Forwarders as channels

Is the HBB considering putting in a new catagory such as forwarders or channels? It seems this is becoming very popular & everyone wants channels for all their emulators & media players & games sometimes. I particularly love the emulator channels Tantric has done & who ever has helped him they look beautiful & professional. Great work. I can't wait for many more to come.

On that note is Wiibrew.org going to add a catagory for forwarders. Many people are talking about them but I'm surprised there's not a list of already made ones that can be utilized. There must be many that look great & work. It seems only Tantric(you rock!) is doing this. I'd love a channel or forwarder for many applications. I've seen a WiiSX channel on youtube & I would love to see more.

Seconded as a request, would be great to have them all itemised in one place.

Certain forwarder channels are already included on the HBB, WiiMC and VBA GX being just two. Would be nice as it would negate the need to use WAD manager to install them, being that WADS are somewhat of a grey issue on here.

It would not be a matter of them being included on the HBB... at least not yet, but finding people dedicated to making them using the available homebrew code, WITHOUT using any of Nintendo's code.

There are tools out there, sure, but not many interested enough in learning how to use these, and test them for that matter. Converting current forwarders in wad format to dol is not really a great option, since many claim to have used official Nintendo channels as a base.

It'd be great if someone actually posted a complete and extremely informative way on how to make channels using the homebrew-made tools, and probably using some kind of incentive, like... a contest of some sort, with at least a small yet memorable prize.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2010 01:30AM by Magil.

Agreed. A tutorial would definitely help the growth & production of applications & so many of us would be able to offer help & work together or start new prodjects. It would definitely give me more confidence doing stuff like that. Your suggestions are great. Any takers?

I could post a tutorial on the subject, but i feel it is unnecessary. CustomizeMii can do the job just fine, and make 100% legal forwarder channels with very little fuss. But if anyone wants a little tutorial, I'll do it.

I would love a tutorial. That would be great. Is customizeMii hard to use or will I need 3 years of college to understand it?

CustomizeMii is incredibly easy to use. The one niggle some people have with it is that it uses the .NET framework, which is only available on Windows. Luckily, it can also be done manually using Wii.py and a couple of scripts, which is slightly more complicated, but still reasonably straight forward if you know what you're doing. However, if you're on Windows, or even on Linux/Mac, via Mono, CustomizeMii is the way to go.

I'll try to get a guide posted in the next few days, but I'm quite busy right now. I will get the guide up very soon though.

OK, as promised, here is the guide to CustomizeMii (if anyone wants a guide to doing it without CustomizeMii, using purely cross-platform tools, ask and I should be able to post it in a few days).

DISCLAIMER: MAKE SURE YOU HAVE BRICK PROTECTION ON YOUR WII BEFORE INSTALLING ANY CUSTOM CHANNEL.

First off, you need to download and run CustomizeMii. Get it here: [code.google.com]

Download and extract the RAR, and run CustomizeMii. You should be greeted by a window like this:



You'll see there is a list of "Base WADs". These are fully legal WADs created by various members of the Wii scene, which CustomizeMii modifies to create channels. (This means that usually the animation in final channels is the same as that in these channels, but with different images). You need to choose a channel with an animation you like. *Note: You will change the images, and the sounds if you want, but the actual animation of images will remain the same*

For this tutorial I will use WADder Base 1. (You can use the "Preview" button to view YouTube videos of the various base WADs). As you can see if you watch this video : [www.youtube.com] this channel has a non-moving background, and an image in the foreground which "grows" (i.e. is scaled larger).

Once you have chosen the base WAD you want, click it and press Load. This will download the WAD and allow you to start editing it. (Alternatively, you can choose Save, and then the next time you want to use this base WAD to make a channel, you will not have to download it again).

Now the fun starts :). It's time to start editing. First, go to the "Title" tab. This one is fairly straight forward, simply type in the Title you want to appear when you hover over the channel in the System Menu, like so:



Next, move over to the "Options" tab. There are a few things to note here. First off, you will want to change the title ID of the channel. The title ID is the unique 4-letter ASCII string which identifies your channel. Make sure it doesn't clash with another channel (all official channels start with H, so just avoid it and you'll be fine).



Next, you need to click the "Forwarder" button, and then choose "Simple Forwarder" (advanced forwarder is understandably more complicated), and type in the name of folder within "apps" that the boot.dol is found in (e.g. "homebrew_browser")



Now for sound. If you want your channel to have a sound, it is best to click the "Browse" button beside the "New Sound" box, and then choose "Convert to BNS" (converting to BNS will mean a smaller file size for your channel). Then simply choose your sound file and click convert.



Finally, on to editing the banner. Move over to the "Banner" tab, and you'll see all the images ("TPLs") in your Base WAD. These are the images you can replace. You can use the "Preview" button to see what the images are, then use the "Extract" button to extract the images as PNG images. These can then be edited with any image editing program (e.g. PhotoShop, Paint.NET, GIMP). Once you're done, use the "Replace" button and choose the edited image. !!MAKE SURE THE IMAGE HAS THE SAME DIMENSIONS AS ORIGINAL!!.



