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GAF Wii Homebrew thread: Homebrew, emulators, USB disc installs! Easy tutorial!

EatChildren said:
And that’s precisely why Nintendo should just quit trying to kill pirating on the Wii.

I really have no problem with them battling pirates, but on the Wii it’s a lost cause in the most literal sense. The console is so easily hacked, and so opened up as is, that pirates are not going to be defeated. As has been shown by a huge amount of the 4.2 update, an update specifically targeted towards homebrewers, already circumnavigated and further hacks on the way.

On top of that a vast majority of pirates are going to be keeping up to speed with all firmware updates. They had to go through the procedure of installing custom IOSs so they’re tech savvy to some degree, and would know the places that keep updated on latest news. They see that the 4.2 update can damage homebrew and thus do not update.

So who gets hurt? Everbody else. With the fundamental risk of the 4.2 update being the actual fucking update, regardless of whether you have homebrew or not, you’re left with a lot of people who don’t pirate, who don’t even know what homebrew is, as the people most likely to be hit with a brick. They’re the people who these kinds of updates are supposed to ‘protect’.

It’s really very shameful. Even if it’s not remotely a widespread issue, the fact the issue exists from a company of such size and wealth as Nintendo is truly pathetic.
quite. it's like the PSP. only thing that's going to fix it is new hardware with better security measures and new exclusive side features to encourage people to upgrade.

fighting piracy/homebrew with firmware updates doesn't work. the system is wide open, and the homebrew scene know the hardware well enough to continually expose new exploits or at the very least to add new features from later firmware into the current one to ensure that you can stay on an open firmware, still play all the latest games and use all the latest features, but still do all that good homebrew stuff.

i love having a region free Wii that i can rip games from to try them out on Dolphin on my PC. i love being able to use emulation LEGALLY and only homebrew allows me to do that.

i don't mind Nintendo trying to close the door, i just think it's futile. i mean it's my hardware to do what i want with, but it's their system to update however they feel.

so long as i can keep negating either the need for those updates, or the security measures in those updates, i will.
 
Dragona Akehi said:
I still find it hilariously ironic that the people Nintendo were targeting, homebrewers, knew about the dangers of the update and refrained, thus only hitting (and bricking) people who don't even know what HBC is. And then ~72 hours later, there's a complete workaround for homebrew. Again.


Wow, already? i havent update yet, but is there a way to maintain everything?
 

HUELEN10

Member
Woohoo! 4.2 is successfully installed, and it takes .8 seconds less to scroll through the channel pages on the Wii Menu! USB Loader doesn't work obviously, and I doubt installing channels is possible either (which kisses the chances of a handy dandy HDD Loader forwarder in the future out of the window sadly, though it does help put a stop to piracy, which is never bad), but I feel that it was worth it. I am now browsing on the Shop Channel, and couldn't be happier.

If you do decide to get 4.2, which is still not recommended unless you understand the risks involved, be sure to update your HBC first! I am happy in the decision I made.
 

vazel

Banned
Haha at all of you saying Nintendo should just give up. These firmware updates have done enough to where I don't hassle with it even though I want all that neat homebrew stuff. Don't assume everyone puts as much effort into bypassing drm as you all in this thread do.

Hasn't it been impossible to install hombrew for a few firmware updates by now anyway. I suppose 4.2 worries is only for those that were lucky enough to already have it intalled.
 

TunaLover

Member
marc^o^ said:
Piracy will lead Nintendo to release a new console (moreso than anything related to HD).

I bet piracy is only present in a small percent of the Wii userbase, there's the modchips too, so HBC is not the only to blame. I think Nintendo is worried about getting other things out of crontrol, like region free Wiis, or people making hack textures on Smash Brawl, I remember the shitstorm caused by this thing, children seeing Zero Suit Samus naked and stuff like that :lol.

Nintendo is such a control freak with its systems, historical they made very closed system, so I think it comes like a cold shower to them. They never though about their IPs being modified in-game, OMG teh children, family, pedobear, etc...
 

thefro

Member
Well, I can understand them trying to patch things when it gets this easy.

I know a lot of people will pirate anyway but when it's so easy to do people with good intentions will get sucked into the slippery slope and make excuses. When you can just borrow a game from a buddy or rent one and rip it to a USB hard drive this easily it tempts a lot of people.

They're really close to a PSP-type situation at this point, and that'll really kill any third party support.
 

shuri

Banned
vazel said:
Haha at all of you saying Nintendo should just give up. These firmware updates have done enough to where I don't hassle with it even though I want all that neat homebrew stuff. Don't assume everyone puts as much effort into bypassing drm as you all in this thread do.
Exactly.

