Hacking WiiFlow - an open source GUI USB-Loader

[Maxternal]

Is there a limit of how many plugin buttons there can be or does it just add whatever INI file it find in the plugins folder to the list?
If I add another plugin later will the new one always appear at then end of the plugin list or will it bump the other ones down in alphabetical order or something?

Something like that could make using the startup_menu.ini kinda tricky.

 

[masterjakeway]

does anyone know how the background music is loaded?
I had it pointed to my instrumental folder that has like 300+ songs.
I'm wondering if that is where my hiccups were coming from.
Does it load the whole folder? or, song by song?

 

[FIX94]

Wiiflows sound decoders are not the most stable ones you know The best format is ogg, I just recently switched to the Oggenc2.87 using libVorbis v1.3.3 encoder that works just fine for my wii, before I used the vorbis tools 1.2.0, for some people the old vorbis tools 1.01 from 2003 makes a better result in wiiflow, you need to try it out, good luck

 

[bostonBC]

Ok, now that the emus are all working and can return to WiiFlow I am trying to setup the cover art for my games.

In the plugins folder each emu ini has a

coverFolder=wii64 (corresponding to the emulator)

I placed my wii64 folder in the usb:\wiiflow\covers directory and also the usb:\wiiflow\boxcovers directory and tried rebuilding the cache by pressing settings-B but the graphics aren't showing up.

The graphics are named like:

1080 Snowboarding (Japan, USA) (En,Ja).png

and the games are named like this:

1080 Snowboarding (Japan, USA) (En,Ja).z64

Am I missing something in the naming convention or where the graphic folder should be?

Please let me know.

Thanks!

Simple enough!
You have to put the WHOLE file name in the PNG file name.
for example:
1080 Snowboarding (Japan, USA) (En,Ja).z64.png
emphasis on the z64!

edit: Maxternal beat me to it!

Making good progress but hit a stumbing block. My N64 images are full covers - they have front/spine/back in a rotaed 1090x680 format. The emu coverflow is only showing the front cover, no spine or back cover. Any idea? TIA.

 

[KiiWii]

twist the box 90 degrees and resize them to match original H/W ratio. I noticed the N64 boxes are oriented wrong way you need to not to wrap them around equatorially , but pole to pole (top to bottom) if that makes sense? make sure the box opening "seem/latch" detail is on the top of the box not the right hand side.

Also change boxcolour to 000000 for black well.. it looks good for PAL cover style anyway.

 

[Etheboss]

@[member='fledge68']
Just remove his themes, retaliation on a friend behalf more than likely as the themes had been abandoned for quite a long time and it seems the band wagon has been boarded

yea i could do that and then what - benjay and jsugarsmacks shows up all of a sudden after all this time to complain too. And you're right - it does seem awfully strange that he shows up after all this time and i've seen him in irc a couple of times and he never said a thing to me. His flags look nice but that page definitely was made up. he says he looked at the ini - i guess he should know that it was hacked up like that to make it easier to keep updating it to keep up with all the wiiflow updates. Anyway I guess you guys don't really want the themes because I don't see very much complaining. maybe someday jiiwah will get around to posting his.

well i think Jiiwah is being an idiot. If he cared so much about his stupid themes he would update them instead of complaining when other people do... but whatever

Please a little more respect here, Jiiwah was around in the early days of Wiiflow, he has done a lot of testing / theming / translating for wii, and if i am not mistaking, also provided covers for GameTDB.
The fact that most of the old themers (like Jiiwah and Benjay) are not around anymore or not so active is due to the fact that some dev. spoiled it for them and they gave up and moved on.
So I understand this reaction of some old Wiiflow themers..

That said, i agree with you that most themes need updating and are left alone too long...
Just make sure fledge (or anyone else updating the themes) that you always leave the credits in and if possible notify the creator..that way issues like this are avoided.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

Testin 402:
codedump after quitting from homebrew mode
Black screen after quitting from Wii mode, I didn't test the other modes but it seems Wiiflow forgot how to go back to the system menu

@Fix94 please fix the homebrew cache bug before reaching rev426 because the other 426 had it corrected already

 

[fledge68]

Is there a limit of how many plugin buttons there can be or does it just add whatever INI file it find in the plugins folder to the list?
If I add another plugin later will the new one always appear at then end of the plugin list or will it bump the other ones down in alphabetical order or something?

