Hacking WiiFlow 4 The Masterpiece Pack by Abz

[ca032769]

@AbdallahTerro I see you have mods of the other loaders in your signature. Do you have a similar pre-setup emulator packs for USB Loader GX?

 

[AbdallahTerro]

@AbdallahTerro I see you have mods of the other loaders in your signature. Do you have a similar pre-setup emulator packs for USB Loader GX?

Emulators work only on Wiiflow and Postloader

 

[Clutz450]

Extract everything except the nand folder then use wiiflow channel installer app
Launch wiiflow and press B select wiiware icon then if you have a custom path select it in the settings.
Wii and GC should work out of the box
You ll be using Nintendont mastermod for GC. Launch a GC game press b to exit autoboot then update nintendont.
As for emulator plugins they should all appear when you press B in wiiflow. Only thing you need to do is copy your roms to the default path for each emulator.

OK. So I extracted everything and this is what I see.

I feel like that's a lot of files to extract to my SD card. Also, while exploring some of the folders I found other zip files that I'm not sure if I need to extract those too and I feel like some of them are computer programs and they don't need to be on my SD card. Plus I feel like my SD card is going to run out of space very quickly once I start putting my roms onto it. Is there a way to have all of this on my USB drive and still work correctly?

Like I said before, I feel as if I already have the perfect setup on my Wii U's vWii and I'd hate to just blindly copy everything over and have it mess something else up. Can you maybe break it down for me and explain exactly what folder and files I need to place where? Or maybe there is another way where I can just keep this pack as a reference but try to set up everything one at a time by myself so I understand what it is I am doing? Thanks for the help.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

This should work fine on USB too
You can move the any emulator folder to usb copy your roms and select the path from within wiiflow
Or extract everything to usb if you re really out of space

 

[Clutz450]

So what I've done so far is this. I decided to put everything onto my USB drive. I used the installer app to install the WiFlow Forwarder Channel. I took the WiiFlow folder from the apps folder on the pack and moved it to the apps folder on my USB drive. I then moved the WiiFlow folder that was in the root of the pack and placed it into the root of my USB drive. I started up WiiFlow and chose USB partition and all my Wii games showed up. Tested a few out and they work. I tried changing the paths so that my covers would show up but I couldn't get it right. So I just left all the default paths and had WiiFlow redownload them. I have plenty of space on my USB drive so I don't mind having them twice. Maybe once I understand where everything is stored I'll adjust the custom paths again. Once all the downloads are done (which I'm sure will take days) I'll check out GameCube and emunand. And once I get those working I will try out the emulators. Unless there is anything else you can think of that I need from this pack right now I will just keep doing what I'm doing and will post back when I am ready for my next steps.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

So what I've done so far is this. I decided to put everything onto my USB drive. I used the installer app to install the WiFlow Forwarder Channel. I took the WiiFlow folder from the apps folder on the pack and moved it to the apps folder on my USB drive. I then moved the WiiFlow folder that was in the root of the pack and placed it into the root of my USB drive. I started up WiiFlow and chose USB partition and all my Wii games showed up. Tested a few out and they work. I tried changing the paths so that my covers would show up but I couldn't get it right. So I just left all the default paths and had WiiFlow redownload them. I have plenty of space on my USB drive so I don't mind having them twice. Maybe once I understand where everything is stored I'll adjust the custom paths again. Once all the downloads are done (which I'm sure will take days) I'll check out GameCube and emunand. And once I get those working I will try out the emulators. Unless there is anything else you can think of that I need from this pack right now I will just keep doing what I'm doing and will post back when I am ready for my next steps.

apps\wiiflow\wiiflow.ini
that's where paths are saved
you can change boxcovers path to match the one usbloadergx is using or copy your old covers to /wiiflow/boxcovers folder

 

[Clutz450]

Another update. WiiFlow keeps appearing to freeze on me when downloading the covers. But the more I think about it the more I realize I really don't need WiiFlow for my Wii, GameCube and EmuNAND games. I already have a perfect USB Loader GX setup for that. So I think what I'm going to be using this WiiFlow MasterPack for is emulators and to be able to display my roms nicely and launch them through WiiFlow.

First emulator I'm going to try is NES. I opened up the fceugx.ini file in a text editor and can see that it is expecting my roms to be located in fceugx/roms. So I'm transferring those over now. Now for the covers, I see that in that file it just says fceugx next to coverfolder. So I'm assuming that I just have to put my covers in the root of the fceugx folder. I like to keep things neat and organized so is there anything wrong with me creating a folder called covers and putting my covers in there and updating the ini file to reflect that? Not sure if that change will break anything else that may already be set up.

