Hacking Wii u and Wii U game pad hack talk to be presented soon at CCC/30c3

[obcd]

Everything is impossible untill someone proves otherwise...
Running gamecube backups the way devolution and nintendon't do it was longtime considered impossible...

 

[Stalkid64X]

i apologize for ever attempting to take you seriously.

That would be the common mistake to make on here.

 

[delroth]

Forgive me if I'm wrong.. but last year.. Didn't Marcan or someone from FoF say it would be impossible to send video to the gamepad from the vWii mode... and then Nintendo pretty much turn around and do it?

It's because Nintendo doesn't do it from the vWii mode but via some GPU reconfiguration that can only be done in Wii U mode. What f0f (and probably I) said still stands and you can notice that there's no way yet to get buttons input from GamePad to vWii.

 

[rednekcowboy]

Actually the majority of posts there are useless thank yous, keep up the good works, sorry double posts, name calling, fights and spam.

It's a little difficult now because of the severe case of verbal diarrhea that plagues f0f, but there are countless ways to release something anon. Of course that wouldn't work because then they wouldn't be able to take credit for it.....

I think most of you misunderstood my posts from yesterday.

f0f's hack is theirs, to do with as they please and while I do feel they owe me and the rest of the community, I don't mean they owe us that hack, but a plausible explanation--ie the truth. Not some made-up BS "OH NOes, we're scared of Warez" crap that they are spewing.

They also want this Wii U scene to function backwards. They want the scene to grow and develop prior to them releasing their hack. No other scene in history has worked this way and will never work this way. The way it works is system gets hacked, hack gets released, devs start devoloping, more and more people jump on board, the scene grows and hopefully flourishes. While there are some interesting things being done right now, they are severely limited without having access to the open system.

Lastly, I'm upset because I feel that we are being lied to. I can usually smell bullshit a million miles away (even if I am the one spewing it lol) and this whole situation reeks. They get almost the whole system hacked and then stop and say "meh, not worth our time?" I have no idea what not having access to the bootrom means in terms of hacking it, but Marcan said something about needing a persistent hack a little while ago. I'm assuming this makes things much more difficult.

So, bottom line, I think the scene deserves the truth and I don't believe that what f0f is saying is anywhere close to it. Their hack is their's to do with what they want. No one should be telling them that they have to release it and that is not what I was saying yesterday, HOWEVER, seeing as they started this giant spectacle they do owe the people a truthful explanation--not some pr-spin load of BS that they have been feeding to the masses.

 

[JerJer]

It's a little difficult now because of the severe case of verbal diarrhea that plagues f0f, but there are countless ways to release something anon. Of course that wouldn't work because then they wouldn't be able to take credit for it.....

I think most of you misunderstood my posts from yesterday.

f0f's hack is theirs, to do with as they please and while I do feel they owe me and the rest of the community, I don't mean they owe us that hack, but a plausible explanation--ie the truth. Not some made-up BS "OH NOes, we're scared of Warez" crap that they are spewing.

They also want this Wii U scene to function backwards. They want the scene to grow and develop prior to them releasing their hack. No other scene in history has worked this way and will never work this way. The way it works is system gets hacked, hack gets released, devs start devoloping, more and more people jump on board, the scene grows and hopefully flourishes. While there are some interesting things being done right now, they are severely limited without having access to the open system.

Lastly, I'm upset because I feel that we are being lied to. I can usually smell bullshit a million miles away (even if I am the one spewing it lol) and this whole situation reeks. They get almost the whole system hacked and then stop and say "meh, not worth our time?" I have no idea what not having access to the bootrom means in terms of hacking it, but Marcan said something about needing a persistent hack a little while ago. I'm assuming this makes things much more difficult.

So, bottom line, I think the scene deserves the truth and I don't believe that what f0f is saying is anywhere close to it. Their hack is their's to do with what they want. No one should be telling them that they have to release it and that is not what I was saying yesterday, HOWEVER, seeing as they started this giant spectacle they do owe the people a truthful explanation--not some pr-spin load of BS that they have been feeding to the masses.

The truth is that they (f0f) have not ever broken the WiiU nor will they. Proof is in the pudding.

 

[Ray Lewis]

Racing situations are known issue with smp. Look it up. Documents and theories on hardware exist if you know what to look for. I have never seen video proof of an exploit working and the running of unsigned code on a retail unit. I saw PowerPoint slides. Anyone see a live demo? I would like to see it. It also proves there something Maxternal is working toward.

Systems have never shown causality between success and piracy. There was a thread on here about this. People will not change their views though. Both sides are convinced they are correct. Wii, 360...most successful for most of the last generation...also the most hacked systems with homebrew scenes. 360 had a niche device market...especially with rgh chips, multi nand, hardware flashers, etc. Still my favorite system after slim was released. Look up sales figures or wait for foxi4 to recite from memory, lol. People disagree but my point is there is a view contrary to the morally hypocritical ivory tower types. Not going into that further.