Nintendo's fight is not about stopping piracy completely. It's about making it harder for your average joe to do it at home. This has been Nintendo's strategy since the snes days back in the copier days. Updates like this make the average joe go 'Ok, this is too much trouble, I'll just go legit'

Just because all the work has been done for people with simple tutorials does not mean that it's easy. The average user can easily freak out about this.
 
Homebrew Channel installation success! Also got the homebrew browser.

Now how the hell am I supposed to check my Wiimote's battery life while using it if it overrides the home button menu?
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
TunaLover said:
I bet piracy is only present in a small percent of the Wii userbase, there's the modchips too, so HBC is not the only to blame. I think Nintendo is worried about getting other things out of crontrol, like region free Wiis, or people making hack textures on Smash Brawl, I remember the shitstorm caused by this thing, children seeing Zero Suit Samus naked and stuff like that :lol.

Nintendo is such a control freak with its systems, historical they made very closed system, so I think it comes like a cold shower to them. They never though about their IPs being modified in-game, OMG teh children, family, pedobear, etc...
Looking at mininova the Wii is second only to PC's in the number of torrents, and there are 300seeds/1000leechers for most of the top games - which include the new turtles game and Dirt 2. My guess is that piracy is becoming a major problem which may well force Nintendos hand to release a Wii2/HD/plus/whatever.
 

OMG Aero

Member
As someone who knows absolutely nothing about how homebrew on the Wii works, I have a quick question: If Nintendo are pushing out these updates to remove homebrew, why do they make the updates optional? If I had homebrew on my Wii I just wouldn't update it. Why don't they make it so if the Wii detects an update, it either auto downloads it or won't let you do anything on the console until it updates?
 

Bizzyb

Banned
Dragona Akehi said:
I still find it hilariously ironic that the people Nintendo were targeting, homebrewers, knew about the dangers of the update and refrained, thus only hitting (and bricking) people who don't even know what HBC is. And then ~72 hours later, there's a complete workaround for homebrew. Again.

:lol

Indeed it is a hilarious situation. I'm almost starting to feel bad for Nintendo...
 
thefro said:
Well, I can understand them trying to patch things when it gets this easy.

I know a lot of people will pirate anyway but when it's so easy to do people with good intentions will get sucked into the slippery slope and make excuses. When you can just borrow a game from a buddy or rent one and rip it to a USB hard drive this easily it tempts a lot of people.

They're really close to a PSP-type situation at this point, and that'll really kill any third party support.
no it won't.

it's speculation that piracy killed PSP software sales. there's certainly no indicators that it's having an impact on Wii software (Wii attach rate is about the same as the unhacked PS3 attach rate).

perhaps i have a different perspective as a long time PC gamer which is a system that has always been open, and always been ridiculously easy to 'steal' games on if you were so inclined... and yet developers still make PC games.

pirates make excuses like 'it's too easy' etc, but i honestly think most people are honest enough not to steal shit. i don't have time to play all the games i can afford to buy. why would i steal any?
 

swerve

Member
TunaLover said:
Nintendo is such a control freak with its systems. They never though about their IPs being modified in-game, OMG teh children, family, pedobear, etc...

FlipNote Studio says hi.
 

Taker666

Member
Burai said:
This is also why people who claim console manufacturers should brick modded machines should die in a fire. You just can't avoid false-positives. And if the update itself is buggy, you end up with a huge mess. Like this one.

What huge mess is that then?

I'm still seeing plenty of talk from homebrew supporters about the dangers of updating...very few people actually having any problems updating their unmodded Wii's...

...and the limited number who are complaining seemed to turn up on the Nintendo forums around the same time as the sudden influx of homebrewers who are currently flooding the forum with posts.

A quick look at look at twitter (for brick + Wii, Bricked + wii, bricks + wii) shows 4 people complaining about a bricked Wii in the last two days..all using homebrew.

A small poll on another Nintendo forum-

Question: Have you updated to the 4.2 Wii Update?

Yes, no problem (29 votes)
Yes, Wii bricked (0 votes)
No, because of bricking risk (9 votes)
No, other (state why) (15 votes)
 

TunaLover

Member
OMG Aero said:
As someone who knows absolutely nothing about how homebrew on the Wii works, I have a quick question: If Nintendo are pushing out these updates to remove homebrew, why do they make the updates optional? If I had homebrew on my Wii I just wouldn't update it. Why don't they make it so if the Wii detects an update, it either auto downloads it or won't let you do anything on the console until it updates?

