Plugin system for the Wii U. (WIP)

WARNING: THIS PROJECT HAS JUST STARTED AND IS FOR DEVS AND PEOPLE WHO WANT TO PLAY AROUND WITH NEW THINGS. IT MAY BE BUGGY, FEATURE COULD BREAK AT ANY TIME, INTERFACES CAN CHANGE, AND MANY BUGS CAN OCCUR. THIS APPLICATION COMES WITH NO WARRANTY-

What is the Wii U Plugin System?

The Wii U Plugin allows you to load multiple plugins on your Wii U which enhance your experience. For example you can mod your games, use USB controller, swap your gamepad and TV screen and much more.

Features

The project is still in it's very early days, but it already has basic functions to play with.

The plugins will be loaded, even when you swap the running game.
Support for up to 32 plugins at the same time.
Each plugin can override up to 100 different existing system functions.
Multiple plugins can override the same system functions.
Plugins can register for certain hook (for example whenever an application was started)
Plugins inherit the SD/USB access from the loader. All plugins have global SD and USB (FAT32 only) access.

How to build

The building process is split into multiple parts.

WUPS library

First we have the "Wii U Plugin System" (WUPS) library. To compile this, you need DEVKITPRO and DEVKITPPC installed and set in your environment. Then call the following command in the root directory.

make
make install

The "make" builds the library, the "make install" copies it into your DEVKITPRO folder.

Plugin loader

The plugin loader is the software run via the Homebrew Launcher, that uses the plugins. It contains a copy mocha, so for building you need a copy of DEVKITARM installed and set in your environment.

For building the loader you need:

libiosuhax (Build WITHOUT the WUT flag set.)
libfat
libntfs (Build with make wiiu-install)
dynamic_libs for access to the functions.
libutils for common functions.
libgui for the gui elements.

Install the according to their readmes. Don't forget to install their dependencies.

Dependencies

All needed dependencies are in the "loader/libs" folder of this repository. Extract the "portlibs.zip" archive into your devkitPro directory. The archive includes:

zlib

Compiling

Then call the following command in the "loader" directory.

make

This should create an "wiiupluginloader.elf" which can be loaded with the Homebrew Launcher.

Plugins

Last but not least you need to build the plugins that should be loaded. Plugins depend on the "WUPS library" installed in build step one, other dependencies are optional.

This is a (maybe incomplete) list of currently available plugins:

HID to VPAD:
Port of HID to VPAD. No configuration is possible yet, all controllers map automatically to the game pad, pro controller mapping not support. Network client is working.
Screenshot plugin:
Simple plugin that take a screenshot by presing L+R+ZL+ZR on the gamepad. Button combo can be changed.
SD Cafiine:
Port of the orignal SDCafiine (https://github.com/Maschell/SDCafiine). No NTFS support yet.
SwipSwapMe:
Swaps the TV and gamepad screen via a buttons combo.The button combo can be changed.
Diibugger:
Port of the DiiBugger.
WUPSPluginPlayground (Various other demo plugins):
This repository is supposed to hold serveral small testing plugins for the Wii U Plugin System. Most of the plugin are either really small (Padcon, NNU_Patcher) or are just for testing / gathering information.

Logging

For logging (for example of the loader) you need to start the UdpDebugReader on a computer in the same network. This has been created by @dimok789 and can be found in the tools folder.

Load plugin via network

While the loader is running, it's possible to load a single plugin via wiiload.
When using this feature, only this plugin will be loaded. The plugin will copied to the SDCard, this mean a SDCard is required. A windows executable can be found in tools/wiiload.exe
More information about wiiload and alternatives can be found here: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiiload

Future and contribution

On the Discord you can more information about open task and how to contribute: https://discord.gg/bZ2rep2

Credits

Some files are based on brainslug by Chadderz:
https://github.com/Chadderz121/brainslug-wii
Much stuff also wouldn't be possible without dimok789. He made many great tools and homebrew this stuff in based on (Makefiles, Mocha, homebrew channel, udp logger, dynamic_libs etc.)
Also thanks to everyone who made actual exploits.
Thanks to dhewg for wiiload:
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Wiiload

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