As for the covers, I found the Cover Collections thread by MasterShoes. Just wondering what the difference is between the standard spine covers and the shrunken spine covers and why the shrunken ones are recommended? I know that the png file needs to be named the same as the rom file. Is there an easy way to do that? And I read somewhere (can't remember exactly where) that if the rom file is named "Super Mario.zip" then the cover has to be named "Super Mario.zip.png". Is that correct? I ask because all the covers in that Cover Collection thread doesn't have the rom extension in their filename. Just wondering if I'm going to have to go through and rename everything and what the easiest way to do that would be. Thanks.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

as I told you before, no need to redownload the covers just change the boxcover path and wait for the wiiflow cache to build up (it takes a while just the first time)
as for plugins covers, yes, use the ones made by mastershoes and co. no online download for that
read the setup info in mastershoes thread to get them right

 

[Clutz450]

Yeah, I know. And I may try that later but right now I want to try and get all the emulators working.

So here's where I am right now. I tried to start from scratch and use the master pack as a guide so I could learn where everything goes and why and how it all works. However, I was just giving my self a headache and finally broke down and just extracted the whole pack to my USB drive. I still didn't like doing that because I know there are files and folders there that I just don't need but I'll go through them all later.

First emulator I set up was NES. I found the plugin's .ini file and saw where I needed to put my roms. The covers however I just couldn't get working and I couldn't understand why. I had used the fuzzy renamer program to have all my covers renamed properly to match my roms. The .ini file said the covers path was "fcuegx" so I thought I just had to put them in the root of that folder, same place where my room folder was. But after searching online I found someone with the same issue and I learned that the covers had to go into "usb://wiiflow/boxcovers/fceugx". The fceugx folder there didn't exist so I had to create it. But after I did that and moved my covers there they showed up.

Question about the cover cache. Do the covers get cached automatically or only when they are in view? Like I loaded up the NES plugin and saw all my covers slowly come in and just left it there. There were maybe 10 covers on the screen. When I came back several minutes later and started moving the games around, I felt like they were still slow to come in. Whereas if I slowly went through the list they all eventually showed up and the next time I loaded them up they were much quicker.

So I got NES working now. But I've noticed since random crashes. One happened while my covers were showing up for the first time. Every cover came up with the default missing cover and when I tried to do anything it just locked up. I've also had some random crashes when exiting the emulator. Like the emulator would go away bit nothing else would come back. Just wondering if there was anything I could do to help with that. Thanks.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

the cache files are permanent they are stored in /wiiflow/cache folder not as png but as special cache format
so the PNG can be deleted if you wish
random crashes always happen with wiiflow, you can try wiiflow 1076 or 1054 mastermods and see which one works best for you

 

[AbdallahTerro]

dropbox back

 

[Clutz450]

How does it know what emulator to launch for the different roms. Like going through the ini files it looks like for NES game there is both fceuex and retroarch. Both ini files have the same rom path and cover path. But when I select an NES game to play it launches in fceuex. Not that I'm complaining or anything. Everything is working great for me so far. I'm just curious is all.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

How does it know what emulator to launch for the different roms. Like going through the ini files it looks like for NES game there is both fceuex and retroarch. Both ini files have the same rom path and cover path. But when I select an NES game to play it launches in fceuex. Not that I'm complaining or anything. Everything is working great for me so far. I'm just curious is all.

each emulator has a magic number, we use magic here

 

[JasonH]

Ive looked all over and i cannot seem to find the rom path for the Atari Jaguar Plugin. Can someone give me some direction?

 

[AbdallahTerro]

Ive looked all over and i cannot seem to find the rom path for the Atari Jaguar Plugin. Can someone give me some direction?

it's \apps\jaguar\ROMs
donno why I didn't add this info anywhere

 

[AbdallahTerro]

I've made a test dol for wiiflow 1054 mastermod that can launch Nintendont as boot.dol or loader.dol in /apps/Nintendont folder, give it a try.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7mwahmptydt0z1/boot.dol?dl=0

and 1076 mod too if you use that
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljccfceki4bu8aw/wiiflow_1076_mod.7z?dl=0

 

[banjo2]

You might should update the DIOS-MIOS included in the full pack. My copy came with 2.10 and it's sooooo slow. The new version is very fast.

 

[fledge68]

I've made a test dol for wiiflow 1054 mastermod that can launch Nintendont as boot.dol or loader.dol in /apps/Nintendont folder, give it a try.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/j7mwahmptydt0z1/boot.dol?dl=0

and 1076 mod too if you use that
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ljccfceki4bu8aw/wiiflow_1076_mod.7z?dl=0

so this is for people who don't know how to rename it boot.dol and/or for people who don't want nintendont showing up in the homebrew channel?

 

[AbdallahTerro]

You might should update the DIOS-MIOS included in the full pack. My copy came with 2.10 and it's sooooo slow. The new version is very fast.

it's so deprecated

so this is for people who don't know how to rename it boot.dol and/or for people who don't want nintendont showing up in the homebrew channel?

indeed boss, to hide it in homebrew mainly

 

[Haloman800]

Hey Abz, could you set the Gamecube joystick to function like the D-Pad? right now it moves around a cursor, but I want it to scroll through menus, move through games, etc.

The reason is, I have an arcade stick hooked up to my wii that emulates a gamecube controller, and it's only recognized as a gamecube joystick and therefor I can't navigate WiiFlow with it.

For clarification, see this:

Spoiler