Hacking Riivolution Backup Compatibility with UniiLoader

[WiiUBricker]

Since my previous thread was totally spamed by the Riivolution guys, I will give it another shot with this thread. Hopefully there will be an ontopic discussion here.

In case some of you do not already know, sorgelig/sorg has released his awesome UniiLoader and NANDEmu over at the WODE forums.

UniiLoader does not work with fakesigned IOS or cIOS because it launches the IOS, that is requested by the title. For example if game X needs IOS37, Uniiloader will launch it.

Since Riivolution only works with original discs, it might be possible to enable Riivolution/RawkSD backup compatibility with UniiLoader, what do you think? Maybe Riivolution can get fooled or something. Riivolution apparently does not work with SNEEK, but since SNEEK is open source, support for Riivolution can be enabled.

Please remain ontopic, any offtopic comments/spam/flaming, especially from the Riivolution guys "megazig", "Omega192", "tueidj" and "AerialX" (Aaron), will be reported and removed immediately. Thanks
,

 

[FenrirWolf]

 

[megazig]

since you didn't catch anything from the last thread, sorgelig's sneek rip off can not do anything about it as sneek does not work with Riivolution. as you say, sneek is open source you can change it, Riivolution is not, you can't fix that part. this is both on topic and constructive. not liking facts doesn't make it spam.

 

[zc00gii]

You fail to realize that the anti piracy patcher really just depends on a normal IOS. This too is both contructive and on topic. It explains how it will not work.

 

[Szalkow]

To take a fair shot at explaining what was last time only mentioned in passing, Riivolution currently does not work with SNEEK at present and UniiLoader doesn't seem to introduce any significant changes that would affect that fact. Riivolution itself has a pretty robust collection of sanity and safety checks for its own operation - it's a precision program and needs exactly what it asks for. Many of these checks are included to prevent Undocumented Behavior™ or crashes that could (and probably would) occur if Riivolution tried to change something that wasn't what it wanted.

It seems like what you're asking for is some sort of SNEEK mod that plays under the same set of rules as Riivolution or at least passes a believable imitation when Riivolution does its checks. The amount of roundabout work that it would take to determine exactly what the closed-source Riivolution wants seems like a lot of effort - you'd almost be better off adding your own Riivolution-like functionality to SNEEK.

In a less strict sense, the amount of on-the-fly work that both SNEEK/Unii and Riivolution do seems like trying to use both, even if they can be tricked into playing along, is a recipe for disaster. I can't see this being terribly useful or practical.

There are really only three or four people who could pull off what you're suggesting and at least two of them play for the "other" team. Starting a thread asking for ideas probably won't get you anywhere - if those people want to try it, they will on their own time and your participation would probably be minimal.

As an addendum, if you are honestly able to ignore everything this post explains then I see no hope for you.

 

[megazig]

zc00gii, that't not the full issue as sneek loads normal modules besides their own main .app (though there's the DI module for backups which means that'd be not proper too and the biggest issue when thinking about backups and Riivolution as it doesn't work that way)

it fucks with ES/FS and kernel though which means sorgelig could write a decent one that has exact features of the real kernel ES/FS that is looked for. I find 0 chance of that happening though as, again, you have no idea what's being looked at

 

[zc00gii]

megazig, pardon my ignorance, perhaps we may "make up" and you could inform me on IRC? also lisp! (only in good fun

only joking mentioning lisp)

 

[WiiUBricker]

Finaly some useful answers. Was it so hard to tell that in the first place?

As far as finding out what Riivolution is looking for and how it works, reverse engineering/disassembling remains as an option

@FenrirWolf, sorry but I had to report your "comment".

 

[megazig]

reverse engineering is an option, the few people who could do it haven't or are on the side that wouldn't. there's things in place to deter it also. without anyone with decent technical knowledge from the OP's side of view, this is just a speculation thread with 0 real basis of reality. if the only real technical points are from the opposing side, it's obvious the outcome

 

[WiiUBricker]

reverse engineering is an option, the few people who could do it haven't or are on the side that wouldn't. there's things in place to deter it also. without anyone with decent technical knowledge from the OP's side of view, this is just a speculation thread with 0 real basis of reality. if the only real technical points are from the opposing side, it's obvious the outcome

I agree on this one, but what makes you so sure, that Riivolution is not going to be reverse engineered in some time and/or people that actually can do it, wouldnt do it? Maybe riivolution is already reverse engineered and you simply arent aware of?

You told me a couple of days ago in the dios-mios thread, that I should not be so sure to see a proper dios-mios usb loader in the future. Now I tell you basicly the same, dont be so sure, that Riivolution is not gonna be reverse engineered

Btw, if you don't mind the question, how many people exactly are in possession of the Riivolution source?

