Hacking WiiFlow - an open source GUI USB-Loader

[MassiveRican]

fledge68 Yea but the weird thing is that it doesn't happen with an earlier rev. If it was a corrupted cache or cover file shouldn't it dump regardless of which version of WiiFlow he's using?

mastershoes the best defrag utilities I've come across lately are Defraggler and Contig. Please run Defraggler by Piriform. Just freeware no extra BS. it even lets u defrag single files and does a much better Job than other defrag utities. I compared and tested 5 top programs and done the testing myself. Contig is a command line equivalent, no GUI. Works great but I prefer Defraggler, it gives a ton of great in depth detailed info on your drive as well. See how things fair after that.

Other than that if u haven't deleted & recreated your cover & banner cache files by now u probably should. If it code dumps creating the cache for a certain banner/cover delete and re-d/load the cover/banner. U know the deal better than most when it comes to this stuff so I wouldn't be surprised if u already did this but it's good for others to know that WiiFlow doesn't automatically delete the cache when u delete a cover AFAIK. Maybe that can be changed in the future if it hasn't been done already.

Edit: spacepimp, haha legend u flatter me bud but I'm just another end user who loves WiiFlow. I really don't consider myself much of a contributor, I don't make themes, covers, source menu/flow icons or code. So ummm yea I'm just a legendary cheerleader lol

Edit2: Contig was recommended to me by Tueidj, so u know that shiz is on point. I mostly use that to defrag ISO files I use for Devo/DM especially good for audio streaming games. Makes the games flow smooth as butter.

 

[fledge68]

fledge68 Yea but the weird thing is that it doesn't happen with an earlier rev. If it was a corrupted cache or cover file shouldn't it dump regardless of which version of WiiFlow he's using?

mastershoes the best defrag utilities I've come across lately are Defraggler and Contig. Please run Defraggler by Piriform. Just freeware no extra BS. it even lets u defrag single files and does a much better Job than other defrag utities. I compared and tested 5 top programs and done the testing myself. Contig is a command line equivalent, no GUI. Works great but I prefer Defraggler, it gives a ton of great in depth detailed info on your drive as well. See how things fair after that.

Other than that if u haven't deleted & recreated your cover & banner cache files by now u probably should. If it code dumps creating the cache for a certain banner/cover delete and re-d/load the cover/banner. U know the deal better than most when it comes to this stuff so I wouldn't be surprised if u already did this but it's good for others to know that WiiFlow doesn't automatically delete the cache when u delete a cover AFAIK. Maybe that can be changed in the future if it hasn't been done already.

good point MassiveRican

 

[mastershoes]

I had something similar happen recently. It happens right as the offending game is coming into view, right? I can't decipher the code dump, but logically it's got to have something to do with the game's cover. A corrupted banner or iso usually shouldn't have any effect until you view the banner or load the game. In my case it turned out to be a really heavily fragmented *.wfc file. Defragmenting the file fixed it.

Yes, that is when it occurs. I'll try again defragging my cache folder, but i know i've tried it already. If that doesn't work i'll try fledge's suggestion of recreating all the .wfc files... Maybe I'll start with the WiiWare I have identified as bad and deleting the associated .png/.wfc files.

I agree with flamepanther. even if windows says its fragmented a small amount. something about 32k cluster size and a little fragmented files can cause issues. I do have a few questions.

what version were you using for the code dump pic? and whats the latest version you have tried? and when you said getting close to the game i assume you are on the main screen scrolling left or right and not the game selected screen? Also do you have wiiflow set to use HQ covers, if so you might want to turn that off, i know the covers don't look as sharp but wiiflow runs much smoother with that off.

something else to try - rename your wiiflow/cache folder so wiiflow will make a new one. this means wiiflow will have to remake all the .wfc files for all your covers and you will have to scroll thru slowly to give it time and while you are at it do the same for you banners too. you can't normally tell a corrupted file just by looking at it.

as for the code dump, hopefully Fix94 can help you with that. I have yet to master reading those things. Good luck!

A/B - I'm always up-to-date with wiiflow-beta, I was using r1027 when i took the codedump screenshot.

C - Yes, scrolling through the games on the main screen. When the culprit is getting close, that's when it dumps.

D - I have HQ covers turned off.

E - I will try that and see what happens. I'll start with the one's i've already identified as codedumpers (see response to flamepanther above).

fledge68 Yea but the weird thing is that it doesn't happen with an earlier rev. If it was a corrupted cache or cover file shouldn't it dump regardless of which version of WiiFlow he's using?

This is what puzzles me the most... I have none of the codedump issues with r924.

mastershoes the best defrag utilities I've come across lately are Defraggler and Contig. Please run Defraggler by Piriform. Just freeware no extra BS. it even lets u defrag single files and does a much better Job than other defrag utities. I compared and tested 5 top programs and done the testing myself. Contig is a command line equivalent, no GUI. Works great but I prefer Defraggler, it gives a ton of great in depth detailed info on your drive as well. See how things fair after that.

