Hacking Nintendont

[MikeyTaylorGaming]

You're welcome!
Hope you find a way to record which doesn't kill performance

Can always record from the WiiU using Nintendont for 1080p output... But it just doesn't look that great unfortunately. Now it's just a decision between 4:3 or 16:9 ratio XD

 

[ShadowOne333]

Can always record from the WiiU using Nintendont for 1080p output... But it just doesn't look that great unfortunately. Now it's just a decision between 4:3 or 16:9 ratio XD

Some games have a Widescreen option you can use.
It basically applies widescreen hacks to the games to make the models look properly even when in 16:9, instead of stretched models. Although not ALL games are compatible of course.
Try it with one of the Zelda's to notice the difference

 

[FIX94]

Hey there!
I follow your Youtube channel, I like your Glitch picnics

I actually do too

So my question is, will Nintendont ever support higher resolution scaling?

OK so for this we have to talk about what force widescreen and force progressive actually do from a technical standpoint. Force widescreen does not use a higher resolution to get it to display more but changes the internal apsect ratio floating point variable the game uses to then create the picture you are seeing on screen, essentially squishing the picture into that small 640x480 resolution which then gets stretched out on your TV.
Force progressive also does a relatively small change to the game, on gamecube and wii the difference between progressive and interlaced comes down to a variable within the video setup done by the system. So all really done to games which normally cant do progressive is change out that value before starting up the game.

Now everything after that point runs on the original GPU from the gamecube/wii, that GPU only has support for a resolution up to 480p at 60fps or 576p at 50fps, after that point every other setting will be invalid. On a wiiu they even kept the original GPU just to be able to display all of this, their new GPU uses a API called GX2 wheres the original one was GX on gamecube and wii, and that from at technical standpoint has nothing really to do anymore with that. Now if we would want to run nintendont in wiiu mode we would not just have to emulate GX graphics but pretty much everything else too because basically everything changed and nintendont itself would not be enough for that job anymore, you would have to think of a entirely different system.

 

[huma_dawii]

I actually do too


OK so for this we have to talk about what force widescreen and force progressive actually do from a technical standpoint. Force widescreen does not use a higher resolution to get it to display more but changes the internal apsect ratio floating point variable the game uses to then create the picture you are seeing on screen, essentially squishing the picture into that small 640x480 resolution which then gets stretched out on your TV.
Force progressive also does a relatively small change to the game, on gamecube and wii the difference between progressive and interlaced comes down to a variable within the video setup done by the system. So all really done to games which normally cant do progressive is change out that value before starting up the game.

Now everything after that point runs on the original GPU from the gamecube/wii, that GPU only has support for a resolution up to 480p at 60fps or 576p at 50fps, after that point every other setting will be invalid. On a wiiu they even kept the original GPU just to be able to display all of this, their new GPU uses a API called GX2 wheres the original one was GX on gamecube and wii, and that from at technical standpoint has nothing really to do anymore with that. Now if we would want to run nintendont in wiiu mode we would not just have to emulate GX graphics but pretty much everything else too because basically everything changed and nintendont itself would not be enough for that job anymore, you would have to think of a entirely different system.

I wish it could be done... at least 720p

 

[MikeyTaylorGaming]

I actually do too


OK so for this we have to... etc

No way... It's so weird having a higher up of Nintendont watch the content XD I guess you discovered the channel through the Nintendont installation guide I did XD

I see. It's good to know the technical side of things but it's also a shame to know that. Guess it's time for that PC upgrade I've been thinking about after christmas! Thanks @FIX94 and @ShadowOne333 !

 

[sideskroll]

I actually do too


OK so for this we have to talk about what force widescreen and force progressive actually do from a technical standpoint. Force widescreen does not use a higher resolution to get it to display more but changes the internal apsect ratio floating point variable the game uses to then create the picture you are seeing on screen, essentially squishing the picture into that small 640x480 resolution which then gets stretched out on your TV.
Force progressive also does a relatively small change to the game, on gamecube and wii the difference between progressive and interlaced comes down to a variable within the video setup done by the system. So all really done to games which normally cant do progressive is change out that value before starting up the game.

