Hacking House of the Dead Overkill USB loader problem

[Nera]

Okay i already posted this on the game help forum, but since i didn't get a lot of replies i'll try it again here:

I'm having some trouble with House of the Dead overkill(PAL) on Wii: The first 5 stages went fine, but in the 6th stage zombies seem to skip around, I checked the compatability list and i found this:" Works perfectly and without lags when IOS is patched to 249. Otherwise Zombies skip around sometimes; Didn't help me, but changing HDD spindown time with hdparm did. Works perfectly now. " Okay so since i patched the IOS to 249 the only other option is to chenge the spindown time of my HDD...the only problem is that i don't know how to use hdparm, and i wanna be sure that it's safe... can someone please explain me how it works? and will it have any affect on my other games? will they load slower? because all my other game run fine.
btw: I have a Western Digital: My passport essential... and i use USB loader 1.1

Thanks in advance, Nera

(someone said to update to usb loader 1.5 but that requires the cIOSrev 10, and i heard that might give some problems with the preloader0.29, is this right?)

 

[micric100]

you should read the WD Passport spindown thread with how to use hdpalm and playing with the spindown shouldn't screw up any other games. Also, i havent had any problems with cios rev 10 or usb loader 1.5, and i havent heard of any preloader 0.29 problems with it, but i suggest that if everything works fine and ur happy then don't change anything.

 

[Tagg7]

cIOS rev10 should work fine with preloader 0.29. As the above guy says, it's likely to do with your hard drive going to sleep.

 

[imapterodactyl]

Okay i already posted this on the game help forum, but since i didn't get a lot of replies i'll try it again here:

I'm having some trouble with House of the Dead overkill(PAL) on Wii: The first 5 stages went fine, but in the 6th stage zombies seem to skip around, I checked the compatability list and i found this:" Works perfectly and without lags when IOS is patched to 249. Otherwise Zombies skip around sometimes; Didn't help me, but changing HDD spindown time with hdparm did. Works perfectly now. " Okay so since i patched the IOS to 249 the only other option is to chenge the spindown time of my HDD...the only problem is that i don't know how to use hdparm, and i wanna be sure that it's safe... can someone please explain me how it works? and will it have any affect on my other games? will they load slower? because all my other game run fine.
btw: I have a Western Digital: My passport essential... and i use USB loader 1.1

Thanks in advance, Nera

(someone said to update to usb loader 1.5 but that requires the cIOSrev 10, and i heard that might give some problems with the preloader0.29, is this right?)

I'v never heard of any problems between Preloader .29 and cIOSrev10, and I'm using that combination myself with no issues.

Somebody seems to have fixed your Overkill problem by switching IOS via USBLoader GUI by dimok, nixxx, cyrex, et al. Here's the post:
http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=149...p;#entry1943023

Just grab the latest compiled version you can find (I grab MAFIA's, as he uploads both the dol and wad in one rar file). Start at the end of the thread to and work back... I'm currently using r192.

Hope this solves your problem. I'd test it, but I haven't copied Overkill over to WBFS yet.

As for hdparm, it shouldn't have any adverse effect on your other games at all. All you're doing is changing the spindown time... the amount of time before the drive stops spinning. You're just keeping the drive from automatically 'going to sleep'. Unfortunately, you have to crack open your enclosure to run the program.

 

[phrozenfeonix]

I've played through the entire game on my ntsc wii, so i'm not sure if it's quite related.

I use IOS36 Rev 10, with wiishizzza's ultimate loader.

Game runs flawless, and there are some zombies that are intended to strafe side to side, very very fast, in case you're referring to something like that...

 

[jono@home]

I've played through the entire game on my ntsc wii, so i'm not sure if it's quite related.

I use IOS36 Rev 10, with wiishizzza's ultimate loader.

Game runs flawless, and there are some zombies that are intended to strafe side to side, very very fast, in case you're referring to something like that...


that some of the skipping yes.. I have run the game with IOS36 Rev 10 with the same loader and it has skipped all over the place. The spindown fix works.. The game actually runs better than when playing from CD.. no serious slowdown either.. I guess though it depends on how your hard Drive is set up initially.

I recommend peeps with HDD to perform the following tasks to get the best performance from your Harddrive with USBloader.. I have seen a significant improvement with resource hogging games with these tweaks.


How to.. with hd parm... (make sure your hard drive is connected to the computer properly, USB does not work so it may involve pulling your external apart, which usually is not too difficult, without damaging the casing)

download hdparm.. (get the windows version if you run windows... google it easy to find)

install it..

open command prompt and goto the directory hdparm is installed

First we are going to turn off the Advanced Power Management feature (spindown whilst idle), if the drive supports it. A low value means aggressive power management and a high value means better performance. A value of 255 will disable apm on the drive)

type the following:

hdparm -B255 hdx (x refers to the number of the PHYSICAL drive, if it is your 2nd drive connected to your PC it will be b)

Secondly we are going to disable the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. Drives that spindown after a short period of inactivity are known to cause issues with games, such a black screens and crashing. This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar. A value of zero means "timeouts are disabled": the device will not automatically enter standby mode. Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, yielding timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes. Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, yielding timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours. A value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes. A value of 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout period between 8 and 12 hours, and the value 254 is reserved. 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds. Note that some older drives may have very different interpretations of these values.


