Hacking USB Loader GX

[Duncan Idaho]

Decided to re-dump my copy of Trilogy to see if that's the issue.

Ok, it was my trilogy .Iso.

Now to dump MP3 one.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Aaaaand Trilogy froze on me, after I activated the canon. FML

After the Ridley Boss fight there is a section where there is a cutscene of one activating the canon that will let the game move foward. Game froze right there.

 

[Cyan]

I think Cyan is just tired of maintaining the project after all these years and I'm still relatively new.

Tired a little because I'm not as good as people think I am and it's not easy for me to do all I would like, but mostly missing free time (to learn more, develop, test, debug). living alone takes a lot of time

Thank you for maintaining/modding that loader, and also taking care of the support with other users here
I don't know if/when I'll release a new official revision. I always hope I'll do it, but I know I procrastinate a lot.
I finally fixed my computer issue. It was out of order since February, 3 months without my computer was hard at first but it made me less "addict to gbatemp". I didn't come at all for a month. I'll have to catch up with all the scenes and gaming news.

 

[bengalih]

Just change it in the titles.txt file. It's an issue with sorting accented letters that will probably require different Unicode code in the loader.

Sorry this doesn't work. But I have found a workable solution.
Just to be clear I'm using 3.0 rev.1262 (which AFAIK is the latest).

I've done some extensive testing and I'm going to present some data here. It is extremely possible I missed something, so I'm certainly willing to go back with some more info and try again.

Based on what I can tell there are 3 ways/locations that USB Loader GX can get a title from:
1) GameTDB (wiitdb.zip/.xml)
2) From the disc header itself
3) From the name of the game file/folder itself.

There are two settings with the Features section of USB Loader GX which control this:
a) Titles from GameTDB
b) Force titles from Disc

When option "a" is chosen, it will read the wiitdb.xml (1) file from the location configured in custom paths.
If you have this option chosen it is strictly enforced - meaning that you will only ever see the titles listed in the xml file no matter what else you do.

If option "b" is chosen, it too is strictly enforced. In fact, enabling option "b" will disable option "a". Even if you turn them both on - if you exit the settings and then re-enter you will see option "a" is turned off. When option "b" is chosen it is again authoritative, except instead of taking the names from the wiitdb.xml (1) it will get the names from the disc header (2).

The disc header can be permanently changed by tools such as WiiBackupManager, but I'm sure many people prefer not to do this (I also believe there is a character limitation on this name(?)).

This leaves us with the final option. Keeping both "a" and "b" OFF. In this configuration, the titles are read from the name of the game file/folder itself (3).

This means that as long as we have the files on the disc names as we wish, they will display as we wish. Fortunately WiiBackupManager makes this very easy. Why? Well, in addition to supporting the GameTDB naming, WBM also supports using the custom-titles.txt file which can override only those names you specify. Then, you can choose to rename only the games you want with a custom name. This is all configured in the Options > Settings > Titles page of WBM. Enable both txt files and set their paths. I also prefer to disable the bottom two boxes so that the disc headers remain untouched.

In my case (I use ISO files on an NTFS disk) and my storage options in WBFS are "Store files in separate sub folders" for folder layout and "Title [GameID]" for naming style. I believe that as long as you are using the full name (and not *just* the GameID) in either in the file or folder name you can name it appropriately here with WBFS and it will show right in the loader as long as you keep both "a" and "b" off.

In WBFS it will show games using a custom title in a different color (purple by default), but remember to actually rename them using the Tools > Game Titles > Rename "X" options in WBFS.

A few closing notes:

As far as USB Loader GX honoring files like wiitdb.txt, titles.txt, or custom-titles.txt. It simply doesn't.
The *only* file that the loader will ever read is wiitdb.xml.
I tested this by placing all of these files in the custom path location and placing a slightly different name for a game in each one.
Testing all permutations of settings in the loader, the only file that was ever read was the xml.
This is why I believe the original suggestion of "Just change it in the titles.txt" is invalid - at least in the most up to date versions.
If anyone has any data points here to prove me wrong, please share as I would like to know if I am misunderstanding some functionality.

