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The Homebrew Channel v1.1.0

February 27th, 2012 by marcan · 44 Comments

You thought HBC was dead? Can’t say I blame you!

Our usualy update cycle tends to follow Nintendo’s updates: Nintendo plugs one of our exploits, and we release a new version with a new exploit. At the same time, you get all the new goodies and bugfixes that we may have accumulated since the previous version.

However, Nintendo’s care for the Wii lately has been rather sparse. We’ve been working on HBC every now and then behind the scenes: a bugfix here, a new feature there, and so on. Meanwhile, we waited and waited and waited for an update to break the current version. Alas, crickets.

And yet! Recently, Nintendo did break The Homebrew Channel. No, it wasn’t a system update. It wasn’t a new Wii model (though they did release a new Wii, it turns out it works just fine). What they came up with was a new Wiimote, which, completely by accident, happens to be incompatible with the previous version of The Homebrew Channel.

You see, way way back in 2006 when the Wii came out, someone figured out that you could send commands to the Wiimote in a certain way. Libraries were developed, and eventually we had support on the Wii itself with the advent of Wii homebrew. And yet, nobody though to question the way we were sending the commands. Nobody bothered to check whether the Wii itself was doing the same thing.

As it turns out, it wasn’t. It was using a different method of sending data to the Wiimote. The Wiimote itself supported both – until the new RVL-CNT-01-TR model came out, that is. They probably had to trim the firmware to make space for the Motion Plus stuff.

HBC 1.0.8 was released 18 months ago, and we’re at over 3.1 million unique installs – that’s 3.4% of all Wiis sold to date, and this is only counting on-line HBC installs! Today, we bring you the HackMii Installer v1.0, featuring The Homebrew Channel v1.1.0 and BootMii 1.4. Here’s what you get:

  • The new RVL-CNT-01-TR Wiimotes are now supported. Unfortunately, although HBC itself will work, there’s no way it can make existing homebrew work with it too – authors will have to recompile using the latest libogc SVN. C’est la vie!
  • HBC now has a new font renderer with TTF support. The new renderer uses FreeType to render fonts with kerning and antialiasing, which looks much, much better than the old crummy bitmap font engine. You can use multiple fonts, sizes, and colors, under the control of a theme. The rendering is optimized for the screen resolution in use (4:3 or 16:9) for the best quality (note: this means the fonts will look a bit different between both modes, as they are hinted at different resolutions). The new default font is Droid Sans.
  • Unicode (UTF-8) support. HBC has been using UTF-8 in meta files for a while, but only supported the latin-1 subset. Now you can display any character present in whatever font you’re using.
  • HBCは日本語を話します！ HBC wa Nihongo o hanashimasu! Yup, with Unicode support comes a Japanese translation, courtesy of JEEB. However, to enable it, you need to install a theme with a Japanese capable font. Check out the themes page to get it.
  • While adding the new font engine we also fixed a bunch of underlying issues. The meta.xml system should now be quite a bit more tolerant and stable.
  • We’ve added screenshot functionality for theme creators who want to show off their themes. Plug in your Nunchuk and press Z+C (in that order) to create a png screenshot on your SD card.
  • The crashes when using no_ios_reload with a bad/disabled network config have been fixed – by removing <no_ios_reload/> mode. Instead, we always reload IOS, but don’t fret – you can still use AHB access, thanks to a trick that we implemented. Use <ahb_access/> (<no_ios_reload/> is actually just an alias for that now).
  • “This update provides behind-the-scenes fixes that will improve the overall system performance”. And unlike Nintendo, we actually mean it; there’s an assortment of fixes for quite a few minor (and some not so minor) bugs and glitches, including those that come with the latest libogc and libfat (e.g. 4K sector support) and some issues when launching apps and hotplugging devices.

The full release notes with all the gory details are available on WiiBrew.

