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Gamecube Homebrew could use some tutorials

Posted: Thu Jul 26, 2018 4:01 pm
by AXELXu7
I currently worked out how to add Game Boy Interface, homebrew quake, and Swiss r442 to an SD card in a file configuration that works. I boot this all from an action replay disk. I realize I could streamline my setup by just burning Swiss onto a minidisk since I also modded my PAL gamecube with a xeno GC chip (so I could play my NTSC library of games). However, I don't have any blank mini-dvds and that's not my issue.

The place I'm having trouble is in figuring out how to extract .gcm files from ISOs and making that into a .dol file so that swiss can run it. I tried to run an ISO directly from swiss, but it just gives me a solid green screen. Also, the files are a mess on my SD card in order for swiss to find them. Can anyone on the forums hook me up with their setup? Or at least give me a tutorial video on how swiss looks for the info it needs for the display options of GBI? I'm very confused, and I'm more of a hardware guy myself. Also, can Action Replay not see any sd cards larger than 2 GB? Thanks a million in advance. I would like to become a member of this community and pass on any knowledge to future members because I feel this is an important secret. It should be carried on and preserved like a lost art.

Re: Gamecube Homebrew could use some tutorials

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:24 am
by novenary
GCM and ISO are a bit confusing because people don't use the names correctly. The former is the format used by games, which is often called ISO anyway because it's a disc image, the latter is the same format as regular CD/DVD and is used by homebrew. Dolphin can easily extract anything from a GCM, and homebrew ISOs can be extracted with anything that lets you open regular ISOs.
Most homebrew releases should come as a DOL file, there shouldn't be any need to extract it from the image.
Swiss doesn't need to "find" files, it has a full blown browser so you can put them anywhere you like. The only exception is GBI's configuration which must be placed next to the DOL, with the same name and the correct extension.
Action Replay does not support the SDHC protocol, which limits card size to 4GB, though in practice non-HC 4GB cards are hard to find or non existent. Since your console is modded, your best bet is indeed burning a Swiss disc to work around this entirely.
It's true that the documentation is a bit hard to process because it's scattered all over the place, but the wiki covers the basics pretty well.
GC homebrew is far from being a lost art, there are still quite a few people working on it, myself included.