Hacking VCFE Wip...

[lolsjoel]

Oh, I think that reply will be quite useful, HC. I've always tried using template banner.brlyt files, which would explain why everything is bricking. I'll extract some clean banner.brlyt files then and try again.

 

[HowardC]

hmm.... reading radio's reply has me thinking....

ALESTE is 6 letters multiply that by 2 and you get 12.... I always add one more null at the end (the files seem to cooperate when there is at least one extra null)
so that's 13.... 13 divided by 4 is 12 with one left over.... that means three nulls to buffer it back to a multiple of 4! Just what I was mentioning earlier.

Super Mario World 10 is 20 + 1 is 21 So that'd leave 3 nulls as well.... Which means you should have gotten distortion but you didn't.

I think we are going to have to compare just the offending text portions (from the "txt1" to the end of the actual string) of a few titles that work versus a few that don't to get to the bottom of this.

Btw, did you notice the distortion? It's EXACLTY like what you get when you try to re-pack a neogeo banner. Makes me wonder how they are related.

 

[HowardC]

Ok guys, I compared the brlyts and did some other testing and this is what I discovered.....

So long as you start with an official brlyt things shouldn't freeze BUT depending upon the length of the title and/or system text, the images may get corrupted. (Players and Year aren't a problem as their length will never change).


"Super Mario Bros. 14" Worked for me with a system name of "Nintendo Entertainment System 2" as did "Super Mario Bros. 145"..... "Super Mario Bros. 1456" corrupted it. I looked at the files and I honestly couldn't figure out anything wrong.

So here is the plan:

We want to take an official wad with a fairly long title and count the text length (actual text length once converted to readable text)
Now we want to take a wad of the same system, with the same type of banner (as we know they've recently changed the format) but with a shorter title and use the brlyt editor to change it's title to the title of the first wad, thus using the app to lengthen the text to the exact size. If we are very lucky, when we install this banner on the wii it'll be corrupted, then I can compare it with the official one to see the differences and hopefully determine a pattern.

That's the only thing I can think of to do.

I'll try to do this sometime this weekend, but as I said earlier, I'm not feeling too well. If you guys want to try it in the meantime though... that'd be helpful.

 

[marioxb]

Is there any way to extract a 00000001.app from an NES game? I get an error with any u8 tool and the program exits.

 

[WiiCrazy]

Is there any way to extract a 00000001.app from an NES game? I get an error with any u8 tool and the program exits.

it's just a renamed dol (executable) file.

 

[dritz]

HowardC

When using the U8 Tool,

If I decompress all files and then compress all files without closing the program everthing works correctly. But if I decompress files, close program then try to compress files. I get a runtime error '76' path not found. Then it deletes the whole directory and I have to start again.


Not sure if this is a problem with everyone but happens everytime with me on 2 different computers.


on a side note:
Thanks these programs are making things alot easier to make new wads. Keep up the good work.

 

[lolsjoel]

Donno if this will help with your attempt to fix the corrupt banner image from using the Brlyt Editor, but I just changed Comix Zone from

1995 -> 1992
1 -> 2 players
Comix Zone -> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles^Hyperstone Heist

And got a corrupted image. At least this time the banner.brlyt didn't freeze the system!

EDIT: Don't know if this seemed like a reasonable thing to do, but I just tested changing the name to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles^Hyperstone Heist_ to see if changing the length of the name with an extra NULL might do the trick. It didn't.

 

[HowardC]

Is there any way to extract a 00000001.app from an NES game? I get an error with any u8 tool and the program exits.

What he said...^^

I really need to change that error message. Consider that a "this is not a valid archive" error.

 

[HowardC]

HowardC

When using the U8 Tool,

If I decompress all files and then compress all files without closing the program everthing works correctly. But if I decompress files, close program then try to compress files. I get a runtime error '76' path not found. Then it deletes the whole directory and I have to start again.


Not sure if this is a problem with everyone but happens everytime with me on 2 different computers.


on a side note:
Thanks these programs are making things alot easier to make new wads. Keep up the good work.

I haven't seen that one..... I've only gotten the occasional "arc not found" error, which is caused by having a folder that is to be deleted open on your desktop. It might be related.... you should back out to the root when you are doing the packing and extracting (windows rule, not mine).

