https://github.com/TeamShinkansen/Hakchi2-CE/releases/latest
This guide is written for Windows users only at this time, however Mac and Linux users may be able to follow along using similar methods.
https://github.com/ClusterM/hakchi2/releases.
Development of this guide will continue as part of something larger, more on that soon in the usual places.
Installing a custom kernel on your SNES Classic for ftp access
Installing and Setting up Python (Required for Scripts)
Configuring the SNES Classic for new ROMS.
Converting SNES games from .smc/.sfc to .sfrom format
Transferring ROMS to the SNES Classic
I will not be held responsible for any damage(s) that occur if you choose to continue and follow this guide. If you follow this guide properly and without skipping any steps you shouldn't have anything to worry about. If you have any concern about bricking your system STOP! DO NOT FOLLOW THIS GUIDE! Use the official release! As much as I consider this a beginners guide, it might still be advanced for some of you. TIP: Always read ahead before trying something so you don't mistake explanations for instructions ;)
This guide may look overwhelming to some but as always I try to guide you through every step of the way, in as much detail as possible, so that anyone can follow my guides. If you don't already have Notepad++ installed, I highly recommend it! This guide assumes you do. If you don't just use any text editor.
Update: This guide assumes you're using using the Official Hakchi2 Web Installer, not a modified version. Please keep this in mind when having issues. Also as progress continues so quickly, some parts of this guide may become outdated or no longer required.
- Download, Install and Launch the hakchi2_web_installer.exe.
- Select
Kernelfrom the menu bar at the top of the Hakchi2 window.
- Select
Dump Kerneland proceed with the on screen instructions. Leave Hakchi2 open.
The Dump folder with the kernel backup will be located in the Hakchi2 folder in “My Documents\hakchi2”.
- Select
Kernelfrom the menu bar at the top of the Hakchi2 window and selectFlash custom kerneland proceed with the on screen instructions. Leave Hakchi2 open.
- Select
Toolsfrom the menu bar at the top of the Hakchi2 window and ensure that there is a check-mark next to “FTP server onftp://root:[email protected]:1021”. Leave Hakchi2 open.
- Unselect the Original 30 games! NEVER SYNC THESE TO YOUR SNES!
- Install/Launch FileZilla or use your preferred FTP client.
Enter in the following information and click connect.
Host: 127.0.0.1
Username: root
Password: clover
Port: 1021
If all went well you should see the SNES Classics file system in the FTP client.
- Since we have the FTP client open, lets go ahead and make a quick change so we don't have issues when transfering files. Click on the edit button at the top of FileZilla and Select Settings. A new settings window will popup.
- On the menu on the left click on "Transfers" and then under Concurrent transfers set the maximum simultaneous transfers to [1].
You’ll need to have Python installed to use the included python scripts, optionally you can manually hex edit the ROM headers/footers, but that is beyond the scope of this guide. If you already have Python 3.6.0 or greater you can skip to the next section of the guide.
The installed Python version must be version 3.6.0 or above and is available at the bottom of this page. 2.7 has been tested and is confirmed not working. 3.6.0 and greater have been tested and are confirmed working up to 3.6.3.
To get to the command line, open the Windows Start menu and type command in the search bar. Select Command Prompt from the search results.
In the Command Prompt window, type the following and press Enter.
C:\>python
If Python is installed and in your path, then this command will run python.exe and show you the version number.
Otherwise, you will see:
python is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.
In this case, you need to download and install Python 3.6.0 and then add it to your path.
Download and install Python 3.6.0 for Windows
Find and download the Windows installer file that matches your system.
Open the file to start the installation wizard. Follow the instructions and make a note of where Python is installed on your system.
When installing Python there is an option to add it to the path, if you checked that box you can skip ahead to Configuring the SNES Classic for new ROMS.
Add Python to path
In the Start menu, search for advanced system settings and select View advanced system settings.
In the window that appears, click Environment Variables… near the bottom right.
