Some of you may be familiar with a major problem in Wii homebrew land. Most applications and games found on use libogc, which in turn relies on.
While most IOS versions have a USB module, it is limited to USB1, and its I/O throughput make some applications next to unusable when using USB mass storage devices, others have annoyingly long loading times.The Wii game “” changed this – it introduced a new IOS version: 58, and this is the first with an official USB2 module. Starting with the, IOS58 is available to every Wii.Thanks to some serious work by tueidj, all homebrew applications can now utilize this USB2 module through libogc. The Homebrew Channel v1.0.8 is the first version supporting it.IOS58 will be automatically installed when you update your Wii to System Menu 4.3.
If you do not want to update, you can use Tantric’s clean.The release notes:HackMii Installer (v0.8):. IOS58 is chosen for The Homebrew Channel when installed. This is required for USB2 support. When we released the Homebrew Channel 1.0.7, we supplied a new look and the announcement of a surprise. I must apologize for the delay in the revelation of this surprise, which is mostly owed to a complete meltdown of my work machine.
Without much further ado, it is my pleasure to give you: Homebrew Channel themes, and a first theme: HBC Classic.While the reactions to HBC 1.0.7’s new default theme – dubbed “Dark Waters” – were generally positive, some complained about it being too dark, unfitting, or simply “exceedingly ugly.” We’re usually not the makers of elaborate plots (that you know of), but this was actually fully intentional to draw a bit of attention not only to the function but also to the looks of the Homebrew Channel. Applying themes to the Homebrew ChannelThere are two options for you to apply a theme to the Homebrew Channel.The first way is to treat a theme file just like you would treat an application: A subfolder in the apps folder on the SD card or USB stick, only with the file theme.zip containing the theme files instead of boot.elf containing an application. The theme file will then show up in the application browser, loading it will apply it to the Homebrew Channel. This allows you to conveniently switch between themes as you can store them along each other on the media of your choice.The second way is to simply wiiload the theme.zip to the Homebrew Channel, after which it will be immediately applied.Once you apply a theme, it is permanently stored with the Homebrew Channel’s “savegame”.
How to revert the Homebrew Channel to the default themeCurrently, this only works by deleting the Homebrew Channel’s “savegame” via the System Menu’s data management. This, of course, also deletes the other preferences, so you will have to visit the Homebrew Channel’s options screen again. We may come up with a better way to remove a theme, but this is how it works for now. Creating your own themesTheming the Homebrew Channel is currently limited to skinning the user interface, i.e., replacing its graphics with same-sized ones. You can skin pretty much any graphical element of the Homebrew Channel, with the exception of the Wii remote pointer and the Homebrew Channel logo in the bottom right. (Yes, you can even insert your own bubble graphics. I propose: mice.)Please take careful note that the graphics need to be the exact size of the ones they are replacing, there is no stretching/cropping mechanism in place.
If the image dimensions mismatch, the image will be ignored and the default image will be used in its place. The same happens if you don’t include a file in the first place. This allows you to selectively skin the HBC. For example, if you only wanted to change the background image, your theme would only include the two background files.Accompanying the image files is a small XML file named theme.xml.
For now, it only includes a few color values and the name of the theme. The color values are in RGBA for the font (which is currently limited to one color GUI-wide) and the gradient to be used in the progress bar.I believe I can leave you with the new HBC Classic theme as a template for both the sizes and the file naming.
I trust you will be able to figure out the purpose of the various image files by their file name. You will notice that the Homebrew Channel’s GUI isn’t terribly complicated and re-uses many of its images in various places.For theme publishing, I suggest you package theme files like an application. You can even include a screenshot or a cutout as icon.png and your name with the meta.xml file (note that you will still have to supply a theme.xml inside the theme.zip file). Theme repository – or lack thereofAs with applications, we do not intend to create a repository for themes ourselves.
Since Wiibrew.org has proven to be a great repository for applications, we think it is a great place to store the accompanying themes. As usual, with Wiibrew, please don’t upload copyrighted content.
For themes, this means: No copyrighted imagery, neither of photographic nor illustrative nature. Also, I would think that it is rather pointless to upload background-only themes.So, there you have it. We are very much looking forward to see how you feel the Homebrew Channel should look like.Tags. Update: I’ve just uploaded v0.7b of the installer. The only change is a small bugfix in the installer itself, and only very few people ran into this.
