Hacking NeoGamma R9 beta

[WiiPower]

Action Replay might be worth retesting now.

WiiGator's loader reserves 32 KB memory just before 0x81800000 when bootin Action Replay, but it only uses 8KB of it. NeoGamma only reserves 16 KB there. If Action Replay resets the value in memory that tells that there's 0x1800000-16KB avaiable memory, the chance is high that NeoGamma's plugin is overwritten, while WiiGator's plugin works, because data is written behind it.

If it works now, the compatiblity for games booted via Action Replay might be different:
- NeoGamma uses less memory -> maybe more games compatible
- NeoGamma tells the game the "correct" value of available memory -> this could get some games to work, but could also break games

PS: If it works now, it might be slow, because of a small bug it would use the forced reloader

 

[WiiPower]

Bump...

Could anybody please test Action Replay with the latest version?

Also, games that didn't boot at all with the high plugin before(didn't exit NeoGamma's loader screen), might work now with the high plugin.

 

[FIX94]

My Action Replay 1.14 backup doesn't work with beta 42, with or without patched MIOS. Beta 40 seems to work without patched MIOS, with it also doesn't work.

 

[WiiPower]

My Action Replay 1.14 backup doesn't work with beta 42, with or without patched MIOS. Beta 40 seems to work without patched MIOS, with it also doesn't work.

It's not supposed to work with patched MIOS, and patched MIOS wouldn't do anything for the actual game anyways.

Does beta 40 play games from Action Replay? What issue do you get with beta 42?

 

[FIX94]

My Action Replay 1.14 backup doesn't work with beta 42, with or without patched MIOS. Beta 40 seems to work without patched MIOS, with it also doesn't work.

It's not supposed to work with patched MIOS, and patched MIOS wouldn't do anything for the actual game anyways.

Does beta 40 play games from Action Replay? What issue do you get with beta 42?

With beta 40 and 41 I can play backup games from Action Replay. Beta 42 boots Action Replay, but I can't start games from it, blackscreen.

 

[WiiPower]

Could you please try Action Replay again with beta 43? I think i know which change made it incompatible again.

The audio 32K fix might fix games that need to be fstfixed(most likely because of shrinking them), like Ikaruga. This fix does not replace the audio status fix that Ikaruga needs.

 

[FIX94]

Could you please try Action Replay again with beta 43? I think i know which change made it incompatible again.

The audio 32K fix might fix games that need to be fstfixed(most likely because of shrinking them), like Ikaruga. This fix does not replace the audio status fix that Ikaruga needs.

Great work, Action Replay works now

 

[WiiPower]

Could you please try Action Replay again with beta 43? I think i know which change made it incompatible again.

The audio 32K fix might fix games that need to be fstfixed(most likely because of shrinking them), like Ikaruga. This fix does not replace the audio status fix that Ikaruga needs.

Great work, Action Replay works now

The best thing about that is that it is able to boot games on any disc now, game and AR on different multi game discs should work now.

 

[XICO2KX]

Just a quick question about one of the changelogs...

R9 beta 5 - > R9 beta 6
- Hide usb/sd loading option when using an IOS

Does this mean that if we only want to load backups from DVD-R's (not from SD/USB) we do not need any special cIOS installed (the official IOS are enough)?

If this is the case, that is great!

If not, what does that comment mean exactly?

And even in SD/USB mode, isn't there a way to load the game's main DOL inside the ISO and then in-memory patch the DVD_Read function calls to be replaced by something like SD/USB_Read (using only the original IOS)?

 

[WiiPower]

Just a quick question about one of the changelogs...

R9 beta 5 - > R9 beta 6
- Hide usb/sd loading option when using an IOS

Does this mean that if we only want to load backups from DVD-R's (not from SD/USB) we do not need any special cIOS installed (the official IOS are enough)?

If this is the case, that is great!

If not, what does that comment mean exactly?