Something like that could make using the startup_menu.ini kinda tricky.

limit = 20 - 4 = 16 plugins. we've already got 6 or 10 if you divide gameboy and sega into 3 parts each. so that leaves 10 or 6 places left. of course another page can always be added.

if you add another plugin it will automatically be added to the list but i'm not sure if it's the end or alphabetical so yes you might have to re-edit startup_menu.ini sorry. Mastershoes gave me an idea of assigning plugins to buttons that i may do but don't keep you hopes up.

@etheboss - I agree benjay and jiiwah and the rest have done a great job with their themes and are very talented. That is why I chose their themes because I liked them so much that I wanted to be able to continue using them with the latest wiiflow and i figured there would be other people who felt the same way so i posted my edited copies and people seem to like it so I kept doing it. And yes i have given them credit - it's even noted in the theme.ini but true i never asked them but that was because they didn't or don't ever seem to be around so i figured they abandoned them. out of respect for him i've decided to remove my wiki theme page and stop posting on here. I wonder if it would be too much to still post them on here and acknowledge that these are my own personally edited version of his themes that anyone is welcome to use if they like.

 

[KiiWii]

Sorry to ask again, but what needs to be done to WiiMC inorder for us to get a movie coverflow happening?

 

[FIX94]

Sorry to ask again, but what needs to be done to WiiMC inorder for us to get a movie coverflow happening?

I dont know if wiimc supports arguments, if it does then nothing, just a small modification on wiiflow to use these arguments then

 

[wiimanofthenorth]

What version of SCUMMVM is it you guys are using to test wiiflow with? I'm using scummvm 1.3.1 Since that's what they have on their webpage. Sadly Homebrew browser seems to be stuck at 1.2.0.

I'm asking because I'm using wiiflow r348 and I can't seem to get it to see any of my emulators. Even though I've installed the plugin pack.

The games work fine through scummvm if I load it from a channel/homebrew. I copied the SCUMMVM.INI file across to the plugins folder. And do all my other emus that I have set up.

 

[FIX94]

Hey, the latest one is scummvm mod3, in the plugin pack is still mod1 because I changed that just a few hours ago. If you want to test it, you can grab it here.

 

[wiimanofthenorth]

Thanks for the try out, but wiiflow still isn't picking anything up.

I'm not sure if I was over thinking things, because I copied the new file over to the plugins folder, renamed it scummvm-mod1.elf

wiiflow and plugins are set out as usb:1/apps/WIIFLOW/PLUGINS

I copied the scummvm.ini file to the same plugins folder

My scummvm games are in usb1:/SCUMMVM and work fine under scummvm 1.3.1

My snes games are under usb1:/snes9xgx/roms

My megadrive/genesis games are under usb1:/GENPLUS/ROMS

The snes and genesis games both have even more folders for alphanumeric sense of the world. Yet again, they work fine in their normal apps.

When I go to the emu part of wiiflow all it does is ask me which partition. Even though it's already set to USB1. If I try to select plugins, it just shows a ticky box with All already selected.

 

[FIX94]

Its usb:/wiiflow/plugins.

 

[KiiWii]

Tried testing out WiiMC:

Added to plugins folder:
wiimc.dol
wiimc.ini
wiimc.ogg

Added to wiimc.ini:

[PLUGIN]
magic=57493635
coverColor=FFFFFF
coverFolder=wiimc
fileTypes=.avi|.divx|.xvid|.mp4
romDir=wiimc/videos
dolFile=wiimc.dol
bannerSound=wiimc.ogg
displayname=WiiMC
ReturnLoader=yes

Put an avi file in /wiimc/videos.
Selected plugin from menu.
Box cover is shown (same dimentions as my N64 box (how do I make different box types?))

Click on it> It loads to wiimc with this error:

ERROR


Could not find a valid SD or USB device - one is required for normal operation.
Clicking OK exits back to system menu.

I have no idea what I'm doing from here, so please could someone help me out?

I added 1 to the wii64 magic number to get : magic=57493635 (as i'm sure i read to do so before) but if i deselect wii64 it also deselects wiimc...., I also dont know how to add arguments to wiimc itself.

