Unofficial Deunan's GDEMU Thread

GDemu still recognizes them fine. I was just curious what games will be broken after shrinking due to something in the dummy data the file uses.

Would there be a difference between GDIshrink and ReBuildGDI? I've already done 60 GDI's and I don't want to do them again lol.

 

Both should be roughly equivalent for most games, but gdishrink simply removes the unused data from the GDI, without rebuilding it. From the GDEmu perspective it's pretty much unchanged, only the sectors that'd never have been accessed are now gone.

In simple terms, RebuildGDI extracts files and recreates a GDI while GDIShrink "carves" away the useless data.

Two games don't work with gdishrink, but I plan to make a specific workaround for those once I implement a more user friendly way to shrink dumps. I'm just very busy.

 

Awesome man thanks for the response

 

@madsheep I found a bug in GDEMU_SD. When you sort by name, any multi-disc game will have the 2nd disc completely erased and a copy of the 1st put in it's place.

@neuroacid Is there no way to have a setup for GDmenu like Rmenu where you can edit the GDmenu image with the customized names you want, then save, and have it automatically sort the game names in the application upon boot? I just think the Rmenu is a lot easier to work with.
I'm trying to work with SD CARD MAKER for GDEMU but keep running into renaming issues. For instance if I customize the names after organizing them how I like (Alphabetically), click done, it will work if I plug it into the GDEMU. But after renaming, I have to sort them again. When opening the SD MAKER, the names are how they were originally and I have to rename them all again. I've even tried clicking the "save" button and loading my saved file when re-organizing, but nothing happens when I load it. Plus the numbers are different from resorting so they wouldn't be named for the correct games.

@madsheep Do you have any suggestions of the best way for me to rename all the games correctly and have them in alphabetical order?

 

I noticed the same bug a year ago with the 2 disc sets, but worked around it by manually organizing any misplaced titles. I agree that the renaming system is unideal.

@madsheep Would it be possible to add the feature to load up an existing SD card and menu file and allow the insertion of just one game without having to load all the original titles from off the SD card?

 

@ShadowofBob @Night-Dweller
about the disk problem i will try to find the problem
please tell me more about it (games names etc)

as for the "load up an existing SD" i don't understand it can you explain?
i want to say that the GDEMU_SD can edit the sd card on the fly you don't need to add all games just the new ones

edit: i thing i fixed the bug please try if it is fixed then i can update the file to the server (test file in the attachments)

 

@madsheep I just tested this myself and the issue related to alphabetical sorting with multi-disc games appears to be fixed! Yay, no more manual alphabetical sorting

As for the second issue, basically:
Once you rename some games, and then use GDEMU_SD to add more games later, the app replaces the earlier renamed game names with the original ones from the disc, forcing you to rename again them every time. You can save a list of names and reload it, but that isn’t usefull if you are adding more games because the original folder numbers will now be incorrect.

It would be nice to have a way to keep the renaming permanent across sessions, even after adding new games.

 

This would be an absolute godsend!

 

@Blockhead @bahamutfan64
ok now save button will save the edited names to sd,
load button will load from the sd,
and default will load the default names

try and tell me if it is ok

 

It works great!
I tested it out and it's flawless. A quick question, is it possible to have the custom names appear on the main interface? Or is it only possible during the menu customization phase?

 

GDEMU SD CARD MAKER 1.10
-Custom menu will be saved in sd card by default
-Custom menu will be load from sd card by default
-Save button removed (not needed anymore)
-Load button will load the saved entries from last session
-Default button will load default game names from ip.bin
-Saved menu entries will be displayed in Main Window

This update will help with the custom menu you will not need to mess with load save files
you only need to do this:
Select SD > Load games > Press SAVE Button > Edit Menu > Done

Download
► http://xxx.biskoto.gr/GDEMU_SD.rar

 

Is there a Linux version available too? I was using your old Linux one and editing the list manually, this seems much simpler.

