Hacking VCFE Wip...

[marioxb]

I successfully banner bricked my wii

Now dumping the zelda game to make it autoboot to fix it.

Probably because of the headers in the archives of either 0.app or banner.bin or because of the tpl file I used.
For banner.bin I selected IMET (Banner Info)
For the 0.app I selected Regular (??)
I replaced the VCPic.tpl with this one (http://www.tepetaklak.com/data/VCPic.rar) (256x192)

It seems like a full brick

It doesn't boot any of the autoboot dvds, after the health and warning screen it displays "...system files corrupted.." white on black screen...

like the case here : http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=101434&st=15

FGOD now you are not alone

My wii is modded yet I'm stuck... How foolish to think that having the tp hack, being on 3.2 and having a modded wii is enough reason to play with the banners.

You two aren't the only ones who bricked their Wii's. I posted this before you posted anything:

QUOTE(marioxb @ Sep 2 2008, 06:45 AM) I had a working TurboGrafx-16 injected wad. Then I used your programs in the first post in this thread to change the banner. Everything installed properly, but then when the Wii rebooted, it had the message, "The system files have been corrupted...". That was last night. I left the Wii unplugged all night to see if that might fix it. No luck. My Wii is not modded (just Zelda hacked) and I have no way to fix it, do I? I really don't wanna pay to have it fixed and I also don't want Nintendo to see what I have on it anyway.

Has anyone else had similar problems? I assume it was just a coincidence, but I don't know what to do now....

So, anyway, I'm still trying to figure out what to do. My warranty is long gone and I don't wanna pay for repairs.

 

[lolsjoel]

If you didn't have certain StarFall hacks installed on your system, you have no options right now, other than installing a modchip and trying to autoboot a Zelda TP to launch the WAD Manager. If not that, you could always wait for marcan's unbricking tool to be put into production and sold, but that may never actually happen.

I was on the phone with Nintendo the other day when I got my new Wii so I could get my VC games and store tranferred to my new account. They told me that in the future, if I were to go to them to get my Wii fixed, it would cost about $80, which really isn't that bad of a charge. Just thought you'd like to know that, as it seems paying Nintendo is probably you best option right now.

All this talk about bricking, HC, really shouldn't stop you from doing what you're doing. Your tools are meant to be for those of us that understand the process of swapping banners, and the inherent risks that come along with it. I know you're trying to make your tools more "noob proof," and that's commendable, but maybe you ought to include a big red warning in your OP to get everyone's attention before they think about downloading and using your tools. There you could include potential brick recovery steps to take before installing any WADs (modchip with autoboot, StarFall with recovery menu hacks + Gamecube controller, filling the first fifteen channel spots with working channels, etc). Unfortunately, no one seems to be taking any precautions here. There are safe ways to do this, but no one takes the time to look into the risks/solutions until they've bricked, and that's unfortunate for them.

But keep on, keeping on, HC. The rest of us appreciate it!

 

[WiiCrazy]

You two aren't the only ones who bricked their Wii's. I posted this before you posted anything:

I had a working TurboGrafx-16 injected wad. Then I used your programs in the first post in this thread to change the banner. Everything installed properly, but then when the Wii rebooted, it had the message, "The system files have been corrupted...". That was last night. I left the Wii unplugged all night to see if that might fix it. No luck. My Wii is not modded (just Zelda hacked) and I have no way to fix it, do I? I really don't wanna pay to have it fixed and I also don't want Nintendo to see what I have on it anyway.

Has anyone else had similar problems? I assume it was just a coincidence, but I don't know what to do now....

So, anyway, I'm still trying to figure out what to do. My warranty is long gone and I don't wanna pay for repairs.

Check the 0.app out of your offending wad, if it starts with LZ77 then it might probably be the same brick as mine. My test with another chipped drive will probably shed some light on this if it works.

 

[RadioShadow]

To those who have bricked their Wii's, what wad installer were you using?

Also me and HowardC have discovered the palette issue in the Save Banners the Icon Tool has been producing. So a update for the tool will come soon once the Neo Geo and Commondor 64 has been tested (the rest are displaying correctly).

