Hacking VCFE Wip...

[HowardC]

It's not strange at all, it's the c64 file that is strange.

I detect a sound.bin by looking for the headers RIFF (wav file), FORM (aiff file) and BNS..... strangely enough, due to excessive text in the c64 5.app, two out of the three are in there, just as readable text instead of a header. (RIFF means something in french??) I've put in a check to make sure if it finds these headers that they are in the first 64 bytes, which a real sound.bin header will always be. I'll up it shortly.

I'm really glad you guys found it, but for future reference, when testing and you run into a error with a c64 file, always test a more "normal" console as well. The c64 is just plain wierd.

*EDIT*

u8 tool 7.1 is up, this will fix the issue.

 

[RadioShadow]

When does the 'sound.bin' header need to be used?

 

[HowardC]

For the sound.bin of course.

It's there to compress and decompress sound.bin. It's a imd5 header sans the u8 archive basically with optional lz77 compresssion.

 

[FGOD]

thx i'll try it later on...

 

[Mrkinator]

Hey HowardC, were you able to fix the error that made banners corrupt w/ the U8 tools? (I was able to make the image smaller to fix the prob, but I'm still curious

)

 

[marioxb]

Just tested a custom NES Adventure Island III save icon with the icon injector and it worked perfectly! Thanks! Didn't test the u8 tool yet, used the older one of yours I had.

 

[HowardC]

Thanks for testing! Afaik the others work just fine so we can consider it working.


Although I haven't tested it enough to be certain, yes this u8tools release should fix corrupted banner issues.

 

[marioxb]

I think all of the issues are fixed! I edited a Japanese PC Engine banner using your latest u8 tool and brylt editor and for the first time, it didn't corrupt! Using the "hardcore" editor, I changed the year into "Released: 1987", the system name into "PC ENGINE" (In English), the game name into English and the, number of players into "Players: 1". In all cases except the system name, one Japanese character was still shown before the English. Like it would say "(Japanese character) eleased: 1987", with the first English letter not shown. Of course text is only displayed when the Wii is in Japanese mode. In English mode, nothing is displayed. Maybe just hex editing all of the JPN into ENG would do the trick for that?

As far as the save injector and SNES, it will import the name into the 01.app, but not the icon into the 05.app (maybe that was the intention..). Trying to change "Super Castlevania IV" into "Castlevania^Dracula X" only displayed "Castlevania" for both the "mouse over" and after clicking on the icon. I ended up changing it to "Castlevania: Dracula X", which worked fine, except the "mouse-over" only shows "Castlevania: Dracul..".

 

[RadioShadow]

I think all of the issues are fixed! I edited a Japanese PC Engine banner using your latest u8 tool and brylt editor and for the first time, it didn't corrupt! Using the "hardcore" editor, I changed the year into "Released: 1987", the system name into "PC ENGINE" (In English), the game name into English and the, number of players into "Players: 1". In all cases except the system name, one Japanese character was still shown before the English. Like it would say "(Japanese character) eleased: 1987", with the first English letter not shown. Of course text is only displayed when the Wii is in Japanese mode. In English mode, nothing is displayed. Maybe just hex editing all of the JPN into ENG would do the trick for that?

Replacing the 'JPN' to 'ENG' in the 'banner.brlyt', 'banner_Loop.brlan' and 'banner_Start.brlan' will fix the problem.

As for the other problem, HowardC's U8 Tool needs to add a '00' in hex before the first letter. If you open the 'banner.brtly' file in a hex editor, it mostly likely got a different hex value placed before the first letter and the Wii detects that as a Japanese character.


Now I just tried packing a GENESIS 00.app and it still came out blurry. >_< Although it isn't as blurry.

The compressed sound.bin file however played. ^^


EDIT: If it helps, this is the 00000000.app.

 

[FGOD]

had the same problem with my Duotris C64 game again after i changed the date which was wrong(filled it in wrong last time) didn't had the time to do other console since i was trying to make some other C64 titles to work, but for some reason in all games, the game just doesn't react on the keyboard :s

 

[HowardC]

I think all of the issues are fixed! I edited a Japanese PC Engine banner using your latest u8 tool and brylt editor and for the first time, it didn't corrupt! Using the "hardcore" editor, I changed the year into "Released: 1987", the system name into "PC ENGINE" (In English), the game name into English and the, number of players into "Players: 1". In all cases except the system name, one Japanese character was still shown before the English. Like it would say "(Japanese character) eleased: 1987", with the first English letter not shown. Of course text is only displayed when the Wii is in Japanese mode. In English mode, nothing is displayed. Maybe just hex editing all of the JPN into ENG would do the trick for that?