As usual, either grab the new installer here, or use The Homebrew Channel’s online update (a confirmation dialog should pop up when you start your current version, if you are connected to the Internet). Have fun!

Tags: Wii

44 responses so far ↓

  • 1 HyperHacker // Feb 27, 2012 at 4:06 am

    Awesome.

  • 2 google.com/accounts/o8… // Feb 27, 2012 at 4:07 am

    Does the Wiimote support in the linux kernel use the correct commands?

    http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commitdiff;h=22a3b9771117d566def0150ea787fcc95f16e724;hp=acb41c0f928fdb84a1c3753ac92c534a2a0f08d2

  • 3 pentolino // Feb 27, 2012 at 4:39 am

    nice work, as usual it seems that marcan is putting on the wii more effort than nintendo 🙂

  • 4 tech3475 // Feb 27, 2012 at 6:04 am

    Nice and thanks for the update, the only downside though is that I wonder how many homebrew apps will be updated to support the new controller?

    Shame iOS doesn’t handle the wiimote (at least I presume it doesn’t) because someone might have been able to create a CIOS (not that kind) to convert commands on the fly.

    My brother recently got a wii he wants me to hack some time and I presume he’s got these wiimotes which I didn’t know had compatibility issues so this is really good to know.

  • 5 marcan // Feb 27, 2012 at 6:52 am

    Old apps only need a recompile; nothing in the app’s code needs changing.

  • 6 mattXPO // Feb 27, 2012 at 9:16 am

    @marcan: One and a half year is a very long time. Wouldn’t it had been possible to fix the network bug earlier and provide a “hot fix” via HBC’s update function? (Especially since the bug was a critical one)

    PS: Just curious, in your opinion how many of the ~3 million people are pirates?

  • 7 SifJar // Feb 27, 2012 at 10:15 am

    Nice update. Glad to see the network bug with AHBPROT being fixed, and the new Wii Remotes as well. And custom fonts is always nice too 😉

  • 8 ketufe // Feb 27, 2012 at 11:22 am

    very nice thank’s

  • 9 winmaster // Feb 27, 2012 at 11:47 am

    So do off brand Wiimotes work now too?

  • 10 andrewhan4 // Feb 27, 2012 at 2:31 pm

    Cool update, it’s nice to see that the homebrew channel is still being worked on, keep up the great work

  • 11 Darkmystery // Feb 28, 2012 at 1:46 am

    Thanks a lot again! Seriously, updates on any of the blogs of TT never disappoint me. I feel the sudden urge to buy the whole team some beers right now.
    Cheers!

  • 12 jtipp3tt // Feb 28, 2012 at 5:14 am

    I really appreciate the effort, and the new features sound great.

    However, I am seeing a major lag when launching apps. Some apps (ones that use networking) take between 10-15 seconds.

    I reverted back to the previous version of HBC and the apps launch instantly.

  • 13 marcan // Feb 28, 2012 at 1:03 pm

    There’s no way that HBC can tell whether an app uses the network or doesn’t. If only apps using the network are taking a while to load, then it must be the apps.

    Are those apps using no_ios_reload? If so, this is not unexpected: since HBC always reloads IOS now, it will probably take longer for them to initialize the network on a fresh boot of IOS than it would if HBC already initialized it for them. This would be expected (apps should have some form of background network init or at least a message while they do so).

  • 14 Cubeyz // Feb 28, 2012 at 5:49 pm

    So wait, Wii-motes with Wii-motion plus inside weren’t working?? Because my Zelda Wii-mote with motion plus has been fine…

  • 15 wiisixtyfour // Feb 29, 2012 at 12:07 am

    @Cubeyz
    Only newer Wii Remotes with the built in Wii Motion+ didn’t work. There are some older ones that do work.

  • 16 DCX2 // Feb 29, 2012 at 1:59 pm

    @jtipp3tt, according to megazig if you set your Wii to use a static IP, network init time is reduced drastically. I haven’t tried it myself yet.

