Homebrew postLoader4

[stfour]

Launching a game the same way neek does it trough it's overlay menu shouldn't be hard to implement either.

Oh, I think this is nearly impossibile. Or better, a filesystem should be emulated at ios level, as a title need to access to files other then the app itself, allow savegames and so on... with nand emulation or sneek there is no sense to follow this way.

 

[JoostinOnline]

Aw, snap...sorry. I totally forgot about progressiveswitch. You asked me to test it somewhere, right?

Anyway...I finally got around to actually DO that...and it works just fine (on uneek-nand). Thanks a bunch, man.

Twice actually, lol. I'm glad it worked. I don't think there will be anymore releases.

 

[scooby74029]

@stfour

if you want or need any help adding the uneek disc calls and loader stuff i can help

i was the original one who helped overjoy with joyflow so i could help you out too

also i made this app into the replacement sysmenu wad like i did joyflow and it works great for uneek +di

 

[GartimusPrime]

@stfour

if you want or need any help adding the uneek disc calls and loader stuff i can help

i was the original one who helped overjoy with joyflow so i could help you out too

also i made this app into the replacement sysmenu wad like i did joyflow and it works great for uneek +di

I second that...works great in cDI!!

 

[obcd]

Oh, I think this is nearly impossibile. Or better, a filesystem should be emulated at ios level, as a title need to access to files other then the app itself, allow savegames and so on... with nand emulation or sneek there is no sense to follow this way.

neek di and cdi uses a cache file for the games (diconfig.bin.) It contains the title information of the games on the system harddisk.
neek di and cdi have an ioctl to tell it to load a specific game into the disk slot. It just requires the number of the game from the cache file.

the next step is launching the loaded game. I don't know the details of that but I think launching a title should do the job (the apploader).
You might need a different loader to allow cheats.. This is more Overjoy his speciallity.

 

[stfour]

@stfour

if you want or need any help adding the uneek disc calls and loader stuff i can help

i was the original one who helped overjoy with joyflow so i could help you out too

also i made this app into the replacement sysmenu wad like i did joyflow and it works great for uneek +di

Thank you scooby... I've already looked at joyflow code, and it seems quite easy to import uneek support to postloader starting from it. More complex is starting the game.

Now I want to complete two things in microsneek and close that page. Then absolutely I need to return to develop wiiload support, I also need it.

 

[zfa]

Just testing microsneek for you...

First thing I notice is in trying to get it to display my titles. Running in normal (non-NEEK) mode, the layouts I've defined as per your 'multiple NANDS for NEEK' changes aren't shown in the emu NAND source picklist. That is, I now have my emu NANDs stored as USB:\\nands\nand1\, USB:\\nands\nand2\, USB:\\nands\nand3\ etc. however this folder structure is not seen by PL when running in 'normal' mode, the NAND had to be in a folder such as USB:\\nand\ to be selectable. It would be nice to not have to swap them about and just have PL support USB:\\nands\. This would allow the choice of running normally or from NEEK without having to mess around moving folders about manually.

As for actual testing, I tried one title that I know to fail normally and it worked flawlessly, copying the data into my SD NAND and launching. However, after shutting down the Wii and restarting PL (where it appeared to copy the SD NAND save data back to USB NAND, which is nice) trying to load the same title via microsneek again then failed. The error is the NEEK '1 flashing disc light' error. All subsequent attempts to use microsneek now fail.

So in short, it works ONCE, then something goes awry. Not sure if the problem only arises when the same title is launched in succession (as this is what I did) or if it would occur whatever title was launched next. I don't have time to build a new NAND so can't check further at the moment but hope this info helps.

Also for info can you tell me do you leave the game itself on the SD NAND or is it deleted on the next start of PL? I guess it would be nice to leave data there for subsequent use to speed things up and minimize SD rewrites. You'd probably have to keep an eye on space on the SD though and so maybe have a FIFO cleanup routine on PL startup which cleans out games not accessed for a while. A user-definable game queue length would be good if this is implemented.

In summary, assuming repeated use bug is fixed, this is an awesome addition.

One final thing (but very much a nice-to-have and not one to take focus from real issues) is that it would be nice to be able to set some title-launching default settings somewhere and have all titles set to 'use default settings' as standard. Users could then define their preferred base config once and just move away from this on a game-by-game basis.

 

[stfour]

Wow, thank you zfa !

First thing I notice is in trying to get it to display my titles. Running in normal (non-NEEK) mode, the layouts I've defined as per your 'multiple NANDS for NEEK' changes aren't shown in the emu NAND source picklist. That is, I now have my emu NANDs stored as USB:\\nands\nand1\, USB:\\nands\nand2\, USB:\\nands\nand3\ etc. however this folder structure is not seen by PL when running in 'normal' mode, the NAND had to be in a folder such as USB:\\nand\ to be selectable. It would be nice to not have to swap them about and just have PL support USB:\\nands\. This would allow the choice of running normally or from NEEK without having to mess around moving folders about manually.

