Hacking Possible to Disable the Wii's (De)Flicker Filter?

[Brand Newman]

Yeah, I think so too, if only so all the info is in a first message, quick and easy to see. I think the information is more than worth of being pinned, all these things have been stuff people have wanted to do for years.

@Brand Newman Hey, i got a bit of time to look at Samurai Shodown Anthology, but I do not bring good news.

Unlike the Metal Slug Anthology, in which the filter was put by the "Wii" itself, on Samurai Shodown Anthology it seems to be part of the individual games. Or, should I say, it's like the emulators running each game has Bilinear Filter turned on.

When editing the Main.dol I get the menu to look cleaner and sharper, so the change itself works, but the games inside the collection do not. The games are also stored in a different way than other compilation games.

Each title is stored as a AFS file, with a BIN associated, that I suppose has information on how the emulator should run the game. Also, very, very curious too, there are two copies for each game...

For each one, let's say "wii_sam1.afs" there's also a "wii_u_sam1.afs". They are almost the same size, the second one a few kb larger. It has to be a coincidence, because the game released on 2009. Still, weirded me out.

I'm honestly quite lost on what we could do, because I don't think any of what we've learnt would work.

Edit: Looking again, only 1 to 5 seem emulated. But Samurai Shodown 6 does show a difference, and it looks overall better, but you were right, the main characters look blurry (as if they used low quality sprites, or used small sprites and just stretched them with the game engine). Everything looks quite sharp except the characters battling.

I will never understand this choice. I've seen it many times across systems and years but I will never understand why they let these things slip. 6 would look great overall if not for that...

Hi Jesus, and thank you for granting my request by looking at the Samurai Shodown Anthology.

I'm not surprised by the answer, especially concerning Samsho6, which I believe is just using low quality sprites (considering the rest is super sharp)... but that's the weakest game of all anyway, and contrary to 2009, can now be played on better conditions with emulation.

As for the others, the only "pro" this compilation really has nowadays is the use of arranged soundtrack : the Samsho Collection on PC and consoles is much more complete, and has two more games (special and perfect), the latter being exclusive and never released before.

I hope they'll add the soundtrack in the future, considering they already are (in their slightly modified version of "cd music to listen") in the game's files, meaning their absence "ingame" is not copyright related!

As for the Wii version, I extracted the AFS files with AFSPacker, and both "wii" and "wii_u" gave me the exact same files of the same size (not exactly of the same content and CRC though). Here's the Samsho1 list of files, for your information:

We already know the games can't be pure emulation, considering you can switch from original to arranged soundtrack and they replaced some things here and there ("press +", etc.), but the reason why they did duplicated folders is a mystery to me, if anyone has an idea?

Anyway, thanks again for trying, I can't wait to see the next progress, and am looking forward for the modded version of USB Loader to "retry" every one and all of my Wii games with cleaned picture!

 

[NoobletCheese]

Would Patch viwidth get rid of overscan?

Yes but then you'd have a horizontally squashed image.

According to the SDK function GXAdjustForOverscan, the embedded and external framebuffers need to be adjusted as well.

For reliability it would need to be patched inside VIConfigure, but even that might not work since "Due to the wide possibilities of how a render mode may be configured, this function may not work in all cases" so it probably needs per-game tweaking and even still there are games that will just black screen or produce garbled green flickering output as soon as you touch any of the framebuffer dimensions, so the chance of getting a reliable solution is slim unfortunately.

Wii U has global underscan for its vWii mode, but other issues with colour bleeding.

 

[SaulFabre]

@NoobletCheese @SuperrSonic @MaeseJesus @SunkenSkunk @Zorg1996

Hey friends, I've made a tutorial for replacing the dark filter of NES VC with a brighter one.
Tutorial here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutoria...-palette-in-wii-virtual-console-games.590714/

Greetings to all

 

[oldmario1974]

Thank you @Nooblet Cheese, @Sunken Skunk, @MaeseJesus, and @SuperrSonic for all your time dedicated to improving the visual quality of Wii and Gc games.
Finally playing without that horrible filter.

 

[ReveriePass]

Is it possible to remove these filters from the vWii menu and wads?

 

[NoobletCheese]

Is it possible to remove these filters from the vWii menu

The current solution uses Priiloader and

Do not install Priiloader on a vWii (Wii mode on Wii U). You will brick your vWii by doing this.

and wads?

Yes -- see patching WADs here.

blackb0x's upcoming USB Loader GX can patch compressed WADs too as it patches them after they've been uncompressed and loaded into memory.

 

[SaulFabre]

RE: Changing the NES dark color palette on Wii VC releases

So I noticed that old NES Wii VC WADs (such Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. 1, etc.) uses another "global location" for store the converted palette, which is different from the "global location" found in Super Mario Bros. 3.

But anyways, when I found that I tried to replace its palette and it also works great.

Today I edited my tutorial for tell if a "global palette location" hex string is not found, try to search the another "global palette location" for see if it works.

In this blog entry I've posted my tests with some NES Wii VC WADs:
https://gbatemp.net/entry/finally-w...hout-that-blurry-dark-filter-loooool-d.19155/

Greetings to all

 

[NoobletCheese]

Today I edited my tutorial for tell if a "global palette location" hex string is not found, try to search the another "global palette location" for see if it works.