  • 17 owen // Mar 2, 2012 at 1:37 pm

    Updated and got a menu with no text labels, only icons. Had to download another theme to the sd card and apply it to get back the text labels. Not sure what caused it though but applying a theme seems to fix it.

  • 18 Jayden // Mar 3, 2012 at 8:13 pm

    The new font renderer looks really nice.
    Thank you guys for all the hard work.

  • 19 nobody_tw // Mar 5, 2012 at 2:21 am

    Hi, everybody:

    There is an issue here to the new version of HBC.

    When there are some directory’s name with chinese_t font in the root of the SD card or HDD,
    the HBC can’t read the content of apps!!

    It just show nothing in the screen. The SD card and HDD are all ok. If you rename the directory to engish. It is normal again.

    I think there must be something wrong about the new libogc/libfat ?!

    Or it just the bug in HBC.

    Thanks!!

  • 20 marcan // Mar 9, 2012 at 8:15 pm

    @owen: There might be something wrong with the theme that you were using previously (that didn’t affect the old font support). Do you have a theme that demonstrates the problem?

    @nobody_tw: can you get a sample filename for us?

  • 21 M0b1us // Mar 10, 2012 at 8:00 am

    Am I correct in understanding that after the update no old aps that haven’t been recompiled will work?

    If so, is it possible to support both versions so old aps that weren’t recompiled will work? Even if this is a change that has to be toggled and the HBC rebooted to be able to use (because it would need to be as if there are 2 versions built into one with a setting to select which one to boot to). Yeah it could double the size of at least that part of the code (potentially up to the whole thing). But I wonder how many people aren’t updating due to loss of non-updated aps.

  • 22 nobody_tw // Mar 10, 2012 at 11:27 pm

    Here is the sample directory name:
    備份

    Forgot to say you are so awesome!!
    Thanks.

  • 23 nobody_tw // Mar 11, 2012 at 12:29 am

    Forgot to say the issue is only happen to HDD!!

    The HDD was formated as FAT partition to put ap on it instead of SD card.

    Hope this helps.

    Thanks!!

  • 24 tueidj // Mar 11, 2012 at 2:05 pm

    M0b1us: No, you’re completely incorrect and I can’t see how you possibly came to that conclusion. Old apps work exactly like they did before.

  • 25 Jesusramirez44 // Mar 13, 2012 at 4:35 pm

    Letterbomb won’t show up on my wii.
    I have 1.4.3 and have the correct MAC and all files are correctly placed on the root of the sd.

    Any help?

  • 26 j0bb13 // Mar 13, 2012 at 7:33 pm

    Awesome 🙂
    I still check this website once every month, happy to see an update!

  • 27 kikujade // Mar 29, 2012 at 9:18 am

    I updated to this latest version of HBC and bootmii, but now, every time that I turn on the wii, it starts from bootmii instead of the system menu, so what is going on??. I installed it on boot2, I have the 4.1U firmware version, I have priiloader installed, on the bootmii.ini file I have on autoboot=sysmenu, I have on the priiloader>system hacks>autoboot=sysmenu. The problem is only solved when I uninstall bootmii, anybody have a better solution??

  • 28 j0bb13 // Mar 31, 2012 at 5:11 am

    @kikujade
    That’s how bootmii works, it boots before the actual Wii software. If you don’t want that, rename ‘armboot.bin’ from the bootmii folder on your SD card. Maybe you have to (re)move it, but I think renaming it will be enough.

    And maybe there is even an option somewhere where you can tell bootmii not to boot, but I don’t know about that option so this is just how I do it.

    You have to fix it again if you want to boot into bootmii though..

  • 29 Sephiroth // Apr 19, 2012 at 6:21 am

    @j0bb13 :

    I’m pretty sure kikujade understands how bootmii works,since he said he used the bootmii.ini file to load directly to the sysmenu.

