Hacking Excited about the new breakthrough on banners by PaRaDoX?

[xdeadxpoolx]

Hmmm, that banner.tpl is the savegame image, not the channel one. Check the savegame, and it might have the modified image.

thanks for the info. maybe you can redirect me to the right path then? and + i don't know Spanish, so all this was through trial and error.

 

[jayparadox]

Sure. Banners are the 00.app, so start unpacking there and checking the files.
I'm sure you'll know how to get round it all

 

[xdeadxpoolx]

much appreciated.

 

[teq]

See Jay, was that so hard?

Thanks deadpool.

 

[jayparadox]

See Jay, was that so hard?

Thanks deadpool.

No, it wasn't that hard.
This guy has shown that he really knows what he's talking about, so I help him to get a bit further.

I can't really explain in detail how to do all these things. Not because I don't want to, but because I'm absolutely no good at explaining things and making tutorials.
Some people are good at making giant posts, and others aren't so good. Sorry.

 

[HowardC]

See Jay, was that so hard?

Thanks deadpool.

No, it wasn't that hard.
This guy has shown that he really knows what he's talking about, so I help him to get a bit further.

I can't really explain in detail how to do all these things. Not because I don't want to, but because I'm absolutely no good at explaining things and making tutorials.
Some people are good at making giant posts, and others aren't so good. Sorry.

So you just assumed everyone on this board was too stupid to understand anything you would post? Thanks a lot man, I'm really feeling the love now.

Pretty sure I made a reply in one of the earlier banner posts that if you were to point me towards which files needed edited and the best way to extract them then I could probably cobble together a tool fairly quickly. Unfortunately I don't have time anymore and I'm guessing by the time I can get back to it somebody else will have already done it. I'll take a look in a few weeks though.

 

[neonix]

Interesting, thanks for that info deadpool, I learned a little from it.

To JP, I encourage you to try to type whatever info you can, even if it's just scattered bits of info, I'm sure plenty of people will be able to make sense of it, and of those people, someone can make a giant post with everything in laymen terms. (Don't take this the wrong way, I don't mean it to sound like begging or demanding, just encouragement).

 

[xdeadxpoolx]

so after 3 hours.... I'm just stuck here with the banner.bin icon.bin and so forth, i understand that these are LZ77 compressed U8 archives, but how to decompress them, i tried using some tools i found for GBA games, doesn't turn anything useful out though. anyone have any ideas? Jay, anymore help?

 

[neonix]

so after 3 hours.... I'm just stuck here with the banner.bin icon.bin and so forth, i understand that these are LZ77 compressed U8 archives, but how to decompress them, i tried using some tools i found for GBA games, doesn't turn anything useful out though. anyone have any ideas? Jay, anymore help?

Haha, I took the same route, but I wasn't expecting them to actually work properly. I would have been searching into this a lot more already, but I have a stupid paper to write and I'm going back and forth between it and this little project. >.

 

[Rykin]

so after 3 hours.... I'm just stuck here with the banner.bin icon.bin and so forth, i understand that these are LZ77 compressed U8 archives, but how to decompress them, i tried using some tools i found for GBA games, doesn't turn anything useful out though. anyone have any ideas? Jay, anymore help?

Take a look at this post on Wiibrew.

http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=LZ77

It has a script for decrypting L7ZZ

 

[neonix]

so after 3 hours.... I'm just stuck here with the banner.bin icon.bin and so forth, i understand that these are LZ77 compressed U8 archives, but how to decompress them, i tried using some tools i found for GBA games, doesn't turn anything useful out though. anyone have any ideas? Jay, anymore help?

Take a look at this post on Wiibrew.

http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=LZ77

It has a script for decrypting L7ZZ

Gah, never used python before and I don't seem to be using it properly. Looking into it though. Thanks for that link.

EDIT: Hm, I seem to be doing everything right, but this script yields and error, unexpected indent on line 3, I edited it and removed the indentation, but it yields a new error. I doubt the script is bad, I must be missing something, I am a newb to python, so maybe an experienced user can do it with much more ease, and explain my problem as well.

 

[xdeadxpoolx]

so after 3 hours.... I'm just stuck here with the banner.bin icon.bin and so forth, i understand that these are LZ77 compressed U8 archives, but how to decompress them, i tried using some tools i found for GBA games, doesn't turn anything useful out though. anyone have any ideas? Jay, anymore help?

Take a look at this post on Wiibrew.

http://wiibrew.org/index.php?title=LZ77

It has a script for decrypting L7ZZ

Gah, never used python before and I don't seem to be using it properly. Looking into it though. Thanks for that link.

