Hacking No box covers for retro consoles/handhelds in WiiFlow Lite 5.4.8

[TheCookieAddict]

I recently updated from WiiFlow 4.1.2 to WiiFlow Lite 5.4.8 to use the Rhapsodii Shima theme but now WiiFlow won't load my retro games box covers anymore, just the box covers for my Wii and Gamecube games. When I was still using 4.1.2 I had all my box covers organized for all my retro consoles/handhelds so I'm kind of unsure how to fix the issue as it has always just worked fine (I just put all the box covers as PNG files in the correct folder in USB:/wiiflow/boxcovers).

For some reason, when I reload my cache in WFL it says it's "Converting covers" with the correct number of box covers in the folder but all the covers are still missing after it's finished. It took a lot longer to convert all my Wii/GC covers and they do actually show up so maybe it has something to do with that?

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

If you look inside USB:/wiiflow/cache/yourfolder can you see any .wfc file? If you see that the green loading bar is going very fast when you're reloading the cache, it actually means that no cover was converted to .wfc
A few question:
1 - Does it happen with every plugin?
2 - Are you using you old plugins .ini files? Or by chance have you installed the Plugins Pack?
3 - Are you using Rhapsodii Shima 5.4.8?

 

[TheCookieAddict]

If you look inside USB:/wiiflow/cache/yourfolder can you see any .wfc file? If you see that the green loading bar is going very fast when you're reloading the cache, it actually means that no cover was converted to .wfc
A few question:
1 - Does it happen with every plugin?
2 - Are you using you old plugins .ini files? Or by chance have you installed the Plugins Pack?
3 - Are you using Rhapsodii Shima 5.4.8?

Hey Tetsuo!

I just checked the cache folder on my HDD and yes there are actually .wfc files for every platform, i.e. USB:/wiiflow/cache/snes9xgx/Alien 3 (U).smc.wfc

1. It does happen with every plugin so far, only the covers for Wii and Gamecube seem to appear.
2. I used Danimal Master Pack (v5.4) for all the plugins.
3. Yup!

Just FYI: I used mastershoes' cover collections for the retro consoles/handhelds box covers.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

I'm not sure about the magic numbers used in that pack. They could be right, but check if they are corresponding to the right ones in wiiflow/plugins_data/platform.ini
Other than this, it could be an out of memory issue. You said that you're on RS 5.4.8, but could there be a chance that you didn't update all the .png images (backgrounds, buttons...) but only part of the theme?
The theme in Danimalz Pack is based on an old RS version, which was not yet optimized for wiiflow. With a lot of memory used by the theme, covers, snapshots etc. it was sometimes failing to cache covers.
Try to switch to the Default theme and reload cache again.
To be able to see the same plugins with the default theme you'll need to copy your source menu .ini files from:
wiiflow/source_menu/Rhapsodii Shima
to
wiiflow/source_menu
If it's a memory issue, you should have no issues with the Default theme.

Edit: you can also try to go to Settings page4 -> path manager -> boxcovers to check if they're not set to SD.

 

[TheCookieAddict]

I'm not sure about the magic numbers used in that pack. They could be right, but check if they are corresponding to the right ones in wiiflow/plugins_data/platform.ini
Other than this, it could be an out of memory issue. You said that you're on RS 5.4.8, but could there be a chance that you didn't update all the .png images (backgrounds, buttons...) but only part of the theme?
The theme in Danimalz Pack is based on an old RS version, which was not yet optimized for wiiflow. With a lot of memory used by the theme, covers, snapshots etc. it was sometimes failing to cache covers.
Try to switch to the Default theme and reload cache again.
To be able to see the same plugins with the default theme you'll need to copy your source menu .ini files from:
wiiflow/source_menu/Rhapsodii Shima
to
wiiflow/source_menu
If it's a memory issue, you should have no issues with the Default theme.

Edit: you can also try to go to Settings page4 -> path manager -> boxcovers to check if they're not set to SD.