As far as the save injector and SNES, it will import the name into the 01.app, but not the icon into the 05.app (maybe that was the intention..). Trying to change "Super Castlevania IV" into "Castlevania^Dracula X" only displayed "Castlevania" for both the "mouse over" and after clicking on the icon. I ended up changing it to "Castlevania: Dracula X", which worked fine, except the "mouse-over" only shows "Castlevania: Dracul..".

Japanese text editing is not supported. To do pc-engine titles you need to use a tg-16 banner and swap out the icons and text. It's just the easiest way.

The injector doesn't decompress app files. If you want it to automatically COPY the tpl for you, you'll need to extract 5.app first and point to the tpl inside. The exception is the nes/famicom tpls of course.

Multi-Line editing is admitedly a little dicey, mostly because it's done differently for each system. I'll look into it. Mouse-over should only show what you typed though because the mouse-over length limit the wii sets is around 22 characters.

As for banner corruption issues, as I said, we might have to look into alternatives. As of now the u8tool is 100% compliant, I am certain of that, and I'm fairly certain that the brlyt editor is as well. So with that being said, unless we find the actual cause we are sorta screwed regarding doing it the "right way".

 

[marioxb]

Japanese text editing is not supported. To do pc-engine titles you need to use a tg-16 banner and swap out the icons and text. It's just the easiest way.

Well, the only problem there is that the PC-Engine background graphic is bigger. I got it to work the way RadioShadow suggested. I just changed one hex postion before the offending ones to 00, which fixed it.

As for the other problem, HowardC's U8 Tool needs to add a '00' in hex before the first letter. If you open the 'banner.brtly' file in a hex editor, it mostly likely got a different hex value placed before the first letter and the Wii detects that as a Japanese character.

Now I just tried packing a GENESIS 00.app and it still came out blurry. >_< Although it isn't as blurry.

The compressed sound.bin file however played. ^^


EDIT: If it helps, this is the 00000000.app.

I just had the same problem with Genesis. Could this have to do with the fact that Sega consoles show the same text, regardless of the region setting of the Wii, while the other systems do not?

 

[FGOD]

guess not cause C64 has the same problem...

 

[RadioShadow]

As for banner corruption issues, as I said, we might have to look into alternatives. As of now the u8tool is 100% compliant, I am certain of that, and I'm fairly certain that the brlyt editor is as well. So with that being said, unless we find the actual cause we are sorta screwed regarding doing it the "right way".

Your u8tool is packing the files correctly, but I bet there is something wrong with the brlyt file.

Now I actually fixed the problem by getting the Streets of Rage 2 banner.brlyt file, using the brlyt to just edit just the name and manually changed the year to 1994.

The good news is, we can compare the corrupted file and the uncorrupted file and see what's going one. I'll get them uploader.

EDIT:

http://www.savefile.com/files/1849485

The corrupted and uncorrupted file.


Also it might be worth asking trent_fox about how he got unicode support in his tool.

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=109...t=0&start=0


EDIT 2:

Well the brlyt editor is naming the Netherlands released year text as 'Released: xxxx' when it should be 'Release: xxxx'.

Also the hex at address '00000B' is different. There the differences I've spotted so far.

 

[FGOD]

That is how i fixed the same problem with the c64 banner

He might indeed help with this

 

[RadioShadow]

Okay, I know what's causing the images to blurry, the 'banner.brlyt' (even official ones that have not been edited).


Now I did the following tests (basically unpacked and packed (no LZ77) the banner.bin file):

ALESTE = Images were blurry.

Super Mario RPG (PAL with message about 60Hz) - Displayed fine.

Super Mario Picross (PAL with message about 60Hz) - Images were blurry.


Now this is where I decided to use the banner.brlyt file from Mario RPG into Mario Picross.

Super Mario Picross with Mario RPG banner.brlyt file - Displayed fine.


There is something inside certain banner.brlyt file that is causing the images to go blurry, even ones that have not be edited by the 'brlyt Editor'. I reckon it could be something to with the image offsets.


EDIT: If it helps, I can upload the ALESTE and EGGY banner.brlyt files. ALESTE is the one that's blurring the images while EGGY displays them fine.

It may help in tracking what's going on.

 

[HowardC]

Okay, I know what's causing the images to blurry, the 'banner.brlyt' (even official ones that have not been edited).


Now I did the following tests (basically unpacked and packed (no LZ77) the banner.bin file):

ALESTE = Images were blurry.