EDIT: Hm, I seem to be doing everything right, but this script yields and error, unexpected indent on line 3, I edited it and removed the indentation, but it yields a new error. I doubt the script is bad, I must be missing something, I am a newb to python, so maybe an experienced user can do it with much more ease, and explain my problem as well.

same problem

 

[death69inc]

Paradox
its real easy to say you are not good at making a tut instead of not wanting to either case its not out
and all lights are on you

from the 1st banner you released and said you was going to share your info after you where done playing a game.... then came on asking about what we thought about your banners and saying you where not going to release info but asked people for release lists you where going to make banners for channels and had NOOOOO plans on releasing the info because you wanted to release banners your self and stay in the light

I tested your smash bothers it was nice to see it working but no wish to use any others till info is released. As I look at it as supporting your withholding of info.
People dont want your light we just want to do things that at the moment we cant and for some knowing someone out there knows and is sticking there tounge out at us when asked to share in the rom/game scene I think it is wrong shrugs

 

[narunet]

I've been hackin' away at this thing forever. I know a bit of python and the script looks sound, but the damn thing wont actually let me extract the banner.bin. I'm pretty sure that the files are LZ77 compressed, because many sources say they do, but it still doesn't work. jayparadox, can you give me a bit of info on how you extracted the files from the banner.bin I don't need a full blown tutorial, I'm not an idiot at this stuff I just need a bit of help here 'cause I'm stumped. ;/

 

[Jacobeian]

well i guess ill sprinkle my findings here since everyone is bickering at eachother, ill start some ppl off and may you guys can help me finish

1. Get u8tool (friggin google it)
2. Get tplx (google it also, takes a little poking around but its out there)
3. I used DKC2 since thats what 99% of injected roms use, so Unpack DKC2 with wadunpacker
4. open u8extr in the top box open the 00000005.app, click "extraer" it will automatically make the output dir and dump the file
5.in here is the banner.tpl and also the emanual file (haven't touched that yet) copy the banner.tpl file to the same directory you have tplx in
6. pull up a command prompt point it to the folder your working in and type tplx banner.tpl, it will extract 5 texture files (.tga) these can be opened in gimp or psp
heres where i stop, ya there small files i suspect the file format has something to do with the way they are handled (expanded and what not on VC screen)
what ive tried from here and was unsuccessful at is this:
edited the .tga files for a diff game, (didnt know what to use here) repacked them into a .tpl with u8pack, replaced old banner.tpl with new one, used u8pack again to repack the whole output folder as 00000005.app, repack the wad and tried to install, got an error code (could be because it was DKC2 that i already have on the wii) BUT i didnt try again beacuse !! AFTER THE WII BEING ON FOR A FEW MINS IT GAVE ME A "Some system files are corrupt" ERROR MSG !! but has been fine since then, no problems and no error again. enjoy

Thanks for participating, this is exactly how everyone should do

But, the problem I see with this method (which is probably also what Jayparadox is doing) is that you are only "patching" an existing banner instead of creating a new one, which mean you are limited to the original type of the files included in the "hacked" channel banner

A betterway would be to start from scratch (or at least, from a clean 00000000.app file, i.e the one extracted from a homebrew channl with no sound/icon/...), using the description provided here, here and here

Basically, the structure of the 000.app file is like this:

1/ we have a fully described IMET header followed by a MD5 sum (I still need to know on what this sum apllies ?)

2/ then we have a U8 archive header which indicates the number of files included in the banner (first homebrew channel had 0) and that need to be modified CORRECTLY to tell the number of files (normally, 3: banner.bin, icon.bin & sound.bin) as well as correct offsets & sizes attributes (correct me if I'm wrong but I think that is what JayParadox do no touch and which limit you to use similar files to patch in, or to look for many different hacked "nintendo" channels when you want to use bigger resolution pictures or sound)

3/finally, at the above offsets, you have others U8 archives with a IMD5 header (need to figure out this header, is it only a MD5 sum or more ?), compressed with LZ77 this time. Each U8 archive contains some files, as described in the opening.bnr section, so you have to configure the U8 headers with offsets/size properly again...

