Hacking Queations about gamepad emulation on Wii/GC games

[loleitors]

Before my questions I'll try to summarize hours of frustration due of my "noobness" trying to achieve Gamepad emulation on Wii and Gamecube games:

- Used TeconMoon's tool and succesfully created a Gamepad compatible Mario Kart Wii. Ended up frustrated because I couldn't add more players (Wiimotes) and Wimmfii doesn't work in WiiVC.

- I wondered if I could inject Gamepad emulation on USB Loader GX and that would "force" games to be compatible, but only movement through the app worked and all the rest was broken due to no USB access.

- Jumped to Gamecube. I successfully injected Gamepad emulation to the latest Nintendont .dol, thing that brought me some joy, but I wonder if I can inject the vWii forwarder instead (this because I believe I wouldn't need to inject the dol again after an update) using "vWii NAND Title Launcher" with Nintendont 4 digit id "WWND", so I tried but I was greeted by a black screen which forced me to unplug the Wii U to turn off. So... I'm sticking with Nintendont's dol inject.

Based on my experiments I'm having some confusions which I hope you guys can help me resolve:

1) Will Gamepad emulation ever be fully compatible (as a Classic Controller replacement) with Wii games via USB Loader GX? If the answer is no, It'll be possible in a future version/fix to add more players using the WiiVC script? AFAIK TeconMoon dropped development of the tool.

2) Can I inject Gamepad emulation to Nintendont's forwarder instead of the app itself? If so, how?


Thanks in advance.

 

[EmulateLife]

Since I use nothing but injects for everything I cant answer about Loaders, but as far as the gamepad ever completely replacing the cc IMO no. The Wii U is already dead and most devs have moved on to Switch. But with TeconMoon all Wii injects that use cc can be made to work with gamepad the rest need wiimote. You pretty much answered your own question Teconmoon dropped development so dont expect new features.

While it doesnt work with Wii unfortunately I have just gotten into Hid to Vpad with Mayflash Magic NS for everything but Wii making it able to use my Dualshock 3 wirelessly for all Wii U games, and Gamecube DS and N64 injects. I know its not exactly what you're asking for mostly but its pretty cool none the less. Bad thing about it is multiplayer which seems to be your main interest you have to buy an adapter for each controller and they are about 20 each.

 

[loleitors]

Yeah sure, I think I shouldn't expect more features, but I was wondering if there's some future regarding injecting, or at least a workaround in form of a fix regarding the vwii nand injection of Nintendont.

The setup you mentioned is really cool, but the reason I'm asking for gamepad injection is because the semi portable nature of the Wii U, since it's almost the only way I can play nowadays.

I hope a good soul can help resolving the confusion I have. If I'm not mistaken I read from @Cyan that there's more advantage to inject the forwarder rather than the .dol file.

off-topic: Please if there's any Mod around here, can you fix the typo in the title of this post? Thanks

 

[Zense]

I get what you want for Gamecube, but I am not sure forwarders can work this way. Are you able to inject forwarders without adding the gamepad support? Also, I think the only hope we currently have for complete Wii U gamepad support in vWii is if this project is finished since that way maybe all Wii games would end up becoming Classic/GC Controller compatible, and you would therefore be able to inject them with gamepad support. Basically that project is making the wiimote obsolete from the system menu itself via custom IOS (I believe), no need for USB Loader GX for that.

EDIT: Seems like he has done a beta for it on his patreon for people who donate, though I do not know the extent of its capabilities. In the thread I linked to he did say that he might have something for this coming Christmas but this is still one person working on it and life can be unpredictable.

 

[Cyan]

injecting the forwarder has the advantage of letting you update the dol on SD card easily, no need to reinject a new dol in a new channel and reinstall it with wup installer.

 

[EmulateLife]

I get what you want for Gamecube, but I am not sure forwarders can work this way. Are you able to inject forwarders without adding the gamepad support? Also, I think the only hope we currently have for complete Wii U gamepad support in vWii is if this project is finished since that way maybe all Wii games would end up becoming Classic/GC Controller compatible, and you would therefore be able to inject them with gamepad support. Basically that project is making the wiimote obsolete from the system menu itself via custom IOS (I believe), no need for USB Loader GX for that.

EDIT: Seems like he has done a beta for it on his patreon for people who donate, though I do not know the extent of its capabilities. In the thread I linked to he did say that he might have something for this coming Christmas but this is still one person working on it and life can be unpredictable.

He wants $135 a month? Thats insane.

 

[Zense]

He wants $135 a month? Thats insane.

I believe you've read it wrong. I think 135 $ is what he gets in total from his current backers every month. The minimum to donate for access to the beta is 10 $ (once or per month, I guess, but don't take my word for it). From what I understand he's doing several projects, so people are probably backing for different reasons.

 

[EmulateLife]

Ah yeah, I was looking on my mobile phone, didn't see the tiers. So nm.

 

[loleitors]

I think the only hope we currently have for complete Wii U gamepad support in vWii is if this project is finished since that way maybe all Wii games would end up becoming Classic/GC Controller compatible, and you would therefore be able to inject them with gamepad support.