Now everything after that point runs on the original GPU from the gamecube/wii, that GPU only has support for a resolution up to 480p at 60fps or 576p at 50fps, after that point every other setting will be invalid. On a wiiu they even kept the original GPU just to be able to display all of this, their new GPU uses a API called GX2 wheres the original one was GX on gamecube and wii, and that from at technical standpoint has nothing really to do anymore with that. Now if we would want to run nintendont in wiiu mode we would not just have to emulate GX graphics but pretty much everything else too because basically everything changed and nintendont itself would not be enough for that job anymore, you would have to think of a entirely different system.

@FIX94 are you planning on merging the Nintendont mod (the one that fixes the memory card creation issue) into the main release?

 

[FIX94]

@FIX94 are you planning on merging the Nintendont mod (the one that fixes the memory card creation issue) into the main release?

I've been incredibly busy these last few weeks with wiiu hacking and all that so I did not have the time to look at it yet.

 

[GerbilSoft]

I've been incredibly busy these last few weeks with wiiu hacking and all that so I did not have the time to look at it yet.

It is a rather big PR. (I'll break stuff into more manageable pieces in future PRs.) Let me know if you find anything that needs to be fixed and/or changed.

 

[AleronIves]

I see in the first post that there are warnings about using modified ISOs with Nintendont, because they may not be aligned on 32 KiB boundaries, or may have other such problems. Are ISOs generated with GCRebuilder considered OK for Nintendont, or is there a better tool to use? GCRebuilder is about the only tool I can find that can extract clean GC ISOs and also build new ISOs from a folder of extracted files. Even so, a rebuilt ISO doesn't match the checksum of a scrubbed original ISO, so I guess the rebuilding process doesn't fully replicate the original (scrubbed) image.

 

[GerbilSoft]

I see in the first post that there are warnings about using modified ISOs with Nintendont, because they may not be aligned on 32 KiB boundaries, or may have other such problems. Are ISOs generated with GCRebuilder considered OK for Nintendont, or is there a better tool to use? GCRebuilder is about the only tool I can find that can extract clean GC ISOs and also build new ISOs from a folder of extracted files. Even so, a rebuilt ISO doesn't match the checksum of a scrubbed original ISO, so I guess the rebuilding process doesn't fully replicate the original (scrubbed) image.

My test branch supports CISOs, which work even better than shrunken images because it doesn't affect the actual file offsets.

If you want to test it: https://github.com/GerbilSoft/Nintendont/raw/v4.428/loader/loader.dol

You can use Wiimm's ISO Tools to convert to CISO format: http://wit.wiimm.de/

 

[AleronIves]

Is GCRebuilder known to produce good ISOs from discs extracted to a folder, though? I'm not aware of any alternatives for GC images, as wit only builds Wii ISOs from folders, and not GC ISOs. Dolphin doesn't seem to care about alignment or anything, so ISOs made with GCRebuilder work fine in Dolphin, even though I suppose that may not necessarily be the case on real hardware.

 

[pedro702]

Is GCRebuilder known to produce good ISOs from discs extracted to a folder, though? I'm not aware of any alternatives for GC images, as wit only builds Wii ISOs from folders, and not GC ISOs. Dolphin doesn't seem to care about alignment or anything, so ISOs made with GCRebuilder work fine in Dolphin, even though I suppose that may not necessarily be the case on real hardware.

why do you need to rebuild them in the first place? why not use teh full md5 checked gc isos on nintendont? all you need to do is rename them to game.iso even if its .gcm.

Because if you are modding games then obviously the md5 will never match redump since you swapped files anyway.

 

[AleronIves]

You can't replace a file with a bigger file unless you extract the whole ISO and then build a new one to accomodate the new file size(s).

 

[pedro702]

You can't replace a file with a bigger file unless you extract the whole ISO and then build a new one to accomodate the new file size(s).

then it will never match redump md5 since your modding the isos anyway, how can you make an iso match an md5 when files were swapped?