AFAIK some of the other loaders (like configurable USB) *does* support both a titles.txt and a custom-titles.txt, very much the same way that WiiBackupManager does. While I would love to see this feature in USB Loader GX, I'll admit that now that I've figured out how it is working it isn't very inconvenient. I'm sure 99% of the users are hooking their drive up to their PC and using WBM to manage their games, so I have no problem just using that to ensure my files/titles are named as I want them.

Oh - one other note on sorting, and why using my method (keeping both "a" and "b" off) solves some other issues. Some of you may have noticed that games following a format like this are sorted wrong:

LEGO Indiana Jones 2: The Adventure Continues
LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

...with #2 being sorted above #1. This sorting issue appears to be caused by the ":" character. If you replace ":" with "-" these titles are sorted properly. Because ":" is not a vaild character in a FAT/NTFS file/folder name, the folders will automatically use a "-" instead. Therefore, if you configure the loader without either of the two naming options, titles of this type will already look right!

 

[GreyWolf]

Aaaaand Trilogy froze on me, after I activated the canon. FML

After the Ridley Boss fight there is a section where there is a cutscene of one activating the canon that will let the game move foward. Game froze right there.

During a FMV? That sounds like the read rate from the drive might be too slow. Have you checked the drive with something like Defraggler to see how fragmented it is? Is it a HDD or flash drive?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

@bengalih Hmm... You could always just change the name in the xml file but I will see if I can make a snapshot that at least uses an override file.

 

[bengalih]

Tired a little because I'm not as good as people think I am and it's not easy for me to do all I would like, but mostly missing free time (to learn more, develop, test, debug). living alone takes a lot of time

Thank you for maintaining/modding that loader, and also taking care of the support with other users here
I don't know if/when I'll release a new official revision. I always hope I'll do it, but I know I procrastinate a lot.
I finally fixed my computer issue. It was out of order since February, 3 months without my computer was hard at first but it made me less "addict to gbatemp". I didn't come at all for a month. I'll have to catch up with all the scenes and gaming news.

Hey welcome back Cyan. Your older posts have been very informative for me while I was remodding my Wii after several years.
Decided on USB Loader GX (after being a WiiFlow fanatic for a while), as it seemed one of the easier ones to configure and had 95% feature parity with the other loaders. I also felt it was the easiest to use for my family.

Do you mind taking a look at my above post regarding observations on title naming and let me know if I'm correct or missing something?

thanks!

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

@bengalih Hmm... You could always just change the name in the xml file but I will see if I can make a snapshot that at least uses an override file.

Yes - that's what I did in my testing notes (at bottom of my post).
Problem is that editing the XML is a bit more cumbersome than a plain text file.

Also, the XML will get overridden with a new update.
In all honesty, I don't know if there is much of a need to update anymore, not like these things are changing frequently.

I don't mind the method of using WBM now that I (seem to) understand how things are working.

Reading posts here and other forums there has been a lot of confusion of how this works. I hope my testing has proved conclusive and will help other people.

I'm sure there are more important things to work on than this feature if it can be so easily obtained. For instance, fixing the sorting of accented characters would be a better investment.

I just want to confirm one other thing. The wiitdb.xml file is *only* used for showing game titles correct? It doesn't look like the synopsis that are in the file (which show in WiiBackupManager) are displayed in the loader regardless of the setting. I just want to be sure that disable the "Force titles from GameTDB" doesn't affect any other data.

thanks

 

[Cyan]

Based on what I can tell there are 3 ways/locations that USB Loader GX can get a title from:
1) GameTDB (wiitdb.zip/.xml)
2) From the disc header itself
3) From the name of the game file/folder itself.

there's a 4th one :
4) From the Title cache. To prevent reading gametdb everytime (can be slow to parse that file every time), the loader is keeping the game's titles you own in a file. you can rename that title manually and keep that title cached. it (should!) has priority over other method unless you enable "force name from disc".