 

[HowardC]

I understand that, loes, but I don't want to set up a situation where the people that are helping me are going to get bricked as a result. I haven't quit anything... what I've done is took a hard look and re-evaluated how u8tool should work. My conclusion is that it should work how it does currently as the other methods out there are simply too cumbersome (u8coes, for example, sucks because you can't change file names or remove files in a archive built with it, and u8 pack makes you painstakingly add one file at a time ). What I am doing is adding as many checks as I can before it becomes hard work to add checks. I already had a check in place that didn't allow you to save a 0.app unless a banner.bin and icon.bin were in the archive, but apparently that wasn't enough. What I've done is added name-based checks on all the sensitive files including 0.app banner.bin and icon.bin. If you try to pack those files with the wrong header or improper compression then you'll get a big error message and the file won't save and it'll set the correct settings. Also there is a new "get settings from source file" option in which you point to a file (hopefully the original) and it gets the settings from this. Unlike u8coes this is OPTIONAL, so it won't slow power users down.

It'll be released after I've done more testing to ensure the checks are working.

Btw I also think I've figured out the save icon issue with the icon generator, but I need to test it. It was something that wasn't on my end.

I think this unbricking dongle the net is talking about will probably do the trick as it explicitly mentions a brick caused by a corrupted main archive file on a channel (read a bad 0.app).

Also infectus has a multi-console modchip that allows re-flashing of the flash drive apparently, but I don't know how difficult it is to install, if it can install on a bricked wii, or if it can solve this problem.

I looked into all of this, because I've put too much faith in wanikoko's wad manager apparently. I've screwed up some banners myself pretty bad, even the 0.app and it's always caught it so I figured that the installer would catch any major issues. The only difference between my tools and the others and my potential brick-makers and you guys is the lz77 compression. Apparently his installer doesn't catch that and adding lz77 compression to a 0.app must brick your wii.

But myself, I always check anything I'm gonna put on my wii in a hex editor first.

 

[marioxb]

Check the 0.app out of your offending wad, if it starts with LZ77 then it might probably be the same brick as mine. My test with another chipped drive will probably shed some light on this if it works.

Yeah, that's the problem.

 

[WiiCrazy]

Check the 0.app out of your offending wad, if it starts with LZ77 then it might probably be the same brick as mine. My test with another chipped drive will probably shed some light on this if it works.

Yeah, that's the problem.

I couldn't test it with another drive yet I've seen I don't have a d2ckey but a clone one. Bastard seller, at the time of purchase I knew nothing about the wii and the fact that cloned d2c chips came into Turkey at that time is plain surprise to me.

Here is my modchip, if this one doesn't support the autoboot then I can replace the modchip and autoboot and fix my problem.
http://www.alibaba.com/product-tp/10118065...od_Chip_31.html

 

[marioxb]

To those who have bricked their Wii's, what wad installer were you using?

WAD Manager 1.1

 

[marioxb]

OK, I borrowed my friend's Wii and installed Starfall just to be safe. I'm able to successfully pack the files now without bricking, but most things I try freeze up.

When I tried making a custom banner with the TG16 0.app file in the original thread, it would come out blurry. So, I needed to try something else. Then this wonderful tool by HowardC came into play.

HowardC, you mentioned SNES is the most stable, as far as banners showing up correctly. However, it seems that whenever I change the colors and/or logo (not sure what exactly is causing it) in the brlyt file, the icon works, but when I click on the channel, the system freezes up. I can reboot the Wii and everything works but that one channel.

Here's what I did. I took my SMW 0.app file and extracted it. Then I put the icon.bin from a TG16 wad file (Bomberman '93) to replace the SNES one. Extracted the banner.bin file. Used your icon tool to change the screenshot and pasted the VCPic.tpl over the old one. Then, I opened up banner.brlyt and changed the colors and logos from SNES to TG16, as well as changed the relevant info. Packed everything up with your packing tool (first banner.bin_OUT with the IMD5 option checked, then 00000000.app_OUT with the IMET banner info box checked.), repacked the wad, installed it. Seems to work, then FREEZE! I also tried leaving the icon.bin file alone with the same results.

What did I do wrong?!

 

[RadioShadow]

Well I dumped ALESTE for the MSX today and started looking threw the files.

The banner.bin has decided to be an oddball as the logo doesn't appear on the bottom half upside down in the channel.

Also it doesn't display correctly if the files are extracted and packaged. That problem should be able to get fixed once the brlty tool gets an update.

The good news is, the MSX Channel is set up in the same way as a Mega Drive/Master System Channel so the 05.app data uses the .ccf compression.

