Rebuilding or in-place patching Gamecube ISOs?

[Qaazavaca Qaanic]

I'm trying to patch a specific file in Zelda Wind Waker. It turns out to be surprisingly difficult for such a simple task.

Running unmodified Wind Waker using a extracted game folder (DVD root) fails on a black screen (disk layout?). So I can't run patched games that way.

wit can extract the game fine, but does not support building Gamecube ISOs. Even if it did, it would be slow.

GCRebuilder appears to be able to rebuild Gamecube disks (but rebuilding is slow).

WiiScrubber does in-place patching of Wii disks. I'll test Gamecube as soon as I copy over Wind Waker to my Windows computer, as it crashes under Wine (after `winetricks mfc42`).

Now I need to automate the task (replace specific file with specific file), which is difficult with GUI programs. This looks promising: http://www.macrocreator.com/download/

Ideally I'd use a CLI program. For each replacement file in a specific folder, take the filename and replace semicolons with slashes. Then insert the file into the corresponding path in the ISO. No such program exists AFAIK, and I don't know enough about GC/Wii disk formats to build one.

[gamemasterplc]

Do a rebuild with GCRebuilder if the new file is bigger than the original or you are replacing the DOL otherwise use GC-Tool.

[Qaazavaca Qaanic]

> Joined: Mar 2016
> Senior Member

That's a bit ironic...

I'll look into GC-Tool, and differences with GCRebuilder. I noticed that saving an unmodified ISO was instant.

[Qaazavaca Qaanic]

It seems like both GC-Tool and GCRebuilder support patching games in-place (with smaller files only). Also, GCRebuilder has a feature to build/extract ISO to folder (like wit).

Is there any reason to use GC-Tool for patching instead of GCRebuilder? Is it less buggy or more stable?

I'm trying to automate the process using AHK/Pulover Macro, so I can build using a single click (shell/batch/Powershell script). I need to decide which to automate, as it will take some time to write the automation code. (Seriously, why are there no good scriptable/command-line in-place patchers for gc OR wii?)

[Qaazavaca Qaanic]

I'm trying to reverse-engineer the BMS music sequence format (note sequence), used in Wind Waker (and Twilight Princess and possibly others). I'm trying to find the meaning of different data types (u8, u16, s16) and commands by generating modified versions of the game's original music, inserting into the ISO, and listening to see what happens.


'Automating' comes from the roots 'auto-' meaning 'self-', and 'mating', meaning 'screwing'.

EDIT:

Options -> Do not use 'game.toc'
----------------

- With this option enabled, GCR ignores information from "game.toc" file.
It means that you can theorically build a new working GC image with ANY files in "Root" folder
(the "&&systemdata" folder must not contain additional files or folders).

This is for rebuilding ISOs from folder. Sounds interesting. I'll try to use it, but it might break like DVDRoot.

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20XX Melee mod uses GCRebuilder to extract Melee to a folder, and rebuild.

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GCMTool is a "pre-alpha" "last updated 2004" command-line tool to rebuild (not patch) GC ISOs. http://sadistech.com/gcmtool/tutorial.php


# AUTOMATING

GCRebuilder is a .Net WinForms app. It should be compatible with MSAA or UIA or something, which needs some library to be compatible with AHK.

GC Tool is a Win32 app.

Should I use Autohotkey (funny language), Pulover's Macro Creator (based off AHK), White .Net (a library imported by .Net languages, none of which I know), or something else?