That's awesome. But I can see some delay after as you said it's only one man's project. Besides... it'll really be WiiU compatible? I saw the project thread in this forums and it seems to me that it'll be Wii only. I hope I'm wrong.

injecting the forwarder has the advantage of letting you update the dol on SD card easily, no need to reinject a new dol in a new channel and reinstall it with wup installer.

Can you provide some steps to do it? Sorry my lack of experience, but how can I inject the forwarder if I only have the forwarder as a .wad?

 

[Cyan]

if it's for nintendont, there's no new version since December 2018, so maybe the forwarder is not really needed.
you can instead inject the main nintendont dol, without injecting a game iso in it at the same time, so instead of having one channel per game you'll have one channel for nintendont, and from its menu you choose the game to launch and the settings to use.
the injector script program let you do that automatically, just select nintendont as homebrew to inject.

if it's for USBloaderGX, you'll find the forwarder dol on sourceforge :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/us...es/Forwarders dols/ForwarderV5.1.dol/download
same process, in the injector script, select homebrew, and pick that dol.

I don't release new revision very often, but it's still coming. a new one will come in few days (not from me, I'll just apply a patch from another user)

From USBLoaderGX launched from that injected channel, you'll have access to gamepad support, in the loader and in compatible games launched from it (gamecube, some channels).
you'll have only SD card access, no USB, no emuNAND.

 

[loleitors]

if it's for nintendont, there's no new version since December 2018, so maybe the forwarder is not really needed.
you can instead inject the main nintendont dol, without injecting a game iso in it at the same time, so instead of having one channel per game you'll have one channel for nintendont, and from its menu you choose the game to launch and the settings to use.
the injector script program let you do that automatically, just select nintendont as homebrew to inject.

Cool. That's what I did in the beggining. I'll stick with that then. Just for the record... is there any forwarder .dol for Nintendont?

if it's for USBloaderGX, you'll find the forwarder dol on sourceforge
same process, in the injector script, select homebrew, and pick that dol.

I don't release new revision very often, but it's still coming. a new one will come in few days (not from me, I'll just apply a patch from another user)

Thanks. I assume doing this detects Gamepad movement and loads gamecube isos only right? I read that it's planned to add Wii U gamepad support in a future release. Whenever that version comes it won't play any Wii games, right?

 

[Cyan]

I checked and didn't find a link to nintendont forwarder. but I might have one somewhere, or else you'll have to unpack the wad you found to get its dol.

wiiu gamepad support is already working on the loader's interface. well, it should, I added support for it when launched from injected channel.
it also "send" (or keep?) that gamepad support to the launched homebrew, so nintendont launched from the loader gets it for all launched gamecube from withing USBGX interface.
the advantage of using USBGX to launch gamecube games is its interface and the fact each game can has its own settings.

There's no way to launch Wii games backup with USBGX from an injected channels, because IOS is blocked to 255 (the one included in the injected channel) and cIOS can't be loaded (responsible for USB Access).
only SD card and NAND is possible. maybe even Disc? if you have the original game disc you could try to launch it from USBLoaderGX disc launch feature, but I think it'll not work because the IOS255 is already emulating the disc channel by redirecting it to Wii ISO located on WiiU NAND/HDD.
Nintendo made their own "backup loader" version, redirecting IOS's request of disc access to an ISO located on WiiU NAND.

 

[Zense]

That's awesome. But I can see some delay after as you said it's only one man's project. Besides... it'll really be WiiU compatible? I saw the project thread in this forums and it seems to me that it'll be Wii only. I hope I'm wrong.

It is not made for the Wii U, however I believe the progress he's making will help towards a vWii implementation of it, since a lot of people would be interested in that. Still, it would depend on him having a Wii U to test it out on etc. I guess if he got interested in making a portable Wii U then he might do it If you think about it he's likely making some changes to the IOSs and a lot of the work that went into making custom IOSs for Wii hacking back in the day was used to hack vWii. Of course, you never know and I'm not an expert myself on this.

 

[loleitors]

I checked and didn't find a link to nintendont forwarder. but I might have one somewhere, or else you'll have to unpack the wad you found to get its dol.

Ok I made it. For anyone interested you can do it by extracting Nintendont vWii forwarder with WadMii (Wii.cs tools from ShowMiiWads's website) and renaming 00000002.app to boot.dol. Thanks for the tip!

the advantage of using USBGX to launch gamecube games is its interface and the fact each game can has its own settings.

There's no way to launch Wii games backup with USBGX from an injected channels, because IOS is blocked to 255 (the one included in the injected channel) and cIOS can't be loaded (responsible for USB Access).

Too bad it doesn't work as anyone might wish, but there's a good reason for that so thanks for the explanation. I wasn't aware that USBGX had that advantage to save settings for each NGC game, so I'll look forward to it.

It is not made for the Wii U, however I believe the progress he's making will help towards a vWii implementation of it, since a lot of people would be interested in that.

I really look forward to it! It seems more plausible to take advantage of the Wii U Gamepad rather than creating a portable Wii. Crossing Fingers...