Other than that if u haven't deleted & recreated your cover & banner cache files by now u probably should. If it code dumps creating the cache for a certain banner/cover delete and re-d/load the cover/banner. U know the deal better than most when it comes to this stuff so I wouldn't be surprised if u already did this but it's good for others to know that WiiFlow doesn't automatically delete the cache when u delete a cover AFAIK. Maybe that can be changed in the future if it hasn't been done already.


Edit2: Contig was recommended to me by Tueidj, so u know that shiz is on point. I mostly use that to defrag ISO files I use for Devo/DM especially good for audio streaming games. Makes the games flow smooth as butter.

Weeerd homie, i'll grab Defraggler and see how that works for me.

Thanks flamepanther MassiveRican fledge68 for the suggestions. You all are some rad folks.

 

[Wasp14]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the files I'm giving Wiiflow, it seems to play anything under 2GB just fine. If it's larger than that, it runs for a few minutes and then freezes. I can't figure out if it's a Wii cache problem, USB stick problem (I've played large movie files off of it) or something I did wrong installing the cios.

 

[FIX94]

I don't think there's anything wrong with the files I'm giving Wiiflow, it seems to play anything under 2GB just fine. If it's larger than that, it runs for a few minutes and then freezes. I can't figure out if it's a Wii cache problem, USB stick problem (I've played large movie files off of it) or something I did wrong installing the cios.

The problem with usb sticks is that cIOS are not written to support them, you said earlier that you need 251 to even boot them up. If you did the regular installation then it has ios58 as base, also using its ehci, meaning the compatibility depends from that and not from the cIOS ehci. We cant change anything about the compatibility in this case, only nintendo could since its their ehci. You could try some different cIOS, I personally would recommend you trying hermes cIOS cause its the most stable cIOS around, also try both d2x v10 beta 52 and beta 53 alt. If all that doesnt work try to set wiiflow to use port 1 instead of port 0 and then try it again with hermes v5.1 and d2x v10 beta 53 alt (d2x v10 beta 52 is port 0 only). Sometimes for whatever reason the compatibility changes with a port switch.

mastershoes:
just did a quick calculation on the list limit just for fun and my end result is if you do have the maximum elements loaded in (65535 to be exact) I get to a list size of 21.6247mb, now if we want the full one you can double that size because of the coverflow has its own list which is nearly as big as the main list. Just to say, we do have about 15mb with all theme stuff loaded in. So crashes with alot of games loaded in are very plausable and fast to happen for sure. I'm a bit shocked btw about that size, never actually calculated it.

 

[Wasp14]

The problem with usb sticks is that cIOS are not written to support them, you said earlier that you need 251 to even boot them up. If you did the regular installation then it has ios58 as base, also using its ehci, meaning the compatibility depends from that and not from the cIOS ehci. We cant change anything about the compatibility in this case, only nintendo could since its their ehci. You could try some different cIOS, I personally would recommend you trying hermes cIOS cause its the most stable cIOS around, also try both d2x v10 beta 52 and beta 53 alt. If all that doesnt work try to set wiiflow to use port 1 instead of port 0 and then try it again with hermes v5.1 and d2x v10 beta 53 alt (d2x v10 beta 52 is port 0 only). Sometimes for whatever reason the compatibility changes with a port switch.

Thank you for your help, I'll try what you recommended and see if it fixes these issues. I had difficulty even installing a cios because they weren't compatible with the Wii Motion Plus (which is all I have). I ended up following a guide in someone's sig here titled "Mod any Wii" and that seemed to work.

 

[bostonBC]

The problem with usb sticks is that cIOS are not written to support them, you said earlier that you need 251 to even boot them up. If you did the regular installation then it has ios58 as base, also using its ehci, meaning the compatibility depends from that and not from the cIOS ehci. We cant change anything about the compatibility in this case, only nintendo could since its their ehci. You could try some different cIOS, I personally would recommend you trying hermes cIOS cause its the most stable cIOS around, also try both d2x v10 beta 52 and beta 53 alt. If all that doesnt work try to set wiiflow to use port 1 instead of port 0 and then try it again with hermes v5.1 and d2x v10 beta 53 alt (d2x v10 beta 52 is port 0 only). Sometimes for whatever reason the compatibility changes with a port switch.

mastershoes:
just did a quick calculation on the list limit just for fun and my end result is if you do have the maximum elements loaded in (65535 to be exact) I get to a list size of 21.6247mb, now if we want the full one you can double that size because of the coverflow has its own list which is nearly as big as the main list. Just to say, we do have about 15mb with all theme stuff loaded in. So crashes with alot of games loaded in are very plausable and fast to happen for sure. I'm a bit shocked btw about that size, never actually calculated it.

What does the 21.6247MB list limit equal in # of games in a coverflow?

 

[FIX94]

What does the 21.6247MB list limit equal in # of games in a coverflow?

as said, 65535. Also that would be way too much anyways cause we havent even got so much space in the ram cause of themes and covers etc, so I would say like 10.000 max is a good amount.

 

[bostonBC]

as said, 65535. Also that would be way too much anyways cause we havent even got so much space in the ram cause of themes and covers etc, so I would say like 10.000 max is a good amount.

Thanks so 16 bit lists. 10000 is a lot of games, I only have 1324 Wii games, I probably have more than that in old console games though.