The best thing to do is let it go. f0f is set in their views, others are, there is no other reputable group publicly working on Wii U. Incontrovertible video proof has never been provided by anyone. I believe f0f but have not seen that video proof. Gamepad vid was released. Little on here is on topic anymore and I fully anticipate a ban and/or a nice trip to the abyss for this post.

Edit: some never get any trouble for flaming site/users and flame baiting. Not talking about most members here.

 

[delroth]

Thanks delroth. Little on here is on topic anymore and I fully anticipate a ban and/or a nice trip to the abyss for this post.

Yeah, that would be great.

 

[pwsincd]

You all set for this evening Delroth , looking forward to hearing from you and shuffle2 . Dont let the nerves get the better of ya . lol . looked like they had sven a bit jittery initially

 

[Sizednochi]

I came into the thread to discuss about the awesome possibilities of using a GamePad with a PC, specially since delroth is here, and I get this shitstorm about piracy instead. I don't even.

 

[rednekcowboy]

I came into the thread to discuss about the awesome possibilities of using a GamePad with a PC, specially since delroth is here, and I get this shitstorm about piracy instead. I don't even.

My intention was not to re-initialize the discussion from yesterday, just merely to provide an explanation to my posts. I do apologize, especially to delroth. I think what he is doing is very interesting and look forward to his discussion.

 

[gitkua]

I for one fully understand f0f's reasoning behind not releasing their hack. Let's be totally honest here; the whole Wii homebrew scene is like 90% piracy related tools. What I am interested in however is; what has changed? Hasn't hacking / enabling homebrew always been the gateway to piracy?

Marcan mentioned on his blog that the prospect of having a console double as media player, emulator, web browser, or homebrew game player was appealing enough to release the Wii hack. But didn't the Wii already support pretty much 85% of these functions? Virtual Console, the Opera browser, later on Netflix etc. all provided these possibilities. WiiMC was an interesting effort, but it's competition (XBMC, Plex etc.) was miles ahead.

My point is (and please, if someone from f0f read this, this is not a flame or a "give me my hackz0r" post, just an honest question out of pure interest); did team Twiizers/fail0verflow really expect a flourishing homebrew scene for the Wii where piracy would not be the center of attention? Surely they fully expected (and accepted) that the Twilight hack would be the gateway to piracy, why did they choose to go ahead and release their hack anyway? An immediate follow up would be; since they decided not to release their hack; are they still developing/researching/analyzing the WiiU or did they quit their efforts?

 

[pwsincd]

I think the answer lies somewhere regarding the now plethora of other devices around that can do what homebrewers aim for without the need for the hack.
At the time of the wii hack that wasnt the case... If you want to blame anyone i would blame android and the like , not f0f.

 

[Stalkid64X]

I never asked for a warez loader and get off your high fucking horse already. You're no better than anyone else. In fact it's a lot harder to create something than it is to pick apart someone else's work.

I just wanted to highlight the irony in that. It's very chewy and delicious.
They created several console/devices worth of hacks and a homebrew ecosystem that went on to be downloaded >5m times. Your "contribution" to the world of creating appears to be some posts on gbafail. I mean, people in glass houses, etc.

The point was made fairly clear in the actual talk for those who took the time to watch and follow it for themselves. Someone mentioned earlier the homebrew `scene` was dead. It is. There just aren't enough talented people with enough reason to take things further - most likely because there is less demand for it now. Without that, there is no reason to invest time and serious effort into developing the framework and tools/SDK to support it. All it would lead to right now is piracy, and again unlike most here they do have a sense of ethics and morals behind their work.

An alien concept to a lot of you.

 

[Ray Lewis]

I just wanted to highlight the irony in that. It's very chewy and delicious.
They created several console/devices worth of hacks and a homebrew ecosystem that went on to be downloaded >5m times. Your "contribution" to the world of creating appears to be some posts on gbafail. I mean, people in glass houses, etc.

The point was made fairly clear in the actual talk for those who took the time to watch and follow it for themselves. Someone mentioned earlier the homebrew `scene` was dead. It is. There just aren't enough talented people with enough reason to take things further - most likely because there is less demand for it now. Without that, there is no reason to invest time and serious effort into developing the framework and tools/SDK to support it. All it would lead to right now is piracy, and again unlike most here they do have a sense of ethics and morals behind their work.

An alien concept to a lot of you.

If you dislike most members here at "gbafail", flame users and entire site with immunity, why post here? There are other sites with "moral" users? Only gain I see is the self deprecating worship some provide and general attention. Most other sites say, "Meh, if hacked it gets posted on front page and I don't care before that." If site sucks, mods allow you and your ilk to flame members and site, users are not in total agreement, why spend time here at all?

