Two months of hard reverse engineering and 10 years later than it should've been, Devolution can finally be used without the silly disc validation requirement, and it doesn't even need a backwards-compatible Wii or 1st-party Wii remote to generate DVVs and run on Family/Mini Wiis and the Wii U.- Not discussion of the "anti-piracy" (leave the dead horse alone already)
- Not discussion of how to "crack" Devolution - feel free to discuss it elsewhere but keep this thread clean.
Technical Writeup
https://github.com/xperia64/unpacking_devolution/blob/master/docs/Defeating Devolution.md
Public Release
Devolution is copyrighted software, and the author has expressed disapproval at sharing unpacked/modified binaries before, so this is being distributed as a set of tools to unpack and patch an unmodified Devolution for you, like a ROM hack.
Some general notes about this release:
- This generates "legitimate" DVVs that can be used with an unmodified Devolution r266 boot.dol or loader.bin, so you can switch back to those if you want after generating the DVVs
- Devolution appears to be buggy/unstable the first time you boot a game and generate the DVVs for it, especially on the Wii U
- If games crash or fail to load entirely, turn off your console and try again. The DVV should've been generated at that point and the game should boot the second time.
- Alternatively, a "keygen" dol is provided to simply generate a DVV and immediately exit before the console can crash
- Besides the above caveat, Devolution appears to generate DVVs correctly on the Wii U, no 1st-party Wii remote required
- This has been tested on two backwards-compatible Wii's and two Wii U's; It has not been tested on Family Wii's or Wii Mini's
- The disk slot LED will not blink 5 times after it has generated a DVV; instead it will do a glow animation that I don't quite understand
Installation/Setup
- You will need:
- A copy of the original r266
gc_devo_src.zip
with a sha256sum ofaf8c4c0aa62adb1559c7809180f0d1624fb0094b00c4248b9a9c427555d10971
- As the author's original website is no longer up, it can be obtained here: https://web.archive.org/web/20191026015213/http://www.tueidj.net/gc_devo_src.zip
- Docker
- A copy of this GitHub repo
- A copy of the original r266
- Ensure your Docker installation works and you have the
docker
command in your PATH in your command prompt/terminal - Locate the GitHub repo folder you downloaded
- If you downloaded a zip file, extract it somewhere
- Copy
gc_devo_src.zip
to theput_gc_devo_src_zip_here
folder - Run the patcher
- On Windows, double click
run_docker.bat
from Windows Explorer - On Linux (and presumably macOS), run run_docker.sh from your terminal in the GitHub repo folder
- On Windows, double click
- Wait
- An
output
folder should be generated in theput_gc_devo_src_zip_here
folder, and contain anapps
folder for you to copy to your Wii's SD card or USB storage- Devolution Cracked (in the gc_devo folder) will bypass the disc check for and directly boot games while generating "legit" DVV files for your console
- As mentioned before, this can be buggy and either fail to boot games the first time (as seen on the Wii U), or randomly hang later. Games should work fine the 2nd time you boot them.
- A loader.bin is provided for other loaders such as USB Loader GX for convenience
- Devolution Keygen (in the gc_devo_keygen folder) will bypass the disc check, generate a "legit" DVV, then exit back to the HBC
- This is recommended for Wii U users and people who encounter random console hangs the first time they boot a game in Devolution
- Ideally Wii U users should go through all of their GC games with this version one at a time before playing any games to ensure a smooth experience
- Devolution Cracked (in the gc_devo folder) will bypass the disc check for and directly boot games while generating "legit" DVV files for your console