4/once you have your modified 0000000.app file, you can repack everything into a wad using WadTool (this is where I'm missing some infos too, is this tool working if we modify the size/content of the first .app file, I guess the encryption/signature stuff that come with any wad need to be done properly)

Regarding picture editing, you will need the leaked Nintendo Image Converter Tool to convert your own .tga pictures into TPL format files that could then be put in the icon.bin and banner.bin U8 archives. You also need to modify the scripts that come with this program in the official devkit, this way you can also configure image resolution you want and many other things like texture format, for example to use transparency effects. Obviously, this tool and the scripts are copyrighted, this is illegal to use them or to distribute them here but as you can guess, the sourcecode is provided in the devkit examples so maybe someone coulds code his own tool

Apparently, for sound.bin, you can simply use a .WAV file so this is cool, we all know how it has to look like


Note that this is purely theorical and based on the informations generously provided on wiibrew and Magicus's tool to parse into banner file


QUOTEI can't really explain in detail how to do all these things. Not because I don't want to, but because I'm absolutely no good at explaining things and making tutorials.
Some people are good at making giant posts, and others aren't so good. Sorry.

and here's what I think: you are just quite satisfied with the current situation, you are the only one releasing bannered channels, like it was the case with homebrew channels, before someone posted WadTool and a way for anybody to make his own channel (everyone deserve his moment of glory, that what you said nah ?

)
and let me extrapolate a little more: I think you know very well that you are not such a "genius" as many people are thinking here and that as soon as all the informations/tools you luckily got first, will become public, people will understand that what JayParadox was doing, quite anybody could have done the same thing, and that's why you want to take benefit of the situation as long as you can..

 

[sigma.nl]

Hey,

i've tried to modify the banner kind a way xdeadxpoolx did, I also used the U8tool to extract the banner.tpl
and the used these tools:

http://www.multiverseworks.com/tplconv/tplconv.0.4.rar to convert the tpl image to Png
then modified the file save it as a gif and converted it with a "gif to TPL" tool found on this site:
http://markgrass.the-horror.com/Vampyre/

I've packed the wad and installed it but the banner did'nt change I now now why because Jparadox said that de banner.tpl is
from the savegame (and I didn't checked that

) I deleted the wad and gave up.
But now I know where the channel banner is located I'll deffinitly give it another shot. the tools i used are commandline programs
so if it works then perhaps someone can write a GUI for it.

JPARADOX can you perhaps tell me / give an idea what happen when a new banner is bigger or smaller than the original file? It could be bricking my Wii
of course but is there a check for files sizes in the wad.

 

[Jacobeian]

then modified the file save it as a gif and converted it with a "gif to TPL" tool found on this site:
http://markgrass.the-horror.com/Vampyre/

this will NOT work, this tool is to convert into PS2 TPL format, which is certainly no the same thing as the NGC/Wii TPL texture format which is described here
http://hitmen.c02.at/files/yagcd/yagcd/chap15.html#sec15.35

Having two files with the same extension does not mean they are the same format (simply do a google search for "TPL file" and see how many applications use these)

As you can see, it's easy to convert a BMP or a PNG file into one of the texture format (RGB565 for example), I think you even do not need to use the illegal converter from nintendo, the following parameters:

4 wrap s
4 wrap t
4 min filter
4 mag filter
4 lod bias (float value)
1 edge lod
1 min lod
1 max lod

are known stuff, very well documlented in the devkit documention, a little less in libogc



QUOTE

JPARADOX can you perhaps tell me / give an idea what happen when a new banner is bigger or smaller than the original file? It could be bricking my Wii
of course but is there a check for files sizes in the wad.

maybe there is a size limit for the texture, there also some restrictions mentionned in the official devkit documentation (I think height & width must be a multiple of 4)
finally, you have to modify each U8 headers to take care of the new size & offset parameters
again, everything is described on wiibrew and a tool has been made by Magicus which clearly explain how a banner is structured and where all files are going

 

[jayparadox]

well i guess ill sprinkle my findings here since everyone is bickering at eachother, ill start some ppl off and may you guys can help me finish

1. Get u8tool (friggin google it)
2. Get tplx (google it also, takes a little poking around but its out there)
3. I used DKC2 since thats what 99% of injected roms use, so Unpack DKC2 with wadunpacker
4. open u8extr in the top box open the 00000005.app, click "extraer" it will automatically make the output dir and dump the file
5.in here is the banner.tpl and also the emanual file (haven't touched that yet) copy the banner.tpl file to the same directory you have tplx in
6. pull up a command prompt point it to the folder your working in and type tplx banner.tpl, it will extract 5 texture files (.tga) these can be opened in gimp or psp
heres where i stop, ya there small files i suspect the file format has something to do with the way they are handled (expanded and what not on VC screen)
what ive tried from here and was unsuccessful at is this:
edited the .tga files for a diff game, (didnt know what to use here) repacked them into a .tpl with u8pack, replaced old banner.tpl with new one, used u8pack again to repack the whole output folder as 00000005.app, repack the wad and tried to install, got an error code (could be because it was DKC2 that i already have on the wii) BUT i didnt try again beacuse !! AFTER THE WII BEING ON FOR A FEW MINS IT GAVE ME A "Some system files are corrupt" ERROR MSG !! but has been fine since then, no problems and no error again. enjoy

Thanks for participating, this is exactly how everyone should do

But, the problem I see with this method (which is probably also what Jayparadox is doing) is that you are only "patching" an existing banner instead of creating a new one, which mean you are limited to the original type of the files included in the "hacked" channel banner

A betterway would be to start from scratch (or at least, from a clean 00000000.app file, i.e the one extracted from a homebrew channl with no sound/icon/...), using the description provided here, here and here

Basically, the structure of the 000.app file is like this:

1/ we have a fully described IMET header followed by a MD5 sum (I still need to know on what this sum apllies ?)

