How to quickly find a game or homebrew on the Wii U's file system?

[meeeow]

Hey,

I have following use case: sometimes, I would like to change some stuff of homebrews / injected VCs that are installed to the Wii U's NAND or USB. For example, changing the name, game icon, boot screen, adding screen layouts for NDS games...

Is there a convenient method to get a human readable list of installed games located in e.g. "/storage_usb/usr/title/0005*" ?

 

[Lostbhoy]

Unfortunately..... Nope. We all should have took note of the title ids before we installed them as I have found myself in the same situation and i done it the hard way...... Looked through every folder till i found the game in question!!!

It would be good if we could dump that info but I dont really see how its possible to read within the title id folder so you would just be left with a file of title ids that are available anyway when ftp'ing. Maybe googling them after that??

One option that is a maybe.... If you can check the manual in game it will have the WUP id which can then be googled to find the game title id however this obviously doesn't work on custom injects or homebrew.

 

[meeeow]

Looked through every folder till i found the game in question!!!

yeah, well, that IS annoying... I did the same for looking up homebrews installed on NAND which worked out 'cause my NAND is kinda clean. But browsing through the USB HDD is tedious. Now, the plan is to temporarily move a game/VC from USB to NAND to find it more quickly...

If you can check the manual in game it will have the WUP id which can then be googled to find the game title id

good to know. Thank you!

edit:
well, a little script could crawl through the directories and extract the meta data from the xml files. Maybe, I gonna feel forced to write such a script sooner or (probably) later.

 

[Lostbhoy]

well, a little script could crawl through the directories and extract the meta data from the xml files. Maybe, I gonna feel forced to write such a script sooner or (probably) later.

Of course! I totally forgot about the xml.... I'm having a 'mare today lol

That's interesting, if you decide to try one out let us know. I agree it would be a great tool to have as I have a few icons and things that could do with a wee polish but yeah, I gave up trawling!

 

[godreborn]

easiest way is to look up the title id on wiiu brew. all of that stuff is in the meta folders of each game, game icon and name. the background for nds games may be in a config file. I know you can change the resolution with that config file, which is for nds games. I've never looked at it though. be careful with the icon. if you mess up the save settings, you'll get a question mark tile and the game won't boot.

 

[tastymeatball]

You could also just visit https://wiiubrew.org/wiki/Title_database press Ctrl+F on your keyboard (or open the search function of your browser the way to like it best) and search for your title

 

[godreborn]

I'm not sure if you need to change both short and long names in the meta.xml for the game name, but you probably should. if it's homebrew you need the title id of, look for it in the ticket via hex. it will be around the midway point, and there will be four bytes at the end of one line, and four bytes at the beginning of the next for high/low ids.

 

[godreborn]

I don't think my friend, @Laf111 , will mind, but here's an example of the title id in the ticket from a wup install:

 

[MikaDubbz]

For this, SaveMii Mod is your best friend, especially for tracking down the title ID of your random injects and whatnot that you otherwise would not be able to track down online. Just launch the homebrew, wait for it to load all your games installed to the device, select the title you're curious about, and write down the title ID it spits back out at you.

 

[Lostbhoy]

For this, SaveMii Mod is your best friend, especially for tracking down the title ID of your random injects and whatnot that you otherwise would not be able to track down online. Just launch the homebrew, wait for it to load all your games installed to the device, select the title you're curious about, and write down the title ID it spits back out at you.

Ah, so does savemii mod list the game names then? That's kind of exactly what would help!

@godreborn... And anyone else really.... Regarding the icon ? symbols, I've always found exporting your tga files with photoshop saves them correctly. I do all my editing with paint dot net but that doesn't save them correctly.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Ah, so does savemii mod list the game names then? That's kind of exactly what would help!

Yup, it's very convenient when you need to find a particular game or inject or whatever's title ID. Can not tell you how many times I've used it for just that. In fact, I'm not sure I've ever used SaveMii Mod for its main intended use. Maybe I did once, but my main purpose for using the homebrew has always been finding installed title IDs.

 

[Laf111]

method to get a human readable list of installed games located in e.g. "/storage_usb/usr/title/0005*" ?