BTW, you might want to take a look at the latest version of gditools. I added a GDIShink function that you could use to shrink the GDI at the same time as you're copying it to the SD-Card. Only two games in the TOSEC set have issues with it because they've a weird track/data layout. This should save a ton of space on SD-Cards, while retaining theoretically perfect compatibility, I've never had a single issue with it (beside the two games that won't work, but that can be bypassed) and a few games known to have bugs with RebuildGDI work properly with GDIShrink.

This post is a good place to start reading about it: https://assemblergames.com/threads/convert-gdi-to-iso.64435/page-2#post-951999

 

@madsheep I can confirm that when sorting alphabetically on the main interface that multi-disc games no longer reduce to 1 name.

Now here is the other problem. I will try to explain this the best I can. When you load the SD card, SD CARD MAKER will populate all the games on the SD card. At this stage, you can only sort the games. Now if you notice, all the games populated are displayed with CAPITAL letters and 50% of the game names are unrecognizable. For instance, my list populated a game name (WWTBAM). I have no idea what this game is judging by the name. I wouldn't be able to know what it was unless I figured it out and renamed it so I would know in the future. Now here is where the problem comes in. If I sort the games alphabetically in the main interface and then SAVE, I won't be able to move the games around in the CUSTOMIZATION MENU. This is a problem because the CUSTOMIZATION MENU is where you can rename the games. After renaming the games in the CUSTOMIZATION MENU, 50% of the games are no longer alphabetically sorted due to the difference between the true game name and what the main interface had originally populated.

The solution to this problem is to be able to rename the games FIRST, then SORT the games alphabetically by their new names, and lastly SAVE. Now everything should be in alphabetical order and renamed to your liking. Now let's say you start playing some games and after a few days you want to add another game. When you load the games up on the main interface of SD CARD MAKER, all the games you spent an hour renaming are now back to the unreadable names that SD CARD MAKER had originally populated. This is a huge problem. It should populate the games by the renamed title so you don't have to rename every game title every time you want to add a new game to the SD card.

Does that make sense?

Basically being able to rename and sort all in the same interface before saving is the solution to the first problem. Having SD CARD MAKER find the renamed titles for the games upon loading is the solution to the second problem. I personally have no experience with programming so I really don't even know if it is able to be done. I appreciate everything you have already done and I'm sure everyone else would agree. But I'm just trying to help make it the best it can be. Thanks a lot! @Blockhead did I explain that well?

 

@Night-Dweller you can add your games press save and rename them and after that you can short the list with the new names and press the save button again.

@-=FamilyGuy=-
need to learn C++/Qt and rewrite it so it can be multi platform but for all this i need to find free time!!! i will take a look at your tools thanks!!!

 

Didn't you write it in .NET? If so and you don't want to learn another language, check out Eto Framework or Gtk#. Both are multi-platform UI libraries for .NET applications. Eto is probably the easier of the two to learn, its controls and methods work similar to WinForms. But neither has a designer, so you have to code the UI by hand.

I think I've used your application in WINE in the past and it worked fine, but maybe I'm remembering wrong.

 

IIRC wine didn't work, but a basic mono version was available.

@madsheep feel free to contact me if you got any question.

 

If I wanted to actually rename the gdi/cdi files by editing ip.bin, what would be the best workflow for that?

 

You can edit the first few sectors of track03 with an hex editor. You need a 2048 bytes/sector track03 or you have to rebuild the EDC/ECC of the sector. If you pass the GDI through GDIShrink it should be editable.

 

Wrong
I sorted alphabetically, clicked "menu", clicked "save", clicked yes to customize, renamed 12 games. I reopened SD CARD MAKER, and all of the games I renamed were back to the original auto populated name.

Correct
I clicked "menu", clicked "save", clicked yes to customize, renamed 12 games. I reopened SD CARD MAKER,
I sorted alphabetically, I clicked "menu", clicked "save", clicked no to customize.