If you could successfully install either The Homebrew Channel or BootMii, there is no need to reinstall again, both are unchanged compared to v0.7. If you had problems before, please try again with this version.
The download links and the integrated update feature in HBC itself have been updated for this bugfix.After more than four weeks we believe we’ve finally reached the point for the next public release of the HackMii Installer: v0.7.A lot of changes and improvements went into this release.
Last weekend was the 10-year anniversary of the Nintendo Wii. We thought we’d dust off the blog with a little birthday present: the source code for The Homebrew Channel.When we built HBC, we always wanted it to serve as a reference for what homebrew software should look like: good design, professional-looking, user friendly, stable, safe, and supporting features such as network connectivity.
Wii Hackmii Installer Download
We hoped it would inspire other software to aspire to a similar level of quality. But we didn’t want it to become an instant base for quick hacks and mods and endless cheap variations, and we also didn’t think proliferation of installable “channels” on the Wii is a good idea: we still think it makes much more sense to have one entry point into the homebrew ecosystem, and then launch everything else from there (among other things, because it’s easy to brick a Wii by installing things into NAND). And, to be fair, the code is definitely not as pretty as what you get when running it.However, the plan was always to eventually open source it.
Bushing, in particular, always championed for this. This release is dedicated to him.Keep in mind that, since this was never developed in public, you’ll probably find embarrassing things in the source code. We’ve kept it maintained over the various releases, and we’ve done some very minor cleanup to this release to bring it up to date with the latest version of the toolchain and remove “security” bits no longer relevant to an open source release, but other than that, what you see is what you get. This is the code that the millions of users of The Homebrew Channel are running on their consoles.As a bonus, this code includes the fix for vWii aspect ratio on Wii U. The Title ID has been changed, so you can install it without clobbering your official Homebrew Channel (though telling them apart in the menu might be tricky!).Tags. Ben Byer1980 – 2016We are deeply saddened by the news that our member, colleague, and friend Ben “bushing” Byer passed away of natural causes on Monday, February 8th.Many of you knew him as one of the public faces of our group, fail0verflow, and before that, Team Twiizers and the iPhone Dev Team.Outspoken but never confrontational, he was proof that even in the competitive and oftentimes aggressive hacking scene, there is a place for both a sharp mind and a kind heart.To us he was, of course, much more. He brought us together, as a group and in spirit.
Without him, we as a team would not exist. He was a mentor to many, and an inspiration to us all.Yet above anything, he was our friend. He will be dearly missed.Our thoughts go out to his wife and family.Keep hacking. It’s what bushing would have wanted.Tags. Update: HackMii Installer v1.2 with The Homebrew Channel v1.1.2 now available, see belowAnother year, another console, another Hackmii Installer!Despite all of the anti-reverse-engineering tricks we put into our last installment of the HackMii Installer, Nintendo managed to find the IOS exploit we used to install The Homebrew Channel and fix it sometime within the last two years.
There never was a Wii system update for this, the fixed IOS versions can only be found on a Wii U.They also blocked our old title ID. Consequently, we have a new release with a new version of The Homebrew Channel; this will install on both Wii consoles, and inside the virtual Wii sandbox inside the Wii U. The currently used IOS exploit is courtesy of tueidj.Please note that this is not running in full Wii U mode; running this on a Wii U will probably work just like on a Wii. (See if you can find any differences, we can all try to hack the Wii U together from inside Wii mode!)Also, due to technical limitations of the virtual Wii mode, BootMii will not work on a Wii U.
If we are able to resolve this, we will make a new release with BootMii support.As usual, grab the new installer.If you’re unsure what do to with the installer, see for a general tutorial on how to setup homebrew on your Wii, and for savegame exploits that still work on a Wii U.Update:Unfortunately some bugs snuck into the v1.1 release, which are now fixed in v1.2:. PAL 50Hz (576i) video mode now works properly. BootMii/boot2 can be installed again on newer Wiis. This does not mean what you think it means. V1.1 had a bug that made BootMii/boot2 available to fewer Wiis than v1.0. V1.2 fixes that.
If your boot1 is not vunerable, you still can’t and will never be able to install BootMii/boot2. Icons load again in The Homebrew ChannelSorry for the inconvenience.Tags.