Hacking WiiU VC game injection working on 5.3.2

pedro702

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Just tried it, the game does indeed boot, but has missing DSP-1/mode 7 (since it uses the DSP-1 chip for the 3D). The framerate is also cut in half for some reason, but it shows way more than Star Fox did, so, I think this is progress :P
doesnt it freeze during missons?
 

pedro702

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Just tried it, the game does indeed boot, but has missing DSP-1/mode 7 (since it uses the DSP-1 chip for the 3D). The framerate is also cut in half for some reason, but it shows way more than Star Fox did, so, I think this is progress :P



@pedro702 Nope, even the missions load, the game shows the menu, vehicle selection and levels, but the 3D plane/map itself is invisible and the plane is always tilted at a 30 degree angle or so, it's really weird.

Good news is that only that 00007FB0 offset is the only one that needs to be copied from header to header, copying anymore lines doesn't make any difference.
interesting so here is my theory

Only rom with games that have special chips can activate them but only if the gameid matches the default VC rom id.

So all dsp 1 games should work when injected into pilotwings VC with pilotwings game header or super mario kart it should work aswhell if its using super mario kart header.

Each VC that has special chips can activate the special chip options but only work correctly with the actual chip they use others will work with bugs obviously.

So the question is is there an actual config file typed in the executable that dictates if it can activate special chip, only if the game header is detected and what chip it activates.
 

fiveighteen

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So I'm at a complete blank trying to get Pilotwings (LoROM) into anything HiROM after like 2 hrs of reading about it. I think LoROM and HiROM only matter once they get to the console; it basically tells the SNES which banks to read information into. I can't figure out how the ROM is put together differently to load into the correct sections though.

The weird thing is I somehow got Pilotwings to boot once last week, though the missions black screened. Ever since that one time, I can't get it to boot at all anymore.

I did find this awesome header reference site though. http://jensma.de/snes/index.php
Search for your base SNES VC game, then click the » on the left side and it will show you a list of other SNES games that match the header data... aka all other listed games should inject properly!
 
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pedro702

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So I'm at a complete blank trying to get Pilotwings (LoROM) into anything HiROM after like 2 hrs of reading about it. I think LoROM and HiROM only matter once they get to the console; it basically tells the SNES which banks to read information into. I can't figure out how the ROM is put together differently to load into the correct sections though.

The weird thing is I somehow got Pilotwings to boot once last week, though the missions black screened. Ever since that one time, I can't get it to boot at all anymore.

I did find this awesome header reference site though. http://jensma.de/snes/index.php
Search for your base SNES VC game, then click the » on the left side and it will show you a list of other SNES games that match the header data... aka all other listed games should inject properly!
seems that it only shows perfect matches im preety sure we have confirmed working games that havent been perect matches but nice find.

Also randomizer any chance you try wolfenstein 3d inject on DK VC? just seeing if the hi/low rom and fast/slow rom compat are enough for noone special chip games.
 

fiveighteen

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The other confusing thing, is that looking at Wii VC injections... Pilotwings was injected into DKC2.

Pilotwings is LoROM, 0KB SRAM, DSP-1, 4MB, SlowROM
DKC2 is HiROM, 16KB SRAM, No chip + battery, 32MB, FastROM

Wtf.
 

pedro702

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The other confusing thing, is that looking at Wii VC injections... Pilotwings was injected into DKC2.

Pilotwings is LoROM, 0KB SRAM, DSP-1, 4MB, SlowROM
DKC2 is HiROM, 16KB SRAM, No chip + battery, 32MB, FastROM

Wtf.
well wii vc emulators were way diferent than wiiu ones, the wiiu ones have alot of stuff added like real emulators and such.
 

fiveighteen

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well wii vc emulators were way diferent than wiiu ones, the wiiu ones have alot of stuff added like real emulators and such.
Ah, I actually had no idea what the differences were between Wii VC and Wii U VC. I guess that makes sense why they can't just re-release all of it. :P
 

pedro702

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Ah, I actually had no idea what the differences were between Wii VC and Wii U VC. I guess that makes sense why they can't just re-release all of it. :P
yeah wii emulators basicaly played the game and that was about it lol wiiu has alot of options and such same for 3ds they were a huge step up with options.
 

fiveighteen

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I tried something that looks like progress...

Lock On is the most comparable ROM to Pilotwings (Rom Type is 03 "ROM + Enhancement Chip" and SRAM size is 0KB).
The only difference is that Lock On is FastROM and HiROM, and Pilotwings is SlowROM and LoROM.

In HiROM games, the header is at 0x0FFC0, while in LoROM games, the head is at 0x07FC0 (half way). So I tried just copy/pasting all of the upper chunks of data from LoROM Pilotwings and overwriting the lower chunks of data from HiROM Lock On. Like this:

Pilotwings -------- Lock On
00000-07FFF --- 08000-0FFFF
10000-17FFF --- 18000-1FFFF
20000-27FFF --- 28000-2FFFF
30000-37FFF --- 38000-3FFFF
40000-47FFF --- 48000-4FFFF
50000-57FFF --- 58000-5FFFF
60000-67FFF --- 68000-6FFFF
70000-77FFF --- 78000-7FFFF

To elaborate, I copied 00000-07FFF of Pilotwings, and then pasted it over 08000-0FFFF of Lock On. This effectively copied the 32K chunk containing the header data of Pilotwings and pasted it over the 32K chunk of Lock On that contained it's header data. I proceeded following the pattern.

