Hacking WiiFlow - an open source GUI USB-Loader

[macmanhigh]

Hey quick ? I have 3 GC games on my SD working on Postloadet & DML
when i load Wiiflow only 1 shows up???

 

[Mantis41]

Is it recommend to prep the NAND in any way before dumping? I'm talking about removing themes or deleting channels to help with compatibility. I am just dumping another copy as I type this.

The old copy I had saved kept code dumping on game start up when used in Wiiflows NAND emu.

Edit: Forget this, I worked out how to manipulate the NAND content during /after dumping.

 

[Maxternal]

You can build one easily with ModMii.

Last I read ModMii's NAND builder for some reason didn't create the "cert.sys" file in the "SYS" folder. Does anyone know if that detail has been fixed?
(Otherwise it works fine as I understand and to fix it you only need to copy that file from another NAND backup that you've made previously.)

 

[Maxternal]

Now that the latest revision of WiiFlow-mod says it works with the custom box color again I was looking for the format information for that and found this old post:

Use something like this for custom_titles.ini (there MUST be an empty line at beginning, and colour cases don't work on latest versions)

Spoiler

[TITLES]

#Wii Games
KMCP01=Mario Kart Wii
R3GXUG=Crazy Mini Golf
RKIENR=Ice Hockey
R3HP6Z=Hugo: Hula Holiday

#WiiWare
WILP=Monkey Island 1: Launch of the Screaming Narwhal
WISP=Monkey Island 2: Siege Of Spinner Cay
WIEP=Monkey Island 3: Lair Of Leviathan
WIYP=Monkey Island 4: The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood
WIRP=Monkey Island 5: Rise Of The Pirate God

[COVERS]

#Wii Games
KMCP01=#FF0000FF
RLBPWR=#FF0000FF

Now, my question is which of those hex values after the # means which color, etc? I would understand six digits with two for each RGB or even 9 with 3 for each but I see eight here. Anyone care to explain?

Also, is there an option I can enter here to change the default cover color? For me it's mostly for the the back of the box on the front-cover-only games. That grey color makes sense for the question [?] mark when there is no cover but it looks kinda ugly when there is a colorful front cover displayed. I want WHITE.

 

[sdoc96]

Reaching way back (http://gbatemp.net/t.../page__st__4450) I had a problem with the uDraw tablet and Wiiflow.
I reported it on the wiiflow-mod site a few weeks back but the issue was closed as Overjoy had people test it and couldn't replicate the issue.
I have since tested it on three fully re-hacked Wii's, two 4.2E, one 4.3U, with latest Wiiflow r159/cIOSx v8br41, completely clean installs. Both still have the same DSI dump issues starting Wiiflow from the uDraw controller.
I'd like to hear if anyone else still has this issue (or the two guys who confirmed the issue in the link above - bostonBC or shortz1994), so I can confirm either it's not just me, or perhaps it's something to do with the setup's I'm creating.
As I said in the link above, it used to work in earlier wiiflow revisions. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Update on my progress on this. I think I fixed what my particular problem was with uDraw.
In a nutshell, I think it was the way the Wii's were hacked. It was one of two things.

• The 236 hack was an old version.
• There were GC wavebird controllers and memory cards plugged in during the hack process

Since addressing both of these issues, Wiiflow now behaves correctly (game selection is no longer spinning around erratically) and no longer DSI dumps when booted with the uDraw controller.

 

[Maxternal]

Update on my progress on this. I think I fixed what my particular problem was with uDraw.
In a nutshell, I think it was the way the Wii's were hacked. It was one of two things.

• The 236 hack was an old version.
• There were GC wavebird controllers and memory cards plugged in during the hack process

Since addressing both of these issues, Wiiflow now behaves correctly (game selection is no longer spinning around erratically) and no longer DSI dumps when booted with the uDraw controller.

Congratulations on your progress. It seems really weird that either of those would make any difference although I would guess it would be the second one since I think 236 was always just ios36 with all the patches that you can also get in DOP-MII (at least that's what I always thought.)

I have heard it's a good idea to take gamecube stuff out while hacking but I'd never thought that it could cause something that weird ... I just assumed it would be something more drastic like the hack just not installing or worst case bricking the wii.

Let this be a lesson to anyone else with ANY random problem and gamecube stuff ... maybe you can fix your problem, too.

 

[MassiveRican]

You can build one easily with ModMii.

Last I read ModMii's NAND builder for some reason didn't create the "cert.sys" file in the "SYS" folder. Does anyone know if that detail has been fixed?
(Otherwise it works fine as I understand and to fix it you only need to copy that file from another NAND backup that you've made previously.)