 

[HowardC]

Donno if this will help with your attempt to fix the corrupt banner image from using the Brlyt Editor, but I just changed Comix Zone from

1995 -> 1992
1 -> 2 players
Comix Zone -> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles^Hyperstone Heist

And got a corrupted image. At least this time the banner.brlyt didn't freeze the system!

EDIT: Don't know if this seemed like a reasonable thing to do, but I just tested changing the name to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles^Hyperstone Heist_ to see if changing the length of the name with an extra NULL might do the trick. It didn't.

Well it helps me in tmnt is an official release and you have the official brlyt for me to compare with the one you genrated AND there aren't any "empty" fields in the banner (when the text is just generic like "virtual console title_ger"). Otherwise no.

I've been having a hard time finding two regular brlyts actually. Smb is a good one, but all the other nes titles I look at have either generic names for some of the regions or are using the new style banners. Nes would be best because the roms are small so the wads install quicker.

The null probably won't help, at least not that way.... it actually adds two nulls, not one so you can't easily switch from evens to odds, which is most likely causing the issue.

 

[gundalf]

Hello HowardC, i have here an problem with the C64 banner/lz77 compresion.


As you can see, the white Space get transparent.
It does not make any diferenc if i use your tools, if i do the tpl by hand or i just use the original tpl without modifying(simply unpack and repack).

Do you have an idea?

 

[RadioShadow]

Is there any way to extract a 00000001.app from an NES game? I get an error with any u8 tool and the program exits.

What he said...^^

I really need to change that error message. Consider that a "this is not a valid archive" error.

It can be extracted from the 01.app using Hexecute. You just need to know the start and end location of the file.

 

[lolsjoel]

Donno if this will help with your attempt to fix the corrupt banner image from using the Brlyt Editor, but I just changed Comix Zone from

1995 -> 1992
1 -> 2 players
Comix Zone -> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles^Hyperstone Heist

And got a corrupted image. At least this time the banner.brlyt didn't freeze the system!

EDIT: Don't know if this seemed like a reasonable thing to do, but I just tested changing the name to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles^Hyperstone Heist_ to see if changing the length of the name with an extra NULL might do the trick. It didn't.

Well it helps me in tmnt is an official release and you have the official brlyt for me to compare with the one you genrated AND there aren't any "empty" fields in the banner (when the text is just generic like "virtual console title_ger"). Otherwise no.

I'm not sure what you mean here. TMNT Hyperstone Heist is not an official VC game. It's an inject for the Genesis that I was trying. I have the original brlyt used and the brlyt that your VC Brlyt Editor outputted. Did you want those uploaded, or not?

 

[RadioShadow]

^ He meant find an early release wad with a long name. Then find an early release wad with a shorter name. Use the tool to extend the second wads name to the first wads name.

That's what I understood from it anyway.

We want to take an official wad with a fairly long title and count the text length (actual text length once converted to readable text)
Now we want to take a wad of the same system, with the same type of banner (as we know they've recently changed the format) but with a shorter title and use the brlyt editor to change it's title to the title of the first wad, thus using the app to lengthen the text to the exact size. If we are very lucky, when we install this banner on the wii it'll be corrupted, then I can compare it with the official one to see the differences and hopefully determine a pattern.

Well I've used:

The Legend of Zelda - NES
Metroid - NES

I extend the name 'Metroid' to 'The Legend of Zelda' (using the All Set button) and the banner wasn't corrupted on the Wii. I even extended it to 'The Legend of Zelda^A very long title' and the banner wasn't corrupted.


EDIT: Thinking about this, VCbrlyt6.0 might not be the cause of sometimes making the images blurry. The tool is shortening /extending the text correct of all the tests I've done (the text is in fact displaying fine). It will need a few more tests on other wads but at least it's not freezing the wads now.

I reckon the banner.bin file isn't being packed correctly by the U8Tool. Looking at the file in the hex editor, why has the IMD5 Header changed when I've repacked the banner.bin file? Also the fact the compressed sound.bin file doesn't play means something isn't right when the file is being repacked.

