Open HackMii Installer about hbc

[marcan]

Scammers selling the bundle is already copyright infringement, and no, we're not going to sue them, we don't have that kind of time and money.

The installer isn't going to be released any time soon because it's vastly more interdependent and complex than HBC itself is, sorry. It ties in with mini, with starlet code, with various exploits, cross checks, etc. And it still works on current consoles. Cleaning up that code for release would be a much bigger undertaking than HBC was (which really just took a day). Plus, the installer is safety-critical code, while HBC per se isn't. We're not going to dump the installer code and have a bunch of clueless people start putting out untested glitchy builds that brick consoles. Sorry :(.

[Margen67]

@marcan

We're not going to dump the installer code and have a bunch of clueless people start putting out untested glitchy builds that brick consoles

1. People can already brick their consoles in other ways
2. It's the user's fault if they modify the installer and brick their console

[mariogamer2]

It would be very good to have an open installer... And not only for that reason....

[mariogamer2]

Any possibility BootMii become open sourced @marcan ? Or it is already? (bootmii-mini, I think)

[notpushkin]

If scammers selling the bundle is a concern, installer could be released under one of Creative Commons Non-commercial licenses (i. e. BY-NC-SA), but obviously this would only work if the authors are ready to sue the scammers and go to court.

[notpushkin]

@marcan Totally understandable. Thank you for your great work!

[Shawnjoseph2001]

@mariogamer2 Bootmii being open sourced would be even worse than the Hackmii installer because of a. the brick potential, and b. the fact that BootMii operates on a much lower level than almost everything else on the Wii.

Now that the wii is falling out of development, would the installer be released? I am trying to learn how it works and am testing all of this on the Dolphin Emulator.

[Shawnjoseph2001]

1. That doesn't mean we should add another.

2. He already said that reverse-DRM'ing it is a hassle.

[gudenau]

What one line of code can break. I've had some interesting issues with stuff like that before.

Happen to have a decent place to learn since basic stuff that isn't "just do it". IDA costs more than all my belongings which is just annoying.

[Lewiscowles1986]

@Margen67 tbf it's @marcan code to release or not release. I'm guessing not too many people know how it works even at a high-level and the Wii is quite old. Luckily my Wii is not bricked as far as I can tell it just throws way too many exceptions including on HackMii installer to be usable and load my games from USB HDD (I'm too lazy to get up and put the discs in, if my wife wants to do that go her...).

I Can also still install custom wads and side-load iOS, boot custom coder I've compiled which is why I made the request in the first place.

[Margen67]

Bootmii being open sourced would be even worse than the Hackmii installer because of a. the brick potential, and b. the fact that BootMii operates on a much lower level than almost everything else on the Wii.

@Shawnjoseph2001 #4 (comment)

[gudenau]

@marcan Might be interesting for you guys to release some documentation about some of the simpler obfuscation and patched exploit code for the installer.

[marcan]

Well there's this if you want to learn about the very first exploit we used :)

[marcan]

Not much more advice that I can give; "just do it" is pretty much how it goes. Maybe give Radare a try? Or you can try the old freeware version of IDA. Or just use objdump and suffer the pain of doing it manually; that's how things worked before IDA :-)

[gudenau]

Executables are also larger than they where before. I'm okay with ASM basics but some of the instructions I just never quite understand and have to look them up. Guess that's just memorization.

[TheTechRobo]

Ik, I'd really like to see how it works

[marcan]

FWIW, the HackMii Installer will never work on mainline Dolphin unless Starlet emulation becomes an official thing. I had a fork that could run BootMii with Starlet emulation, and that was adapted for IOS HLE semi-passthrough, but the HackMii Installer needs both things to work on Dolphin (or full Starlet peripheral LLE, which doesn't exist anywhere, i.e. wiimote USB BT stuff), which as far as I know has not been implemented anywhere.

So the technology to emulate the HackMii Installer properly right now does not exist.

[PokeyManatee4]

I want the source in 2021 because i want to make my own and u know i have forked hbc in the background and im turning it into a more gamer friendly loader and gamer themed but i don't want the user to have the hassle because the user is prob a gamer.

[PokeyManatee4]

It hard enough to type in a DNS because of the Wii controller

[TheTechRobo]

Out of curiosity, how would the HBC be more gamer friendly?

[PokeyManatee4]

Ye I will work on it

…

On Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 10:49 AM TheTechRobo ***@***.***> wrote: Out of curiosity, how would the HBC be more gamer friendly? Booting backup games? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/APNRYPPJCFNSI7Z2DN5UMVTUTHMAHANCNFSM4C2YUUPQ> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[marcan]

I think I'm going to coin "marcan's laws": as an online discussion about console homebrew grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of someone mentioning and supporting video game piracy approaches 1; as time passes from the release of a console homebrew tool (regardless of purpose or intent), the probability of someone using it for video game piracy approaches 1.

This discussion has run its course. And maybe releasing the HBC source was a mistake too.