WiiFlow):
http://www.wiihacks.com/other-faq-g...evolution-usb-loading-gamecube-games-wii.html

Games don't ask to use progressive scan mode like they used to in previous versions of Devolution - does Devolution now handle this automatically somehow? I can't actually check with my TV if it's outputting 480i or 480p.

Try holding down the B button when a GameCube game is first booting up. Now AFAIK the component outputs on my Wii are shorted out, so I've never successfully used progressive output, but from my knowledge holding the B button down allows you to select whether to use progressive scan or not.

 

[GameFreakDude]

It actually does work, and AFAIK is the only software on a normal Wii that can even use a Wii U Pro Controller. Also FYI, a PS3 controller works as well - check out the readme.txt in the apps/gc_devo folder for more info.

Wow, that's pretty insane; I was under the impression that the Wii's bluetooth chip wasn't able to communicate with Pro Controllers.

Bloody nora mate, I'd hate to think how long they take in native GameCube mode...

Funny thing is it loads just fine on a real GC; it just seems to hate Devolution with a passion.

Note that I'm pretty much the only person that has been adding those notes regarding if a game works in Devolution with ISO compression; I'd greatly appreciate it if you could help out and add notes to any other games that you know to work in Devolution with ISO compression.

I would, if any of my games except Four Swords Adventures actually worked. Not that I don't plan on expanding my GC collection, though - Super Monkey Ball 2, F-Zero GX, Luigi's Mansion, Viewtiful Joe, Eternal Darkness... Someday.

Most of us don't use the sample loader but actually use Devolution via a separate dedicated USB loader, and these loaders contain the options you're looking for. Take a gander at that Devolution guide again, but this time pay attention to Part 3: Picking a Loader (the creator of Devolution recommends either USB Loader GX or WiiFlow):
http://www.wiihacks.com/other-faq-g...evolution-usb-loading-gamecube-games-wii.html

I noticed CFG Loader had a less than friendly comment in the source code, so I'm gonna steer quite clear of that one; probably gonna try USB Loader GX later, whenever my family stops using the TV for Netflix. Funny how I got a Wii U in part for second-screen gaming and now they use it for Netflix all the time...
Thanks for your input!

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

Funny thing is it loads just fine on a real GC; it just seems to hate Devolution with a passion.

Well nobody else has mentioned such an issue before when talking about Sonic Heroes... perhaps your ISO for that game is heavily fragmented? I personally recommend using Defraggler and doing a "quick defrag" which will do the job without actually defragging the entire drive (you an even specify to quick defrag only an individual file).

F-Zero GX

That reminds me, don't be a derp and enable the widescreen hack for games that already have their own built-in widescreen setting, like F-Zero GX. Sometime within the last year or so there was a guy on here that was using the widescreen hack on F-Zero GX because he had no idea that the game had an option for it.

I've also seen screenshots of F-Zero GX in Dolphin where people were using Dolphin's widescreen hack rather than the built-in widescreen mode...

 

[SuperrSonic]

Sonic Heroes is fine, I did a quick check and it took me 11 secs to load a stage...
This game however, does have a texture issue and some enemy attacks do not show up.
The hint marker has squares instead of circles and the texture in them is all garbled.

When I boot a game that supports 480p, I automatically get the option without pressing any buttons.

 

[GameFreakDude]

Well nobody else has mentioned such an issue before when talking about Sonic Heroes... perhaps your ISO for that game is heavily fragmented? I personally recommend using Defraggler and doing a "quick defrag" which will do the job without actually defragging the entire drive (you an even specify to quick defrag only an individual file).

Well, it's technically not a drive since it's just on an SD. Defraggler froze when I told it to defragment the file anyway.

That reminds me, don't be a derp and enable the widescreen hack for games that already have their own built-in widescreen setting, like F-Zero GX. Sometime within the last year or so there was a guy on here that was using the widescreen hack on F-Zero GX because he had no idea that the game had an option for it.

I've also seen screenshots of F-Zero GX in Dolphin where people were using Dolphin's widescreen hack rather than the built-in widescreen mode...

Oh that's awful; yeah no I looked up all my GC games to confirm none of them have a native widescreen setting before using it in Devo.

Sonic Heroes is fine, I did a quick check and it took me 11 secs to load a stage...
This game however, does have a texture issue and some enemy attacks do not show up.
The hint marker has squares instead of circles and the texture in them is all garbled.

When I boot a game that supports 480p, I automatically get the option without pressing any buttons.

I double-checked and the ISO's hash is verified by redump.org, so that shouldn't be the issue either. I... After trying out Sonic Heroes from the system menu like normal, suddenly it doesn't have any loading issues in Devolution anymore (aside from the texture issues); it even asked if I wanted to use progressive scan mode. In fact, all my games just started asking for it. Why this???? I guess I shouldn't complain since it actually works properly now, somehow.
Started trying out USB Loader GX afterward, seems to be working well. Need to figure out some things still, like how to make it stop complaining about there being no USB device every time I start it up. All I've got is this 8 GB SD, isn't that good enough for you??!

 

[panmusic]

And don't forget evryone the analog triggers issue that makes Luigi's Mansion completely unplayable!

P.S I patiently await the next revision that fixes the analog triggers issue (for launch games).Thank you tueidj for all your hard work!

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

Well, it's technically not a drive since it's just on an SD.

Windows sees it as a drive though.

But I just said "drive" because that was the most generic term I could think of that applied to sd cards, usb flash drives, and usb hard drives.

Defraggler froze when I told it to defragment the file anyway.

I have NEVER heard of this happening, and it's never happened to me as well. You sure it just wasn't taking a long time?

After trying out Sonic Heroes from the system menu like normal, suddenly it doesn't have any loading issues in Devolution anymore (aside from the texture issues); it even asked if I wanted to use progressive scan mode. In fact, all my games just started asking for it. Why this????

Well I guess Defraggler did something after all. Perhaps consider running checkdisk on your SD card? Also you could try manually backing up your SD card's data and then re-formatting the SD card to the largest available cluster size. Note that this will require re-verifying your GameCube games in Devolution however...

Einstein said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Therefore I like to joke that Einstein clearly never used computers.

 

[GameFreakDude]

Yeah, Defraggler went all frosty white on me. Probably doesn't like the super old SD card reader built-in to my computer. Most things don't. Before and after it froze it told me the ISO was in 3 fragments, and it still didn't work in Devo after I tried to use it, only after I booted it from the system menu. Gonna refrain from reformatting my whole SD.
Einstein is probably better off never having lived in a world with DLL hell.

 

[Maxternal]

have you tried the defrag utility build into windows? (it's definitely not the greatest but I'd say at least worth a shot)

 

[drakorex]

I would like to know why it is that after verifying games on my own gen1 wii, and using my SD,HDD,and controllers on somebody else's gen1 wii, it wants me to verify the games again.

 

[GameFreakDude]

Devolution's verification files are tied to your storage device as well as your Wii console. You cannot use verification files generated for one Wii console on another Wii console.
edit: oh, duh, except that they changed how verification works since I lasted used Devo

 

[TeconMoon]

Devolution's verification files are tied to your storage device as well as your Wii console. You cannot use verification files generated for one Wii console on another Wii console.

Unless you use the same Wii Remote on the new console that you used when you verified the old console.