Option 4 has priority over option 1. But think there is a problem in the caching source code, as sometime it's forgeting the user's chosen title and set the title back to the one from gametdb. (especially noticeable with Okami)
option 2 has priority over all.

priority is :
force header > title cache > gametdb > folder > header (back to header if no other title is found).

title.txt is not used anymore (it was used in v1.0, but was dropped in 2.0 or even earlier) to favor gametdb and (implicated?) force users to submit and maintain the gametdb website.


To take advantage of option 4 (title cache) :
Features : title caching : enable
features : force title from disc : disabled
GUI : game window : rotating or dual

select a game where you see rotating disc.
click on the title displayed at the top of the rotating disc, and select a new title.
reboot the loader.

This "title renaming" has 3 issue currently :
1- it's only in rotating disc. I planned to put it in the game settings, but never did yet. it's easy to do.
2- the title is not always refreshed automatically, you need to reload the game list or the loader.
3- like I said, that title cache seems to "forget" the user's title and read gametdb.xml instead. I never took the time to debug or fix it.


edit:
Oh, and, there's a 5th one !
you can compare it to "read from disc header".
5) Read from NAND.
it's used to get channel's titles on NAND and EmuNAND. The channel title can only be retrieved if you use a cIOS with NAND access or HAB access. (IOS58/d2x is fine. Hermes and some waninkoko cIOS have issues, using old forwarder has issues)
This one has a bug too, due to loading order (nand/cache/gametdb): NAND takes priority, making issue with the Title cache AND with the parental control level always loaded to a fixed value instead of using the value set in gametdb.

You can't rely on gametdb parental level value for channels installed on NAND. you need to set a user's individual setting for them.

 

[GreyWolf]

There aren't really a whole lot of new Wii/GC titles being released so there's not much need to update the xml file.

The best solution to this would be to modify the sorting function to ignore accented characters but that will require building a table of equivalent characters. (O is still O whether it has an umlaut or not.)

I will try to get an override file implemented in the next day or two in the meantime.

 

[bengalih]

there's a 4th one :
4) From the Title cache. To prevent reading gametdb everytime (can be slow to parse that file every time), the loader is keeping the game's titles you own in a file. you can rename that title manually and keep that title cached. it (should!) has priority over other method unless you enable "force name from disc".
...

Thanks for that additional info. Due to the bugs in the other methods, they just don't seem reliable as a solution. I doubt that Okami is a special case here, it is probably just noticeable more due to the fact that it is a problem title that people change..it probably affects them all the same.

While I have your attention could I ask for an answer as well to my question of: Is it normal not to see banner animations but only a black screen for Wiiware titles on NAND?

There aren't really a whole lot of new Wii/GC titles being released so there's not much need to update the xml file.

The best solution to this would be to modify the sorting function to ignore accented characters but that will require building a table of equivalent characters. (O is still O whether it has an umlaut or not.)

I will try to get an override file implemented in the next day or two in the meantime.

Thanks...because I just noticed a flaw in my logic...and that is with WiiWare. Since there isn't really a good way (I know of) to manage WiiWare titles outside of the GameTDB file, turning off the "Force Titles from GameTDB" means a lot of my WiiWare names are ugly/bad.

So I think we do need an override file, or maybe a way to break the settings apart for WiiWare titles so we can manage those separately from standard Wii games? Of course, fixing the sort characters would be the best solution assuming that GameTDB was correct (which it pretty much is I believe these days).

Thanks again guys for your work!

 

[Cyan]

Is it normal not to see banner animations but only a black screen for Wiiware titles on NAND?

no, it's not normal.
usually, there's a black screen when the banner is corrupted/not compatible with the banner emulator.
There are few features not working in the banner emulator used in the loader : language selection (castlevania has japanese text), dynamic data (WC24 like vote channel or mariokart), but they are generally not black.

you said it's installed to NAND (not emuNAND, right?), does it work fine on the system menu?

it could be a NAND access issue too, like I explained above you need NAND access to read the channel title but also the resources.
You are using IOS58 or a cIOS while inside the loader? try a different IOS/cIOS

 

[bengalih]

no, it's not normal.
usually, there's a black screen when the banner is corrupted/not compatible with the banner emulator.
There are few features not working in the banner emulator used in the loader : language selection (castlevania has japanese text), dynamic data (WC24 like vote channel or mariokart), but they are generally not black.

you said it's installed to NAND (not emuNAND, right?), does it work fine on the system menu?

it could be a NAND access issue too, like I explained above you need NAND access to read the channel title but also the resources.
You are using IOS58 or a cIOS while inside the loader? try a different IOS/cIOS

Sorry...I think I have posted more details in another thread...

