Loading MKW-SP From The Wii U Menu (Aroma/Boot2vWii)
42This is mainly a quick recording as proof of concept. It was 2-3 am at the time, and God knows how long my non-existent code knowledge spent trying to get this to work overall. ๐
I sought out a way to try this after watching a video by @funkyscott47, where he got the CTGP channel to load in the same way via Boot2vWii. However, as great as Scott is and as helpful as his tutorials have been for modding my 3DS and Wii U, his video doesn't show how to create your own Boot2vWii forwarder as much as providing the one he created and showing how to use it yourself. Which is still great because I'm definitely going to do that!
Funkyscott's Video: https://youtu.be/YIKtgKfDTEQ?si=x-CvWAysSpyXWHDQ
Boot2vWii Github: https://github.com/WiiDatabase/Boot2vWii
The Boot2vWii GitHub (at least to me) is incredibly vague when explaining how to get set up and started, as it assumes most people doing this know what they're doing. So, most of the more understandable tutorials and blog posts I found were about compiling a WUP file (or folder?) that you'd install to your Wii U, which runs the boot.dol on your SD card.
At first, this seemed ideal as it sounded like I'd be able to use the forwarder without Aroma (it's currently not on either my MKW-SP or CTGP cards). But after nearly 3 days of trying various methods and tutorials to create a WUP, I never managed to get MKW-SP to load this way. Out of frustration, I checked Scott's video again and noticed the Discord conversation between him and Pacman, who helped him set up Boot2vWii.
From screenshots of that, what I learned about using devkitPro and MSys2 following previous tutorials, and finally figuring out the command examples on GitHub, I was FINALLY able to create a working Boot2vWii forwarder for MKW-SP! I know it would have probably taken someone who knows what they're doing only a couple of minutes, but I'm still happy I did it with no prior knowledge whatsoever!
What's annoying is how much easier I found this compared to all the WUP methods. Granted, I probably saved myself a couple of steps getting devkitPro somewhat set up during the WUP attempts, but even so, it still feels like there were a lot fewer steps. Makes me wonder why Scott hasn't made a tutorial on it himself yet? (or at least he hasn't at the time of this upload) I might try and make one if enough people are interested, but I feel that would require me to go back and understand what I did a little better. ๐
A downside, I'm fairly certain it takes longer to load MKW-SP via the forwarder than the vWii channel, and that isn't even factoring in Aroma loading at the beginning. I don't know if any optimizations need to be made to the wuhb file, as the loading times seem inconsistent (at least from my recordings). However, it could also be the SD card that I'm using, as I know that's pretty slow booting other stuff. The CTGP forwarder as well, for example.
If enough people are interested, then I will make a public download for the forwarder files I made. Otherwise, if anyone wants them really badly, feel free to get in touch via Discord. ๐
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