And even in SD/USB mode, isn't there a way to load the game's main DOL inside the ISO and then in-memory patch the DVD_Read function calls to be replaced by something like SD/USB_Read (using only the original IOS)?

Nah, it's just hiding the usb options when they won't work anyways. When you run NeoGamma with an IOS, you can play retail discs, or backup discs if you have a modchip.

About that main.dol patching, that's how GC backup launching works. But i'm not capable of writing that for wii games, that's far beyond my skills. And i think it would be really hard to get a good compatibltiy out of it. Well you don't have much memory to play with, in fact only 6KB without getting into trouble. So you would need to reduce the game's available memory, which would causes serious issues.

 

[XICO2KX]

Thanks for the quick reply, WiiPower!

Nah, it's just hiding the usb options when they won't work anyways. When you run NeoGamma with an IOS, you can play retail discs, or backup discs if you have a modchip.
Oh, ok! I understand!

But even with that new HW_AHBPROT trick, a modchip is still needed for backups?

I though that it could (quoting the HackMii blog) "bypass IOS to access devices directly from the PPC, eliminating the need for any IOS patches"...

What about if we had a scrubbed and already decrypted backup disc? Would that work without a modchip?

QUOTE(WiiPower @ Aug 24 2010, 10:53 PM) About that main.dol patching, that's how GC backup launching works. But i'm not capable of writing that for wii games, that's far beyond my skills. And i think it would be really hard to get a good compatibltiy out of it. Well you don't have much memory to play with, in fact only 6KB without getting into trouble. So you would need to reduce the game's available memory, which would causes serious issues.

Wii is far more difficult to code than GC, I understand!

Still it would be really great if one day someone could do that kind of automatic memory patching!

Would it be easier if one could extract all the game data from the ISO, then offline-patching the game's DOL and then run it like a regular DOL from a homebrew app?

 

[FPSDars]

Hey, I get a 1208 disc ID error when I try playing No More Heroes 2 on Neogamma. I posted a thread, but haven't had much help.
http://gbatemp.net/t249839-no-more-heroes-2-error-1208

Could you guys help me out?

 

[WiiPower]

Thanks for the quick reply, WiiPower!

Nah, it's just hiding the usb options when they won't work anyways. When you run NeoGamma with an IOS, you can play retail discs, or backup discs if you have a modchip.

Oh, ok! I understand!

But even with that new HW_AHBPROT trick, a modchip is still needed for backups?

I though that it could (quoting the HackMii blog) "bypass IOS to access devices directly from the PPC, eliminating the need for any IOS patches"...

What about if we had a scrubbed and already decrypted backup disc? Would that work without a modchip?

[...]

Enabling DVD-R game reading in an IOS is not just changing 1 byte like the trucha patch, it's way more complicated. If the di module is shutdown, HW_AHBPROT might allow to overwrite the DI module with the patched one in memory => enable playing backup discs. The patch from usb reading is more complicated as it involves more modules. Maybe the on-the-fly IOS backup patch is easy, not sure, but i'm sure i won't do it, it will only make a lot of people(including TT) angry.

 

[cobleman]

Ok i have used the gbatemp search engine Tjcool intoduced me too.
And for the life of me i cant find a fix for NTSC U mysims racing storymode freeze after you speak to gabby?
Has neogamma got a patch for it?

 

[WiiPower]

Ok i have used the gbatemp search engine Tjcool intoduced me too.
And for the life of me i cant find a fix for NTSC U mysims racing storymode freeze after you speak to gabby?
Has neogamma got a patch for it?

That's a 002b game, right? Is your game scrubbed? Have you tried cIOSrev20? Have you tried it with all patches disabled? If the IOS the game wants untouched?

 

[cobleman]

Yes i tried rev20 base56 all patches disabled a standard ios and trucha enabled.
Just ripping disc to see if it was scrubbed.
P.S. it works fine in Sneek

 

[XICO2KX]

Enabling DVD-R game reading in an IOS is not just changing 1 byte like the trucha patch, it's way more complicated. If the di module is shutdown, HW_AHBPROT might allow to overwrite the DI module with the patched one in memory => enable playing backup discs. The patch from usb reading is more complicated as it involves more modules. Maybe the on-the-fly IOS backup patch is easy, not sure, but i'm sure i won't do it, it will only make a lot of people(including TT) angry.