It still doesn't afaik and regardless it's only necessary to put the file there if you're having problems with *neek and nand emu and the likes. I haven't always had to transfer it let me put it that way, but failsafe would be to just do it

Reaching way back (http://gbatemp.net/t.../page__st__4450) I had a problem with the uDraw tablet and Wiiflow.
I reported it on the wiiflow-mod site a few weeks back but the issue was closed as Overjoy had people test it and couldn't replicate the issue.
I have since tested it on three fully re-hacked Wii's, two 4.2E, one 4.3U, with latest Wiiflow r159/cIOSx v8br41, completely clean installs. Both still have the same DSI dump issues starting Wiiflow from the uDraw controller.
I'd like to hear if anyone else still has this issue (or the two guys who confirmed the issue in the link above - bostonBC or shortz1994), so I can confirm either it's not just me, or perhaps it's something to do with the setup's I'm creating.
As I said in the link above, it used to work in earlier wiiflow revisions. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Update on my progress on this. I think I fixed what my particular problem was with uDraw.
In a nutshell, I think it was the way the Wii's were hacked. It was one of two things.

• The 236 hack was an old version.
• There were GC wavebird controllers and memory cards plugged in during the hack process

Since addressing both of these issues, Wiiflow now behaves correctly (game selection is no longer spinning around erratically) and no longer DSI dumps when booted with the uDraw controller.

Glad to hear you got it work! Anyone else that's having problems with uDraw tablet I'll refer to your advice.

 

[macmanhigh]

Also GC covers not showing up in Wiiflow....


:Edit: Is there a way to make GC titles appear with Wii titles?like all in same grouping or sumthing.......

 

[bostonBC]

Reaching way back (http://gbatemp.net/t.../page__st__4450) I had a problem with the uDraw tablet and Wiiflow.
I reported it on the wiiflow-mod site a few weeks back but the issue was closed as Overjoy had people test it and couldn't replicate the issue.
I have since tested it on three fully re-hacked Wii's, two 4.2E, one 4.3U, with latest Wiiflow r159/cIOSx v8br41, completely clean installs. Both still have the same DSI dump issues starting Wiiflow from the uDraw controller.
I'd like to hear if anyone else still has this issue (or the two guys who confirmed the issue in the link above - bostonBC or shortz1994), so I can confirm either it's not just me, or perhaps it's something to do with the setup's I'm creating.
As I said in the link above, it used to work in earlier wiiflow revisions. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Update on my progress on this. I think I fixed what my particular problem was with uDraw.
In a nutshell, I think it was the way the Wii's were hacked. It was one of two things.

• The 236 hack was an old version.
• There were GC wavebird controllers and memory cards plugged in during the hack process

Since addressing both of these issues, Wiiflow now behaves correctly (game selection is no longer spinning around erratically) and no longer DSI dumps when booted with the uDraw controller.

I just tested the uDraw tablet against the latest WiiFlow-mod r229 build that I just compiled on my clean test system (d2x v8 final cIOS's) and it works fine. Please let me know if you would like me to test it against any other config.

 

[bostonBC]

fix94.1 - what is different between Wiiflow-mod in the game detection/cache rebuilding from Wiiflow? Asking because I am seeing a weird problem where it looks like Wiiflow-mod is rebuilding the cache every time it loads. I have a large collection on a 2TB drive with over 1100 games. Under Wiiflow r425 and earlier when I add new games or delete games the cache rebuilds during loading the splash screen and then the next time Wiiflow loads it loads almost instantly. With Wiiflow-mod (using r229 but it happens back to 223... haven't tested it earlier) when I add/delete a game it takes forever at the splash screen and I'm guessing it is rebuilding the cache each time.

I used Wii Backup Manager to delete 3 games and add 1 new one and when I ran Wiiflow-mod it did its normal taking forever to load at the splash screen but eventually came up and displayed the new game and didn't show the ones I deleted. But when I quit and reloaded Wiiflow-mod it did the exact same thing. When I ran a game and then exited it took over a minute to get back to the menu as it looks like it rebuilding the cache.

I tried re-downloading the XML but it keeps doing the same thing while loading. I checked it on a 500GB drive with about 280 games and the delay is noticable but not nearly as bad as on my 2TB drive. I think you won't see it unless you have a very large game list but it is much faster on Wiiflow.

I even tried pressing B on the options button to rebuild but I get a crash and code dump. I am using the default theme and nothing special other than my big category list. Interestingly after the crash the usb1_wbfs.db file was missing in the lists/cache folder but the usb1_apps.db was there.

