Hacking USB Loader GX

[XFlak]

Unrelated to USLGX but I wanted to share this: I made all my forwarders from WiiXplorer source and I don't know why, they never worked with GenPlusGX. Trying for anything that could work for both SD and USB (and I tried A LOT), I compiled FIX94's forwarders with meta.xml support (also based on WiiXplorer v12 source) and the no_args variant worked with GPGX!

Think you can share the wad or dol?

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

Think you can share the wad or dol?

I mean, I've not had issues using FIX94's own complied Genesis Plus GX forwarder, no idea about meta.xml argument support though:

• https://gbatemp.net/threads/genesis-plus-gx-forwarder.307155/page-2#post-4041263

vWii version:

• https://gbatemp.net/threads/forwarders-are-back.340226/page-32#post-9492459

 

[one-piece]

I've got similar code in a test build somewhere, since I was experimenting with custom widths while it was being discussed a few months ago. Although what you're requesting is a little different.

Could you implement this, please?. The newest release of Swiss added more horizontal scaling options. For example thanks to this new update i use the new 656px horizontal scale to get a perfect ball in super monkey ball. (Im using a GC with Carby+hdmi2component adaptor to RetroTink5x).
Because the aspect ratios of games are very different.

 

[blackb0x]

@one-piece Using a custom width will either immediately cause my TV to emit a loud beep or the game will crash and my screen will turn green when I press the home button. So these settings won't be available in my next release.

There will be an option to use the framebuffer width, since that does work correctly.

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

(accidental double-post)

 

[Nintendo Maniac]

I just discovered today that, while running a WiiWare game (e.g. Fluidity, Bust-A-Move Plus!, etc) that was launched through USB Loader GX, if you press the physical reset button on a Wii console, it'll go to a black screen and freeze the game console.

Also in the process I discovered that, if you have your system set to widescreen but have an individual full-fat retail Wii game (e.g. Metroid Prime Trilogy, Mario Kart Wii, etc) set to 4:3, and then while running that aforementioned full-fat retail Wii game press the physical reset button on the console, the game will restart but in 16:9 widescreen.

 

[blackb0x]

I just discovered today that, while running a WiiWare game (e.g. Fluidity, Bust-A-Move Plus!, etc) that was launched through USB Loader GX, if you press the physical reset button on a Wii console, it'll go to a black screen and freeze the game console.

That seems to be a longstanding issue with some WiiWare when launched from the loader. I don't know what causes it yet though.

You might see the same issue with WiiFlow and CFG Loader.

Also in the process I discovered that, if you have your system set to widescreen but have an individual full-fat retail Wii game (e.g. Metroid Prime Trilogy, Mario Kart Wii, etc) set to 4:3, and then while running that aforementioned full-fat retail Wii game press the physical reset button on the console, the game will restart but in 16:9 widescreen.

That's to be expected, since you're basically relaunching the game without any of the patches.

 

[NoobletCheese]

That's to be expected, since you're basically relaunching the game without any of the patches.

Am I correct in thinking the only way to avoid that issue is to patch the dol on disk?

If true, that would be very risky as it is a permanent change to the dol on disk and could corrupt it. A system of backup/restore the original dol could be implemented, but would quire a lot of work.

But, I think it would be neat to have an option to enable "patch dol on disk" in the per-game settings, with a big fat warning to the user that they should only do it as a last resort. Then we could maintain patches after resetting and for games that launch their own dol's like metroid prime.

 

[blackb0x]

Am I correct in thinking the only way to avoid that issue is to patch the dol on disk?

It's probably not the only way to handle it, but nobody has come up with a good solution after all of these years.

Don't modified dol files also revert back to their unmodified versions within your backups when you perform a reset? If the answer is yes then you'd need to modify WBFS files instead, but that's something that the loader can't do. And personally I wouldn't want any USB loader to modify my backups, even if the changes could be reverted.

Some of the patches can't easily be converted to static patches either, since they're adding code to games and not just patching existing code e.g. the Wiimmfi patch, the 480p fix and my new partial VIConfigure patch.

 

[NoobletCheese]

Don't modified dol files also revert back to their unmodified versions within your backups when you perform a reset? If the answer is yes then you'd need to modify WBFS files instead, but that's something that the loader can't do.