The save banner is set up the same way so there are 6 icon save images and 1 banner save image stored in the 'misc.ccf.zlib' file. However, the images are displayed using Nintendo's set up:

01.wte = 100% VC-Pic
02.wte = 100% VC-Pic
03.wte = 75% VC-Pic, 25% MSX
04.wte = 25% VC-Pic, 75% MSX
05.wte = 100% MSX
06.wte = 100% MSX
banner.cfg = Contains the Save Name
banner.wte = Save Banner

The config file has a few more settings than the Mega Drive/Master System:

country="jp"
romfile="Aleste_D4.ccf"
player.0.bindings_override="(core b=A)(classic x=A,y=C)(gamecube y=A,b=C)"
player.0.mapping_keyboard="A=SPCE,S=FK09,X=AD05,Z=ESC"
machine_msx.enable_opll="1"
config_menu.disable_staff-credit="1"
config_menu.disable_ds-controller="1"

The interesting thing is, it might be possible to modify the control settings for the Keyboard. The last three options I think have to do with the Option that comes up if you press the '-' button on the WiiMote and you get two options, one to use enhanced music and the other to swap around the two button actions.


Now the important part, the location of the rom. Well it's stored in a file called 'Aleste_D4.ccf.zlib' along with four other files:

aleste_D4.meg (This is the rom the Wii Emulator loads)
arch
fmpac.rom
init
msx_aleste_D4.rom (not sure what this is for)

Haven't got round to trying a custom rom let. I also think this Emulator only runs MSX1 roms but it might be set up to run the other types.



There is also a small bug in the ccftool2.0 tool. It doesn't seem to extract the 'patch' file stored in the 'data.ccf' file correctly in the 'ALESTE MSX' and 'Puyo Puyo MEGA DRIVE' wads (both which I dumped myself).

As the image shows, it extracts the file, but there is no data inside the file.

 

[dritz]

OK, I borrowed my friend's Wii and installed Starfall just to be safe. I'm able to successfully pack the files now without bricking, but most things I try freeze up.

When I tried making a custom banner with the TG16 0.app file in the original thread, it would come out blurry. So, I needed to try something else. Then this wonderful tool by HowardC came into play.

HowardC, you mentioned SNES is the most stable, as far as banners showing up correctly. However, it seems that whenever I change the colors and/or logo (not sure what exactly is causing it) in the brlyt file, the icon works, but when I click on the channel, the system freezes up. I can reboot the Wii and everything works but that one channel.

Here's what I did. I took my SMW 0.app file and extracted it. Then I put the icon.bin from a TG16 wad file (Bomberman '93) to replace the SNES one. Extracted the banner.bin file. Used your icon tool to change the screenshot and pasted the VCPic.tpl over the old one. Then, I opened up banner.brlyt and changed the colors and logos from SNES to TG16, as well as changed the relevant info. Packed everything up with your packing tool (first banner.bin_OUT with the IMD5 option checked, then 00000000.app_OUT with the IMET banner info box checked.), repacked the wad, installed it. Seems to work, then FREEZE! I also tried leaving the icon.bin file alone with the same results.

What did I do wrong?!

I have the same problem when I use the VCbrlyt editor. If you edit the banner.brlyt manually with hex editor it will work. I'm not sure why it locks up. The only thing I can tell is the files are a diferent size depending on the name input.

Also the VC Icon Generator when it makes the banner tpl for save files the colors are getting corupt on snes files. Haven't tested others yet.

But these programs arer eally coming together. Keep up the good work!!!!!!!!

 

[RadioShadow]

I have the same problem when I use the VCbrlyt editor. If you edit the banner.brlyt manually with hex editor it will work. I'm not sure why it locks up. The only thing I can tell is the files are a different size depending on the name input.

Also the VC Icon Generator when it makes the banner tpl for save files the colors are getting corrupt on snes files. Haven't tested others yet.

The colours are not getting corrupted, an alpha colour is being painted over them. HowardC did find the problem and should be fixed when he updates it.

If you want an unofficial fix of the tool, download this one which fixes the colour issue in the save banners: http://www.filefactory.com/file/5fe643/n/VCIcon6_0_zip


The VCbrlyt editor doesn't appear to be working correctly at the moment but is something that HowardC mentioned in a PM that is what he will be looking at.