This *is* an emuNAND created with ModMii. I can see the animations and run the games fine when booted into the nand from neek2o.

The games load fine from the loader it is just all the animations are just black screens.

Any ideas?

My whole mod is based off of Mauifrog's guide and apart from this, everything seems working well.

 

[Cyan]

maybe it's a banner bug in the loader.
I remember some users reported having black banner issue few months ago, but I never worked on that feature so I don't know how to fix it.
We (other users and me) evoked a possible issue with number of games, but we couldn't find a real game limit. some users had it with less than 100 games, some users with more games.
We never found a definitive reason. then, I don't know if it's because it was fixed or users didn't expect a fix, but nobody reported it anymore.

Maybe a bug in the banner cache creation/extraction?
try to disable the banner cache to force reading the banners from emuNAND (it could be slower, I don't know if it reads the banner from FAT library or from ISFS, I think it's FAT32 so it should be fast unless you have 1000 games installed)
if it works without banner cache, you can try to delete the banner cache folder and re-enable cache option to force a new extraction/copy of the banners.

 

[mikuheart]

I posted this in the vWii hacking thread but i was suggested to post here. So, for 2-disc games, only the second disc shows up in the menu. I have tried both 1262 and the 1263 versions, i've tried putting the games TitleID in the game folder in my sd card, updated nintendont to latest, etc. And still no luck. Both discs show up on Nintendont, just not on USB Loader GX. Any ideas on how to fix?

 

[bengalih]

maybe it's a banner bug in the loader.
I remember some users reported having black banner issue few months ago, but I never worked on that feature so I don't know how to fix it.
We (other users and me) evoked a possible issue with number of games, but we couldn't find a real game limit. some users had it with less than 100 games, some users with more games.
We never found a definitive reason. then, I don't know if it's because it was fixed or users didn't expect a fix, but nobody reported it anymore.

Maybe a bug in the banner cache creation/extraction?
try to disable the banner cache to force reading the banners from emuNAND (it could be slower, I don't know if it reads the banner from FAT library or from ISFS, I think it's FAT32 so it should be fast unless you have 1000 games installed)
if it works without banner cache, you can try to delete the banner cache folder and re-enable cache option to force a new extraction/copy of the banners.

No luck disabling the banner caches or trying different Loader IOS.

I'm discouraged especially after seeing this video:


There is no way to know *for certain* if this guy loading Sonic 4 - Episode I at the :30 second mark is in fact installed on his emuNAND, but based on the title of the video I think we are to assume it is...which means this works/has worked at some point for others.

Do you have any other recommendations I could try? Is there an older version of the loader that you think I might be able to test for this to see if it is my config or the loader itself? If so, which version might I try?

Maybe I will try to create an emuNAND with USBLoader instead and see if that one produces the same issues that I get with the ModMii one. I'm pretty sure my NAND is a good one because I can boot it in neek2o without issue.

 

[Cyan]

We also thought it could be related to a specific version, but users reported 3.0 also had that issue. that is if your issue is the same as the previous users reporting black banners.
You can try 3.0 (r1180), but keep a backup of your current setting file GXGlobal.cfg or you'll reset some values by reverting to an old loader version.
The banner reader function was developed in versions preceding 3.0 (between 2.3 and 3.0, you can find ALL the released version in the first post's link)

Few questions :
Do you have many games installed to emuNAND ? how much ? a lot of different regions ?
How did you install them ? using USBGX internal feature or with ShowMiiWads? did you install the full pack or little by little ? (internal feature had a bug around r1230)
Did you have the black banner issue from the start or it happened recently but worked fine before?

