disadvantages to using USB Loader GX to load gamecube games

leejaclane

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Generally I think there are a lot more advantages to using a loader as a frontend for Nintendont -- that's the use case Nintendont was designed for as well. Using USB Loader GX as a frontend allows you to easily download and view the boxart for all the games, retitle games, search games, categorize games, sort games by the number of players supported, and most importantly it allows you to save settings individually for all the games.
 

ber71

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Plus, if you have many games, nintendont takes forever to load the list, which is cached in ulgx.
 

N7Kopper

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One other advantage is the ability to seamlessly use Devolution or DIOS MIOS as a loader for certain edge cases. (Devolution handles Pac-Man Vs. way better than Nintendont for example) No Swiss support at this time, though. Swiss would likely also need to support a Wii loader sending a "load ISO" command to it via cMIOS.
Exfat is supported if using Nintendont directly without gx, but it's a stretch calling that a disadvantage when ppl generally use fat32 anyway
That could be fixed in USBLGX, but that program's pushing memory limits and would need refactoring to allow for loading stuff whilst running.
 

Jayro

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The main disadvantage is that it's USB Loader GX, and not the superior CFG Loader. It's ugly as sin with hardly any features, and tries to hard to be the stock Wii system menu while coming off as a cheap Chinese knock-off.
 

a-problem

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The main disadvantage is that it's USB Loader GX, and not the superior CFG Loader. It's ugly as sin with hardly any features, and tries to hard to be the stock Wii system menu while coming off as a cheap Chinese knock-off.
Personally I prefer ULGX because it isn't old and broken software. However, if you like the way CFG does things, it's better you make the jump to Wiiflow Lite.
 

XFlak

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CFG is in the process of playing catch up with a lot of the latest features added to other loaders, so if you stuck it out this long, maybe wait a bit longer before giving up on the idea of seeing new features finally added to it too.

That being said, currently GX is generally the leader of the big 3 loaders in terms of functionality cuz of blackb0x's efforts to integrate new features and other improvements, with perhaps some hiccups (for now) in terms of fat32 usb thumb drive compatibility and sd card loading, but I hope to see those get resolved in the not too distant future. And whatever other improvements get added to gx may find their way into the other loaders too since they're all open source. So basically you should be all set for most things (if not right now then soon) regardless of what loader you choose, even cfg, assuming nitro continues to integrate some of blackb0x's new stuff. This is why regardless of what loader you prefer you gotta love all of them. It's like android vs apple, while I prefer android I'm glad they've both got competition to push them to new heights and maybe copy some of the best features from each other... monopolies aren't good for innovation after all.

These days WFL and CFG are made better cuz of gx (not to discount the work done by fledge which obviously was also a big contributing factor), and back 10 years ago or so perhaps it was oggzee/cfg leading the charge in terms of new functionality/development.

The main disadvantage is that it's USB Loader GX, and not the superior CFG Loader. It's ugly as sin with hardly any features, and tries to hard to be the stock Wii system menu while coming off as a cheap Chinese knock-off.
sorry but I gotta disagree, you can argue you prefer the UI of other loaders over gx, but u can't deny gx has been a leader in terms of functionality/development the last few years. Even if you don't like it, no need to be so disrespectful and dump on it so hard. As someone who still occasionally uses cfg usb loader I'm grateful nitro has picked up development, but props still go to gx/blackb0x for pioneering so many of the features that are finding their way into all of the big 3 loaders

Edit: also, while I agree that the default gx theme might be dated and underwhelming to some, it's totally themable
 
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leejaclane

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GX doesn't like it when I try to force NTSC for some GameCube games that Nintendont has no issues with, so that's one drawback. WiiFlow Lite doesn't seem to have the same issue either, it's specific to GX. When playing Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory with video mode forced to NTSC in GX (to remove the GameCube deflicker filter), the game can hang the first time you switch to night vision goggles. It's probably an edge case, and I think it wasn't 100% consistent when I was testing it, but it is a drawback to using GX as a frontend.

I'm not even completely sure if Chaos Theory has the deflicker filter on at 480p in the first place though, I wasn't paying that much attention and the game looks pretty bad visually no matter what, anyone looking to play it is better off playing the PC or Xbox version since those will not only look better but are also just generally better versions of the game, I only still have the GameCube version because that's how I played it as a kid.
 

leejaclane

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Just to correct my earlier post about Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, I got that one to work with forcing NTSC to remove deflicker by setting it to Force NTSC480p in USB Loader GX instead of just Force NTSC.

I've been having hard to troubleshoot issues with USB Loader GX but it suddenly started working fine for me, only to stop working again (only on certain games and in certain ways) after swapping between different HDDs -- no settings or anything else was changed at all. I think the issue is the splitter cable I'm using, since the HDD itself has no problems anywhere else and it only stopped working after having unplugged the HDD and plugged it back in (while the console was off, of course, not hot swapping it). So it's possible Force NTSC would also work because I had thought I had tried Force NTSC480p before as well with the game still freezing when using night vision.

Anyway, whatever the cause of the issues, WiiFlow Lite is somehow unaffected for me for the same games (mostly Wii games, not Nintendont). I ordered another cable so assuming it's functional it will either fix my issue or rule out the cable as the problem. Either way, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory seems like an edge case for games behaving slightly differently between Nintendont and USB Loader GX, and it only happens when trying to force a video mode. So it still works well as a frontend for Nintendont.
 

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