Yes, this is true. Actually /nands folder is reserved for uneek nand switcher. Waninkoko emulation nand folders are searched only in root subfolders. This can be canged in future

As for actual testing, I tried one title that I know to fail normally and it worked flawlessly, copying the data into my SD NAND and launching. However, after shutting down the Wii and restarting PL (where it appeared to copy the SD NAND save data back to USB NAND, which is nice) trying to load the same title via microsneek again then failed. The error is the NEEK '1 flashing disc light' error. All subsequent attempts to use microsneek now fail.

So in short, it works ONCE, then something goes awry. Not sure if the problem only arises when the same title is launched in succession (as this is what I did) or if it would occur whatever title was launched next. I don't have time to build a new NAND so can't check further at the moment but hope this info helps.

Also for info can you tell me do you leave the game itself on the SD NAND or is it deleted on the next start of PL? I guess it would be nice to leave data there for subsequent use to speed things up and minimize SD rewrites. You'd probably have to keep an eye on space on the SD though and so maybe have a FIFO cleanup routine on PL startup which cleans out games not accessed for a while. A user-definable game queue length would be good if this is implemented.

In summary, assuming repeated use bug is fixed, this is an awesome addition.

Mmm... this is strange. I've played a lot and never have had problems of this type. No, it isn't true... I have had to remove my sandisk 8gb sdhc card becouse sometime it became corrupted when playing with files. Switched to non sd card, all worked find. What kind of sd you have ?

Actually it leaves all on sd. Title data folder is always copied back to nand source to guarantee gamesaves sync. The idea is to reserve a fixed amount of mb on sd (for example 128MB or more) and than working in fifo when space limit is exceeded.

QUOTE(zfa @ Sep 30 2011, 02:24 AM)

One final thing (but very much a nice-to-have and not one to take focus from real issues) is that it would be nice to be able to set some title-launching default settings somewhere and have all titles set to 'use default settings' as standard. Users could then define their preferred base config once and just move away from this on a game-by-game basis.

This is really a good idea !


Again, thank you !!!

 

[zfa]

Hi stfour,

I'm just using a standard Sandisc SD card, no SDHC. Have tried it again with another fresh ModMii NAND and the same issue - 1 flash of the disc light from NEEK. I reformatted the SD card to make sure it wasn't a corruption/fragmentation issue and same thing.

Also, I tried launching Word Of Goo as a first title into another clean NAND and that just hung.

 

[JoostinOnline]

also i made this app into the replacement sysmenu wad like i did joyflow and it works great for uneek +di

In that case, would you like me to make more apps like ProgressiveSwitch? It would take a lot more work, but I could probably bundle everything into one app, with the exception of things like internet settings that require custom values.

 

[stfour]

Hi stfour,

I'm just using a standard Sandisc SD card, no SDHC. Have tried it again with another fresh ModMii NAND and the same issue - 1 flash of the disc light from NEEK. I reformatted the SD card to make sure it wasn't a corruption/fragmentation issue and same thing.

Also, I tried launching Word Of Goo as a first title into another clean NAND and that just hung.

If you rename back 00000098.app.bak to 00000098.app system menu starts ?

 

[zfa]

Hi stfour,

Now here's the oddest thing. If I put the sys menu back and try and launch a game via postloader I still get the 1 disc flash error. However if I then replace the sneek\kernel.bin the kernel.msn (instead of the kernel.unk backup) then boot into sneek via priiloader (well, launch bootmii from priiloader where bootmi is the sneek launcher thing) instead of via postloader then I get to the sysmenu successfully. AND in the sysmenu postloader has successfully inserted the game title to launch.

In this case the game failed to launch with a "There is not enough available memory..." saved game message but I think this is a different error as I think I had this with this game when launching it as a 'first load' title.

So it looks like maybe it's the invocation of sneek.msn that's the problem rather than the NAND itself.

 

[stfour]

So it looks like maybe it's the invocation of sneek.msn that's the problem rather than the NAND itself.

Yes it seems that the problem is really this one.

Now I need to understand why I can't reproduce it...

If you have more time, you can create a postloader.log empty file on the root of sd. It will log copy operation... can you send it to me via pm ?

 

[JoostinOnline]

stfour, my previous post was directed at you too.

 

[stfour]

stfour, my previous post was directed at you too.

Joostin, I'm thinking to integrate all sysconf to postloader.

 

[JoostinOnline]

stfour, my previous post was directed at you too.

Joostin, I'm thinking to integrate all sysconf to postloader.

Stealing my work, huh? I'm pretty sure I said not to do that when I shared the source, lol.

 

[stfour]

Stealing my work, huh? I'm pretty sure I said not to do that when I shared the source, lol.

Eheheh... all sysconf except progressive settings, obviusly

 

[tueidj]

Stealing my work, huh? I'm pretty sure I said not to do that when I shared the source, lol.

Seriously? It's not like you wrote any of that yourself.

 

[stfour]

Seriously?

He was obviosuly joking...

 

[zfa]

Hi stfour,

I'll re-test and send you the log, no problem. Give me a couple of hours to finish some stuff up first.

Just to give you something to think about, though, please note that I DON'T have a NAND on my USB root. I wonder if the title could possibly being called accidentally from this NAND (which maybe you have available and I don't?) instead of the 'microneek' NAND? I guess this might make it appear to work or not work depending on the other NANDs presence. Just a thought before I get to retest...