Hacking VCFE Wip...

[FGOD]

I wish I had a link for you, but honestly I forgot the name. It's a team tweezer app I think and basically it dumps your keys to the sd card. You'll have to look for it. I do remember that the name of the app doesn't give you ANY clue as to what it does, so that makes things difficult.

you mean the Xyzzy tool bushing made?

 

[WiiCrazy]

But a app that can pack them with the user's Wii common-key would be helpful.

EDIT: How do you obtain the common-key.bin from my Wii (if I can)?

It won't work since you also need to forge the tmd and the only way for doing so is trucha... by the way xyzzy tool that dumps the keys from wiis also affected from the update as it downloads/patches and installs an ios temporarily... I'm not quite sure about yawnd, nand dumping application... I looked through the sources of it and it doesn't seem to be relying on a bug that is fixed recently... just not sure... anyways it won't help you that much... but I'm sure there will be a workaround in the near future...

 

[HowardC]

Thanks for the clarification.... xyzzy was indeed the one I was thinking of, but I never looked at the source, so I just assumed it didn't use any trucha tricks.

So the stuff like the cios downgrader don't even work? That's a pretty substancial update.


Anyway, I just wanted to give a quick update.... It rained all this weekend so my halloween decorating was a bust, which is bad for me, but good for you. I went ahead and added unicode support to the brlyt editor as well as an option to pad the end of the file, as that seems to solve corruption issues. There is one withstanding bug that I'll have to think on to fix though. .......

Right now all of my apps let you add an extra line with a "^" but apparently, when to split the first character of the year text in japanese into two ascii characters (a dirty trick I have to pull to get the apps to print unicode to file) the second character becomes a "^". I put in checks for this, but I can't seem to get it to stop converting. This is probably due to the odd-ball way I have to convert stuff to make it readable. So long story short I may have to change the special character we use. Now by default, the real character that the wii uses is visible on the new forms as a paragraph symbol. That's all well and good for viewing, but seeing as how that symbol isn't on a keyboard, it'd be a real pain in the ass to type one.

I'll think on it for a while, but suggestions are welcome.

Later.

**EDIT**

Nevermind, I figured out the issue and while I had to do some fixing internally, the end user shouldn't notice any changes as to how to add an extra line.

 

[RadioShadow]

So the stuff like the cios downgrader don't even work? That's a pretty substancial update.

It will work if you already installed cIOS before updating. Otherwise, you're screwed for now.

At least the tools will have Unicode support!

 

[Sorox]

How do i pack the sound.bin file? I have it in there with banner.bin and icon.bin but i cant figure out how to pack it...

 

[RadioShadow]

The 'sound.bin' file is the music itself, just with a IMD5 header, so it doesn't need unpacking.

There is a way to put a custom music in the banner, let me see if I can find the link.

EDIT: See This Link

1. Obtain the sound file you want to use. Any type of audio files are supported.

2. Open audacity.exe, press ctl+o and load the sound file.

3. Cut out a sound portion that is just under 10 seconds long.

4. Click "file" and select "Export as WAV...". Name the file (name doesn't matter) and save it to a folder. Close Audacity.

5. Rename the file to "sound.bin". Make sure the extension gets changed, not just the file name.

6. Open MD5Sig.exe and point it towards the sound.bin you created.


Shouldn't be too hard to find MD5SIG.exe but if you can't, I can upload it.

 

[Sorox]

I figured out why its hasnt been working.... I Havent been using the IMD5 header tool. Im such a idiot.

 

[HowardC]

The 'sound.bin' file is the music itself, just with a IMD5 header, so it doesn't need unpacking.

There is a way to put a custom music in the banner, let me see if I can find the link.

EDIT: See This Link

1. Obtain the sound file you want to use. Any type of audio files are supported.

2. Open audacity.exe, press ctl+o and load the sound file.

3. Cut out a sound portion that is just under 10 seconds long.

4. Click "file" and select "Export as WAV...". Name the file (name doesn't matter) and save it to a folder. Close Audacity.

