Making The World Ends With You work on VC injection

[BlazeHeatnix]

If you look at TWEWY in the compatibility list for VC injections, it's broken, as the game freezes after the first battle. This isn't just a quirk with the Wii U's emulator, though; it's an anti-piracy measure that's also been experienced on older flashcarts and emulators. If we look back at old forum posts, we can see two methods people have of getting around this.

The first method involves using a save file from after the crash in order to bypass it. It IS possible to import a .sav file from an emulator to make it work on Wii U, but AFAIK this method would not work unless you managed to get far enough to save in the first place, which you can't until after the tutorial. You can't import restore points, either. I'd like to be wrong, though, so if someone can come up with a properly converted save file, let me know.

The second method is that, supposedly, if you open and close the DS lid repeatedly right as it's about to crash, OR simulate closing the lid on an emulator, you can bypass the crash. Since VC DS games support a "fold_on_pause" argument, where opening the VC menu with ZR folds the lid (used in Phantom Hourglass, which TWEWY is injected into), this method should theoretically be possible. However, I tried this several times and was unsuccessful. I was able to get past the white screen to the following area, but the game still crashed before any dialogue came up. Maybe the "fold_on_pause_timeout" or "fold_on_resume_fade_from_black_duration" values could be altered to help this, but I've given up (mostly because my finger got tired).

Has anyone else looked into this? Because I'm out of ideas.

 

[samedifference]

Why not just modify the game itself to remove the copy protection?

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

Why not just modify the game itself to remove the copy protection?

If that were easy to do, it would've been done 15 years ago. It's one of those "holy grail" bugs for DS games, and it has something to do with memory timings, similar to FF3.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

but AFAIK this method would not work unless you managed to get far enough to save in the first place,

I'm not entirely certain this is true. I believe if you manually create the directory structure of the game and then place the proper file in place to inject, SaveMii should detect it. I believe it'll throw a warning but shouldn't outright fail.

I did some save file inject/extract tests a while ago, and had a few games where I would wipe all the save data for the entry and then inject, and it seemed to work. Not 1:1 with never having saved, ever, but reasonably speaking, it's plausible.

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

I'm not entirely certain this is true. I believe if you manually create the directory structure of the game and then place the proper file in place to inject, SaveMii should detect it. I believe it'll throw a warning but shouldn't outright fail.

I did some save file inject/extract tests a while ago, and had a few games where I would wipe all the save data for the entry and then inject, and it seemed to work. Not 1:1 with never having saved, ever, but reasonably speaking, it's plausible.

This might be true, but how would you know what to name the directory and filename without an original save?

Incidentally, some people report that the Japanese version does not have this crash, and while that may be true on flashcarts and emulators, it is not true on Wii U, where the same thing happens.

EDIT: At least one person seems to have done the save-swapping method, on the UWUVCI Discord. They never posted how, though.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

This might be true, but how would you know what to name the directory and filename without an original save?

Incidentally, some people report that the Japanese version does not have this crash, and while that may be true on flashcarts and emulators, it is not true on Wii U, where the same thing happens.

EDIT: At least one person seems to have done the save-swapping method, on the UWUVCI Discord. They never posted how, though.

Presumably you'd look at other NDS save files and see if you can't derive their save structure and mimic it. I imagine there's probably some level of information online.

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

So it turns out that SaveMii is able to make a directory and backup without an actual save. I don't know if having first launched the game or having a restore point makes a difference, but still...I was eventually able to import a save for Day 2. Things were looking good. Unfortunately, once again, the game froze after the first battle.

This means this is not the same anti-piracy problem that emulators deal with, and it being in the same location is just a coincidence. The Wii U simply can't play the game, and it can't be circumvented. I'll at least document this on the wiki.

 

[KeinesR]

Have you tried NooDS?

 

[BlazeHeatnix]

Have you tried NooDS?

Yes, and it doesn't run any DS games worth a damn. VC injection is the only way you're going to play any DS game with any modicum of speed.

 

[Memes1921]

I haven't played that game, but I'm pretty sure you don't have to do anything special to carry over a save file from an emulator (or TWiLight Menu++ if you're on a 3DS/DSi) to the Wii U VC emulator that has progress past that crash. I use an FTP client to carry over my save file to do this, since it's more easier for me to carry over files from my PC to my Wii U without taking the SD card on the fly.

So,

1. Have a Wii U VC save file created already (In this case, you don't NEED to save in-game, just have a suspend point or restore point created in the emulator to find the name of the save file).

2. Connect to your Wii U through an FTP client with a PC.

2a. If your save file is on the NAND, go to "/storage_mlc/usr/save/00050002/TITLEID/user/80000001" (I think the last number on the last folder can vary if you have other users with different save files)
2b. If your save file is on an USB storage device, go to "/storage_usb/usr/save/00050002/TITLEID/user/80000001"

3. On the folder, you should see 3 or 4 things (I'm pretty sure all of these files, except the "once" file, have the same name):
3a. "once", should be empty in size (?).
3b. "ROMID.save", the VC Injection's save.
3c. "ROMID.conf", the screen layout setting (?).
3d. "ROMID_0.state", the VC Injection's suspend point. You have to delete this file in order for the save to work, otherwise, it will be overwritten by the old save (you can also get rid of this file by turning off the Wii U while in-game).
Side note: If you have a restore point created in the emulator, there can be 2 "ROMID.state" files with 2 .png files. If you want to keep your restore point intact, just delete the .state file that ends with "_0" (although the restore point will overwrite your new save file if loaded).

4. Rename your original .sav file to the .save (Wii U VC Injection) file's name and replace.
4a. Example: "Sonic Colors (USA) (En,Ja,Fr,De,Es,It).sav" to "SONICCOLORSBXSE8P_0123456789012345678901234567890123456789_0.save"

I already tested this with Sonic Colors DS and it works.