 

[megazig]

I think the difference is amount of knowledge on the subjects. you couldn't read the code for Dios-Mios to understand it. I can read the code for sneek and Riivolution. my "opinion" should be weighted a bit higher on the probability point. also a "proper" dios-mios usb loader will be setting everything needed first by sneek and then setting gamecube mode up. this isn't exactly the ideal situation when you could mod sneek with it being open source to put your loader into it

 

[WiiUBricker]

I actually dont need to understand code as much as you can. I never learned how to code, because I didnt had a computer in my childhood , but there are a lot of other people around who can, not just on this board but also in real life.

And I actually didnt intend to discuss dios-mios here, but since you mentioned it, I would like to say something about it. Crediar proved without a doubt that gc usb loading is possible, but it's just proof of concept at this time. The dependence on sneek could vanish if he or anybody else manages to get dios-mios working on real nand.

Also, we have the upcoming SD-Boot 1.0. Even if dios-mios remains proof of concept forever, SD-Boot will be a great alternative to dios-mios. And it will be open source, which means, maybe it will improve the development of dios-mios. The time will tell.

 

[qwertymodo]

I agree on this one, but what makes you so sure, that Riivolution is not going to be reverse engineered in some time and/or people that actually can do it, wouldnt do it? Maybe riivolution is already reverse engineered and you simply arent aware of?

Simple. Every time you thumb your nose at the stupid RawkDev idiots, they add another sanity check to thumb theirs right back at you. The last thread alone rendered it downright impenetrable... but just keep going. Off-topic or not, telling you to give up your ridiculous witch hunt and just get on with your life is a far better use of both our time than anything you've done.

 

[AerialX]

Besides any sanity checks, Riivolution heavily relies on the normal IOS to be in place; it patches IOS in a whole number of different ways in order to inject its own code and get it to work as it needs it to. 90% of Riivolution runs in IOS, if SNEEK isn't an almost identical clone of the original, it just won't work and you're better off spending your time writing its functionality into SNEEK itself.
Think about this: It even needs specific support for different *minor versions* of Nintendo's official IOS (this is why we need to issue an update whenever there's a system update). Making it work with something as vastly different from IOS as SNEEK is a lost cause. It just wasn't designed to run that way, and won't.

Finaly some useful answers. Was it so hard to tell that in the first place?

You got some in the last thread, just chose to ignore them.

PS: Gotta love how I'm on your hate/ignore list when I've only ever made one post in any of your threads.

 

[Szalkow]

It takes a startling number of people explaining things to you for it to get across.

Oh, and reverse-engineering Riivoluation/RawkSD3? That's funny. Every bug report I've seen the programs spit out is obfuscated to the point of uselessness to anyone but the devs ("hey guys, how can we obfuscate this more? I know, let's name our classes after letters of the alphabet").

 

[WiiUBricker]

@Aaron: Now that was a usefull answer, not the ones in the other thread. I ignored you and the rest of your team because you said nothing directly related how Riivolution works and why it will not work with UniLoader/SNEEK. Thanks for your explanation.

@Szalkow: Be ready for getting your useless comment removed by a moderator, since I reported it.

 

[tueidj]

Last time I checked, Riivolution ran identically under SNEEK compared to running it normally.

 

[SifJar]

Am I missing something? Doesn't SNEEK load backups extracted on a USB drive? So you could just replace the files on the USB drive surely? And if you want to be able to switch between "patches", a simple app to re-arrange a few files on the USB drive should surely suffice? AFAIK, you wouldn't be missing out on much of Riivolution's functionality that way.

 

[tueidj]

I ignored you and the rest of your team because you said nothing directly related how Riivolution works and why it will not work with UniLoader/SNEEK.

Can we please drop this "Riivolution Team" crap. The creators of Riivolution are Aaron, Tempus and myself. Likewise Aaron and myself are the creators of RawkSD. It was bad enough that I got my name dragged through the mud in the other thread before I was even involved in it, on top of everything else I don't need to be accused of encouraging my "team" to spam the forum just because some individuals jumped to my defense of their own accord.

 

[Szalkow]

@Szalkow: Be ready for getting your useless comment removed by a moderator, since I reported it.

"Useless" because I explained why one of your ideas wouldn't work? It was a statement of fact, reverse-engineering Riivolution/RawkSD is impractical because they've been deliberately obfuscated to prevent reverse-engineering against the developers' wishes. You disliking it doesn't make it false or useless.

Stop trying to ignore or have mods delete every post that doesn't respond in the positive, it looks really bad.

Cliff Notes to this thread:
* Getting SNEEK to play backups in a way that doesn't interfere with Riivolution would be tricky or impractical
* Reverse-engineering Riivolution is unlikely
* If file swapping in SNEEK is desired, replicating this functionality in SNEEK is the most likely solution (and it's still going to be a lot of work)
* You personally don't have the chops to accomplish any of the above, making this thread speculative
* All capability for further action in this area lies with only the most knowledgeable of SNEEK developers