Homebrew How Do I set up roms to run off a usb drive?

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong area or if this question has been answered before but I want to move all my roms to a usb drive. I've never ran anything off usb. Only sd or disc.

So I want to know, do I have to move both the emulator and the rom files or can I just move the rom files and leave the emulators on my sd card? Do I have to make an "apps" folder to put all the emulators in? Do I have to copy any other folders in the root of the sd card pertaining to their respective emulators? Thanks in advance!

I'm currently using these emulators:

Genplus GX
SNES9x GX (cover mod)
Mednafen
Atari2600

 

[ScreamingBeast]

You can just but them all in a folder called something like "roms" and load them easily from any of those emulator, the emu itself can stay on the SD card or you can move the whole thing to USB, your choice.

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

Ok thank you so much! Same for the cover mod for SNES9x? I also have snaps of all my Genplus roms.

 

[Hielkenator]

wii2600 is not able to load roms from usb.
In order to get them to even load you need 2 apps folders.
One on your sd and one on your USB.
In that apps folder copy the wii2600 files.
The folder structure cannot not be changed from it's default in wii2600

BTW: if I were you i'd check out RETROARCH.
It's a shell containing alomost every available emulator on Wii.
It also has some improvement over the original emulators, for instance the elimination of frameskipping while maintaining a full 60fps!

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

Ok so keep both on sd and usb. I take it I need to copy the wii2600 folder from the root of the sd to the root of the usb too?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong area or if this question has been answered before but I want to move all my roms to a usb drive. I've never ran anything off usb. Only sd or disc.

So I want to know, do I have to move both the emulator and the rom files or can I just move the rom files and leave the emulators on my sd card? Do I have to make an "apps" folder to put all the emulators in? Do I have to copy any other folders in the root of the sd card pertaining to their respective emulators? Thanks in advance!

I'm currently using these emulators:

Genplus GX
SNES9x GX (cover mod)
Mednafen
Atari2600

It's up to you, anything will work as long as the emulator is capable of loading from USB, all the recent ones should be.
You might consider using WiiFlow as an emulator frontend, it's rather nice for that. Or as said RetroArch but I didn't like the GUI of that at all. It's button controlled only, and the menus are basic and ugly. It needs a proper libwiigui based GUI like Snes9x GX, VBA GX etc. to be good.

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so! Yeah I don't really like the RetroArch gui that's why I just went with Mednafen. Aside from SNES9x and Genplus (I like that I can have all my Sega related stuff in one spot), I didn't want to have tons of emulators that catered to one specific console like most of the GX line (VBA, FCE Ultra, etc). Also Game Boy emulation on Mednafen just works better over Retroarch in my opinion. Although I do like that Retroarch supports Super Game Boy but it's not enough to keep me coming back. Also it supports Virtual Boy, Lynx, and Neo Geo Pocket which I actually use.

 

[mightymuffy]

Like The Real Jdbye said, if you're liking the idea of using covers (you did mention snes9xgx cover mod) then Wiiflow is highly recommended! Mastershoes supremely awesome cover collection sticky on this forum is perfect for full box covers, no need to see the [ugly] Retroarch etc gui, and it's easier to run Atari 2600 games off usb than the standalone emu! May suck up a bit of your spare time getting your rig set up on it, but it's more than worth it in the end - I haven't gone back to any standalone Wii emu since!

 

[Hielkenator]

RA emulation is the best on the Wii platform.
It's optimized to run WITHOUT ANY FRAME SKIPPING.
This translates in faster respons and better gameplay.
DO NOT LET THE GUI FOOL YOU GUYS.
NEOEO <ARCADE<SNES<NES<DOOM<QUAKE<PCE<PCEDC<GENESIS<SEGACD< CAPCOM PLAY SYSTEM 1 &2 !!!ETC<ETC
All under one single ( simple) GUI
Gameboy and GBA emulation is TONS better than any other solution on Wii.
They contain higly optimized versions of VBA and SNESGX.
For example it capable of running starfox at 60FPS WITHOUT FRAME SKIPPING.

The reason the gui is simple, is because of the fact that resources are being kept for perfect emulation of all systems.

Don't believe my word, just try it.
Or use Wiiflow with it's retroarch plugin if you WANT a pretty gui.

