Hacking snes9x on usbloader

[The Real Jdbye]

Here's what I came up with, in case you were interested:

So you figured out a way to switch between different platforms in WiiFlow more easily? I didn't know that was possible.

I was actually about to suggest postLoader, since it has emulators, Wii and GC games and WiiWare all in one place and seems like it's optimized for navigating with a D-Pad. I knew about postLoader before but I didn't know it supported emulators as well.
It hasn't been officially updated in a while but seems like it supports everything you'd need. It's not as pretty looking as WiiFlow though. I don't personally like it much. But it's functional.

 

[dishe]

So you figured out a way to switch between different platforms in WiiFlow more easily? I didn't know that was possible.

Right? That sort of makes it good enough even though I'd rather have it all on the same menu. I'm not sure if the official versions can do that, or at least the latest builds I found didn't seem to. But the mastermod edition from ABZ has an option for "Source flow" which uses the same cover flow as the rest of the UI interface for the boring old source menu. Then it was just a matter of also enabling B to enter the source menu, changing the title for NAND to say "Main Menu" in the config file, and replacing the graphic with one that looks something akin to an app drawer / channel menu. For good measure I also enabled the option to show the source menu at start, so you are greeted with the options to go either way from the beginning.
The Mastermod stuff is BIG with a lot of messy placeholders and misc files and emulator plugins that I couldn't get working properly (I spent hours trying to get covers to display, then gave up because I couldn't get them on the same menu as WiiMC and VC games anyway. I sold out with a snes9x channel forwarder). I just needed the actual app so I could get the source flow thing, and left the rest of it out to keep it lean on my storage card. I think that without all the other plugins and the options removed from the source menu, it actually loads and switches screens ridiculously fast. No loading screens aside from a very brief one at boot.

Again, its not perfect, really I wanted everything together, but its good enough for now.

I was actually about to suggest postLoader, since it has emulators, Wii and GC games and WiiWare all in one place and seems like it's optimized for navigating with a D-Pad. I knew about postLoader before but I didn't know it supported emulators as well.
It hasn't been officially updated in a while but seems like it supports everything you'd need. It's not as pretty looking as WiiFlow though. I don't personally like it much. But it's functional.

So someone in another corner of the internet suggested post loader. It does sound promising, but after looking at videos and screenshots of it, I didn't particularly like it visually. On a small screen like a car display, I want big easy to read text and icons like the way wiiflow shows one at a time. Its just extremely clean and sleek looking without all the other on-screen icons too.

I think in the future I might revisit this with the idea of making channel forwarders for all the games I have installed on the USB (there's only like 5 or 6 of them anyway), then I could conceivably turn off the other menus. I think it would be easier than doing it the other way around (making ISO forwarders), right?

 

[JoostinOnline]

I opened up ModMii and the advanced mode has a way to create your own ISO forwarders for both apps and channels.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Right? That sort of makes it good enough even though I'd rather have it all on the same menu. I'm not sure if the official versions can do that, or at least the latest builds I found didn't seem to. But the mastermod edition from ABZ has an option for "Source flow" which uses the same cover flow as the rest of the UI interface for the boring old source menu. Then it was just a matter of also enabling B to enter the source menu, changing the title for NAND to say "Main Menu" in the config file, and replacing the graphic with one that looks something akin to an app drawer / channel menu. For good measure I also enabled the option to show the source menu at start, so you are greeted with the options to go either way from the beginning.
The Mastermod stuff is BIG with a lot of messy placeholders and misc files and emulator plugins that I couldn't get working properly (I spent hours trying to get covers to display, then gave up because I couldn't get them on the same menu as WiiMC and VC games anyway. I sold out with a snes9x channel forwarder). I just needed the actual app so I could get the source flow thing, and left the rest of it out to keep it lean on my storage card. I think that without all the other plugins and the options removed from the source menu, it actually loads and switches screens ridiculously fast. No loading screens aside from a very brief one at boot.

Again, its not perfect, really I wanted everything together, but its good enough for now.


So someone in another corner of the internet suggested post loader. It does sound promising, but after looking at videos and screenshots of it, I didn't particularly like it visually. On a small screen like a car display, I want big easy to read text and icons like the way wiiflow shows one at a time. Its just extremely clean and sleek looking without all the other on-screen icons too.

I think in the future I might revisit this with the idea of making channel forwarders for all the games I have installed on the USB (there's only like 5 or 6 of them anyway), then I could conceivably turn off the other menus. I think it would be easier than doing it the other way around (making ISO forwarders), right?

Sure, that would work, though load times would be longer going from the system menu to a USB game than from Wiiflow to a USB game.
There is actually a new loader in development that's made with portabilized Wiis in mind that looks really promising. It has everything in one place and large text that's easy to read. But I don't think it's been released to the public yet.