Was the string A529800D840C940B not found in some games, or found more than once?

 

[SaulFabre]

Was the string A529800D840C940B not found in some games, or found more than once?

@NoobletCheese That string can be found as only one string, but was not found in some WADs. So I was seeking another hex values basing on a word that I saw in almost every NES WAD ("Bombliss") and I found that:

These hex strings were found in older Wii VC WADs of NES games (such Donkey Kong, Super Mario Bros. 1, etc...)

BA7F0000426F6D426C69737300000000425921C80D5341540000000000000000

But these hex strings were found in newer NES Wii VC WADs (such Super Mario Bros. 3, Castlevania, etc...)

00600000426F6D426C69737300000000425921C80D5341540000000000000000

Hope this understand

EDIT: You can see my tutorial here https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutoria...-palette-in-wii-virtual-console-games.590714/ , hope you can understand that i wrote

Greetings

 

[NoobletCheese]

@NoobletCheese That string was not found in some WADs. So I was seeking another hex values basing on a word that I saw in almost every NES WAD ("Bombliss")

Thanks, I've added your tutorial to the summary post on previous page.

 

[ReveriePass]

The current solution uses Priiloader and




Yes -- see uncompressing 00000001.app in WADs here.

blackb0x's upcoming USB Loader GX can patch compressed WADs too as it patches them after they've been uncompressed and loaded into memory.

Thanks so much! I’m going to patch all of the RiiConnect24 wads now!

 

[ReveriePass]

Would it be possible to take the vWii files from the Wii U, then use a hex patch to remove the filter? Where are the vWii system files located on the Wii U?

The current solution uses Priiloader and

 

[Cifer037]

Here is a magical string that should work for all N64 games.

80 04 00 04 2C 00 00 FF 40 82 00 10 80 04 00 08 2C 00 00 FF

Then walk backwards until you find the

94 21 FF E0

and replace with

4E 80 00 20

After checking all NTSC N64 VC games using a histogram, I found that only five of them use the darken filter. The games are:

Cruisn' USA (RGB > 199)
Hex Offset: 46CBC

Mario Kart 64 (RGB > 190)
Hex Offset: 46DB8

Mario Tennis (RGB > 216)
Hex Offset: 2C960

Super Mario 64 (RGB > 190)
Hex Offset: 46210

Wave Race 64 (RGB > 190)
Hex Offset: 44AD4

 

[Maeson]

And Mario Tennis. But yeah, only a handful, fortunately.

 

[Cifer037]

Mario Tennis doesn't use the filter. The title screen looks a bit dark (caps at RGB 216), but the game runs at full brightness.

EDIT: Re-tested Mario Tennis. As @MaeseJesus mentioned, it uses the darken filter. I'll add the offset to my previous comment.

 

[Clector]

I tried the Line2x finally and well, I think the Wii output isn't as awful as most say if not ideal, ignore the noise, that's not the Wii's fault but my computer causing interference.

 

[Maeson]

In all honesty, the myth that the Wii had a bad output should be put to rest, because that was an assumption we got because a forced, software-based filter always muddying things, even when on Progressive Scan made no sense to still force it, AND the vast majority of the games forcing the most obnoxious filter there is, making us think that the picture really was like that, with only games like Brawl showing the difference thanks to the filter option to remove it.

When you mention Linex2 are you talking about the OSSC or some device like that?

I was very happy to see myself too about how much better GC/Wii looks on x2 once the filter is removed with my OSSC. Before, it was slightly better if your TV doesn't do a great job, now I have it always set on x2.

With all that said, if for some reason someone is still using interlaced resolutions, the filter being there is better to avoid eye harm from the flickering...

 

[NoobletCheese]

[deleted]

 

[ReveriePass]

It's not over yet -- stay tuned




The patching tool was either going to give you a [ID6].dol to launch separately with ULGX, or make you a patched copy of your original iso/wbfs, so you could always revert to your originals. But I guess it wouldn't hurt to also add an 'unpatch me' option as well.

This article shows the brightness control in Metroid and menu screen fades in Soul Calibur not working when GXSetCopyFilter is disabled
https://ppltoast.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/a-small-look-into-the-gamecubes-copy-filter/

Not a dealbreaker for me personally -- I'd still rather not have the filter -- but enough to preference the vfilter patching method as the default method, and revert to patching GXSetCopyFilter as a last resort.

When is this tool being released?

 

[NoobletCheese]

When is this tool being released?

It's around 50% complete but I stopped working on it as blackb0x has already implemented all the Wii vfilter patching methods discussed in this thread for their upcoming release of ULGX. Test builds have been compiled and tested, and I imagine it will drop any day now.

I'll probably start working on the tool again though as it might still be useful for a few things:

• removing vfilter from a few Wii games which launch their own dol's causing ULGX patches to be lost, eg. Metroid Prime Trilogy
• removing vfilter from Wii games where the user needs to use the HOME > Reset functionality as that can also cause ULGX patches to be lost
  
• removing dark/epilepsy filter for VC games
• removing region restriction for WADs using custom NAND loader
  
• removing vfilter from a few GameCube games which Nintendont fails to remove
  
• adjusting viWidth for GameCube games which Nintendont fails to patch