5. Rename the file to "sound.bin". Make sure the extension gets changed, not just the file name.

6. Open MD5Sig.exe and point it towards the sound.bin you created.


Shouldn't be too hard to find MD5SIG.exe but if you can't, I can upload it.

I've told ya three times already buddy but you aren't listening.

amending your list

Step 0..... use my u8 tool and extract the sound.bin

replace step 5 with:

Delete the sound.bns inside the folder where sound.bin was extracted and save your new sound file as sound.wav inside that folder and using u8tool repack the sound.bin using the "sound.bin" header type.

Yes, your method is quicker, but with mine you don't have to keep track of another tool.

 

[marioxb]

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.

Where exactly would this banner.bin file be? Just hanging out there loose in the 05 or 06.app? I have two Neo Geo games- Blue's Journey and Ninja Combat. Both have the same file setups: 05.app contains: home.csv, opera.arc and html.arc. The 06.app contains: game.bin, config.dat, and memcard.dat. Does this mean these games don't save and don't have icons? Does memcard.dat have anything to do with saving?

 

[RadioShadow]

The NeoGeo dos have a save feature similar to the N64. The save is there to save your High Scores. Also in some games, it is possible to save and reload at certain points like in Magic Drop 3.

 

[lolsjoel]

3. Cut out a sound portion that is just under 10 seconds long.

A lot of people seem to think it's necessary to have a sound sample that's under 10 seconds, but honestly, that's not a requirement. Originally, the suggestion of using a sound.bin of less than 10 seconds was made because this is, after all, just a quick sound to be played when opening a channel. Also, a longer sound.bin means a larger install size. But there's nothing that says it can't actually be long. I made a sound.bin of an entire song once as a joke and it worked fine. Though, if using the +/- buttons to change between that channel and another very rapidly, it would crash the Wii.

 

[marioxb]

The NeoGeo dos have a save feature similar to the N64. The save is there to save your High Scores. Also in some games, it is possible to save and reload at certain points like in Magic Drop 3.

OK, I just downloaded Magician Lord. It does have a banner.bin in the 06.app. So I guess Ninja Combat and Blue's Journey just don't have a save feature. Oh well, my Ninja Combat is from Japan, and I was hoping to see what a Japanese NG save icon looked like. I'm going to bet it's different than the US one, even if the system is called the same thing in Japan. This theory will be tested when I download Custom Robo V2 for N64 from the Japanese Wii Shop this weekend.

On a related note, playing around with Save Icon Injector 3.0, I can't get Neo Geo save icons or titles to inject. I click on the first (...) and choose the banner.tpl I made with the Icon Generator. Then I click on the second (...) and click on the banner.bin file in the extracted 06.app. I tried with and without changing the title. No matter what, I get "Run-time error '424': Object required.". What does this mean? What am I doing wrong? What do I do with the tpl_neogeo_header.bin file in the templates folder?

 

[Mrkinator]

HOWARD! Your tools didn't fix the fuzzy banner XD. I'll just shrink the image I guess

 

[marioxb]

HOWARD! Your tools didn't fix the fuzzy banner XD. I'll just shrink the image I guess

I think he's getting ready to release a new tool that will fix everything. At least I hope so...

 

[HowardC]

The NeoGeo dos have a save feature similar to the N64. The save is there to save your High Scores. Also in some games, it is possible to save and reload at certain points like in Magic Drop 3.

OK, I just downloaded Magician Lord. It does have a banner.bin in the 06.app. So I guess Ninja Combat and Blue's Journey just don't have a save feature. Oh well, my Ninja Combat is from Japan, and I was hoping to see what a Japanese NG save icon looked like. I'm going to bet it's different than the US one, even if the system is called the same thing in Japan. This theory will be tested when I download Custom Robo V2 for N64 from the Japanese Wii Shop this weekend.