I really don't want to go back to Wiiflow r425 as I like the new category list feature so please let me know if there is anything I can do to get the cache to rebuild and stay so it doesn't reload each time. Thanks!

 

[sdoc96]

I just tested the uDraw tablet against the latest WiiFlow-mod r229 build that I just compiled on my clean test system (d2x v8 final cIOS's) and it works fine. Please let me know if you would like me to test it against any other config.

Thanks anyway mate - all is good with mine now so not necessary. As long as my 3yr old daughter gets off my back about uDraw I'm happy.

Glad to hear you got it work! Anyone else that's having problems with uDraw tablet I'll refer to your advice.

Hopefully it can help someone with this or other problems.
Other things I should have mentioned (not sure if it's relevant, but it is worth bringing up) is I re-did IOS58 as well and am using d2x v9 beta now along with r225 wiiflow-mod. Whether they also have something to do with it is yet to be determined. I'm pretty certain the problem came from the changes in my previous post though, as I think I re-hacked the Wii way back when this problem started in r412-r415 Wiiflow days.

 

[bostonBC]

I've gone through the source and think I know where the problem is with regards to the cache reloading each time. If I comment our these lines in cachedlist.cpp the cache is not reloaded on each start of WiiFlow-mod or when you exit a game back to the WiiFlow-mod menu.

/* if(strcasestr(m_discinf.c_str(), "wbfs") != NULL && stat(m_discinf.c_str(), &discinfo) != -1)
ditimes = discinfo.st_mtime > cache.st_mtime; */
m_update = update_lang || noDB || mtimes; /* || ditimes; */

Not sure if I follow the logic of this code to see why it was added but it causes the cache to reload each time you run WiiFlow-mod.

i will add an issue for it on Google code.

 

[bobea]

I was hoping for some help getting the wiiflow categories.ini working.

My problem is i can only get the general catagory to show and its the one i do not want to show at all.
Searching categories.ini you find little and most of it is only for the general section.
Seems to me i may need something to seperate categories...maybe?

I have blindly tried various things, deleteing the general section (reloads at next boot) switching 'category="to 1 as binary or setting it in numbered sequence, setting sort numbers in the wiiflow.ini...
In case you wondering i did corrupt my emunand but it was freshly baked anyhow so it was not a problem.

It feels like it is something simple that i am missing but i could not begin to say what it might be.

@fledge68 & bostonBC - The work you two are doing with flowmod categories looks great and you seem to know alot about this do you have any advice?

Spoiler

I would like something like this, the main thing would be to learn how to change this file and have it not break wiiflow or wiiflowemu.

(DISCLAIMER: DO NOT USE THIS AS AN INI)

[CATEGORIES]
sxae52=010000000100

[GAMES]
cat1=Sing
cat10=Online
cat11=Adult
cat2=Dance
cat3=Classic
cat4=Multiplayer
cat5=Sport
cat6=Story
cat7=Mind
cat8=Other/Mini
cat9=Special Control
category=4
category_on_start=no
numcategories=12

[GENERAL]
category=0
numcategories=0

[DIOSMIOS]
cat1=to be detemined
cat10=Zelda games
cat11=RPG
cat2=First Party
cat3=sports
cat4=example
cat5=Eternal Darkness
cat6=NTSCJ
cat7=kids
cat8=NonWorking
cat9=NC-17
category_on_start=no

[HOMEBREW]
cat1=apps
cat10=DANGER
cat11=beta
cat2=utilities
cat3=games
cat4=tools
cat5=emulator
cat6=there is no number 6
cat7=toys
cat8=loaders
cat9=expiremental
category_on_start=no
numcategories=12

[NAND]
cat1=N64
cat2=Arcade
cat3=Super NES
cat4=NeoGeo
cat5=Nintendo
cat6=TurboGrafx16
cat7=Genisis
cat8=Commadore64
cat9=Master System
category=0
category_on_start=no
numcategories=10

Again an help with this is apreciated

 

[MassiveRican]

Also GC covers not showing up in Wiiflow....


:Edit: Is there a way to make GC titles appear with Wii titles?like all in same grouping or sumthing.......

refresh your cache by hitting "B" button over the settings icon (gear/cog) you "should" see the rest then.
If you put the GC games in the wbfs folder you will be able to see the GC games along with the Wii games.

 

[bostonBC]

Ok, I am an idiot. I looked at the code a little longer and realized it was checking to see if a new game was installed or one deleted based on the timestamp of the disc.info and the .db. I checked and my test Wii's clock was set to the wrong date (3/18) so the comparison would always force the cache to be rebuilt since the disc.info was newer than the .db.