 

[marioxb]

I just bought the Japanese version of Ninja Combat for the Neo Geo Virtual Console. Just for fun, and also since I only have 1 Neo game (Blue's Journey). Neo Geo is interesting in that it's the only system (I think) that is exactly the same (the actual game, that is) in all regions. Unlike Genesis/ Master System, where the language is determined by the config file inside the wad, the Neo's language is determined by the language settings of the Wii itself! So, if you have the game on a Japanese Wii, the game will be in Japanese. If you play on a US Wii (or change the region to US like I did), the game will play in English. Of course the wad also has to be "freed". The console name, "NEOGEO", is English on the banner, no matter what the settings are. The game name, players and year are blank in English mode, the same way all Japanese systems (except Japanese Mega Drive) are in US mode. Also, as with TG16/ PC Engine, the home button functions are in English now. (Return to game, quit, operations guide, whatever they say) Although the manual itself, in English mode, calls for /html/startup.html, where as in Japanese mode, it looks for the manual in html/index/frameset.html (something like that). Since the English manual is not present, an error message comes up when clicking "Operations Guide". Sega consoles also look for a non-existing English manual when the config file is changed.

 

[HowardC]

^ He meant find an early release wad with a long name. Then find an early release wad with a shorter name. Use the tool to extend the second wads name to the first wads name.

That's what I understood from it anyway.

We want to take an official wad with a fairly long title and count the text length (actual text length once converted to readable text)
Now we want to take a wad of the same system, with the same type of banner (as we know they've recently changed the format) but with a shorter title and use the brlyt editor to change it's title to the title of the first wad, thus using the app to lengthen the text to the exact size. If we are very lucky, when we install this banner on the wii it'll be corrupted, then I can compare it with the official one to see the differences and hopefully determine a pattern.

Well I've used:

The Legend of Zelda - NES
Metroid - NES

I extend the name 'Metroid' to 'The Legend of Zelda' (using the All Set button) and the banner wasn't corrupted on the Wii. I even extended it to 'The Legend of Zelda^A very long title' and the banner wasn't corrupted.


EDIT: Thinking about this, VCbrlyt6.0 might not be the cause of sometimes making the images blurry. The tool is shortening /extending the text correct of all the tests I've done (the text is in fact displaying fine). It will need a few more tests on other wads but at least it's not freezing the wads now.

I reckon the banner.bin file isn't being packed correctly by the U8Tool. Looking at the file in the hex editor, why has the IMD5 Header changed when I've repacked the banner.bin file? Also the fact the compressed sound.bin file doesn't play means something isn't right when the file is being repacked.

Yes that's what I meant. I think those two games have "generic" entries though which are problematic. Since my app doesn't support underscores (they are used to force in null characters) and the generic titles have them, I have no way of generating the exact same text. The idea is to get two files that SHOULD be identical, one that is the real brlyt and another that is from another game only with the text changed by the app and compare them in a hex editor to find any glitches.

Well the imd5 should be different...... A md5 hash is generated by the size of the file AND it's contents. This is what ensures that the md5 hash is unique for each file. I'm not ruling out issues with the u8 tool though. The problem is, there isn't much info out there about the u8 archive (when I built mine I found that much of the info posted on wibrew is WRONG) and I based my files on the ones the original u8 packer makes. I guess what I'm saying is if it's the fault of the u8 tool, I'm not sure how I could fix it. It probably wouldn't hurt to try packing with the old u8pack though on a banner that is corrupted and see if it makes a difference. If it does then at least we've pin-pointed our problem.

EDIT:
About the sound issue, I'm pretty sure that is a different problem. Here's the thing (at least in theory). My tool can handle sound.bin better because it actually uses the file size in the banner info header instead of the original tool, which simply didn't alter the value at all. Unfortnately some sound.bins also use lz77 compression and that means the actual size of the sound file is larger than the size of the file istelf. Those ones don't play. There are ways I can get the original size though, I just haven't iplemented them yet. At least that's the theory, I haven't looked into it yet, because quite frankly once I got the u8 tool working I was so sick of coding on it I didn't want to fool.