 

[Hielkenator]

Thank you! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so! Yeah I don't really like the RetroArch gui that's why I just went with Mednafen. Aside from SNES9x and Genplus (I like that I can have all my Sega related stuff in one spot), I didn't want to have tons of emulators that catered to one specific console like most of the GX line (VBA, FCE Ultra, etc). Also Game Boy emulation on Mednafen just works better over Retroarch in my opinion. Although I do like that Retroarch supports Super Game Boy but it's not enough to keep me coming back. Also it supports Virtual Boy, Lynx, and Neo Geo Pocket which I actually use.

Wiimednafen does not yet support the new motionplus controllers.
Also the genGX in Wiimednafen core is VERY outdated and cannot run game like Thunderforce IV full speed.

I have all my Roms in root of my USB in a folder called ROMS > folders ( named by system )
Is great this way and I know exaxtly were they are.
All full sets, so A LOT OF FILES.

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

Well to each their own. I'm just gonna continue to use Mednafen. Tomato, Tomatoe. I don't have a Motionplus controller anyway and I don't use Mednafen to play any Sega games so it doesn't affect me. I think you can add more cores to the Retroarch too but that seems like a little too much extra work for me.

As for Wiiflow I thought it was only for use with USB loader GX which both came bundled with whatever softmod I used when I modded my Wii. I don't own an external HDD so I canned em both never thinking twice about it. How long/difficult is it to set up?
I had a hell of a time just labeling my roms and covers for SNES9x. Some of the game info isn't shown for some games but I looked at that info.xml for the cover mod and I don't even want to try to modify that mess. Waaay too much text to go through. I don't understand how to add entries to it either. I wanted to add info for Star Fox 2 and a handful of others that don't have info but it's a daunting task I don't feel like delving into. As long as I can see a pretty picture for whatever game, that's fine enough for me. But if so many people swear by Wiiflow then I might have to give it a shot.

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

I have a lot of full sets too which is why I decided to move everything over to a usb instead of having it all on my sd card. All my Mednafen roms (NES, GB/GBC/GBA, Virtual Boy, NeoGeoPocket, Lynx,) took up 6+ gigs of space on the card (16g) itself.
It's hard to determine what full sets entails though. Do you mean every US rom? Do you mean every rom for every game ever created for that console? Does that include every translated rom? Hacked rom? Unreleased? Homebrew roms? etc.

 

[Hielkenator]

I have a lot of full sets too which is why I decided to move everything over to a usb instead of having it all on my sd card. All my Mednafen roms (NES, GB/GBC/GBA, Virtual Boy, NeoGeoPocket, Lynx,) took up 6+ gigs of space on the card (16g) itself.
It's hard to determine what full sets entails though. Do you mean every US rom? Do you mean every rom for every game ever created for that console? Does that include every translated rom? Hacked rom? Unreleased? Homebrew roms? etc.

Yes ALL dumped and or hacked translated rom out there.
I tend to keep things up to date also as every now and thennew hacks emerge in the scene.
I know it a bit overkill by means"of playing a game" but I got a lot of them in All in one pack a while ago.
Space is'nt really a problem with a 2TB hdd to be honest.
The PCE CD and SEGA CD games probably take up the most of space.
Some roms are very hard to find, so I try to keep them as safe a possible, wich means duplicating on other media etc.
If you ever come across a rom you cannot find, you know who to talk to, lol!

You have to understand that Retroarch "lends"the initial core of all seperate emulators.
There's not really a difference in that.
BUT RA does allow for some nifty updated code that can increase compatibilty on some problem games. Add that to the fact it emulates all games wiithout the use of frameksipping.

Wiiflow on his turn LENDS Retroarch to load roms on the fly.
In fact it loads the cores of RA to load the games.
So it's basicly the same also.
Wiiflow on the other hand is presenting itsself in a rather attractive gui to load ( ANY ) game.

I tried it a while ago, but you have to maintain a set structure for your roms wich I did;nt like.
I;m just like you : ALL ROMS IN ONE PLACE THAT CAN BE USED BY ALL EMULATORS

It can be done in Wiiflow, but it takes a lot of time to set up.
Basicily I went for the shortest path, BEST emulation just via the RA gui.
Offcourse I still use the standalone versions somtimes, heck I even did an official translation of Wiimednafen ( dutch ), I even contacter Raz0red to ask if he can update his port to utlilize the new Wiimotes...