 

[dishe]

I opened up ModMii and the advanced mode has a way to create your own ISO forwarders for both apps and channels.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

Oh, this is something I'm not aware of. Last time I poked around Modmii I did something awful to my cIOSs, so I've been afraid to delve into it since. Is there documentation or a tutorial anywhere on this feature?

There is actually a new loader in development that's made with portabilized Wiis in mind that looks really promising. It has everything in one place and large text that's easy to read. But I don't think it's been released to the public yet.

And THIS has piqued my interest as well! See, this is what I've been talking about... there are uses for the hardware beyond the traditional setup. Funny, I just watched a video today about a portable wii project that looked super cool. And I was wondering the whole time how the UI was going to work on there.
Do you know who is working on this? I'd love to pick their brain!

 

[JoostinOnline]

Oh, this is something I'm not aware of. Last time I poked around Modmii I did something awful to my cIOSs, so I've been afraid to delve into it since. Is there documentation or a tutorial anywhere on this feature?

Go into the advanced mode, choose Advanced Downloads, and enter F.

 

[dishe]

Go into the advanced mode, choose Advanced Downloads, and enter F.

Interesting! I assume it just embeds whatever banner, etc, that the channel already has?

 

[JoostinOnline]

Interesting! I assume it just embeds whatever banner, etc, that the channel already has?

No. You have to create your own. ISO's don't have built in banners. For games you can download images, but you'll have to find custom ones or make your own for homebrew and channels.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

[The Real Jdbye]

No. You have to create your own. ISO's don't have built in banners. For games you can download images, but you'll have to find custom ones or make your own for homebrew and channels.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

They do have banners the Wii Menu and some USB loaders will display. Should be possible to take the banner from an existing channel/forwarder.

Oh, this is something I'm not aware of. Last time I poked around Modmii I did something awful to my cIOSs, so I've been afraid to delve into it since. Is there documentation or a tutorial anywhere on this feature?


And THIS has piqued my interest as well! See, this is what I've been talking about... there are uses for the hardware beyond the traditional setup. Funny, I just watched a video today about a portable wii project that looked super cool. And I was wondering the whole time how the UI was going to work on there.
Do you know who is working on this? I'd love to pick their brain!

Was it this one?

He shows the loader very briefly in that video, around 13:50 and again at 15:48. I asked in the comments (and he responded almost immediately!) and it seems like it's something he's working on himself, I don't know if anyone else is involved in it.

 

[JoostinOnline]

They do have banners the Wii Menu and some USB loaders will display. Should be possible to take the banner from an existing channel/forwarder.

That's not the kind I meant. I'm talking about the cover art that is displayed for every game. You can use this to find a lot of cover art for channels and homebrew though. It's all custom made.
https://www.gametdb.com/

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

 

[dishe]

They do have banners the Wii Menu and some USB loaders will display. Should be possible to take the banner from an existing channel/forwarder.

That's what I thought. But modmii just sets it up based on a path you give it, I just tried. How does one add a banner to the ISO that plays if the launcher supports that?
The graphics for the cover I know is just a png that the launcher associates with the file. Since I already have those from the channel forwarders, I can just rename them / put them in the right directory for ISO usage I'd guess.

But I think it will have the same problem I was having before, as it requires the outdated hermes cIOS to work, and I think this wii only has the d2x ones. I guess I should try using modmii to add those missing ones, couldn't hurt right? I'm kind of rusty on how that works, when I softmodded I followed a guide that only recommended and installed the latest ones.

was it this one?

He shows the loader very briefly in that video, around 13:50 and again at 15:48. I asked in the comments (and he responded almost immediately!) and it seems like it's something he's working on himself, I don't know if anyone else is involved in it.

OMG, yes that's the one!! It just showed up on my feed yesterday and I was mesmerized by it. I had originally imagined taking the motherboard out of my Wii to embed somewhere, but realized there are just far too many things that could go wrong to be worth trying. This guy is a BOSS at modifications! I should reach out.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

That's not the kind I meant. I'm talking about the cover art that is displayed for every game. You can use this to find a lot of cover art for channels and homebrew though. It's all custom made.
https://www.gametdb.com/

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk

Then you shouldn't have said banners.
Coverart for other platforms should be possible to find online. Doesn't the mastermod pack come with covers for tons of games too?

 

[dishe]

Then you shouldn't have said banners.
Coverart for other platforms should be possible to find online. Doesn't the mastermod pack come with covers for tons of games too?