Last thing that needs done if the icon. This process is identical to the "Banner" process, only under the "Icon" tab. Should be straight forward.

Then you're done. Click the "Create WAD" side of the big button at the bottom of the CustomizeMii window, choose where to save it and give it a minute to package it all up.

You now have a fully legal, custom, forwarder channel. Can't give you help with installing, but I'm sure you can work it out ;)

This may seem like a lengthy process, but really, apart from the image editing, which could take a while depending on how much detail you want etc., it takes about a minute. I hope you can follow this guide, if there are any parts which are unclear please give me a shout and I'll try to clarify. Also, if people notice any mistakes, please tell me so I can correct them.

Note: It is also possible to edit the actual animation, as well as just the images, but this is a far more advanced topic, and shouldn't be attempted by beginners. Its much easier to use the animations others have made and just replace the images.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2010 11:16PM by SifJar.

awesome walkthru sifjar... thanks man (I was thinking about doing a custom chan for some of my stuff)

Wasn't there an app out there to test these custom channels and see how they'd look like on the sys menu FIRST without having to install them? My memory is fuzzy, but I do recall of such an app somewhere.

SifJar thank you so much. That is a great tutorial plus pictures, masterful. I will try one out very soon. Magil or anyone who knows about this app to test the channel before installing would be greatly appreciated.

Quote
Magil
Wasn't there an app out there to test these custom channels and see how they'd look like on the sys menu FIRST without having to install them? My memory is fuzzy, but I do recall of such an app somewhere.

SadMenu



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/2010 03:31PM by jbc007.

SadMenu will technically do the job, but its not that straight forward. Its MUCH simpler to just have brick protection (i.e Priiloader or BootMii/boot2, nothing else is good enough) and install the channel, or else install System Menu and the channel into an emulated NAND on Dolphin, the PC based Wii emulator. But even that is hassle. The easiest way is to install the channel on the Wii. CustomizeMii has built-in checks to prevent banner bricking AFAIK, so you should be safe. (But you should still have brick protection).

For those interested, by my understanding for SadMenu, you must unpack the channel WAD manually, then extract the U8 archive which is called 00000000.app by most WAD unpackers AFAIK, then rename three files found there (sound.bin, icon.bin and banner.bin) to zound.bin, zcon.bin and zanner.bin, then repack the U8 archive, then repack the WAD, then install it, then run SadMenu. So its a lot of hassle, unless I have misunderstood how to use it.

It certainly is easier (and arguably better) to install Bootmii/boot2 or Priiloader, but SadMenu is not that hard to use. ShowMiiWads can extract the necessary files, which can then be used with SadMenu without difficulty. Dolphin is not an option, since channels do not appear in the emulated system menu. Besides, it takes some effort to set Dolphin up with a decrypted NAND dump and then install a custom channel into said NAND dump.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/20/2010 12:16AM by jbc007.

I doubt you'll see forwarders on wiibrew any time soon - a lot of people hate them!

I like personally them (I did the icon and banner coding for Tantric's emu/wiimc channels). Mr_Nick666 did the stunnng artwork for the emus.

There a lot of high quality channels at [removed, sorry] made a by a variety of people.

@jbc007 - what files do you ned to extract for sadmenu and where do you put them please?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2011 07:49PM by SifJar.

I can't see why anyone would hate them. I think all of your work Wilsoff & Mrnick666 & Tantric & whoever else busted their ass to creat great channels for convenience & art is awesome hands down. If no one likes channels they don't have to have them but don't hate them just because they have some similar involvement of piracy. It's just like a hand-gun. You can use them properly or for crime but don't hate them just because other people abuse them. Some people use their car for illegal activities but that doesn't mean I now hate all cars. I love your channels. I wish you'd make many more. They still hold value & look professional! If there's a right way of doing it, Wiibrew should require that process to be put on here. They should then either accept those kinds or BAN channels all together. I see nothing wrong with wanting a shortcut forwarder channel for an emulator. It also makes it more kid friendly & less confusing. It doesn't & never will replace the Homebrew channel. I still get on every week for updates & new stuff. If the Homebrew channel can be done right so can others. Wilsoff, Mrnick666, Tantric & everyone else who contributed to Forwarder Channels: WITH THE MOST RESPECT I CAN GIVE, Thank you so much for doing them!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2011 06:24AM by punkydudester.

One of the big problems is the lack of a WiiBrew approved custom channel installer (i.e. one that can't also be used for warez). And wilsoff: Sorry, but please refrain from posting links to that site, I believe it has links to tools that can be used to install warez, and therefore cannot be linked here. The themes posted there are also mostly illegal.

EDIT: And look at my post right above jbc007's, it explains how to use SadMenu I think.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2011 07:50PM by SifJar.

Thanks, and sorry (won't do it again :) )

No worries. Much of the content on that site is (AFAIK) fine here (custom channels etc.) its the installers that are the main problem.