Sorry for the false alarm... on the defensive programming side you may want to set the timestamp on the disc.info file when the cache is recreated. That way if the Wii has its date/time set earlier than the PC where the disc.info was updated it won't always force a cache rebuild.

I shouldn't be testing/making code changes at 5:30 in the morning

I'm going to sleep... see you all later.

 

[MassiveRican]

@[member='painless'] I'm going to be doing some NAND testing to check things out, but I believe from what I've read on the IRC that there are some NAND issues right now, it's not being worked on right now afaik so we'll have to wait until that gets looked at.

Edit: Like Maxternal said the .ini "path=" line is case and space sensitive, you might also need to try a fresh NAND and you can build one easily with ModMii

Thanks MassiveRican, I actually completely remodded the Wii from scratch, which included a boot2 nand backup. Using Giantpune's program as well as ShowMiiWads to inject all my WiiWare/VC stuff into it. Still, doesn't work. This is now hours and hours (days??) of trying to get this sorted out. My gut tells me there's some sort of correlation here with older Wii's and the WiiFlow programming because I have a couple of newer Wii's here that work perfectly. They started life as 4.1's and above while the older ones with 3.2-4.0 are the ones that have issues with nand emulation.

I'm so excited to see what happens next with WiiFlow though as well as USB Loader GX. They're both so awesome!

Ok Painless I can vouch that the NAND emu feature is working however it is hit and miss and doesn't work with every game I tested. About 6 out of 10 that games I tried worked (unfortunately for me it always seemed to b the games I want to play most that didn't >_< Cave Story and Kyotokei for example) and there were minor adjustments to get it to work right.

First off get yourself a cert.sys file from your original NAND dump and put in the sys folder, make sure the setting in the .ini file "path=" is set properly and last when in NAND emu mode go into general settings and set emulation to full. It seemed to have much better compatibility launching games this way(I got the system files are corrupted message when I didn't), return to menu option was also a success, however it's still not capable of launching all games. This is will also be an area where WiiFlow will hopefully improve but right now I'm impressed because in the past I really couldn't get Any of the games to work lol.

Let me know how it turns out for u and which games your trying out so I can test em too.

Edit: Refer to this post.

 

[painless]

@[member='painless'] I'm going to be doing some NAND testing to check things out, but I believe from what I've read on the IRC that there are some NAND issues right now, it's not being worked on right now afaik so we'll have to wait until that gets looked at.

Edit: Like Maxternal said the .ini "path=" line is case and space sensitive, you might also need to try a fresh NAND and you can build one easily with ModMii

Thanks MassiveRican, I actually completely remodded the Wii from scratch, which included a boot2 nand backup. Using Giantpune's program as well as ShowMiiWads to inject all my WiiWare/VC stuff into it. Still, doesn't work. This is now hours and hours (days??) of trying to get this sorted out. My gut tells me there's some sort of correlation here with older Wii's and the WiiFlow programming because I have a couple of newer Wii's here that work perfectly. They started life as 4.1's and above while the older ones with 3.2-4.0 are the ones that have issues with nand emulation.

I'm so excited to see what happens next with WiiFlow though as well as USB Loader GX. They're both so awesome!

Ok Painless I can vouch that the NAND emu feature is working however it is hit and miss and doesn't work with every game I tested. About 6 out of 10 that games I tried worked (unfortunately for me it always seemed to b the games I want to play most that didn't >_< Cave Story and Kyotokei for example) and there were minor adjustments to get it to work right.

First off get yourself a cert.sys file from your original NAND dump and put in the sys folder, make sure the setting in the .ini file "path=" is set properly and last when in NAND emu mode go into general settings and set emulation to full. It seemed to have much better compatibility launching games this way(I got the system files are corrupted message when I didn't), return to menu option was also a success, however it's still not capable of launching all games. This is will also be an area where WiiFlow will hopefully improve but right now I'm impressed because in the past I really couldn't get Any of the games to work lol.

Let me know how it turns out for u and which games your trying out so I can test em too.

Hey again, yes, I actually tried several games there, one of which was Mario 3. Also tried pitfall I think and a couple others. None of them worked . Really though, it's not that bad since I have most of the rom's + emu's installed and can play them there.

I think of WiiFlow as a really slick usb loader basically. To me, it's got a long way to go but it's the most promising usb loader for the Wii today.

Oh, also... I have all those same settings that you have enabled as well. Thanks for trying to help me out man.

 

[MassiveRican]

@[member='painless'] I'm going to be doing some NAND testing to check things out, but I believe from what I've read on the IRC that there are some NAND issues right now, it's not being worked on right now afaik so we'll have to wait until that gets looked at.

