Hacking NeoGamma R8 beta test

[giantpune]

i think there might be something we have missed with the alt dol + stuff. when using the modified DIP to run redsteel2 from the system menu from usb, i never had to watch the WM+ video. the game started right away. there still is a icon to click to watch the video, but its just optional.

maybe there is some parameter or value to set when booting the main.dol so it will not require people to watch the video for WM+ ever.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

maybe there is some parameter or value to set when booting the main.dol so it will not require people to watch the video for WM+ ever.

There is a value to set, but it is in the NAND, not the parameters passed to the .dol. It's what Wii Sports Resort stores on your NAND. You just have to watch the WMP video the first time you play any WMP game. You can do this from the original disc or using the alt dol method.

Even the WMP video itself reads the file. If you try to run it after watching the WMP video properly, it gives you a menu of which section to view rather than autoplaying the whole video.

 

[giantpune]

here is the log of what that happens when you click to start the WM+ video... http://pastie.org/873133
th only stuff it checks from the nand is the save data for the game in question. i dont see it accessing any "global" WM+ file that tells other games with a WM+ that you have watched the video.

 

[TeenTin]

here is the log of what that happens when you click to start the WM+ video... http://pastie.org/873133
th only stuff it checks from the nand is the save data for the game in question. i dont see it accessing any "global" WM+ file that tells other games with a WM+ that you have watched the video.

So, this means if we copy the save to Wii, we can start the game without even watching the video "the first time" ?

 

[giantpune]

well, you have to have the TMD of the game to copy a save to it. and you need to at least open up the partition of a game to get the TMD on your wii. what im saying is that there might be some other parameter you can pass to the main.dol so it will not make you watch the stupid video.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

here is the log of what that happens when you click to start the WM+ video... http://pastie.org/873133
th only stuff it checks from the nand is the save data for the game in question. i dont see it accessing any "global" WM+ file that tells other games with a WM+ that you have watched the video.

I'm a little confused. It says at the start that you click to watch the wm+ video, so is this a trace from in-game when the game has already installed a save? If so, could it be that the code loads the save for the game, and if the flag for having watched the video is not in there, it loads some other file?

I have seen claims of people running Red Steel 2 without watching the WM+ video first, and the only thing that makes any sense is that they already saw it before playing WSR. Either they are lying or mistaken, or there is something going on that we don't understand yet.

 

[WiiPower]

Vsin i don't follow your problem at all. Set NeoGamma to use use alt .dol disc+, put the .wdm file in the NeoGamma folder on sd card and it will prompt you to select which episode to play.

Where EXACTLY do you get WHAT problem?

The final problem dealing with, was that on Season 2 of Sam & Max (fixed now). The fix for Neogamma appears to be having a game save file on my system for the game. I did have problems with it on CFG but with 56b2 update, it finally worked with CFG. After saving my game, trying the game again on Neogamma 8 RC5, it loaded. Before when it didn't load (at this stage of the problem), I could use Disc+ to bring up the episode selections. The problem was that after selecting one, a white message on a black screen said "starting game....." and stayed frozen there.

The final problem I had dealing with on Season 1 of the game was that I needed to rename the r3x.wdm file to rc3x.wdm for some reason. CFG also loaded it but the file required the name to be just r3x.wdm

All is working now through alt dol/disc+ with HDD loading. I'm not worried about the issues with playing them from disc as I don't care to use discs to play my games and only season 2 on disc has given me problems.

Sorry i still can't follow you. You had to rename the file to get Sam & Max Season 2 to work, ok, that's what i would have thought. But it only started working in NeoGamma after you saved the game in configurable usb loader? And the rc3x doesn't make sense at all, and was it before or after saving the game?

 

[giantpune]

I have seen claims of people running Red Steel 2 without watching the WM+ video first, and the only thing that makes any sense is that they already saw it before playing WSR.

you can clearly see when the player.dol is loaded from th game. and you can see everything it accesses from the nand. so how does this dol know that i have already seen the video and gives me the menu rather than make me watch the whole thing? the same with the main.dol. how does the main dol know ive seen the video before from a different game? there is no "global ive seen the WM+ video save" on the nand. so there is most definitely some other way to tell the main.dol not to make the person watch it.

 

[WiiPower]

To figure that one out i suggest comparing 2 nand dumps, the 1st when the game refuses to boot because the video wasn't watched. And the 2nd of course after watching the movie.

And i would like to know if the paramter from Sam & Max can be dumped with a patched disc, i haven't had time yet to test it. If it works, one could test what parameter the disc channel uses to boot the game.

 

[Dr. Clipper]

I have seen claims of people running Red Steel 2 without watching the WM+ video first, and the only thing that makes any sense is that they already saw it before playing WSR.

you can clearly see when the player.dol is loaded from th game. and you can see everything it accesses from the nand. so how does this dol know that i have already seen the video and gives me the menu rather than make me watch the whole thing? the same with the main.dol. how does the main dol know ive seen the video before from a different game? there is no "global ive seen the WM+ video save" on the nand. so there is most definitely some other way to tell the main.dol not to make the person watch it.

