Hacking Wii backup Manager for Windows

[hong392]

Sorry i am having problem with the Wii Backup Manager.
All of a sudden all the ISO file doesn't load finish. for a 4.3Gb file became only 1.3 Gb .
Is this normal or is there something wrong with my Wii Backup Manager.

 

[zizer]

it is normal for wbfs format

 

[hong392]

Thanks for the information XD

 

[kavid]

WBM Simplified Chinese.lang 0.38b60 file r4

 

[zafira_]

Hello!

I'm a newby in this area and I'm having a problem with the Wii backup Manager and the covers.
The wii console mounted the usb drive and reads all games I put there, but it doesn't read the covers.

In the pc, with the usb drive connect to it, I click on covers --> "syn and download all". The covers show up in the Wbmanager but they don't show up in the wii console, when I load the games on "configurable usb loader".
Could you give me a hand with this?
Many thanks

 

[kLik@0x40]

Hi & thanks for that nice app...

Here's my little bug report for build60:

Arrggh, had to edit my post due to not digging into deep enough:
The mentioned problem also applies to build58! But there the "Software" renderer is default and build60 it's "OpenGL". This and "Direct3D" do not work properly - at least on my WinXP SP2.

I only tested the default pictures (showing [?], former "noimage"), but as far as I can see there is a problem with the PNG
support at least in the main windows cover view. For not being distorted, image-width has to be 256 (or a multiple of) pixels.
Else (as with the disc.png and 3d.png, also front.png, NOT full.png - it's 1024) the image-lines seem to be concatenated and simply wrapped at 256 pixels (okay, when you see it, you know what I mean - like memcpy an array a1[x,y] to another a2[x+i, y+k], i!=x, k=?).
I tested the PNGs of build58, too. The ones with width%256=0 are okay for use, others are not.
The problem is not present when using the "Software"-renderer. Smaller pictures are simply scaled there.

(This following procedure is absolutely unnecessary: simply choose ="Software"! But I'll keep it since I wrote it in the "1st pass" ;-)
Scaling the images to 256xYYY does solve the problem, but if you simply scale the whole image (even with original aspect ratio preserved) or it appears stretched in the cover view. Scale the background to e.g. 256x256 using some prog with PNG alpha-channel support (GIMP: scale layer and/or canvas size).

Well then, thanks again and good luck bug-hunting...

klikatat

 

[fig2k4]

@kLik@0x40
Can you test with all the renderers? OpenGL, Direct3D and Software.. Obviously software will be OK though. Check the log to see which renderer is actually in use, because if "preferred" renderer isn't available the app will try to init something else.

I used to have a problem with memory alignment that caused something like this. eg. Some graphics drivers align the memory to 4 bytes, others don't. But I solved that a long time ago.

Although this does sound a little different, it's definitely graphics driver related.

Does you card support NPOT textures? I have code that's supposed to deal with that without resizing the image, but maybe it doesn't work as it should.

@zafira_
You need to tell WBM where your covers should be saved. By default, it uses some folders in the WBM cover folder. You can set the base folder in the Options->Settings->Covers tab. See the image..



@kavid
Thanks.

@lejong2002
I was confused as to why this would happen, but I found that I left the default cover renderer as OpenGL. Could that be the cause? There's 3 options.

1. Update your graphics drivers.
2. Copy your old settings.ini to the WBM folder.
3. Edit the settings.ini to show "Renderer=0" to set it to software.

If none of that helps, send me one of the old logs from when it crashed.

@dun4cheap
I'll add the ability to set cover folders for all the loaders. So you can enable CFG and GX at the same time.

I've got a few good ideas now for having "per drive" info. Basically, you'll be able to configure the cover folders, display name for the drive menus, whether the drive should be auto mounted on startup/insertion, the location of the games folder (so you can use it like the custom folder feature) etc. This info would be stored in a drive.info file in the root of the drive. A config dialog will be available under something like "Tools->Configure this drive.."

This could probably replace a few of the current options. Like the drive display names, startup drives etc. Anything that could be used differently per drive.

 

[kLik@0x40]

@fig2k4

Yes, you are right.