Ok, I understand!

Who is TT and why would he be angry with that kind of patching, by the way?

 

[WiiPower]

Who did this in the compatiblity list?

Press B to Boot Game. Disc Swapping works with the Xi Loader. NTSC-U Game works with PAL Wiis. (NeoGammaR9B43/cIOS37v19 Note - if gameplay FMV is glitchy and/or audio is distorted/garbled, the following settings seem to work well : [Gamecube...] internal, [Force...] Disc, [Patch...] All, [Reloader] No+32K, [Backup...] Auto, [Audio...] No, [Patched...] Auto. These settings are based on a multi-disc burn @8x on a Sony AccuCORE 4.7GB DVD-R). Works on multi-game iso.

I want to clean this up. I'm not angry about this edit or whatever, i'm happy the list is updated. But i want to only mention relevant stuff there

- GC mode internal should be self-evident to be used when using NeoGamma
- Video modes don't need to be mentioned, except on import games forcing the video mode doesn't work, or needs patching, and then i would like something like "PAL version works in color on NTSC Wiis with force NTSC480i + video mode patch 'normal'" or "NTSC version doesn't work in PAL video mode, not even with video mode patches(red screen issue with RGB cables)"
- Patch video modes is only required on import games. And if import games work without it, in color(!), then patching only makes things worse.
- If the game doesn't do .dol/.elf loading, then turning off the reloader should give a tiny speed boost. But i wrote it to be as fast as possible. If you notice faster reading with disabled reloader, could you please do a benchmark with a stopwatch with and without reloader? (force reloader doesn't need to be tested for speed, i know it slows everything down)
- Auto settings: When a game needs a certain setting for one of those, i want to know that, and then it will be done automatically in the next NeoGamma revision. Currently the defaults are: Low plugin, no audio patches, no patched MIOS. Games that affected by auto settings are: Pokemon Box(high plugin), Ikaruga(both audio fixes) and Zelda WW NTSC(high plugin + patched MIOS). Oh and none of these 3 should affect the speed in any way.
- The audio fix settings are only relevant if the game really has streaming audio. Before commenting on this for a game, please wait for beta44, it will tell you if a game really has streaming audio

Oh, and if you want to increase the reading speed, then you can try to put the game closer to the outer edge of the disc. I think the random freeze issues in Baten Kaitos are only speed related(couldn't find ANYTHING by debugging). Because the current fix(fstfix t s g for 1st disc, fstfix t s f for 2nd disc) increases the speed: If the data is aligned(fstfix t), the backup plugin can do DMA transfers, which should be faster than reading sector by sector. And fstfix g, makes a 3 GB .iso of the game with the data near the end -> nearer to the outer edge of the disc. Oh and setting the reloader to forced makes the random issues in Baten Kaitos worse.
So if you have speed issues, try fstfix t s g for your game and/or put it as last game on the disc, i think this should do way more about the speed than reloader off or fast.

 

[WiiPower]

So beta 44 now only warns about missing audio if there are audio streams found on the disc. Oh and you might want to update to the "new" cMIOS, i removed the video code from its .dol loader, maybe that fixes the random crashes.

 

[Daileon]

Hi WiiPower, how are you?

Do you know of WiinnerTag? http://www.wiinnertag.com

I'm the creator of it, and I'm adapting various loaders to support it. The code needed is a library to support network, and a connection to the website before the launch of the game.

I want to know if you can consider to add this feature to the official NeoGamma versions. As of now, CFG Loader have already added support, and WiiFlow is evaluating it. I want to do the same with NeoGamma, and also USB Loader GX and also uLoader, that have been already modified, but not incorporated to the official sources.

Thanks!