EDIT2:
Thinking about what you said... it might not be on our end at all. Maybe it's the wad manager? The reason I ask is because an alternate version of the official wad manager has been released over at tehskeen and although it's in "spanglish" I noticed this little blrub at the bottom....

"The free version does not use the CIOS Custom IOS, which means that if you have a CIOS below CIOS IOS36 rev04 or Custom IOS tona: Patchmii rev03 you must use this version to avoid the bug at the installation of title (or other bug that may not be known?). "

Avoid the bug at the installation of the title? Does that mean there is a bug that'll screw up banners?

 

[HowardC]

Hello HowardC, i have here an problem with the C64 banner/lz77 compresion.


As you can see, the white Space get transparent.
It does not make any diferenc if i use your tools, if i do the tpl by hand or i just use the original tpl without modifying(simply unpack and repack).

Do you have an idea?

I got your message btw. I was going to reply but since you didn't ask me anything I didn't know what to reply to.

As you know, I didn't make the tool that does the lz77 compression, I just use it because it's easier. It is known to have issues though so it is undoubtedly your problem. My suggestion would be to try it without compression at all. From what we've found about files in wads so far, they don't have to be compressed, it just saves space that way. My icon generator only adds lz77 compression if gbalzss is found in the same folder.... rename it and it'll make you one without compression.

Barring that, I really don't know atm. You might want to change the color of the white slightly in photoshop and see if that helps. If it does then I can modify my templates accordingly. Remember, true white has a rgb value of 255,255,255 and (I think) that is the color of the white in the c64 logos. 254,254,254 should look identical to the human eye but it is another color to the program and thus it won't touch it.

 

[HowardC]

I just bought the Japanese version of Ninja Combat for the Neo Geo Virtual Console. Just for fun, and also since I only have 1 Neo game (Blue's Journey). Neo Geo is interesting in that it's the only system (I think) that is exactly the same (the actual game, that is) in all regions. Unlike Genesis/ Master System, where the language is determined by the config file inside the wad, the Neo's language is determined by the language settings of the Wii itself! So, if you have the game on a Japanese Wii, the game will be in Japanese. If you play on a US Wii (or change the region to US like I did), the game will play in English. Of course the wad also has to be "freed". The console name, "NEOGEO", is English on the banner, no matter what the settings are. The game name, players and year are blank in English mode, the same way all Japanese systems (except Japanese Mega Drive) are in US mode. Also, as with TG16/ PC Engine, the home button functions are in English now. (Return to game, quit, operations guide, whatever they say) Although the manual itself, in English mode, calls for /html/startup.html, where as in Japanese mode, it looks for the manual in html/index/frameset.html (something like that). Since the English manual is not present, an error message comes up when clicking "Operations Guide". Sega consoles also look for a non-existing English manual when the config file is changed.

The manual stuff is easy to fix. If you look at the main html file for the manual, it has an elaborate php script setup that tells it to look in different places depending upon the language. We could easily just replace this file with one that always looks in the same place.

 

[marioxb]

The manual stuff is easy to fix. If you look at the main html file for the manual, it has an elaborate php script setup that tells it to look in different places depending upon the language. We could easily just replace this file with one that always looks in the same place.

Oh yeah, well I fixed it almost as easily. I just copied the index_framset.html file from html/index to html/ and renamed it startup.html. Then I edited the new startup.html file and changed it to look for the other files in /index rather than the root folder. So now it will display the manual in English or Japanese modes. Still in Japanese in English mode, of course.

Speaking of Neo Geo, I wanted to see if the Japanese Neo Geo save banner was the same as the US, or more like your alternate version in your icon generator. I doubt this is used in Japan:

But, it doesn't seem that the Ninja Combat game has a save feature. Does that mean there are no save icons, or would they still be there? How and where can I check?

 

[HowardC]

Even if it's there you can't check it. Neogeo Save banners are in the 5.app (sometimes 6) saved as banner.bin. It's a special tpl that can't be opened by normal viewers because it doesn't have a header. Actually yes, that's probably the same save banner. As I've already stated, the name of the neogeo in japan is neogeo. The EXACT same system sold in the US was also sold in japan, thus the branding is the same. It's different for the other consoles as they had different consoles for different regions. Btw this is why the neogeo games can be region freed so easily.