Super Mario RPG (PAL with message about 60Hz) - Displayed fine.

Super Mario Picross (PAL with message about 60Hz) - Images were blurry.


Now this is where I decided to use the banner.brlyt file from Mario RPG into Mario Picross.

Super Mario Picross with Mario RPG banner.brlyt file - Displayed fine.


There is something inside certain banner.brlyt file that is causing the images to go blurry, even ones that have not be edited by the 'brlyt Editor'. I reckon it could be something to with the image offsets.


EDIT: If it helps, I can upload the ALESTE and EGGY banner.brlyt files. ALESTE is the one that's blurring the images while EGGY displays them fine.

It may help in tracking what's going on.

Unless you are seeing something I'm missing, all your examples prove the opposite is true.

Think about it.... all the images are the same size, even if you edit them. If it's a stock brlyt then obviously it isn't the brlyt causing the issue. What is causing the issue, at least from what you are saying, is the SIZE of the brlyt or the combination of the brlyt size and the size of the other images. Your two examples you uploaded confirm this. The ONLY difference between the two is 4 extra bytes on the netherlands year entry. The other differences represent header size values changed to reflect this fact.

Afaik there aren't any image offsets contained in the brlyt or anywhere else except the u8 file itself. It thought this might be the cause when we ran into the issue early on so I compared SEVERAL brlyts of the same system, just with different length texts. The image sections were always identical. If there were image offests anywhere in the files then this section would have varied depending upon the text length.

So if mario rpg and mario piccross have the extact same size brlyt file AND you are having these results when you swap them then it very well could be an issue with the headers inside the brlyt itself, otherwise, it sounds like a packing issue to me.

We need to also keep in mind that none of the official banner files have a banner.bin without lz77 compression as well. That very well could be our issue in that the structure is SUPPOSED to support uncompressed archives, but nintendo never tested it.


Aleste and Eggy aren't going to be much help because half of the text is in japanese and I can't properly edit it with the editor.

Now mario rpg and mario picross might be more helpful, but I'm going to need the entire banner.bin as it's obviously not the brlyt but it's size that is causing the issue.... maybe there is a hiccup with the u8tool.

Also, for the record, I couldn't replicate the error you found with the genesis banner. Every time I save a file it makes the netherlands year entry "Release: "
It could be that I've done some tweaks since the last official release and forgot about them. I'll release a version with the latest exe shortly.



Now one thing I DID notice is entire file-wise, the corrupted brlyt isn't a multiple of 16 but the uncorrupted one is. I think I might put a little function into the save routine that adds junk at the end of the file, but I honestly don't know how that should make a difference.

 

[HowardC]

I upped the latest version of the brlyt editor. It appears that the last released version was 6.0 and I'm on 7.1, so that might be the issue right there. It would be greatly appreciated if you could try the same ones that corrupted again with this new tool (starting with the stock brlyt of course.)

(p.s. Trent's app has unicode support because he is using a forms 2.0 container. Unfortunately, packaging an app with the forms 2.0 control is a violation of m$'s office copyright agreement as it's a component of office.)

 

[RadioShadow]

Unless you are seeing something I'm missing, all your examples prove the opposite is true.

Think about it.... all the images are the same size, even if you edit them. If it's a stock brlyt then obviously it isn't the brlyt causing the issue. What is causing the issue, at least from what you are saying, is the SIZE of the brlyt or the combination of the brlyt size and the size of the other images. Your two examples you uploaded confirm this. The ONLY difference between the two is 4 extra bytes on the netherlands year entry. The other differences represent header size values changed to reflect this fact.

Afaik there aren't any image offsets contained in the brlyt or anywhere else except the u8 file itself. It thought this might be the cause when we ran into the issue early on so I compared SEVERAL brlyts of the same system, just with different length texts. The image sections were always identical. If there were image offests anywhere in the files then this section would have varied depending upon the text length.

So if mario rpg and mario piccross have the extact same size brlyt file AND you are having these results when you swap them then it very well could be an issue with the headers inside the brlyt itself, otherwise, it sounds like a packing issue to me.

Now mario rpg and mario picross might be more helpful, but I'm going to need the entire banner.bin as it's obviously not the brlyt but it's size that is causing the issue.... maybe there is a hiccup with the u8tool.

Both banner.brlyt files were 12KB. Download them here.

 

[FGOD]

i just edited the banner.brlyt from my Duotris C64 wad and that is the only thing i did, with the 7.1 tool. and both files differ in size.

edit: just tried the new wad and it worked great no problem at all, although the size difference... (maybe the new one solved it?)