I just tried reloading the cache while using the default theme but sadly it didn't fix the issue. I already selected the correct folder on my USB in WFL for the covers and it worked for all my Wii and Gamecube covers but converting them took wayyy longer than converting any of the other covers. Will check the magic numbers thing but all my ROMs show up and launch when I select any old console/handheld (just without the covers). I did find out that I'm using WFL 5.4.1 instead of 5.4.8 (I think I might have replaced the 5.4.8 one with the one from the Danimal Master Pack and same thing for RS).

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

what is the coverfolder= path from one of your plugin.ini's?

 

[TheCookieAddict]

USB:/wiiflow/plugins/snes9x-gx.ini:

[PLUGIN]
displayname=SNES9xGX
magic=534e4553
coverfolder=snes9xgx
dolfile=snes9xgx-mod11.dol
romdir=snes9xgx/roms
filetypes=.smc|.fig|.sfc|.swc|.zip|.7z
consolecoverid=nintendo
covercolor=000000
bannersound=SNES.ogg
arguments={device}:/{path}|{name}|{loader}

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

I did find out that I'm using WFL 5.4.1 instead of 5.4.8 (I think I might have replaced the 5.4.8 one with the one from the Danimal Master Pack and same thing for RS).

Sorry I missed this part. So did you fix your issue updating both Wiiflow and the theme to 5.4.8?

 

[TheCookieAddict]

I just updated them both and went into my N64 ROMs, reloaded the cache and it started converting all my covers at the normal speed! It's still going (300+ covers) but I'm pretty sure that did the trick. I also think part of the problem was not putting the covers in the right folder, i.e. putting the SNES covers into USB:/wiiflow/boxcovers/snes9xgx instead of USB:/wiiflow/boxcovers/SNES.

Will update you when it's done converting!

edit; Where are the converted .wfc files stored? Because I think they're going on my SD card now and I only have a 2GB card which is why I store all my data (like covers) on my HDD.

edit 2: So after converting over 300 N64 covers, the only N64 ROMs that have working covers are the ROMs that start with A, B, C, D and E. All of the other ROMs just have the " No Cover" cover. I tried converting my SNES covers but unfortunately it gave me the same problem as before (converting takes like 5 seconds and the covers don't appear after it's done). Very frustrating as I thought I had finally fixed the issue.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

You find wfc files in wiiflow/cache/(your cover folder).
Did you tried to reboot wiiflow and then reload cache again? I bet the missing covers will show up

 

[TheCookieAddict]

When I reboot and reload the cache, it first takes a very long time to load and then it just starts converting all the covers all over again. Is there any way to force Wiiflow to store all the .wfc files onto my HDD? Because I have the feeling that the problems are being caused by a lack of space on my SD card from the cache folder.

Edit: I just deleted the SD:/wiiflow folder from the root of my SD card (not the SD:/apps/wiiflow folder of course) to see what would happen (and because I never had a wiiflow folder on my SD card when I was using Wiiflow 4.1.2 and that worked like a charm) but now everything is set to default and I can't select the RS theme anymore even though it's on my HDD under USB:/wiiflow/themes_lite like it was on my SD card. Same thing for my plugins. Any idea on how to set WFL to look for the data on my HDD instead of SD card?

Edit 2: I put the RS theme back in the wiiflow folder (that was created by Wiiflow itself on the root of my SD card after booting into WFL once) and now I can select the theme again. But this is weird to me because when I was still using Wiiflow 4.1.2 I only had a Wiiflow folder on the root of my HDD with all of my themes in it and that worked perfectly. Maybe I just forgot to re-enable some settings to get it to work like that though but I can't think of anything right now.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

You can install wiiflow to your usb drive, and with this I mean you have apps/wiiflow AND the wiiflow folder in your usb.

 

[TheCookieAddict]

Cool I'll try that and see if it works! Do I need to delete the apps/wiiflow folder from my SD card?