I agree that the trace shows no location for a global WM+ flag. However, I'd like to see a trace of a game being launched when there is no save for the game already on the NAND. The one you posted seems to have one there already (but I can't be sure as I'm not fully versed in the save structure of the Wii. If it was the first time the game was run, then forgive me, but the fact you say that it is clicking the button to watch the video makes me think it's the in-game button that you push after you have seen it once before.

My theory is that maybe RS2 uses this pseudocode pattern to load:
CODE

if save exists for Red Steel 2
ÂÂÂÂwmp_vid = true
if wmp_vid = false
ÂÂÂÂopen innocuously_named_file_in_NAND
ÂÂÂÂwmp_vid = read flag from file
...
if wmp_vid = false
ÂÂÂÂlaunch player.dol
play game

In this case, it would use the existence of the save as a first test, but would only look for the other file if the save doesn't exist and we would not see the other file in the trace if the save does exist. This is all supposition on my part, but I need to see the trace of the first run of the game or to see what happens when the save doesn't exist to prove the guys saying they never watched the video to play RS2 are lying or mistaken.

 

[Cyan]

@Giantpune :
I'm thinking about the 4.1 system menu update.
wasn't it a bugfix to prevent the video from being shown again after accessing a VC from SD card ? so it must reset the "video is already shown" somewhere.
There might be a way to check what this bug currently do/read/write while using system menu 4.0, no ?

And it could be great to check if every games have this bug with WM+ after playing a VC games from SDcard or only Wii sport resort.


@Dr. Clipper :
I thought about the save file too, but on my 1st launch of Red steel2 (using usbloaderGX) without alt dol method to run the video manually, and without any save data present on the NAND, it never launched the WM+ video either.
So the game known I watched it on WSResort? or there's another trigger to decide if the user have to see it or not ? (Or is usbloaderGX bypassing the video by some unknown process ?)

I would like to know if SR2 video is forced on first run to someone who never watched it on another game (WSR for example).

 

[Dr. Clipper]

@Giantpune :
I'm thinking about the 4.1 system menu update.
wasn't it a bugfix to prevent the video from being shown again after accessing a VC from SD card ? so it must trigger the "video is already shown" somewhere.
There might be a way to check what this bug currently do/read/write while using system menu 4.0, no ?

And it could be great to check if every games have this bug with WM+ after playing a VC games from SDcard or only Wii sport resort.

That actually plays into something I was considering putting into my previous post, but decided to wait until I'd researched things a bit more. Now that you mention it, I'll go with it, though. I am thinking that maybe RS2 checks for existence of its save to determine whether to play the vid as an initial test before looking for the main file. This could be a direct reaction to the WSR problem which may have only used the global file and not its save as proof. I don't think the other WM+ games forced you to watch the vid on your first play of the game, so they wouldn't count in this case.

Edit: Just saw your edit

. Yes, I believe that there must be something on the NAND because of testimonies like yours. It's nice to get another one in this thread from a highly reputable source

.

 

[WiiPower]

RC6:
- Fixed bug in .wdm file parsing code that caused the last parameter to be ignored if there isn't a newline at the end of the file
- Added some .wdm files
- Changed some config defaults

Now there are .wdm files for the follwing games:
Boogie
Fifa 08
Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings
Madden NFL 08
Metal Slug Anthology
Metroid Prime Trilogy
Medal of Honor: Heroes 2
Mortal Kombat Armageddon
NBA Live 08
Red Steel
Sam & Max Season One
Sam & Max Season Two
SSX Blur
The House of the Dead 2&3

I hope they work, i wrote some of them without testing.

Seperate download for the .wdm files alone:
http://www.mediafire.com/?nqmmdtmyqiq

 

[Cyan]

sorry, I'm a edit-fu ninja

I always edit my posts a lot to correct grammar, add and move text etc.

Thanks for the "highly reputable" title.
but I can't help a lot here, I can only propose ideas.


Thank you Wiipower for the .wdm files.
That's not hard to create, but it has to be made by someone who can spend time on it

(people tend to ask without doing it themselves too)

 

[Muyfa666]

I don't quite get the hang of this .wdm stuff.

If I have it in the sd:\NeoGamma folder the program automatically searches for it?

I tried to read through the thread, but I don't really get it.

 

[WiiPower]

I don't quite get the hang of this .wdm stuff.

If I have it in the sd:\NeoGamma folder the program automatically searches for it?

I tried to read through the thread, but I don't really get it.

The feature is called alt .dol disc+. I recommend alt .dol disc+ only, that will play the games as if there wasn't a problem and it won't bug for the other games.

 

[gothchristian]

Does this new Neogama supports cIOS55BugFix ?

 

[nikeymikey]

Does this new Neogama supports cIOS55BugFix ?

That sounds like a cIOSCORP IOS, so i would imagine the answer is no. I think NeoGamma only likes PROPER cIOS like 249 or 222/3/4 but i may be wrong.

 

[madri1]

well, thanx wiipower for the RC6 but what is the aim of those wdm files,
they are just a .dol selector menu ?

They made some game that were not playable before, now playable ?

 

[nikeymikey]

well, thanx wiipower for the RC6 but what is the aim of those wdm files,
they are just a .dol selector menu ?

They made some game that were not playable before, now playable ?

Yes Sam & Max for example, now works, whereas before, it didnt!!!