 

[air2004]

you can already do this with Playon

 

[ddrrmm]

I just wanted to highlight the irony in that. It's very chewy and delicious.
Your "contribution" to the world of creating appears to be some posts on gbafail. I mean, people in glass houses, etc.

His contribution? I didn't see him show off about how he hacked wiiu? I didn't see him show off images with trollfaces inside and saying lets see what all the gbafail noobs think of this, I didnt see him joining this board acting better then anyone else?

And oh yeah, piracy really destroyed the psx and ps2....lol..

 

[SirByte]

In my opinion, what drives a homebrewer, is owning a piece of hardware and wanting to be able to run your own programs on it. It doesn't matter if this is a computer, a phone, a console, or even a toy like a Plug'n'Play TV Game.

Homebrewing on computers has been around forever, not just software but also hardware. The first meeting of the "Homebrew Computer Club" was in March 1975 and all kinds of good things came out of that, among others Apple Inc. Were there the same issues? You betcha! Bill Gates himself wrote a "Open Letter to Hobbyists" in January 1976 complaining about (home) piracy (Altair BASIC). Was everybody suddenly very concerned with the possibility of unauthenticated software running on these beasts? No, and rightfully so. Did that kill Silicon Valley and/or Microsoft? No.

Homebrewing on consoles has been around as early as the Atari 2600 days, late 1970s. People reversed the carts, reversed the software, developed their own and programmed their own carts. Did that lead to (home) piracy? You betcha! You can dump a cartridge and program it on an empty one. Did this kill the consoles? No. And this homebrewing is still current! At Revision 2013, there was an hour-long seminar on demo-coding in the Atari 2600. And of course demo entries (as well as later parties like Nordlicht and Silly Ventures)... for 36 year old hardware!

Just saying "Yah, but just get an Ouya and it'll do the same thing better" does not fly with a real homebrewer. The desire for homebrew on the WiiU is the same as the reason for the man to climb the mountain: because it's there. Did f0f insinuate something that didn't happen? Perhaps, but it could just be clever "marketing" of their talk... it created lots of buzz and many people attended and/or were watching the Saal 2 live stream.

The above is not off-topic but to establish that there is a legitimate need to gain access to the full hard- and software in the WiiU. Can this be done via vWii? No. That's just a hardware Wii emulator inside the WiiU. Use a real Wii. Using the PS2 emulator inside the original PS3s was also not PS3-homebrew. So what about TriCore Linux? Does that fully unlock the WiiU? No. Even f0f admits that in their talk: they can't re-enable all of the hardware components that were locked out once vWii mode starts, which means control must be gained before that happens.

So that leaves the One Eternal Question: now what?

This can be answered by looking at iOS (Apple's). Did the world depend solely on f0f? No. Others will come, and yes they can use some of the information given by f0f for which we owe them thanks. But at one point, someone will figure it out as well and then maybe come to a different conclusion and release their work. Will piracy happen? You betcha. Should you be concerned about it? That's for you to decide. fail0verflow decided to withhold, which is their good right. But you might decide differently.

It may also just be a matter of time; Nintendo will at one point announce either the successor to the WiiU, or that it will halt production altogether. Once no new titles appear for "first sale" anymore, the point becomes moot. As well, within the European Parliament the voices of those that want to legalise p2p filesharing within the EU are becoming stronger (in the sense that "copyright" will no longer apply in situations of not-for-profit personal use copying). In that case the whole point will also become moot, at least within the EU.

For regular folk (i.e. that have a full time job and other commitments) that means we should not be holding any grudges but instead will have to be patient and in the mean time use vWii mode to run homebrew.

 

[Tigran]

It's because Nintendo doesn't do it from the vWii mode but via some GPU reconfiguration that can only be done in Wii U mode. What f0f (and probably I) said still stands and you can notice that there's no way yet to get buttons input from GamePad to vWii.

The point is... f0f said that they fully hacked the Wii U... and that it was impossible to do. But nintendo -did- do it. That means that either f0f didn't fully hack the system.. or they don't know everything that they think they do.

 

[Ray Lewis]

Nobody posted proof. Random characters, troll pictures, slides, talk, and could have been theories presented. Four Horsemen presented a video at least. Albeit a dev kit gamepad. Nobody has presented actual proof. People hack cell phones and wireless devices also. Firmware is said to not be encrypted on gamepad. Still waiting to see any proof. This is why others have said, "Why get worked up? No proof was given and without a release who cares?".

 

[pwsincd]

Nobody posted proof. Random characters, troll pictures, slides, talk, and could have been theories presented. Four Horsemen presented a video at least. Albeit a dev kit gamepad. Nobody has presented actual proof. People hack cell phones and wireless devices also. Firmware is said to not be encrypted on gamepad. Still waiting to see any proof. This is why others have said, "Why get worked up? No proof was given and without a release who cares?".

You Do !!