Is it an aggregate of all the plugins or about 10K per plugin?

 

[FIX94]

Is it an aggregate of all the plugins or about 10K per plugin?

For everything loaded at the same time that is. Even then 10K is a heavy number considering all the background stuff.

 

[bostonBC]

For everything loaded at the same time that is. Even then 10K is a heavy number considering all the background stuff.

Are the game lists for the plugins loaded when those plugins are loaded or at the start? If the former you could probably have more total games up to the 10K limit (as long as you don't combine plugins) by loading the game lists of plugins only when they are shown.

 

[FIX94]

Are the game lists for the plugins loaded when those plugins are loaded or at the start? If the former you could probably have more total games up to the 10K limit (as long as you don't combine plugins) by loading the game lists of plugins only when they are shown.

You can have more than 10k games sure, wiiflow only loads games up if you did select them, there is no pre-loading or anything, thats impossible with like 15MB RAM playground

Oh and btw, I just added a autoboot function to source menu buttons in r1030:
http://fix94.no-ip.org/wf_revs/boot_r1030.7z
Just read the changelog on google code if you want to try it out.

 

[AbdallahTerro]

Wiiflow can display around 10,000 games combined using missing LQ covers mainly(1 cover per plugin)
If we use HQ covers (1 cover per game) I would say it will display a max of 2000 to 2500 games max

 

[Wasp14]

The problem with usb sticks is that cIOS are not written to support them, you said earlier that you need 251 to even boot them up. If you did the regular installation then it has ios58 as base, also using its ehci, meaning the compatibility depends from that and not from the cIOS ehci. We cant change anything about the compatibility in this case, only nintendo could since its their ehci. You could try some different cIOS, I personally would recommend you trying hermes cIOS cause its the most stable cIOS around, also try both d2x v10 beta 52 and beta 53 alt. If all that doesnt work try to set wiiflow to use port 1 instead of port 0 and then try it again with hermes v5.1 and d2x v10 beta 53 alt (d2x v10 beta 52 is port 0 only). Sometimes for whatever reason the compatibility changes with a port switch.

I couldn't install d2x, it gets stuck at the press any button screen because of the motion plus turning off. Is it really difficult to makes programs accept that controller? Homebrew and Wiiflow work with it no problem but a lot of the cIOS installs don't.

I still have to try Hermes. Games in Wiiflow freeze on my SDHC card as well. I still don't get why games under 2GB are fine.

 

[bostonBC]

Does anyone know if there a version of WiiMC that supports the hidden USB partition on a vWii?

I see that CFG supports it (if you boot from SD first) but USB Loader GX doesn't support it directly or with an SD intermediary.

 

[bostonBC]

You can have more than 10k games sure, wiiflow only loads games up if you did select them, there is no pre-loading or anything, thats impossible with like 15MB RAM playground

Oh and btw, I just added a autoboot function to source menu buttons in r1030:
http://fix94.no-ip.org/wf_revs/boot_r1030.7z
Just read the changelog on google code if you want to try it out.

I meant pre-loading the entire list of games, not the games themselves

 

[mastershoes]

Just wanted to drop a line to say I found my WF problem.

I had a lot of "False Full Cover png's" that got created somehow in my boxcovers folder. It seems at some point, all of my games that only had 2D covers created a corrupt 0kb full cover png. This conflict is what was causing my codedumps. I deleted all the false full cover png's and everything is back to good. Shoes is in full flow, thanks for the input guys!! Oh, and just fyi, the 2D cache files for those particular covers were fine and didn't need to be re-created.

 

[bostonBC]

Just wanted to drop a line to say I found my WF problem.

I had a lot of "False Full Cover png's" that got created somehow in my boxcovers folder. It seems at some point, all of my games that only had 2D covers created a corrupt 0kb full cover png. This conflict is what was causing my codedumps. I deleted all the false full cover png's and everything is back to good. Shoes is in full flow, thanks for the input guys!! Oh, and just fyi, the 2D cache files for those particular covers were fine and didn't need to be re-created.

I had that happen a few times, real tough to figure out

 

[bostonBC]

Can folks check their wiiflow\cache\lists folder and see if their usb1_wii.db file is all upper case and 0 bytes?

I have a recurring very annoying problem.

If you reload the cache it creates a 0 byte .db file that is all upper case. And the kicker is it results in directory corruption (FAT32 volume, single partition).

Most people may not notice it since they don't have a large collection and the process occurs pretty quick.

But pull the drive from the Wii and check it on a PC and you will see USB1_WII.DB with 0 bytes and if you do a disk check the wiiflow\cache\lists folder will have directory corruption.

If you let it fix it and delete the FOUND.000 folder and then eject it and put it back on the Wii it correctly creates the file. But if there is already a file there and you reload the cache it screws things up.

I've tested this and found the same problem on several of my Wii's. All are running > r1000 with a single FAT32 partition with everything running from hard disk (no SD card).

If anyone else can confirm this is a problem I would greatly appreciate it. TIA

 

[Th3-Blu3BoMb3r]

are there any benifits switching from wii to wiiu for homebrew?