 

[dritz]

Thanks RadioShadow that did the trick.

Good to hear about the VCbrlyt editor also.

 

[lolsjoel]

Yeah, RadioShadow, that unofficial fix of yours worked perfectly. So thank you for that. I now finally have properly bannered Genesis games!

Now, on to the U8 Tool, is it just my using it wrong, or is it actually not possible to pack up the whole 00.app correctly with it? When I've used the U8 tool to completely swap out banners, I can't get the icon.bin to show properly (it just displays white) with the IMD5 and LZ77 compression settings checked, even though this is what the original file had. Also, I haven't been able to get the sound.bin to play. I must be doing something wrong there, though. All I do is leave it in the 00_app_OUT folder untouched, but when repacked, it just doesn't work. Any thoughts on why that happens?

Other than that, I've only ever had problems with the brlyt editor when using a brlyt that has odd entries (for example Year_Released: GER or whatever) when the text isn't there for some regions. By hitting "set all" when I changed that information, I got a bricked channel out of it. Obviously, that can be fixed by changing each region individually (or not at all where need be), though I haven't actually done that.

All in all, I think these tools are still coming along great. I'll look excitedly to the future for revisions and updates!

 

[RadioShadow]

Yeah, RadioShadow, that unofficial fix of yours worked perfectly. So thank you for that. I now finally have properly bannered Genesis games!

Now, on to the U8 Tool, is it just my using it wrong, or is it actually not possible to pack up the whole 00.app correctly with it? When I've used the U8 tool to completely swap out banners, I can't get the icon.bin to show properly (it just displays white) with the IMD5 and LZ77 compression settings checked, even though this is what the original file had. Also, I haven't been able to get the sound.bin to play. I must be doing something wrong there, though. All I do is leave it in the 00_app_OUT folder untouched, but when repacked, it just doesn't work. Any thoughts on why that happens?

For the icon.bin file to display properly, just pack it with IMD5. Don't compress it with LZ77.

The compressed sound.bin files has worked in some wads and in others it doesn't using the tool. To fix that problem, you will need to replace it with this uncompressed sound.bin file.

 

[badboy08]

Hi RadioShadow i thing i have a little problem i change all the names years and more with VCbrlyt editor
But when i going to click at the game at my wii menu it crashes can you tell me please why?



Sorry for my bad english

 

[lolsjoel]

badboy08 - that would be a banner.brlyt brick. VC Info does not work on brlyt files that have instances like "Title_Year_GER", as in instead of a date or number of players for some lanugages, it simply shows a three letter code for the country. You'll have to set each date/players information individually (set all will not work) and you'll have to leave the odd ones alone (GER, ITA...).

Either that or just HEX edit it.

 

[HowardC]

Ok guys, just to update, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth, my comupter simply has.

I killed my power supply and although I'm back up, my pc is very sick. Hopefully I can work on all of this a little later this weekend, but if you suddenly stop hearing from me again it means my pc has bit the big one and it'll be a few weeks before I'm back up.

 

[lolsjoel]

Bummer, gotta hate it when the PC craps out. Well good luck getting it working well again. We'll see you when we see you!

 

[marioxb]

Anyone ever get a TG16/ PC Engine custom banner done correctly with ANY method? When I use a 00000000.app from a TG16 wad, any changes result in the banner coming up blurry. Using HowardC's banner editor to change the colors of Smash Bros's banner to the TG16 color worked, but I can't get it to say "TURBO GRAFX16" at the top, only "TURBO GRAF" since that's how long "NINTENDO64" is. Adding letters with any method I tried results in freezing. Also, I copied the TG16 icon.bin from a TG16 game, replacing the N64 one, which worked perfectly. I also replaced the N64_icon.bin file from the banner.bin with an official TG16 one, renamed it to the N64's file, but it displays squished. Here's my custom TG16 00000000.app file (Monster Lair, aka Bikkuriman World with an English patch), if someone wants to try and fix it for me.

http://rapidshare.com/files/144748507/00000000.app.html

I injected the game into Dracula X (wouldn't work injected into a US game), renaming the syscard3p.pce into the filename from bomberman 93, and deleting all the CD files and editing the ini and txt files. I also made a custom manual and save icon. The game plays, but if you want to play it again, you have to delete the save file for some reason or else it will lock up on a black screen. Any idea what could be wrong?