In the next window, find and select the user variable named Path and click Edit… to change its value. The value for this variable is a semi-colon-delimited list of file locations.
Scroll to the end of the value, add a semi-colon, and then add the path of the folder containing python.exe. On newer versions of Windows, editing PATH will show a list. Just add said path as an entry at the end.
(If you do not know where your python.exe is, you can search for it. Instructions below)
Click OK to save this change.
If you do not have a user variable named Path, click the New… button.
Add a variable named Path and make its value the absolute path of the folder containing your python.exe.
Finding python.exe
If you do not know where Python was installed, search for python.exe in the Windows menu.
Right-click the file name in the results, select Properties, and find Location.
Copy the location and add it to your path variable.
Confirm addition to path
Open a new command prompt and re-run the original command:
C:>python
to confirm that Python 3.6.0 is installed and added to your path.
Now that that's done you can move onto the next part of the guide...
The first thing you want to do is create (2) backups of the b0000_defines file located in /var/lib/hakchi/rootfs/etc/preinit.d/. Keep one someplace safe and rename it b0000_defines.bkp so you don't mix them up as you'll need it if you ever want to switch back to the original games folder.
Next we're going to edit the other b0000_defines file you downloaded, You can edit this file using Notepad++ to match the one below. All we're doing is changing the 'gamepath=' to our new directory since we don't have write access to the default location. Make sure after you save it there's NO extension like .txt on the end.
modname=hakchi
modpath=/$modname
installpath=$mountpoint/var/lib/$modname
firmwarepath=$installpath/firmware
rootfs=$installpath/rootfs
preinit=$rootfs/etc/preinit
preinitpath=$preinit.d
gamepath=/usr/share/games
temppath=/tmp
Now that you've edited the b0000_defines file, you can copy the modified file back to the SNES using Filezilla or other FTP client.
Leave your SNES ON as at this point if you shut the system down, no games will show up as we're pointing the system to a different directory that we haven't yet added games too. DON'T PANIC! Now let's get some games ready!
You may want to check this list before continuing to see if your game is working or not. It's not complete, but it should be a good reference for now.
A fellow GBATemp user named Valter created and shared a set of python scripts on his gist page for converting games to the supported format .sfrom. I've incorporated that script into my program and it's now automated.
UPDATE: Oct 7th, 2017
I've made a new and improved script called bulkconvert.py which you can view/get from my gist account HERE. I'll update the guide for this soon.
To run the sfc2sfrom.py script you can use one of the .bat file programs I wrote below. These will automatically convert .smc and .sfc ROMS into the required .sfrom format and name them appropriately as well (This is only required when using the native emulator canoe. You do not need to convert ROMS if you're using RetroArch, but that is again beyond the scope of this guide). No special naming of the ROMS is required on your part, the script will find and rename them automatically. Make sure they're not compressed! only .smc or .sfc files work right now.
I've included (2) .batch scripts in the download for converting SNES games. I recommend running SNESCE_ROM_TOOL[DNA64].bat first to ensure that everything is properly configured as I've incorporated some error checking in this one and it will tell you what the problem is if you have one. The second script is the 1 click solution for fast conversions 1-click-convert[DNA64].bat. A popup may appear for a moment, but will close as soon as the program ends, this is normal.
The program will output the new .sfrom file and move it into a folder under the same name.
