softmodding the wii - a diary of my experience

[CLoudysteve]

alrighty i think im a bit of an expert on wii homebrew and shizzle now so heres my rehp0rt lol. if your thinking about a softmod. have no fear. heres my experience with it all. wrote this cuz i thought it would be fun

DAY 01:
ventured out to buy a wi-fi usb connector but they was out of stock..hmm so i checked an electronics shop and bought a wi-fi max..took it home and later that night i tested it out...oh god...the horror....the nightmare...if your reading this and thinkign baout softmodding your wii for the LOVE OF SWEET BABY JESUS, DO NOT >>>NOT<<< BUY THE FREAKIN WI-FI MAX, EVER!! no matter what you may have read on sites and reviews. DO NOT BUY THIS PIECE OF GARBAGE!!!

ahem..yeah it was a real pain to setup, took 7+ hours..

DAY 02:
spent more time trying to get the wi-fi max to work.

a whole lot of anger tantrums and connection tests later i got it to work. i had even more trouble cuz it was for xp and i had vista. drivers were hard to get and techs support was non existant. most guides were for XP. big thanks to ostianto for trying to help me out.

anyway my wii was a veteran. never been updated before. so it updated straight to 3.4E (E for europe U for USA) then i copied over the twilight hack files to the SD card. ran the game and loaded the hack. this installed the "homebrew channel" this let me do quite a few things, like installing WAD files. but before i did any of that i had to have a go at the wii shop channel, wii news channel and wii weather channel. also downloaded 2 free channels. everybody votes channel which is very kwl. and the nintendo channel (abit like inside xbox but with way more videos)

anyhoo i ran the neccessary applications and patches to get backup games working. and it worked. yay. next i had to burn a game.
the packages i downloaded had programs in there to patch ISO files before you burn them. i did. i dragged animal crossing LGTTC into wiiUR to remove the update and patched it with IOSpatcher to IOS version 249. then i burned it at a 2X speed with imgburn.

i put it into the wii and ran it with the gamma launcer 0.3 from the homebrew channel. it came up. i later found out from the net that animal crossing is a game that loads just a bit more slower when backed up but still perfect. a bit like iso>cso compression.
anyways i played around with tht and enjoyed it.

DAY 03:
i burned a copy of need for speed undercover but i received an error while trying to launch it from the GAMMA launcher. so i researched it and discovered for some game syou should patch it with a program called wiiscrubber and genericwiipatcher, i extraced the main.dol file removed the error with the program, then it saved the ISO. i burned it with img burn and it worked great.
it was my first time playing a racer game with the wiimote. i enjoyed the balancing feature. like the wheels in the arcades also the cutscenes look pretty good compared to the 360 and ps3 version. i mean it looks pretty good.

also installed some other WAD files, like the internet channel(lets you surf web with wiimote, i came to this forum with it lol! also installed some virtual console wads. found out that only the mega drive and NES games can use the wiimote. N64 and SNES and the like need a classic or gamecube controller which i dont have. so i had to make do with megadrive and NES games :P

DAY 04:
today i think..meh...today i tried to play animal crossing online but i couldnt connect to the internet and get a friend code..this of course made me PANIC! oh no!! the freakin wi-fi thingie stopped working another 7 hours to set it up again. but i did some research and it turns out that 3.4 firmware wiis cannot go online with animal crossing. so i had to downgrade..

i downlodaed the appropriate apps and ran the downgrader, it then downloaded the files it needed from my wi-fi connection and instaleld the version i wanted. i had to pick 3.2E cuz if u pick the wrong region you can semi-brik ur wii. 3.2 is the best apparantly because of something called the trucha bug. i dont know much about that though. so anyway then i could play over wi-fi, leme tell ya animal crossing for wii is kick ass. i played with a group of people and even though i could talk like on xbox typing was stil kwl..i just dont see the point of buying the wiispeak accessory when theres only one game compatable with it so far (to my knowlege) so they helped me farm my land, chop my trees and plant ma fruit lol :)


if you have any questions about softmodding, if your worried or anything just post or PM me and il give you the answers you need.

[KnightRid]

Nice post! Only thing that would make it nicer would be, posting all of the programs/steps you took in order to do everything you talked about :)

I am guessing you followed the guide posted on these forums?

[CLoudysteve]

HELL no. not to say the guide is badly written but i just used a different guide. i had a quick look over the guide and it seemed overly complicated. its actually alot simpler than most guides on the net czare to mention, most are doom and gloom and have the "i am not responsible bla bla bla" line in there somewhere.
ima write a morons guide to softmodding it pretty soon.

[KnightRid]

HELL no. not to say the guide is badly written but i just used a different guide. i had a quick look over the guide and it seemed overly complicated. its actually alot simpler than most guides on the net czare to mention, most are doom and gloom and have the "i am not responsible bla bla bla" line in there somewhere.
ima write a morons guide to softmodding it pretty soon.

EXACTLY what I need!! Simple, down to earth guide.

I might pick up zelda tonight - keep forgetting to stop and look for it

[KnightRid]

Ok, I bought Zelda last night - will look around at a couple guides and maybe try it today before Daytona comes on!