That's only random question, just to gather information. It will probably not help fix it.

What I suggest :
try a new clean emuNAND from modmii (use same console serial number than your console to be sure there's no compatibility issue) and install only 1 channel. see if it works. try to install them again little by little (not necessarilly 1 by 1, but maybe 10per10? if you notice one batch makes all other channels black, try again a new fresh emuNAND with games from that batch to see if it's a particular game which is responsible.

If it's becoming black very early, like on first channel install, instead of making a clean nand try making a dump of your real NAND as base by using the internal features :
Settings > loader settings > loader's IOS : d2x (don't use IOS58 to make the dump or install a game, it could cause issues), then reboot.
Settings > features > dump NAND > full (select emuNAND channel path before doing that)

 

[GreyWolf]

I seem to remember having a problem with it reading the banners from a NAND dump if it's in a subfolder. (i.e.: /nands/foo/ rather than just /nand/)

If you move the folder to /nand/ then run the loader to cache the banners they will stay in the cache after you move the folder back to its original location.

 

[Shiranui-san]

Aaaaand Trilogy froze on me, after I activated the canon. FML

After the Ridley Boss fight there is a section where there is a cutscene of one activating the canon that will let the game move foward. Game froze right there.

I don't know about MP3 standalone (I don't have it) but MP3 from Trilogy is a pain in the arse. I also have problemas with it, I think most of them are cIOS related:

- if it is loaded off of emuNAND with neek2o, it gets stuck in the cannon cutscene destroying the Leviathan after the attack of Dark Samus.

- if it is loaded using cIOS D2X (I tried with v6, v7, v8, v10), it freezes randomly, the Wii reloads and gets back to Wii main menu. In this case it doesn't matter if emuNAND save option is enabled or if you are storing your savegame in the console's own memory. But it seems that the game runs faster using a cIOS base38 instead of a cIOS base56.

- several years ago, I finished the game using Hermes' uLoader and his cIOS 222, never had any issues even saving in the uLoader's own emuNAND. The problem with this configuration is that you have to set the alternative .DOL for MP3 in the loader, and you are forced to always play in the same difficulty level.

If you can, try installing cIOS 222 and load the game with it. USB Loader GX is compatible with cIOS 222 in case you don't want to use/don't like uLoader, but you cannot use emuNAND saves feature using GX+222.

 

[bengalih]

We also thought it could be related to a specific version, but users reported 3.0 also had that issue. that is if your issue is the same as the previous users reporting black banners.
You can try 3.0 (r1180), but keep a backup of your current setting file GXGlobal.cfg or you'll reset some values by reverting to an old loader version.
The banner reader function was developed in versions preceding 3.0 (between 2.3 and 3.0, you can find ALL the released version in the first post's link)

Few questions :...

So - I've spent a couple hours frantically building NANDs in all sorts of different ways and doing testing.
Some times I had success, others I didn't. I don't like blindly taking one that was working and saying "OK" - I want to know why the other one didn't work because in my case I am meticulous about how they got created and I honestly couldn't see any differences between the good and bad ones.

I won't answer all of your questions - because I believe I found the issue (in my case).
It seems that the banner animations don't work if your nand folder that you are using is more than 5 characters in length.

Originally my folder was:
/nand/WiiWare

After all is said and done I can reliably recreate the issue simply by changing the name back and forth from the above to:

/nand/WiiWa

Any more characters than that (5) and the banner animations don't work.

Strangely enough everything else works. I have nands longer than 5 where I launch WiiWare from, where I launch Wii games with lots of DLC (GH, Just Dance, etc...) and it all seems to work. The only thing that didn't was the banners.

I destroyed my main nand that was giving me the issues, so I am going to rebuild it the same way I did and load back on my ~150 titles, but make sure the name is under 5.

Assuming that works - as I expect it to, you won't hear from me again on this issue.

Thanks for your time and advice.