Yeah, sorta. Not the ones I'm looking for, but anyway I removed most the extra stuff in Mastermod to make this clean. And either way, all the graphics currently exist for the titles in the NAND menu so I could just apply the pngs I already have. Also, I'm totally fine making my own in photoshop if one is missing (which it shouldn't be). I'm wondering how, if anything, one would embed a banner? It doesn't matter terribly, just curious at this point. I'd have to actually successfully get an ISO forwarder to launch before I'd worry too much about banner graphics. Baby steps.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Yeah, sorta. Not the ones I'm looking for, but anyway I removed most the extra stuff in Mastermod to make this clean. And either way, all the graphics currently exist for the titles in the NAND menu so I could just apply the pngs I already have. Also, I'm totally fine making my own in photoshop if one is missing (which it shouldn't be). I'm wondering how, if anything, one would embed a banner? It doesn't matter terribly, just curious at this point. I'd have to actually successfully get an ISO forwarder to launch before I'd worry too much about banner graphics. Baby steps.

If you're talking about the Wii Menu banners (that WiiFlow also displays), I think it's as simple as unpacking a WAD with the banner you want and replacing the banner file in the ISO, of course this won't work for emulator games since there won't be channels available for them.
I think there are rudimentary tools to simply insert a static image as a banner that you could do yourself, these were used for some early homebrew, but of course it doesn't look as good as a properly made banner with animations.
The best would be a VC-style banner, there might be an easy to use tool that can create those since people have been making VC injects for a long time.
You can however make VC-style banners manually by extracting a VC wad, taking the banner from it and replacing the image, as explained in this guide: https://sites.google.com/site/gamemockersbeta/game-hacking/wii-hacking/vc-injector
But that's a lot of work if you have a lot of emulated games.

 

[dishe]

Agreed.
I tried a WiiMC ISO that I found on this forum on my home Wii (which I've been softmodding since Twighlight Princess and has a lot more cIOS over the years than my new one I'm modding for this sensor-bar-less setup), and it DOES work. So clearly I just need to add some cIOSs and it will work fine. I don't remember where I found this one or who made it, but it DOES have the banner from the forwarder channel, so I'm not sure how that works. Maybe whoever made it put it in? But this is promising now that I know it works.
Are VC ISOs just as easy to make? I'm ok with the emulated games just living in a SNES9x forwarder for now. I'll get to that later. For now I would be super happy to just have everything on a single menu flow.

 

[dishe]

Go into the advanced mode, choose Advanced Downloads, and enter F.

I'm wondering now if it wouldn't be easier to find a way to create an ISO that launches uses cIOS 249 like my games do? It seems any WAD creates in Modmii requires a cios with base 38. Other ISOs don't seem to need that if created using other methods, unless I'm not understanding how this works.

 

[JoostinOnline]

I'm wondering now if it wouldn't be easier to find a way to create an ISO that launches uses cIOS 249 like my games do? It seems any WAD creates in Modmii requires a cios with base 38. Other ISOs don't seem to need that if created using other methods, unless I'm not understanding how this works.

If every cIOS was the same, you wouldn't need more than one. A base is what official IOS is copied over to another "slot" (that's the 2XX number) before it's modified. The 202/222-224 cIOS's have code written by a guy named hermes. The 202 cIOS is optimized specifically for media, and can't play games. The 245-250 ones have had many different authors and versions.

You need to stop fighting it, this is the way things are. Homebrew forwarders use code that you can't run on just any cIOS. It's five seconds extra work on your part, and you complaining about that makes me want to not help.

 

[dishe]

If every cIOS was the same, you wouldn't need more than one. A base is what official IOS is copied over to another "slot" (that's the 2XX number) before it's modified. The 202/222-224 cIOS's have code written by a guy named hermes. The 202 cIOS is optimized specifically for media, and can't play games. The 245-250 ones have had many different authors and versions.

You need to stop fighting it, this is the way things are. Homebrew forwarders use code that you can't run on just any cIOS. It's five seconds extra work on your part, and you complaining about that makes me want to not help.

Hey, I just wanted to understand, and your posts have been very helpful! Don't give up on me, this is fascinating and fantastic. Thank you.

 

[dishe]

Just wanted to update this thread and let everyone know I've got a pretty sweet setup running with the newer WiiFlow Lite fork. They've added a lot more customization, and now homebrew, nand and wii can work like other plugins (combined source menus). And the source menu chooser can actually launch applications directly from there.
I need to make an updated video to explain better, but right now you turn on my Wii in the minivan and you are presented with 3 options: Videos, Games, and Netflix. All the games for playing in the car (whether it is a Wii game, SNES game, virtual console, Homebrew, etc) are in games. If the passengers feel like watching a movie, they can go to Movies, or if they are bored of everything we have on the USB and want something new, I can turn on my phone's hotspot and have them click Netflix.

Its pretty sweet and works really well without any pointing on the screen. Just wanted to thank you guys for all your help when I was trying to figure out my options.