Edit: Like Maxternal said the .ini "path=" line is case and space sensitive, you might also need to try a fresh NAND and you can build one easily with ModMii

Thanks MassiveRican, I actually completely remodded the Wii from scratch, which included a boot2 nand backup. Using Giantpune's program as well as ShowMiiWads to inject all my WiiWare/VC stuff into it. Still, doesn't work. This is now hours and hours (days??) of trying to get this sorted out. My gut tells me there's some sort of correlation here with older Wii's and the WiiFlow programming because I have a couple of newer Wii's here that work perfectly. They started life as 4.1's and above while the older ones with 3.2-4.0 are the ones that have issues with nand emulation.

I'm so excited to see what happens next with WiiFlow though as well as USB Loader GX. They're both so awesome!

Ok Painless I can vouch that the NAND emu feature is working however it is hit and miss and doesn't work with every game I tested. About 6 out of 10 that games I tried worked (unfortunately for me it always seemed to b the games I want to play most that didn't >_< Cave Story and Kyotokei for example) and there were minor adjustments to get it to work right.

First off get yourself a cert.sys file from your original NAND dump and put in the sys folder, make sure the setting in the .ini file "path=" is set properly and last when in NAND emu mode go into general settings and set emulation to full. It seemed to have much better compatibility launching games this way(I got the system files are corrupted message when I didn't), return to menu option was also a success, however it's still not capable of launching all games. This is will also be an area where WiiFlow will hopefully improve but right now I'm impressed because in the past I really couldn't get Any of the games to work lol.

Let me know how it turns out for u and which games your trying out so I can test em too.

Hey again, yes, I actually tried several games there, one of which was Mario 3. Also tried pitfall I think and a couple others. None of them worked . Really though, it's not that bad since I have most of the rom's + emu's installed and can play them there.

I think of WiiFlow as a really slick usb loader basically. To me, it's got a long way to go but it's the most promising usb loader for the Wii today.

Oh, also... I have all those same settings that you have enabled as well. Thanks for trying to help me out man.

Well I played around some more with the games that weren't working and it turned out all the games that didn't work played for me if u mess with the settings. For example Cave Story needs Video Mode set to NTSC and Vipatch on and it worked with no problems, Kyotokei needs Video Mode set to NTSC and Patch video modes set to normal and then again it worked like a charm. I tested these methods thoroughly and confirmed that they do not work otherwise.

I actually haven't tried any VC games though I can try to start messing around with those, I just have to install them but I have themed NANDS set up with neek2o and PostLoader 3 that load my VC games for me, for example I have a NAND that has nothing but SNES games, another with TurboGrafx and NEO-GEO, another with N64 games only etc... and then I just easily switch between NANDS with PL/n2o interface. I wanted WiiFlow to play all my WiiWare cuz of the phenomenally awesome GUI andI haven't tested VC at all, but I know that NAND emu has issues with N64/NEO-GEO and several specific games in general so I stuck with *neek for 100% compatibility. I was a long time Mighty Channels and Mighty Channels Mod (by xFede) user and pretty much it got to a point where I left it behind, PostLoader does a much better job now since Mighty Channels is no longer updated.

@[member='EtheBoss'], [member='fix94'], [member='Mugotu'] or anyone else that has pretty good technical expertise can you explain to me the difference between Vipatch and patch video modes and how they work together with video modes if possible?

In the meantime Painless try playing around with the video settings like I did, cuz 2BH I have no urge to install VC stuff and do testing at this point on the NAND i use with WiiFlow sorry. (However if nand emu is worked on some more in the near future then yes I will be doing some testing but for now I'm really happy playing WiiWare through Wiiflow.. although it would be real cool to pick chrono trigger in WiiFlow... eh who knows maybe I will do some testing lol.

 

[Etheboss]

@[member='EtheBoss'], [member='fix94'], [member='Mugotu'] or anyone else that has pretty good technical expertise can you explain to me the difference between Vipatch and patch video modes and how they work together with video modes if possible?

Thanx, but you are giving me too much credit..although i have been around for a few years now, this part has me confused too..

 

[macmanhigh]

Also GC covers not showing up in Wiiflow....


:Edit: Is there a way to make GC titles appear with Wii titles?like all in same grouping or sumthing.......

refresh your cache by hitting "B" button over the settings icon (gear/cog) you "should" see the rest then.
If you put the GC games in the wbfs folder you will be able to see the GC games along with the Wii games.

ok Covers r showing but i try to add GC iso's thru WBFS Manager but no go