EDIT:

That will teach me for playing around, my emulators screen has gone empty again, nothing showing at all

EDIT2:

Oddly deleting categories.ini fixed the problem.

 

[fledge68]

Thanks for the try out, but wiiflow still isn't picking anything up.

I'm not sure if I was over thinking things, because I copied the new file over to the plugins folder, renamed it scummvm-mod1.elf

wiiflow and plugins are set out as usb:1/apps/WIIFLOW/PLUGINS

I copied the scummvm.ini file to the same plugins folder

My scummvm games are in usb1:/SCUMMVM and work fine under scummvm 1.3.1

My snes games are under usb1:/snes9xgx/roms

My megadrive/genesis games are under usb1:/GENPLUS/ROMS

The snes and genesis games both have even more folders for alphanumeric sense of the world. Yet again, they work fine in their normal apps.

When I go to the emu part of wiiflow all it does is ask me which partition. Even though it's already set to USB1. If I try to select plugins, it just shows a ticky box with All already selected.

the main thing i see wrong is the plugins folder goes in usb1:/wiiflow/plugins not your apps folder

 

[FIX94]

Just that you guys know I havent stopped working on new emulators, here is a new one, wiimednafen mod1
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25620767/WiiflowMod/wiimednafen-mod1.7z
This emulator supports very much roms, just check their wiibrew site out I only added a few rom types to the sample ini, you can add more of course, have fun

 

[matto21]

just tested r404
ok with plugins, return to wiiflow
ok games wii, return to wiiflow
same problem after play, press home to return to the Wii menu, black screen

 

[wiimanofthenorth]

the main thing i see wrong is the plugins folder goes in usb1:/wiiflow/plugins not your apps folder

Thanks, I've fixed that now.

Its usb:/wiiflow/plugins.

in the wiiflow.ini I've set everything to usb1: because otherwise it doesn't find the covers etc for anything all. It just creates defaults folders and files on the SD card.

Though, now that I have the plugins in the correct wiiflow folder, I tried scummvm, but it fell over after not finding anything in the usb1: folder, I guess because it's looking for usb: ???

So how should I set up the wiiflow.ini? I haven't touched what is ever happening in the scummvm.ini settings.

 

[Maxternal]

Sorry to ask again, but what needs to be done to WiiMC inorder for us to get a movie coverflow happening?

I dont know if wiimc supports arguments, if it does then nothing, just a small modification on wiiflow to use these arguments then

Tried testing out WiiMC:

Spoiler

Added to plugins folder:
wiimc.dol
wiimc.ini
wiimc.ogg
Added to wiimc.ini:

[PLUGIN]
magic=57493635
coverColor=FFFFFF
coverFolder=wiimc
fileTypes=.avi|.divx|.xvid|.mp4
romDir=wiimc/videos
dolFile=wiimc.dol
bannerSound=wiimc.ogg
displayname=WiiMC
ReturnLoader=yes

Put an avi file in /wiimc/videos.
Selected plugin from menu.
Box cover is shown (same dimentions as my N64 box (how do I make different box types?))
Click on it> It loads to wiimc with this error:

ERROR
Could not find a valid SD or USB device - one is required for normal operation.
Clicking OK exits back to system menu.

I have no idea what I'm doing from here, so please could someone help me out?
I added 1 to the wii64 magic number to get : magic=57493635 (as i'm sure i read to do so before) but if i deselect wii64 it also deselects wiimc...., I also dont know how to add arguments to wiimc itself.
EDIT:
That will teach me for playing around, my emulators screen has gone empty again, nothing showing at all
EDIT2:
Oddly deleting categories.ini fixed the problem.

I'm pretty sure WiiMC does accept some sort of arguments since WiiXplorer has an option to use it to open media files.
I don't think it takes them in the same order as WiiFlow's plugins do, though.

Modifying the actual WiiMC code and making it into a plugins seems a shame since it's still updated fairly frequently.
Modifying WiiFlow specifically for it is an option but I was thinking about something that may be a bit more universal.
a simple DOL could be put together that would take WiiFlow's arguments and put them in the order that WiiMC wants and then call the already installed WiiMC app.
This could then be used as a stencil for anyone who want to add an existing app to WiiFlow by just changing the argument forwarder DOL, and dropping the new file in the plugins folder. something like what ModMii does to make forwarders.