I was just editing my post regarding this renderer fact, when you wrote your answer.
Anyway, thanks for replying, anyway - I really appreciate that.

I use a very old ATI graphics card, with its latest drivers, but yes, very old (CatalystCC states "Radeon 7000 series").

What I found in the OpenGL Wiki fortifies your theory:

Older Hardware

The R300 and R400-based cards (Radeon 9500+ and X500+) are incapable of generic NPOT usage. You can use NPOTs, but only if the texture has no mipmaps.
NV30-based cards (GeForce FX of any kind) are incapable of NOPTs at all, despite implementing OpenGL 2.0 (which requires NPOT). It will do software rendering if you try to use it.

My ATI is something about R100-based, I think, so there most likely is no NPOT-Texture support. This being the reason for the problem makes also perfect sense to the fact, that a multiple of 256 worked (btw: 128 and the like do so, too - just checked that).
I use that graphics card 'cos it can drive 2 indepent monitors with 2 VGA-connectors ... and I can live easily with Software-rendering (hope so ;-)...

klikatat

 

[Daniel15]

Thank you for all your hard work on the great program! Seems to work perfectly

 

[kLik@0x40]

btw another question:
Are there any new variables like %APP% for the cover-path? Didn't see anything about that in the changelog, but since you said you're gonna add them... ;-)

I'd like to suggest %APPDRIVE% as I want to use the covers from the "usb-loader" dir, which is in the root of the same USB HDD, that also stores WBM. If the drive letter changes for some reason, it would be nice not having to alter the settings.
You can actually use a path like %APP%\..\..\usb-loader\covers, but then you cannot change the dir-level of WBM without changing the settings.
Well, okay, a minor problem, I have to admit. It really is...

klikatat

 

[fig2k4]

@Daniel15
Cheers.

@kLik@0x40
Check your PM for a little test if you have time.

I've added the %APPDRIVE% variable and %LOCALTEMP% too.

%APPDRIVE%\usb-loader\covers = F:\usb-loader\covers
%LOCALTEMP%\WBM = C:\Users\fig\AppData\Local\Temp\WBM

If anyone would like any more variables, it only takes a few seconds to add them..

Edit: I changed that from %SYSTEMP% to %LOCALTEMP% because it's easier to read.
Edit 2: I added the new variables after I sent the test exe, so the new variables won't work with that.

 

[DGenerateKane]

Hey fig, back in 0.3.5 when a game was renamed it automatically updated Custom-Titles.txt, but in rev58 and rev60 (can't vouch for any others) it doesn't update it. Hope you can fix that in an upcoming release.

 

[2FastLX]

Ok, I am rethinking this and I would still like to see at least one more drives tab so you can have 2 drives and a custom folder mounted at the same time. It would be helpful for moving things around from a backup folder to a pair of drives which I have for 2 Wii's. Instead of mounting drives one at a time and not knowing which games I have on the drive that isn't mounted. I know I can just open the drive to see the files, but it's nice to have the sorting options and transfer tools in Wii Backup Manager to do this on both drives while having a third location to pull files from. But if this never happens, I am getting by as it is.

Also, I have a custom folder created to save a backup of all my WBFS files. Another useful "option" would be to extract the file to this custom folder as well as the WBFS drive in one step (creating a WBFS file backup) plus, delete the original archive file. Some people may not do this, but after I convert to WBFS I delete the original to save some space.

I like the new version. It seems to be working flawlessly.

Thanks again.

 

[fig2k4]

@2FastLX
I spoke about having more drives before. I should've really designed it so the tabs were dynamic so you could add as many of each tab you wanted. eg. 2 DVD tabs and 5 Drive tabs. I could code this, but I would need to change a lot to do it. It's something I might attempt to do at some point.

One way round it could be to load your backup folder on the files page so you could mount both the drives.

I'm not sure about the backup option, I'd need to think it through.

@DGenerateKane
I found a couple of big problems with the custom titles. Hopefully it was one of these that was causing the file not to be updated.

|-Fixed: The custom titles file was always saved to the app folder instead of the location in the settings.
|-Fixed: After selecting the custom-titles.txt location in the settings, the filename was set to titles.txt instead of custom-titles.txt.