On a related note, playing around with Save Icon Injector 3.0, I can't get Neo Geo save icons or titles to inject. I click on the first (...) and choose the banner.tpl I made with the Icon Generator. Then I click on the second (...) and click on the banner.bin file in the extracted 06.app. I tried with and without changing the title. No matter what, I get "Run-time error '424': Object required.". What does this mean? What am I doing wrong? What do I do with the tpl_neogeo_header.bin file in the templates folder?

Some neogeo games have a dedicated save file, some don't. It doesn't necessarily mean that there isn't a save feature though as I believe kof 94 has a memcard file in it's archvie but does NOT have a save icon.

The neogeo thing is a bug.... I removed a now unnecesary object but there is a line of code that still tries to call it. It'll be fixed with the unicode update.

 

[RadioShadow]

HOWARD! Your tools didn't fix the fuzzy banner XD. I'll just shrink the image I guess

HowardC hasn't released an update which will fix that problem let.

If you want to fix it manually, just add a bunch of '00' hex bytes (I advise using Hex Workshop) to the 'banner.brlyt' file so it's 12KB exact in size.


EDIT:

QUOTE(HowardC @ Oct 23 2008, 05:22 AM) I honestly don't remember the maximum length, but I'm not sure if it'd help us. With so many variations of the brlyt structure even if we knew how big all the texts would be we would never know if extra stuff (esrb, 60hz warning) were added making it even bigger. It might give us a rough idea though.

Well my Wii can install wads now wads! So I'm happy.

I went and made the title use 41 character's (this includes the '^') in the 60HZ warning SNES banner and it displayed fine. In fact it was still below 12KB (not by much mind).

20 Letters on both lines is plenty bigger enough.

 

[HowardC]

That's good news! How did you fix it?

The buffering technique seems to be working well, but I want to go ahead and release one that just adds a few bytes first. We want to keep it as small as possible. Knowing a working solution though, I can add in support for a 12kb buffer in a flash if we need that much, which I have a suspicion that we don't.

After trick or treat (which is tomorrow here) I'll have time to work on this and get a release out. I've successfully added unicode support to everything but the save icon injector (cause it's wierd as hell on some consoles) and fixed a bunch of bugs (not big ones, but a bug is a bug) along the way. I must say though, guitar hero world tour has me a bit distracted. Of course anything that involves a virtual "nuge" riding a buffalo to the stage is distracting.

 

[WiiShizzza]

As you guys figuered out the byrlt and brlan files, maybe one of you could give me a hint on how to loop a sound.bin.
As I understood, it can be done with a sound_start.bin (intro) and a sound_loop.bin (loop^^)
Problem is, I don't know how to make a corresponding byrlt or brlan file...

Any Hints?

 

[RadioShadow]

That's good news! How did you fix it?

The buffering technique seems to be working well, but I want to go ahead and release one that just adds a few bytes first. We want to keep it as small as possible. Knowing a working solution though, I can add in support for a 12kb buffer in a flash if we need that much, which I have a suspicion that we don't.

After trick or treat (which is tomorrow here) I'll have time to work on this and get a release out. I've successfully added unicode support to everything but the save icon injector (cause it's wierd as hell on some consoles) and fixed a bunch of bugs (not big ones, but a bug is a bug) along the way. I must say though, guitar hero world tour has me a bit distracted. Of course anything that involves a virtual "nuge" riding a buffalo to the stage is distracting.

My Wii or the 'banner.brlyt' file?

Don't forget all of the Save Names use Unicode except for the SNES which uses Shift JIS.

The only difference with Shift JIS is ASCII characters only uses one bytes while the Japanese characters use two bytes.

 

[marioxb]

I made some alternate save icons for Famicom and Super Famicom that have the console name in English, as well as alternates for SNES (pal) and NES.

I also made an alternate icon.bin for Famicom so that it says "Family Computer" in English.

They are now all posted on a later post.