I do not have fully finished the work on Cemu2WiiU (a save manager using FTP) but if you clone the repository and launch scanWiiU.bat it will scan your Wii-U (you have to run WiiuFtpServer + B button to mount mlc path on your Wii-U) to create a csv file in .\WiiuFiles\Scans\%date%\gamesList.csv that with just few clicks will look like :

(So you can use excel filters to know which games are on mlc, usb, if it have update and or a dlc and saves detected)

EDIT : i replaced getWiiuOnlineFiles.bat in my initial post by scanWiiU.bat (getWiiuOnlineFiles calls scanWiiU)

 

[meeeow]

wow! Thank you for all the feedback!

I do not have fully finished the work on Cemu2WiiU (a save manager using FTP) but if you clone the repository and launch scanWiiU.bat it will scan your Wii-U (you have to run WiiuFtpServer + B button to mount mlc path on your Wii-U) to create a csv file in .\WiiuFiles\Scans\%date%\gamesList.csv that with just few clicks will look like :

That looks exactly like the planned output that I had in mind (using python on linux) , gonna test it (in a Windows virtual machine) as soon as possible (which might be in 3 month unfortunately).

For NUS content or self-made injections saved on regular computer, it still makes sense to write a script that crawls through the directories / ticket.tiks and extends the folder's name with the title ID.

 

[godreborn]

wow! Thank you for all the feedback!


That looks exactly like the planned output that I had in mind (using python on linux) , gonna test it (in a Windows virtual machine) as soon as possible (which might be in 3 month unfortunately).

For NUS content or self-made injections saved on regular computer, it still makes sense to write a script that crawls through the directories / ticket.tiks and extends the folder's name with the title ID.

the last thing, tik2sd does that, but it doesn't contain the names of the games, just ticket location and title id.

 

[Deleted member 571007]

If all you wanna do is edit things like the name / icon just use the title boot editor. It automatically fetches all installed software custom or not and lists both the 00050000 and 0005000e directories. It gives the title ID and name of the installed software(s) automatically and lets you convert any saved image (JPG, PNG) anything into a working Icon / boot screen without the need to change anything manually.

 

[Deleted member 571007]

If all you wanna do is edit things like the name / icon just use the title boot editor. It automatically fetches all installed software custom or not and lists both the 00050000 and 0005000e directories. It gives the title ID and name of the installed software(s) automatically and lets you convert any saved image (JPG, PNG) anything into a working Icon / boot screen without the need to change anything manually.

Not sure if I made this clear or not but it DOES work with custom injects / homebrew titles. I've used it to edit the homebrew launcher channel, NUSspli and RetroArch forwarder multiple times without needing to go through files manually.

 

[meeeow]

Thanks for the advice, I was not aware that title boot editor exists. I quickly tried it and it works (for MLC; have to figure out why it does not work for USB).

In any case: I am creating a bunch of icons for Wii injects that seem to be missing in UWUVCI but let UWUVCI do the cropping/scaling/format conversion; I gonna install the games and read the pictures from the directories and upload them in the corresponding thread here

edit:
in case I still have the inject as NUS package, opening title.tik with a hexeditor works pretty well, too

 

[Deleted member 571007]

Thanks for the advice, I was not aware that title boot editor exists. I quickly tried it and it works (for MLC; have to figure out why it does not work for USB).

In any case: I am creating a bunch of icons for Wii injects that seem to be missing in UWUVCI but let UWUVCI do the cropping/scaling/format conversion; I gonna install the games and read the pictures from the directories and upload them in the corresponding thread here

edit:
in case I still have the inject as NUS package, opening title.tik with a hexeditor works pretty well, too

This may not be the prettiest way to do so but for editing software stored on USB I just go the 00050000 / 0005000e and either look up the title ID of the game I have and go to said folder, or if it's custom go to the meta folder and download IconTex.tga and see what it is. Then I just save a .txt file with all my TitleIDs

Edit: If you have trouble finding TitleIDs there's the official TitleID database and I'm also hosting a mirror of Utik on GitHub if you need it.