You can always make an unofficial update through NUS
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
plagiarize said:
no it won't.

it's speculation that piracy killed PSP software sales. there's certainly no indicators that it's having an impact on Wii software (Wii attach rate is about the same as the unhacked PS3 attach rate).

perhaps i have a different perspective as a long time PC gamer which is a system that has always been open, and always been ridiculously easy to 'steal' games on if you were so inclined... and yet developers still make PC games.

pirates make excuses like 'it's too easy' etc, but i honestly think most people are honest enough not to steal shit. i don't have time to play all the games i can afford to buy. why would i steal any?
Wii soft modding that allowed pirating is only a recent phenomenon, so the attach rate will only ever be marginally effected by it.
 

Somnid

Member
plagiarize said:
no it won't.

it's speculation that piracy killed PSP software sales. there's certainly no indicators that it's having an impact on Wii software (Wii attach rate is about the same as the unhacked PS3 attach rate).

perhaps i have a different perspective as a long time PC gamer which is a system that has always been open, and always been ridiculously easy to 'steal' games on if you were so inclined... and yet developers still make PC games.

pirates make excuses like 'it's too easy' etc, but i honestly think most people are honest enough not to steal shit. i don't have time to play all the games i can afford to buy. why would i steal any?

Developers have expressed a lot of concern over the PC market and piracy. It's not like there's no money to be had on PC but most of the ones that still do well have online multiplayer modes with mandatory patches. Don't assume people will do what you do, in many parts of the world you're an idiot if you don't pirate and people couldn't fathom paying for games.
 

TunaLover

Member
swerve said:
FlipNote Studio says hi.

It's different when the user create its own content on porpouse, that modify a game as it is. Not sure if you can use Nintendo characters in Flipnote TBH. I remember when Nintendo kindly ordered to a guy stop using a Mario avatar in a softporn site.
 

Somnid

Member
TunaLover said:
It's different when the user create its own content on porpouse, that modify a game as it is. Not sure if you can use Nintendo characters in Flipnote TBH. I remember when Nintendo order to a guy stop using a Mario avatar in a softporn site.

Pretty sure there's a dedicated channel for Nintendo related FlipNotes.
 
Somnid said:
Developers have expressed a lot of concern over the PC market and piracy. It's not like there's no money to be had on PC but most of the ones that still do well have online multiplayer modes with mandatory patches. Don't assume people will do what you do, in many parts of the world you're an idiot if you don't pirate and people couldn't fathom paying for games.
of course developers are concerned at lost sales, but frankly i don't think there's any good way of tracking losses due to piracy. it's all speculation. we have no way of knowing what percentage of pirated games amount to a lost sale.

in many of those parts of the world, if i'm not mistaken, you can't buy consoles period.

just the very nature of the demographic of who owns the wii ensures that any lost sales due to piracy will be minimal.

i'm not saying that piracy is okay, it isn't. i'm just saying that we can't even say for sure it hurt the PSP, and that it's pretty obvious that in the Wii's case, a much smaller segment of the market is going to be interested in doing it, though naturally they will pretend that everyone is doing it.

i just think it's untrue to say that piracy is going to cost the Wii support. why would it? what other system are you going to make those games for instead?

wii homebrew is a legitimate use of a piece of hardware you own. don't blame those of us that are using it legitimately for speculated future harm that may or may not come to pass.

that's all.

anyone reading this on a computer could steal a game much more easily than they ever could on a Wii, and yet the vast majority don't. so don't try and tar and feather those of us that like all the non piracy related things homebrew lets us do as if somehow we're part of a perceived yet unsubstantiated problem.
 

TunaLover

Member
Somnid said:
Pretty sure there's a dedicated channel for Nintendo related FlipNotes.

Yes, it was incorporated by default with the new Opera Browser, my point is Nintendo isn't the kind that left people make freely ''bad use'' of their characters.
 

Somnid

Member
plagiarize said:
of course developers are concerned at lost sales, but frankly i don't think there's any good way of tracking losses due to piracy. it's all speculation. we have no way of knowing what percentage of pirated games amount to a lost sale.

in many of those parts of the world, if i'm not mistaken, you can't buy consoles period.

just the very nature of the demographic of who owns the wii ensures that any lost sales due to piracy will be minimal.

i'm not saying that piracy is okay, it isn't. i'm just saying that we can't even say for sure it hurt the PSP, and that it's pretty obvious that in the Wii's case, a much smaller segment of the market is going to be interested in doing it, though naturally they will pretend that everyone is doing it.

