HackMii

As you all know, we’re getting busy with several other projects, and HBC isn’t a priority. However, the beta9 release had a few rough edges, and some things that should have been fixed weren’t.

So we’re giving you the chance to voice your pet peeves about HBC now, and we’ll release a new version soon. Consider this version “final” at least for the time being. HBC is basically feature-complete, so we won’t be adding any new major features, but we want to get rid of some remaining bugs and annoyances. Once this new version is out, you’re going to be stuck with it for a while.

Things that we’ve already fixed/added for beta10:

• meta.xml now handles non-ASCII characters properly (you can use iso-8859-1 or utf-8 encoding, but utf-8 is restricted to the iso-8859-1 subset)
• Wiimote shutdown support (in libogc git now – we should have added this earlier)
• Wiimote rumble now honors the rumble setting
• A crash bug or two (hard to hit)

Post a comment if you want something fixed. We reserve the right to fix whatever we want and ignore the rest, but at least we promise we’ll listen. Please read the comments before asking for something; we don’t want 20 people mentioning the same thing.

Guys, NO BIG NEW FEATURES. Don’t even think about integrating other apps, or adding disc loading, or anything like that. We’re talking about small fixes like honoring some setting or adding some minor controller support. Classic controller support is plausible. Fixing some graphical problem is doable. Integrating FTPii isn’t. Sound isn’t. I’m deleting totally implausible posts to keep things sane.

Edit 2: to the people who requested features which are obviously already in beta9 or even beta8: shame, shame, shame.

Speak Up Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace.
Comments are now closed – they’re starting to get repetitive. You’ve had your chance. If you believe you’ve found a real bug that was not mentioned in the comments (and that doesn’t mean “I believe this should be done this way” – it means “this is crashing / breaking / not working properly”), drop me an e-mail at marcan@marcansoft.com or message marcan on EFNet.

Beta9 would have been out a few days ago, but then Nintendo came up with the new October 23 update with perfect timing, so we had to make sure the beta9 installer was compatible (read: exploited a new bug nobody knew about until then). So here it is.

Warning: We’ve updated the ELF loader to be compliant with the specs. Unfortunately, DevkitPPC ELFs currently are not (they will be in the next release), so they’ll break. App authors should distribute DOL versions. If they don’t, tell them to. If they don’t, convert it yourself:

powerpc-gekko-objcopy -O binary boot.elf boot.dol

Newer ELFs produced by the new toolchain (when it comes out, hopefully soon) will be compatible both with the new loaders (HBC beta9) and all the old loaders. All DOL files work as usual. The new linkerscript will also be more flexible (we’re using it for all the binaries involved in HBC, instead of a mixture of custom linker scripts). Authors of other loaders will like this.

Changelog:

• Installer / updater now works with the October 23 update
• SDHC support
• REALLY fixed the memcard bug
• Installer now picks newest sane IOS, fixes some beta8 regressions
• Added a reload button (for SD card changes)
• Return to system menu skips warning
• Fixed some graphical glitches
• Saner XML load code
• Many fixes to underlying stuff in the newer libogc

We’re keeping the new bug under wraps for now to increase the chances of us being able to use it for the BootMii-Core installer too 😉

Even with beta9, I don’t recommend that you update unless you need to. You can use Muzer’s or tona’s installer to install IOS51 and the new Wii Shop only, which will keep all the old vulnerable IOSes too.

A few days ago I posted a video of something that we’ve come to call BootMii. I think it’s time to answer some questions about what it really is, what it does, and how it will help you. Oh, and by the way, before I bore you and you stop reading this, at least note that BootMii is entirely software-based. The hardware in the video is merely for debugging.

[Read more →]