Hacking Loading homebrew from the USB Launcher

[Mrmatch]

I want to know if its possible to create (or be liked to) homebrew iso's that will work on the USB loader channel (or preloader dol). If the hbc has one then i assume that it can be done (i rememebr a hackmii post from a while ago which was something to do with it...)
anyone tried this?
I want to end up with preloader just booting into a usb launcher and there are a couple of apps that i use (geexbox/mplayer ce etc) abd would like to have on there

thanks for any help

 

[idane]

This is possible (although not convenient). You can replace the executable within an existing Wii image file, and then trucha signing it - effectively creating a disc image that contains the desired code (I'm guessing that this is the way that the HBC iso file was created).

This method isn't too straight forward, but it should work, and thus you will have your homebrew as image files.

There are 2 problems, though:
1. Each game has a unique ID, so I believe that if you inject a game (e.g. wii sport) with the code, you won't be able to have the same game on the HDD.

2. The image file will take as much space on the drive as the original game, even though non of the data will actually be used.

This pretty much covers this method. If there's a way to create an entirely new iso with a unique identifier - I don't know about it.

What would really be cool would be if we could have a hybrid channel with 2 listings - one of the WBFS partition and another of a FAT32 partition. That way we'd have a listing of all games in one list, and with the press of a button, switch to a list of homebrew apps located on the fat partition.

 

[Dteyn]

idane: Cool idea! What if you used WiiScrubber 1.4 to extract the entire game partition (of like Wii Sports or Wii Play for example), then replace the main.dol with the homebrew app, and also delete most of the game data files. Then pack it into a game partition using WiiScrubber 1.4, the end result should be a smaller ISO file with just the main.dol (and some other small files on it), instead of all the (now) useless game data.

The idea being that if you're replacing the main.dol for homebrew purposes, then perhaps you could remove the rest of the game files as well to end up with a super-small game partition containing the homebrew app. Then that could be installed in WBFS and would take up a very small amount of space.

Also I think the latest version of WiiScrubber lets you edit partition.bin... if not there is another app (Partition.bin changer) that allows one to change the game ID. Perhaps this would allow one to mod the Wii Sports disc with a different title ID, so Wii Sports could still be used as an actual game?

I think there's a legal template ISO out there (to go with WiiScrubber 1.4 to make multi-game images), perhaps using that as a starting basis would be better than modifying Wii Sports.

I dunno, just brainstorming... I like this idea, and I'm sure others like the OP would find it useful to be able to run homebrew in the USB Loader.