It probably is minimal but that doesn't mean anything greater than 0 is acceptable. People treat it like a futile battle and in Wii's case it probably is due to the nature of the system but on the whole consoles now are much more secure than they have been. I mean hacking newer 360 drives took decapping a chip and reading out the bits with a microscope. That's pretty serious stuff, but that security can be improved still. PSP may have gone through 4 iterations but the newest ones are the strongest yet security-wise and homebrewed PSPs are now 2 firmware versions out of date. There's been a lot of progress made on these fronts and piracy is harder and less stable than it was.
 
Somnid said:
It probably is minimal but that doesn't mean anything greater than 0 is acceptable. People treat it like a futile battle and in Wii's case it probably is due to the nature of the system but on the whole consoles now are much more secure than they have been. I mean hacking newer 360 drives took decapping a chip and reading out the bits with a microscope. That's pretty serious stuff, but that security can be improved still. PSP may have gone through 4 iterations but the newest ones are the strongest yet security-wise and homebrewed PSPs are now 2 firmware versions out of date. There's been a lot of progress made on these fronts and piracy is harder and less stable than it was.
i have no problem with Nintendo trying to stop piracy, i mean it's their time and money to waste. it's just i often feel like i'm getting punished for the crimes of others. i have zero interest in 360 modding because it only lets you do the one thing i have no interest in.

i don't know though, if i agree about it being harder and less stable though. than it was a year ago? sure. but pre the original Xbox we never had homebrew on the level we still see on systems like the PSP, DS and Wii.

time was you had to actually solder a chip into your system to do this kind of stuff. now you just have to have access to a few easy to find pieces of equipment like a memory card and a mem card reader, and to carefully follow an FAQ.
 

dyls

Member
It seems like every time there is an update for any system that someone starts a thread saying that their console has been bricked. Why is this update special enough to get its own sticky announcement when it seems like it has affected so few people?

Anyway, I updated my unmodded, no-homebrew Wii (quaint, I know) to 4.2 a couple of days ago before I saw any of this and have had no problems.

I know nothing about all of this, but could Nintendo have prevented a lot of it if they had worked in patching into games as the other consoles do? I'm referring specifically to the TP hack that started it all. If so, that would be somewhat tragically funny.
 

TunaLover

Member
nincompoop said:
Holy shit, Quake Wii is AMAZING. Why does this seem to have more effort put into it than any retail FPS games on Wii?

It have network gameplay, a little buggy but playable, it would be fun make a GAF deathmatch or something =P

Even people without Wii can enter, by PC version.
 
I tried out the new N64 emulator, the speed and sound are both good but they fucked up the button mappings with all three setups and you can't remap it, so it's basically unplayable for now.

Is there anyway to bypass the BootMii screen when I start the Wii aside from removing the SD card?
 

DRock

has yet to tasted the golden nectar that is tag
nincompoop said:
Is there anyway to bypass the BootMii screen when I start the Wii aside from removing the SD card?
You can rename the BootMii folder on your SD card, or edit the config file in the Bootmii folder. I think you set the boot time or something to 0 or 1.
 
nincompoop said:
I tried out the new N64 emulator, the speed and sound are both good but they fucked up the button mappings with all three setups and you can't remap it, so it's basically unplayable for now.

Is there anyway to bypass the BootMii screen when I start the Wii aside from removing the SD card?

Yeah, for the N64 emu, I wish they had an option to flip L and Z, it'd be useful for just about every game that uses the analog stick (which usually make Z as L).

For Bootmii, I rename the bootmii on the SD card to something else, so if the SD card were in the system, the Wii would start without Bootmii. If I ever needed to use it (normally for backing up or restoring the nand), I'd rename the folder back.
 

HUELEN10

Member
So, I was playing Sonic Unleashed (Big surprise amirite :lol ) and now I feel like playing some Mario Kart...

I cannot eject the disc!

A little help?
 
HUELEN10 said:
So, I was playing Sonic Unleashed (Big surprise amirite :lol ) and now I feel like playing some Mario Kart...

I cannot eject the disc!

A little help?
this is divine retribution

just keep playing sonic
 

Bizzyb

Banned
HUELEN10 said:
So, I was playing Sonic Unleashed (Big surprise amirite :lol ) and now I feel like playing some Mario Kart...

I cannot eject the disc!

A little help?


Wha?? Why?? What did you did?? :lol
 

Jocchan

Ὁ μεμβερος -ου
HUELEN10 said:
So, I was playing Sonic Unleashed (Big surprise amirite :lol ) and now I feel like playing some Mario Kart...

I cannot eject the disc!

A little help?
You deserve it, sorry.
 

GaussTek

Member
HUELEN10 said:
So, I was playing Sonic Unleashed (Big surprise amirite :lol ) and now I feel like playing some Mario Kart...