 

[2FastLX]

The dynamic thing would be great. I'll keep my fingers crossed

 

[kLik@0x40]

@2FastLX (and all)

Initially I felt like strongly supporting your idea of more DriveTabs, it actually was one of my first impressions when testing the app, as I use multiple partitions and drives, too. But I also see, that coding this would take quite an effort, and - maybe more important - after reconsidering I think the interface is nice&clean the way it is. Think of it as NC-style with Drive1 being LeftPane, Drive2=RightPane and operations "source" in the currently active tab, "destination" in the other one (disregarding the DVD- and other tabs for now).

So my suggestion would be kind of a compromise: what do you think about having user-definable folder-favourites selectable via the drive-ComboBox? I think these would be convenient, too, since they let you switch between your custom folders. Plus, they don't require any changes to the interface, what should make them easier to implement.
Multiple dynamic drive tabs are a nice feature (I'd still support that idea), but you would have to attend to this in the "Select"-, "Remove"- and "Transfer"-menu, what could turn out to be rather cluttered.

But that's just an opinion - dynamic tabs would also imply that you can simply disable those you don't want/need, so I'd be happy with this feature, too.

Ah, and I definitely like your idea about that backup folder! Think I'll make one, too.

klikatat

 

[giacomitti]

Hello,

I have all my covers on the drive with the wbfs files, so how can I configure the Wii backup Manager for Windows to use it?

Regards,
Giacomitti,

 

[2FastLX]

QUOTE(kLik@0x40 @ Feb 7 2011, 02:39 PM) @2FastLX (and all)

Ah, and I definitely like your idea about that backup folder! Think I'll make one, too.

klikatat

Yes, keeping a backup WBFS file makes more sense than keeping the archive because WBFS files will load into Wii Backup Manager much faster and transfer much faster since they don't have to be extracted. That's kinda why I would like to be able to place the WBFS into two locations while deleting the archive. It saves a couple steps. Hey, how about support for other file types. Heck, maybe Fig just needs to create a new Explorer for Winblows... just kidding

 

[fig2k4]

@2FastLX
Transferring from archives to 2 WBFS destination folders won't really be possible just now. Well, it would work OK, but the transfer thread deals with the archive extraction too. The archive would get extracted twice and transferred twice. It seems a bit of a waste of time.

With the job queue idea I have, the extraction would be one job and I could set up two transfer jobs that are run after the extraction. A much better idea. I haven't started on that yet though and it'll be another big job, replacing all the threaded code that deals with the transfers etc.

To be honest, if I was going to implement the job queue and the dynamic tabs, I'd be quicker starting the GUI from scratch again.

@giacomitti

See my reply to zafira_ above

http://gbatemp.net/t188295-wii-backup-mana...t&p=3443422

The covers you have already won't be used for display in WBM. I did that on purpose because the cache is used as the main cover source. Using the cache, it's easy to tell which region etc. the covers are for. So when you select "sync and download" again, the covers can be updated. Without that information, there's no way to tell where the covers came from. You just have to settle for whatever cover you managed to get the first time.

It's quick and easy to update the cache. Just mount your drive and then use "Covers->Update displayed cover cache". You can also enable "Automatically download displayed covers" so they're downloaded when you click on a game. The next time you use "Sync and download" your cover folders will be updated too.

 

[dazeruk]

I seem to be having a problem with Wii Backup Manager which I don't know if it's expected behaviour.

My USB hard drive is 1TB formatted FAT32 with files being stored in .wbfs format in the \wbfs folder.

I've now reached 150 games and getting a message 'System Error. Code: 112. There is not enough space on the disk' whenever I try to transfer any further games.

The drive 1 tab shows 597GB free.

I've changed the setting 'Ignore storage conventions for transfer to WBFS file' on the FAT32/NTFS tab and this seems to allow me to transfer further games.

However, I still get the message if I start with a RAR file. I have to extract the ISO first and then transfer.

I'm using WBM version 0.3.8 build 60.

My questions are:

1 Is there a limit of 150 games for FAT32 drives?
2 Have I changed the right setting to solve this?
3 Why can't I start with the RAR file?