 

[SomeGamer]

For some reason, it doesn't save (launching from USB Loader GX) and it isn't visible in HBL (only there, I can launch fine from other loaders).

 

[GreyWolf]

For some reason, it doesn't save (launching from USB Loader GX) and it isn't visible in HBL (only there, I can launch fine from other loaders).

Could you be more specific? If you can't see Nintendont in the HBC you have it installed wrong on your SD/HDD. If settings from USB Loader GX don't carry over to the launched game your loader needs updating.

 

[Deleted member 42501]

I've just noticed that the analog response in Nintendont feels very digital when playing xiii. Anyone else noticed this?

 

[AleronIves]

then it will never match redump md5

I never said it should. I said that if I scrub an unmodified ISO, extract it, then rebuild it, the checksum of the rebuilt ISO doesn't match the original scrubbed ISO, so the rebuilding process didn't exactly clone the original image. Of course a rebuilt image will never match the original ISO, because there's no way to replicate the garbage data on the original disc when building a new image, but in theory it would be possible to match the scrubbed version of the ISO when rebuilding it from unmodified extracted files.

That was just an aside, though. I was concerned with the warnings about modified ISOs having poor performance, due to unaligned sectors. GCRebuilder has no option to set sector alignment, so I was asking if the ISOs it generates are considered good, or whether there is another ISO tool for GC discs that's considered to be better.

 

[Khar00f]

I actually do too


OK so for this we have to talk about what force widescreen and force progressive actually do from a technical standpoint. Force widescreen does not use a higher resolution to get it to display more but changes the internal apsect ratio floating point variable the game uses to then create the picture you are seeing on screen, essentially squishing the picture into that small 640x480 resolution which then gets stretched out on your TV.
Force progressive also does a relatively small change to the game, on gamecube and wii the difference between progressive and interlaced comes down to a variable within the video setup done by the system. So all really done to games which normally cant do progressive is change out that value before starting up the game.

Now everything after that point runs on the original GPU from the gamecube/wii, that GPU only has support for a resolution up to 480p at 60fps or 576p at 50fps, after that point every other setting will be invalid. On a wiiu they even kept the original GPU just to be able to display all of this, their new GPU uses a API called GX2 wheres the original one was GX on gamecube and wii, and that from at technical standpoint has nothing really to do anymore with that. Now if we would want to run nintendont in wiiu mode we would not just have to emulate GX graphics but pretty much everything else too because basically everything changed and nintendont itself would not be enough for that job anymore, you would have to think of a entirely different system.

First let me just state that i'm not good with all that technical stuff when it comes to the internal workings of emulators etc...

This might not make any sense and please correct me if i'm wrong.

From my understanding what you mentioned above is that if we were to port nintendont to run on wiiu it would have to become an emulator vs it's current state as an interpreter (without all the technical jargon).

Here's my question, I don't know how Wii VC works (referring to Metroid Prime trilogy and Mario Galaxy1/2 that were released by nintendo, my understanding is that they actually boot vWii from the wii menu, wouldn't we be able to do something like that for the wii homebrew such as nintendont and others to take advantage of the added benefits?

 

[GerbilSoft]

From my understanding what you mentioned above is that if we were to port nintendont to run on wiiu it would have to become an emulator vs it's current state as an interpreter (without all the technical jargon).

Here's my question, I don't know how Wii VC works (referring to Metroid Prime trilogy and Mario Galaxy1/2 that were released by nintendo, my understanding is that they actually boot vWii from the wii menu, wouldn't we be able to do something like that for the wii homebrew such as nintendont and others to take advantage of the added benefits?

What would be needed is something similar to TWLoader on 3DS: a Wii U homebrew application that starts Wii mode with gamepad controls enabled. This is outside of the scope of Nintendont, but the good news is that, assuming the gamepad controls emulate a Classic Controller, it will "just work" with Nintendont once it's done.