CODEtype the following:

hdparm -S0 hdx (x refers to the number of the PHYSICAL drive, if it is your 2nd drive connected to your PC it will be b)

NOTE: hdparm commands are CASE SENSITIVE.. Type it as you see it...


done hth

jono

 

[TeenTin]

QUOTE(jono@home @ Apr 29 2009, 01:49 AM)

I've played through the entire game on my ntsc wii, so i'm not sure if it's quite related.

I use IOS36 Rev 10, with wiishizzza's ultimate loader.

Game runs flawless, and there are some zombies that are intended to strafe side to side, very very fast, in case you're referring to something like that...


that some of the skipping yes.. I have run the game with IOS36 Rev 10 with the same loader and it has skipped all over the place. The spindown fix works.. The game actually runs better than when playing from CD.. no serious slowdown either.. I guess though it depends on how your hard Drive is set up initially.

I recommend peeps with HDD to perform the following tasks to get the best performance from your Harddrive with USBloader.. I have seen a significant improvement with resource hogging games with these tweaks.


How to.. with hd parm... (make sure your hard drive is connected to the computer properly, USB does not work so it may involve pulling your external apart, which usually is not too difficult, without damaging the casing)

download hdparm.. (get the windows version if you run windows... google it easy to find)

install it..

open command prompt and goto the directory hdparm is installed

First we are going to turn off the Advanced Power Management feature (spindown whilst idle), if the drive supports it. A low value means aggressive power management and a high value means better performance. A value of 255 will disable apm on the drive)

type the following:

hdparm -B255 hdx (x refers to the number of the PHYSICAL drive, if it is your 2nd drive connected to your PC it will be b)

Secondly we are going to disable the standby (spindown) timeout for the drive. Drives that spindown after a short period of inactivity are known to cause issues with games, such a black screens and crashing. This value is used by the drive to determine how long to wait (with no disk activity) before turning off the spindle motor to save power. Under such circumstances, the drive may take as long as 30 seconds to respond to a subsequent disk access, though most drives are much quicker. The encoding of the timeout value is somewhat peculiar. A value of zero means "timeouts are disabled": the device will not automatically enter standby mode. Values from 1 to 240 specify multiples of 5 seconds, yielding timeouts from 5 seconds to 20 minutes. Values from 241 to 251 specify from 1 to 11 units of 30 minutes, yielding timeouts from 30 minutes to 5.5 hours. A value of 252 signifies a timeout of 21 minutes. A value of 253 sets a vendor-defined timeout period between 8 and 12 hours, and the value 254 is reserved. 255 is interpreted as 21 minutes plus 15 seconds. Note that some older drives may have very different interpretations of these values.

type the following:

hdparm -S0 hdx (x refers to the number of the PHYSICAL drive, if it is your 2nd drive connected to your PC it will be b)

NOTE: hdparm commands are CASE SENSITIVE.. Type it as you see it...


done hth

jono

Does hdparm work for ALL brands of USB HD ?

 

[jono@home]

Does hdparm work for ALL brands of USB HD ?

it does not work via usb...

you have to connect the drive as you would normally to the PC, Generally speaking Hdparm supports a wide variety of drives. It just depends on whether your drive supports advance power management/ power management features. If it does then you need to perform these tricks..

CODEfor info on your hard drive in hdparm type the following;

hdparm -I hdx (x refers to the number of the PHYSICAL drive, if it is your 2nd drive connected to your PC it will be b)

 

[vettacossx]

mine works perfectly (hotd) on a wd book but i also patched it to IOS249 so maybe thats why?

used waninkoko's iospatcher

 

[doyama]

I also had this issue but it seems to have resolved itself. Here is what I did

1) Put in an original game into DVD drive
2) Using wiishizzza's ultimate loader set the region to be 'game default'

That combination seemed to help resolve the jumping around issues. It's best seen when using 'extra zombies' in the jail level right at the beginning.

Also I am using an unpatched version of the game.

 

[Raziel5000]

Do the Zombies Skip Gayly? Because my zombies are fine.

Adv. 1. gayly - in a joyous manner; "they shouted happily"
blithely, happily, jubilantly, merrily, mirthfully

 

[raptir]

From what I've read, patching shouldn't do anything for use with the USB Loader. I had a couple issues with HotD when I was using 1.1, but I haven't had any since upgrading to 1.5. Using a Western Digital Elements 640GB. I haven't done the HDParm hack because I don't want to void my warranty just yet.

And I installed cIOS rev10 after installing Preloader 0.29 and I haven't had any issues with either of them. When it comes back up, go to the wiki about USB loaders. Find one that has the Lopst (or something like that) fix, it fixes the hard drive spindown issue.

http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/index.php/USB_Loader_Releases