Yes, I suppose ULGX would have to extract the dol from the wbfs, patch it and re-pack it into the wbfs file. I presume ULGX already has code for extracting dols from wbfs, as this is needed to patch and launch them. But does it have code for re-inserting a dol back into the wbfs file?

When we reset the game, I presume the game is calling its own loader function to read the unpatched dol from disk and launch it. Instead we want it to load the patched dol which is already in memory.

 

[blackb0x]

I presume ULGX already has code for extracting dols from wbfs, as this is required to patch and launch them. But does it have code for re-inserting a dol back into the wbfs file?

It's similar to Dolphin in that it can quickly inspect certain files, but there's nothing there to add or modify files. And at no point does the loader write any of the files to your storage.

When we reset the game, I presume the game is calling it's own loader function to read the unpatched dol from disk and launch it. Instead we want it to load the patched dol which is already in memory.

I haven't read any documentation on how it's handled, but I assume a reset will overwrite some memory too.

Maybe a cIOS with specific changes to handle resets would be a solution. But that's a whole different project.

 

[totakeke95]

Pikmin 2 has an option that makes the image look sharper, would it be something similar to the deflicker filter?

 

[Maeson]

Yes, certain games, such as the Smash Bros. games on both the Wii and GC, and Sonic Heroes had an option to turn off the filter, but very few games did have it. It's the exact same thing we managed to disable.

 

[fandango]

Yes, certain games, such as the Smash Bros. games on both the Wii and GC, and Sonic Heroes had an option to turn off the filter, but very few games did have it. It's the exact same thing we managed to disable.

Yes, and if I remember correctly, in the Smash Bros. game the filter isnt just able to be turned off, it is turned by default.

 

[mive]

i've encountered a strange issue:

if I change emunand base path ("emu channel path") to something like /emunand/my (from /nands/my), vc saving stops working (also some arcade titles wont work at all).
regular wii title save emunand ("emu path") seems to work without issues.

 

[godreborn]

i've encountered a strange issue:

if I change emunand base path ("emu channel path") to something like /emunand/my (from /nands/my), vc saving stops working (also some arcade titles wont work at all).
regular wii title save emunand ("emu path") seems to work without issues.

if it's a neek nand, neek2o, afaik, is the only one that can read through folders. if it's normal neek, they need to be a root folder, I think.

 

[mive]

I dont talk about neek/sneek/uneek/neek2o, else I would mention that, I mean "regular" cios emunand

 

[blackb0x]

if I change emunand base path ("emu channel path") to something like /emunand/my (from /nands/my), vc saving stops working (also some arcade titles wont work at all).
regular wii title save emunand ("emu path") seems to work without issues.

If it's bugged then I would of expected the issue to have been reported years ago, but I guess the settings are poorly labelled and not many people will use separate paths. I'll check it out when I've got some free time though.

I had already renamed "NAND Emu Channel Path" to "EmuNAND Channel Path" and "Nand Emu Path" to "EmuNAND Save Path" for my next release.

 

[mive]

I probably wrote it in a misunderstanding way,
forget about Nand Emu Path/EmuNand Save Path.

The issue I'm talking about regards "Channel Path",e.g.:
usb1:/nands/whatever changed to usb1:/emunand/whatever

starting vc game "Blazing Lasers" (PCE), play a little, hit home button and exit to wii menu -> expected behaviour would be a savestate which will be loaded if you start "Blazing Lasers" again. Instead it starts from the beginning. This issue does not occur if the used path is usb1:/nands/whatever

 

[fandango]

I probably wrote it in a misunderstanding way,
forget about Nand Emu Path/EmuNand Save Path.

The issue I'm talking about regards "Channel Path",e.g.:
usb1:/nands/whatever changed to usb1:/emunand/whatever

starting vc game "Blazing Lasers" (PCE), play a little, hit home button and exit to wii menu -> expected behaviour would be a savestate which will be loaded if you start "Blazing Lasers" again. Instead it starts from the beginning

Sorry if this is stating the obvious, but you do realise that if you change the Channels emuNAND path in ULGX you also have to move the channels to the new folder. ULGX wont move them for you.
Or are you saying that it only works if the top level folder is called nands? Well in that case why dont you simply rename your top level folder to nands? It is the convention to call it that anyway.