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

It seems that you have too many covers, I don't know why you need 300 n64 covers, when the n64 emulator can only run a bunch of them with no glitches/performance issues.
I suggest you to remove all the useless stuff to reduce caching time and wasted memory.

 

[TheCookieAddict]

I just like having complete collections of ROMs haha, but I know it's kind of an overkill.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

Cool I'll try that and see if it works! Do I need to delete the apps/wiiflow folder from my SD card?

Yes, absolutely. Delete everything and reinstall from scratch, but make a backup copy of your plugins folder to spare some time

 

[TheCookieAddict]

Little update; I managed to get all 300+ N64 ROMs to show with all their covers so that's nice. But reloading the cache when viewing my 600+ SNES ROMs just gives me the old fast converting error. I will try to see if it will work with a smaller amount of ROMs if there's no other way to fix the issue. My Gamecube collection works fine with 500+ games tho.

For some weird reason I now cannot get WFL to show me my NES ROM collection even though they're on the same HDD as all my other ROMs. I even checked the fceugx.ini file from the plugins folder but, as far as I can tell, everything looks as it should. It just gives "Welcome to WiiFlow. I have not found any games. Click install to install games or Select partition to select your partition type. usb1:/fceugx/roms" message no matter what I try...

 

[TheCookieAddict]

So I just tested my SNES ROM collection with only 11 ROMs instead of the full collection. Oddly enough, I got pretty much the exact same results as with the full collection. WFL converted the covers (which was so fast I could barely see what it was doing) but after returning to the cover view they just had the No Cover cover again...

This is so strange to me as the SNES and N64 have identical folder structures on my HDD so I have no idea why one of them works perfectly and the other one doesn't. Maybe I can try reinstalling the plugins and cover folders and see if that does anything.

 

[Tetsuo Shima]

No roms found (when they actually should be there) can be another of the consequences of WFL being out of memory.
You can try with Wiimpathy's Create Cache app. Sadly, my theme is still very resource hungry, even after image optimization.
For me, rebooting the wii multiple times I was able to recreate the entire cache. But maybe that's because I have not so many games.
Another thing, but very unlikely, is maybe filetype is wrong in the .ini?

edit: wiimpathy's Create Cache v0.2

It scans all your Wiiflow boxcovers and generate the cache files. Only plugins covers are converted, Wii covers are skipped.
If a .wfc file already exists, it won't be overwritten. If you have a lot of covers(thousands), the conversion takes hours.
You can check the log file called log_cachecreate.txt for any error.
Jpeg files are not supported! Cache compress neither, only compress texture.

What are the advantages :
- For large collection, you don't have to browse all the covers per plugin. It's doing all the process at once without any interaction.
- It should be a bit faster, there's no gui, it should essentially use mem1(well I think?).
- It will warn you if there are errors in a log file. For example, I had covers that were larger than 1090, so it couldn't create the cache.

It's not 100% guaranted but it should work rather well. I've made a usb test with about 10000 covers, and that took about 4 hours.

 

[TheCookieAddict]

No roms found (when they actually should be there) can be another of the consequences of WFL being out of memory.
You can try with Wiimpathy's Create Cache app. Sadly, my theme is still very resource hungry, even after image optimization.
For me, rebooting the wii multiple times I was able to recreate the entire cache. But maybe that's because I have not so many games.
Another thing, but very unlikely, is maybe filetype is wrong in the .ini?

I'll try the Create Cache app, thanks. I'm guessing it has to do with caching as I have about 800+ games between just my Gamecube and Wii collections (2TB HDD so storage isn't really an issue) but I never had these issues with WiiFlow 4.1.2. I had all my complete ROM collections displayed with their covers. But I can imagine the way WFL 5.4.8 works is a lot different from WiiFlow 4.1.2 so that doesn't say a lot either.

Edit; already checked filetype in the .ini and it's fine.