 

[bengalih]

On another note. As I was looking at some older versions of the loader to download I saw that there were all sorts of different versions.
Like for different IOS: 249, 250, etc.
I doesn't appear that 3.0 does this anymore.
I do see an option in 3.0 for which IOS to run the loader from.

Has this basically moved from a hard-coded option in which you needed a separate .dol for to a dynamically configurable option?

If not (or there is more), can someone please explain what has fundamentally changed that these aren't required anymore.

I have a tentative grasp on AHBPROT, and a basic understanding of cIOS (being patched standard IOS that remove certain restrictions, or in some cases add new code) - but I'm still a little fuzzy as to how this plays out when running a loader and/or a game.

The Mauifrog guide, which I think most people here follow - and most other common guides have a configuration like:

IOS249[56] (rev 21010, Info: d2x-vXXX): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0
IOS250[57] (rev 21010, Info: d2x-vXXX): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0

To me, the only difference here is that the cIOS is based on either official IOS 56 or 57.

Why would one work over the other?

For instance, in my default configuration, the loader and games are set to 249.
Some games however (Just Dance 2014), I need to set to 250 to run.

Is it really as simple as the game itself needs IOS 57 to run? If that's the case, and we can't just run everything with 250, is that because the IOSes aren't complete backwards compatible? So an older game may not work on 57 and actually need 56 to run?

I'm further confused because I thought games that used USB peripherals like the microphone needed IOS 37, but if that was the case I would need to use 245 based on my syscheck:

IOS245[37] (rev 21010, Info: d2x-v10beta52): Trucha Bug, NAND Access, USB 2.0

Or at the very least stick to 249 which is using 56 which supposedly has the compatibility of 37.
However 245 and 249 don't work for me here, only 250 does as stated above.

I feel like I have 80% of the knowledge to understanding this, but I'm missing some critical piece to tie it all together.

Thanks again.

 

[Cyan]

thank you for spending your time doing the with your on emuNAND and founding the issue.
It's strange the length is the issue, but that's good to know for future users with the same issue

Has this basically moved from a hard-coded option in which you needed a separate .dol for to a dynamically configurable option?

yes, that's it.
it was released with different hardcoded version.
Now the IOS used to boot the loader is both hardcoded (249) and can be soft-edited by the user by using the meta.xml argument -ios=xxx


The users had choices with more than just 2 IOS : there where Hermes cIOS too, located in 220 range
these cIOS had different features, and on old loader it was required to boot directly using this cIOS (for example FAT32 support with hermes while waninkoko supported only WBFS partitions) instead of reloading later while inside it, but it was mainly to "win" some loading time by preventing a second IOS reload.

HBC used IOS58 -> launching the loader version 249 was reloading to IOS249 -> you wanted hermes IOS so it reloaded again to 222.
You could skip the first reload to 249 by using USBLoaderGX v222, and you won something like 1 second loading time ... only. but users seemed to care.

I droped that habit and released only a single version, as users could set the boot IOS directly in the meta.xml and it achieves the exact same effect : prevent a unnecessary reloading time.



About the base :
base56 was historically chosen because it was the one with the fastest USB access when Waninkoko released cIOS rev18 (which allowed different base instead of the forced IOS38)
I don't remember if base57 existed yet.
IOS57 is slightly (unnoticeable) slower than IOS56, but has better game compatibility.
IOS 56 has less compatibility compared to IOS 57, and users should stop using IOS56 as default base, really. guides are just copying each other instead of thinking a little and making things easier for noobs (and at the same time for us, helpers!).
IOS57 is required for few games, and the users with 56 installed in the default slot used by the loader is wondering why the game is not working, has to ask on forum to learn it needs to set "slot250" to fix some games. it's stupid and anti-noob proof.

I started telling users to install only one IOS when modding the console : a d2x based on IOS57, final8 or v10 r52. (NOT r53, another stupid noob proof choice in guides).


d2x v8 or v10 (non alt) based on IOS57 is the best for all games, even with the ones which required hermes cIOS, so there's really no need of any other IOS on wii or vWii to get all games working.
All games = games without anti piracy protection, or Dragon Quest RPG which requires IOS59.