Example: CLV-X-SHIBE > CLV-X-SHIBE.sfrom
The program will then move the .sfc file into a folder called sfcfiles along with a matching text file so you know which game is which. This is really sloppy I know, but it works and I plan on fixing it soon. Really you can just consider this a trash folder since you no longer need these, unless you do .. :P
Fixed!: The boxart image sizes are now inline with the original image sizes
Now that you have the folder, and the ROM, we need to create the .desktop file and the images. It's these files that can end up giving you C7 and C8 errors so keep that in mind when transferring files. More on this below
Each ROM file requires (2) images. The main boxart image CLV-X-XXXXX.png 228x160, and the thumbnail image CLV-X-XXXXX_small.png 40x28. You'll have to google the box art for each game and then resize it accordingly, make sure to save them as .png. I highly recomend the FREE graphic editing program Paint.net. I've written a script as mentioned above to help you with file and folder names as well as converting the ROM files to .sfrom, you can download that HERE if you like. If you're not using the script you'll need to create a folder for each game using the same naming scheme CLV-X-XXXXX, where (XXXXX) is a unique nameID using only Numbers and Capital letters. Example: CLV-X-DNA64
Next you'll want to create a .desktop file in Notepad++ or Notepad, any text editor will do. It contains all the information about the ROM. Use the same naming scheme you did with the images. Example: CLV-X-DNA64.desktop
I've included a template in the download file. You can also use this tool someone created (Credit to follow once I find them) to generate the file.
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/usr/bin/clover-canoe-shvc -rom /usr/share/games/CLV-P-DNA64/CLV-P-DNA64.sfrom --volume 100 -rollback-snapshot-period 600
Path=/var/lib/clover/profiles/0/CLV-P-DNA64
Name=Pilotwings
Icon=/usr/share/games/CLV-P-DNA64/CLV-P-DNA64.png
[X-CLOVER Game]
Code=CLV-P-DNA64
TestID=064
ID=0
Players=1
Simultaneous=0
ReleaseDate=1964-06-04
SaveCount=0
SortRawTitle=pilotwings
SortRawPublisher=Nintendo
Copyright=Nintendo 1964
MyPlayDemoTime=45
Replace all instances of the current game CLV-P-DNA64 with your own unique gameID. And fill out the rest of the information like the games name, publisher, number of players etc. Don't worry if you don't know, just leave it as default.
SaveCount=0 is FALSE SaveCount=1 is TRUE Set this to TRUE or FALSE depending on if the game has in game save abilities like Final Fantasy for example.
Example: You should now have a game folder (CLV-P-DNA64) with (4) files.
- CLV-P-DNA64.png
- CLV-P-DNA64_small.png
- CLV-P-DNA64.desktop
- CLV-P-DNA64.sfrom
Now the moment you've been waiting for, let's see if it works!
Launch Hakchi2 if it's not already running and select Tools from the menu bar at the top of the Hakchi2 window and ensure that there is a check-mark next to “FTP server on ftp://root:[email protected]:1021”.
Leave Hakchi2 open or the FTP won't be able to connect.
Launch FileZilla or use your preferred FTP client.
Enter in the following information and connect.
Host: 127.0.0.1
Username: root
Password: clover
Port: 1021
If all went well you should see the SNES Classics file system in the FTP client.
In the FTP client Navigate to /var/lib/hakchi/rootfs/usr/share/games/ and copy the game folder we just created CLV-P-DNA64 onto the SNES Classic system. Once the transfer completes power the SNES Classic off, wait a moment and then turn it back on. Browse the list for your newly added game!
If you don't see it, double check the .desktop file and make sure everything is correct. If it still doesn't show up, review the guide or try a different game. See below for more on this.
Now repeat the process to install more games. - Enjoy! :)
If you get a C7, C8 or other error simply delete the last game you copied over from the system and power the system off. When you turn it back on you shouldn't get an error. You can also try copying and renaming images from a working game to rule out any issues with your images. Compare your .desktop file to mine as well. If you do get and error and you don't want to troubleshoot it, you can just flash the original kernel you dumped earlier back to the console using Hakchi2, but before you do that backup your game saves! Some users are reporting loosing game saves after reverting back to the original kernel. Saves can be found in /var/lib/clover/profiles/0.
Special Thanks to ClusterM and MadMonkey1907 for creating Hakchi2 and devoting so much of their free time to the project and Valter for his Python ROM Scripts.
Questions? Comments? Let me know!
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