    @kikujade:

    I think I had a similar problem once with bootmii…either rename the file as j0bb13 suggested or use a bootmii configuration tool (http://www.wii-homebrew.com/download/nintendo-wii-downloads/anwendungen/bootmii-configuration-editor/)…I don’t know why but that fixed the problem for me…I know it sounds stupid because the only thing that “bootmii editor” does is, write text to the bootmii.ini file…anyway it worked for me with that tool.

  • 30 norbyte // Apr 29, 2012 at 11:42 pm

    Hey TT,

    first, thanks for the update. I updated my own wii immediately and everything is working fine. Now I got another wii (virgin 3.4E, boot2 v3). I used bannerbomb v1 to install HBC v1.1, but the hackmii installer said, that bootmii cannot be installed as boot2.

    Is that a bug? I thought, boot2 v4 (which came with the 4.2 update locked boot2). I’d like to try hackmii installer 0.8, but I lost the zip file. Or do I have any misunderstanding for boot2?

    Thanks,
    norbyte

  • 31 tueidj // Apr 30, 2012 at 12:38 pm

    @norbyte: the boot2 version is not relevant, it is boot1 which determines if bootmii can be installed as boot2.

  • 32 fernandovg // Jun 25, 2012 at 5:48 am

    Is it possible to use the GPU ACCELERATION of Wii to decode videos?
    Its it possible to use it so Wii can play H.264(AVC) videos?

  • 33 Frederic // Jun 30, 2012 at 5:19 pm

    Someone has ripped the code off your bootmii site and made a translated 1:1 copy. The HackMii Installer is hosted there. I thought I let you guys know: http://wiidatabase.de/bootmii/index.html

  • 34 j0bb13 // Aug 3, 2012 at 9:37 am

    @Frederic
    I don’t know if they changed something in the past month, but it actually says on their website
    “Deutsche Übersetzung von BootMii.org”, which translates to “German translation of BootMii.org”.
    So they do give credit to the original bootmii website, don’t know if that changes something.

  • 35 sankionline // Aug 6, 2012 at 8:51 pm

    Hi Guys,

    I am not able to access http://please.hackmii.com is the any problem with the site?

    Or my ISP is blocking it? I m from Canada

    Are they restrictions on this site??

    Thanks for the reply.

  • 36 marcan // Aug 7, 2012 at 11:21 am

    Guys, calm down. We know it’s down. Shit happens, hardware dies. It’ll be back soon.

  • 37 robby // Aug 7, 2012 at 4:05 pm

    @Marcan Is there an estimated time on it being back up? :s

  • 38 marcan // Aug 7, 2012 at 5:51 pm

    @robby It’s back up now (on a temporary server).

  • 39 Natej // Aug 14, 2012 at 1:06 pm

    Help! My wii motes turn all off when going to the Homebrew channel. How can I fix this?

  • 40 TheDMChriS // Aug 16, 2012 at 8:47 am

    When is the next post going to come?
    Me and other people are looking forward to it.

  • 41 Pchild // Sep 17, 2012 at 3:09 pm

    Wii noob here. I purchased my wii back in 07, never really play it much. I have a few kids games for my kids but am interested in “homebrew”/Jailbreaking.

    Can you guys recommend a reliable source for getting information, and the proper way to jailbreak it? I don’t wanna brick my wii. There are so many BS sites out now, I’m having a hard time sifting through inaccurate data.

  • 42 marcan // Sep 17, 2012 at 7:50 pm

    http://wiibrew.org is the right place to start.

    In particular, follow this guide:
    http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Homebrew_setup

  • 43 Pchild // Sep 18, 2012 at 6:56 am

    Thanks Marcan! I’m clicking the links now.

  • 44 lucasanti // Oct 1, 2013 at 1:27 pm

    Hi all,

    there is a problem on the HBC with the new firmware v4.0 released today by Nintendo: it is now visualised with the format 4:3 instead of 16:9.
    Is it possible to fix this issue ?

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