I then made 4 different versions and tried testing them in SNES9X emulator.
1) SlowROM and LoROM (like Pilotwings original): Doesn't see the internal ROM name. Shows size as Corrupt. Shows type as normal ROM. Shows SRAM:Corrupt
2) SlowROM and HiROM: See's correct internal ROM name, size, type, and SRAM
3) FastROM and LoROM: Doesn't see the internal ROM name. Shows size as Corrupt. Shows type as normal ROM. Shows SRAM:Corrupt
4) FastROM and HiROM (like Lock On and Super Mario Kart): See's correct internal ROM name, size, type, and SRAM

This proves it's looking at the game as if it's HiROM! It still blackscreens on all 4 of those tests, but I feel like it's maybe a step in the right direction. Maybe instead of only replacing the lower 32K of Lock On with the upper 32K of Pilotwings I should do replace the upper AND lower 32K of Lock On with the upper 32K of Pilotwings?

EDIT: Tried that ^ still black screens, though it seems to read the first header set instead of the second (so yes, I did change the info in both headers)... I give up lol.
 
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the_randomizer

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I was asleep for a nap, I'm back now and saw what looks like progress, but...I guess not *sigh* I was hopeful, esp. when I successfully injected some ROMs into an SA-1 VC ROM, but I suppose that too was a big waste of everyone's time, including mine. I'd like to take this time and apologize for involving everyone and for getting them involved in such a trivial thing....my apologies :(

seems that it only shows perfect matches im preety sure we have confirmed working games that havent been perect matches but nice find.

Also randomizer any chance you try wolfenstein 3d inject on DK VC? just seeing if the hi/low rom and fast/slow rom compat are enough for noone special chip games.

Sorry, just barely woke up. I can try to inject that by swapping the Wolfenstein 3D header with DKC2 header, to see what happens and will let you know, but at this point, and given @Summersett's last post...I don't know if it'll mean anything in the long run....damn. As I thought, I was wrong for wanting to ever get involved in the Wii U hacking scene. :nayps3::hateit:

Dammit all -_- I don't even think somehow getting the executable used to load the VC games would do any good, if that's even possible. Excuse me while I hit my head against the bathroom sink in frustration.
 
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the_randomizer

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have you guys tried looking around in the ram dumps of different snes VC titles to see if you can find any configs/flags

We don't know how to even go about that, we do know VC games can be dumped/extracted back to one's PC, but as far as the actual emulator executable, I don't know, but that would account for their unusually large size. If you look in the Wii U data management, you can see how big they take up in the NAND, subtracting the ROM size from that can give you a good idea how big the rest of the files, but surely, the config files are somewhere. What else could lock certain games to that VC wad?
 

gamesquest1

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We don't know how to even go about that, we do know VC games can be dumped/extracted back to one's PC, but as far as the actual emulator executable, I don't know, but that would account for their unusually large size. If you look in the Wii U data management, you can see how big they take up in the NAND, subtracting the ROM size from that can give you a good idea how big the rest of the files, but surely, the config files are somewhere. What else could lock certain games to that VC wad?
well if you just do a ram dump and search for the snes rom then look around that area, it may be that the integrated rom has an addition header attached to it similar to the TNES header they used with NES roms on the 3DS that is used to set the emulator up
 
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the_randomizer

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well if you just do a ram dump and search for the snes rom then look around that area, it may be that the integrated rom has an addition header attached to it similar to the TNES header they used with NES roms on the 3DS that is used to set the emulator up

A guide was posted on how to dump the RAM for the Snes ROM, but that's only 4 MB max, if that, depending on the game (he posted this a few pages ago, just the other day). What I'm talking about is the fact some of these are 40 MB downloads or so, I have no idea what that extra data is, surely, it can't be the ROM, right?

user interface, manual etc (although iirc the manuals are online right?)....but general UI could clock up 20MB easy and if the snes is anything like the N64 VC it may have spare UI elements for other systems

@gamesquest1 True, but admittedly, I'm discouraged about the whole thing, you know? Just when I thought I was helping with progress, we hit a proverbial wall, and I don't know what else we can do *sigh* Not trying to be negative, but it's kinda of hard not to. How would one even begin to see how big everything was before extracting it from the VC? The way these are programmed are just confusing to me, perhaps it's out of my league since I can't program, IDK.
 
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gamesquest1

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A guide was posted on how to dump the RAM for the Snes ROM, but that's only 4 MB max, if that, depending on the game (he posted this a few pages ago, just the other day). What I'm talking about is the fact some of these are 40 MB downloads or so, I have no idea what that extra data is, surely, it can't be the ROM, right?
user interface, manual etc (although iirc the manuals are online right?)....but general UI could clock up 20MB easy and if the snes is anything like the N64 VC it may have spare UI elements for other systems

but there is probably lots of padding on stuff too, the size doesn't really mean much unless it was like 5gb (and even then it would probably just mean they are trying to waste space like on nes remix by including multiple copies of games) funny that retro remix clocks in a 140mb.......such a waste of a 25GB disk :rofl2:, they could have just thrown a couple of demo's on there to use some of it up
 

VinsCool

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have you guys tried looking around in the ram dumps of different snes VC titles to see if you can find any configs/flags
If anyone provides me one, I would like to :)
 

pedro702

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so i got VC sin and punishment thansk to fix e shop acess, is there any kind soul that would link me to the gecko program to use on pc? i wanna dump the Vc titlte since sin and punishment might have more inis.
 

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