I cannot eject the disc!

A little help?

So, does it make a strange noise while trying to eject or something?

I had a similar problem a few months ago, but it was AC-CF that was stuck inside :lol

You know, I had to send the Wii to repair, because the eject mechanism got screwed. But it did make a strange noise when I pressed the eject button. It was repaired, but since then, my Wii has some problems reading some disks :( Hope it's not your case.
 

HUELEN10

Member
GaussTek said:
So, does it make a strange noise while trying to eject or something?

I had a similar problem a few months ago, but it was AC-CF that was stuck inside :lol

You know, I had to send the Wii to repair, because the eject mechanism got screwed. But it did make a strange noise when I pressed the eject button. It was repaired, but since then, my Wii has some problems reading some disks :( Hope it's not your case.
No, the mechanism works and everything, nothing out of the ordinary, I like keeping my Wii in tip-top shape and all, it's just not ejecting. There's one thing I haven't tried though, BRB...

Fucking 4.2, fixing one problem and causing another. :lol
 

HUELEN10

Member
UPDATE: I can eject once more! All I did was boot up the Wii in maintenance mode, and hit eject. I wonder what caused this freak occurrence! Has it happened to any of you other 4.2ers?
 

Nabs

Member
nincompoop said:
Is there anyway to bypass the BootMii screen when I start the Wii aside from removing the SD card?

yep. you just have to edit the config file for bootmii (bootmii.ini)

you can have it boot up to the system menu (SYSMENU) or Homebrew Channel (HBC)

heres mine:

Code:
AUTOBOOT=HBC
BOOTDELAY=1

and whenever you want to use bootmii, just tap a button on a GC controller or hit a button on the actual wii (eject maybe) when the screen first pops up.
 
HUELEN10 said:
UPDATE: I can eject once more! All I did was boot up the Wii in maintenance mode, and hit eject. I wonder what caused this freak occurrence! Has it happened to any of you other 4.2ers?
You've fixed the problem now but I have to ask this:
-Was the disc still spinning when it was unable to eject?

I remember back when the Wii Freeloader came out and people were using it for imports (maybe sold old,old versions of Gecko OS too...) when you got back to the Wii Menu the disc drive wouldn't not stop spinning the disc meaning it couldn't be ejected until you had powered down the system.

Maybe for some reason a form of that problem decided to re-emerge...
 

HUELEN10

Member
Starwolf_UK said:
You've fixed the problem now but I have to ask this:
-Was the disc still spinning when it was unable to eject?

I remember back when the Wii Freeloader came out and people were using it for imports (maybe sold old,old versions of Gecko OS too...) when you got back to the Wii Menu the disc drive wouldn't not stop spinning the disc meaning it couldn't be ejected until you had powered down the system.

Maybe for some reason a form of that problem decided to re-emerge...
No, it wasn't that. Still as weird though! :lol
 

Clipper

Member
So this is highly needed again,given some of the recent posts. Can other people please post this as well when it's been a while and there are people that are obviously oblivious to the tutorial?

For all your questions about homebrew and updating, look here first:


You can post this info yourself by just copy-pasting the following code and removing the spaces after each "/".
Code:
For all your questions about homebrew and updating, look here first:[/ highlight]
[URL="http://gwht.wikidot.com"][IMG]http://gwht.wikidot.com/local--files/start/logo.png[/ IMG][/ URL]

We definitely need it at the start of each page right now, and I don't want to be the one who keeps spamming it.

HUELEN10 said:
Woohoo! 4.2 is successfully installed, and it takes .8 seconds less to scroll through the channel pages on the Wii Menu! USB Loader doesn't work obviously, and I doubt installing channels is possible either (which kisses the chances of a handy dandy HDD Loader forwarder in the future out of the window sadly, though it does help put a stop to piracy, which is never bad), but I feel that it was worth it. I am now browsing on the Shop Channel, and couldn't be happier.
Your IOS250 will still be active, which is a copy of IOS249 installed at the same time as IOS249. You can use it to rerun the installers for all the other IOSes to restore whatever functionality and channels you used to have.

vazel said:
Well I remember it was for a while anyway.

Edit: OOooo I see I can install on 4.2 using a Brawl exploit.
MarkMclovin said:
So I update to 4.2 and now I've stumbled upon this thread.

Is it possible to use Homebrew now?
Both of you, please read the tutorial above, you no longer need the Brawl exploit. All you need is an SD card. You can install everything except for the stuff related to USB Loader using the tutorial right now, and Ii'll probably add the cboot2 method for getting USB LOading going on virgin 4.2 Wiis sometime today.
 
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