2/ then we have a U8 archive header which indicates the number of files included in the banner (first homebrew channel had 0) and that need to be modified CORRECTLY to tell the number of files (normally, 3: banner.bin, icon.bin & sound.bin) as well as correct offsets & sizes attributes (correct me if I'm wrong but I think that is what JayParadox do no touch and which limit you to use similar files to patch in, or to look for many different hacked "nintendo" channels when you want to use bigger resolution pictures or sound)

3/finally, at the above offsets, you have others U8 archives with a IMD5 header (need to figure out this header, is it only a MD5 sum or more ?), compressed with LZ77 this time. Each U8 archive contains some files, as described in the opening.bnr section, so you have to configure the U8 headers with offsets/size properly again...

4/once you have your modified 0000000.app file, you can repack everything into a wad using WadTool (this is where I'm missing some infos too, is this tool working if we modify the size/content of the first .app file, I guess the encryption/signature stuff that come with any wad need to be done properly)

Regarding picture editing, you will need the leaked Nintendo Image Converter Tool to convert your own .tga pictures into TPL format files that could then be put in the icon.bin and banner.bin U8 archives. You also need to modify the scripts that come with this program in the official devkit, this way you can also configure image resolution you want and many other things like texture format, for example to use transparency effects. Obviously, this tool and the scripts are copyrighted, this is illegal to use them or to distribute them here but as you can guess, the sourcecode is provided in the devkit examples so maybe someone coulds code his own tool

Apparently, for sound.bin, you can simply use a .WAV file so this is cool, we all know how it has to look like


Note that this is purely theorical and based on the informations generously provided on wiibrew and Magicus's tool to parse into banner file


QUOTEI can't really explain in detail how to do all these things. Not because I don't want to, but because I'm absolutely no good at explaining things and making tutorials.
Some people are good at making giant posts, and others aren't so good. Sorry.

and here's what I think: you are just quite satisfied with the current situation, you are the only one releasing bannered channels, like it was the case with homebrew channels, before someone posted WadTool and a way for anybody to make his own channel (everyone deserve his moment of glory, that what you said nah ?

)
and let me extrapolate a little more: I think you know very well that you are not such a "genius" as many people are thinking here and that as soon as all the informations/tools you luckily got first, will become public, people will understand that what JayParadox was doing, quite anybody could have done the same thing, and that's why you want to take benefit of the situation as long as you can..

Excellent post, I admit. If I'm no wrong, I wold say it's all correct. Just add some things to it, like the MD5 you aren't really sure about:

The IMET MD5 is 600bytes up starting at the end of the MD5(blanked out to 00's).
The IMD5 is a MD5 starting at the LZ77, U8 or BNS, and the size is specified in the 4bytes after the IMD5 tag.


The last thing you have said... not 100% with you on that.
Sure, there are people a lot smarter than me(maybe

), but I've got all these tools alone, all the info alone, and help from no one(not like with the WADPacker that marcan gave me).
Also, once all these banners I'm doing are finished, I'll start investigating deeper into the BRLYT & BRLAN to make my own banners from zero ^^

PD: I think you could help if I ever make a tutorial

 

[sigma.nl]

Jacobeian: Thnx for the info

i'm glad I didn't brick my Wii

 

[Jacobeian]

Sure, there are people a lot smarter than me(maybe tongue.gif), but I've got all these tools alone, all the info alone, and help from no one(not like with the WADPacker that marcan gave me).
Also, once all these banners I'm doing are finished, I'll start investigating deeper into the BRLYT & BRLAN to make my own banners from zero ^^

excuse me again, but this is bullshit
who coded the program you are using ? who put the informations on wiibrew about file strutures ? certainly not you, since I'm sure you haven't any coding talent (or you will arleady had coded something to speed up your task instead of doing everything manually with hexeditor)

I don't say you are bad because you don't have coding talent,that is sometime a quality, just telling you to show a little more respect to the precursors who gave you all what you need and at least, follow the same spirit by sharing the informations you PERSONALLY discover

btw, thanks you for your "tips" , seems like you are not so "close-minded" that you seem at first look