With my setup I have acces to all roms by any emulator on Wii.

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

Yea it is A LOT of work. Even going through the images for the SNES9x cover mod I noticed a handful of games that I didn't have. Mostly Japanese titles. But I'm the type of person who likes to A) see if a translation has been done or B) see if it's playable even without knowing the native language. I never really bothered with hacked roms until I saw the image for LoZ: Parallel Worlds in there which is a pretty challenging game. It's like a Link to the Past version of Master Quest! I come from a breed of oldschoolers so it's more the whole nostalgia of being able to timewarp and play all those classic games that paved the way for modern gaming. I grew up during the Great Console Wars from a time long forgotten. I appreciate the value of retro games and am not so quick to just forget about them. I invested a small fortune in videogames.

I myself never owned a NES but I spent a lot of time over at friend's houses playing on their consoles. I begged my mom to get me a SNES for the first two christmases it was out. Once I did finally get one the only two games I owned for a while were Super Mario World (obviously) and Daffy Duck's Duck Dodgers but I spent all my allowance on renting videogames from Blockbuster back in the pinnacle of rental stores. I've owned three more since then. I owned two Sega Genesis consoles (Mega Drive v1 & v2) and a Game Gear. I had a Sega CD also. I owned every Game Boy from the old fat boy to the Game Boy Micro. I still play my old fatty DS because I never upgraded to any of the other incarnations. I had a PS1 and a 64 when they were still hot. I never owned a Dreamcast though. I owned a fatty PS2 and an XBox but never a Gamecube. I used to play Phantasy Star Online at a friends house alot. When they did the Resident Evil or Mario Party bundles they got one for my little brother. After that I kinda petered off the grid. I had a PSP but I bricked it. My dad has a PS3 and I play it sometimes but it's his so I don't mess with it much. I inherited his Wii because he never played it and it just sat there collecting dust for a long time. I had a Wii before that that was stolen from me.

Don't get me wrong RA is probably pretty good. I was gonna use it on my phone to play Cave Story when I saw they added the NXEngine but my phone sucks (Droid Froyo 2.2) and I can't seem to get BluezIME or any of the Wii Controller apps out there to work. But I have the Wiiware version of Cave Story so I can still get my fix plus my sceen is small so it kinda defeats the purpose anyway. I do have the Map demo gba rom Ravenworks sent to Pixel on there but it just sucks because it's more just a cave/level exploring demo so there isn't much going on there. I really wish he would've put out a full working version for gba before focusing his efforts on the DS version.

So if I start using wiiflow I'm gonna have to spend a lot of time relabeling everything I take it? I watched a video for it and liked what I saw. Only thing is the work involved to set it all up but it is a labor of love. Will it work for OpenBOR too? That's one I forgot to mention. I don't have a lot of games for that though because I haven't been able to find a decent file of games for it. I mainly got it for my Maplevania fix but there's a few others I play on occasion.

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

I know this is a little off topic but there's this program called Arcade County to create 8bit or 16bit games. I've been wanting to check out. I want to make a Megaman-esque game based on what goes on inside a computer game system. I was gonna make characters named Gig, RAM & ROM (twins), Tera, etc and you gotta fight enemies like Trojan, Worm, etc. to collect ISOs to reboot the Motherboard. Or something along those lines lol I just want to make something that feels original but retro at the same time. I don't want to use tile sets from any previous games either. I want to make everything from scratch.

Here's a video of what can be done with the program:
http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/kuq9yz/arcade-county-retro-dreams-trailer

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

Yeah I don't think Wiiflow is me. I've been trying to set up 4.1.3 but I keep having trouble. I'm missing box covers for Neogamma channel, SNES9X channel, and Genplus channel. I can't seem to get to any emulators other than SNES9X or Genplus and it only brings up Genesis. I don't really have a clue as to set everything up. I've been poking around trying to get it to work right but I'm starting to get a little frustrated. I got the advanced plugins and the source menu. I started looking at Abz Masterpiece pack but there's too much stuff and I really don't know what most of it is for.

 

[Duckuss_Maxximo]

If it's not too much to ask could someone possibly just send me their Wiiflow files somehow? Maybe I can just drop em on my sd card and go. Maybe if that would be ok.