this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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133
Any noobie guide on switch piracy and along with emulator setup? (feddit.de)
submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
36 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

All these news about Yuzu made me realized I never tried a switch emulator. For education purposes I am interested in guides with links to prod keys. Anyone have any links?

Thanks in advance!

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

download Ryujinx, get keys by downloading them from a site (like from prodkeys.net) and you should get files "prod.keys" and "title.keys", place them in "./Ryujinx/system/". then you can go on a site like www.nxbrew.com, download nsp or xci files of the game (and a potential updates and whatever dlc), and throw them in folders of your choice (i personally have a "roms" folder with all my game files for different consoles, including a "switch" folder, with folders called "games" and subfolders "updates", "dlc", "mods", "cheats").

then, get on ryujinx, select the folder with your games as your game directory, and your games should be visible. you can right click on the game on the list and add updates or dlc, you can go to the mod directory ryujinx made for the game and add a bunch of folders with the mod data inside of it (for example, for ACNH i might have a folder called "360_camera" and inside of it will be a folder called "romfs"/"romFs" which will have a bunch of files/folders for the mod in it) and then select the mods to enable. for cheats you just need a folder named "cheats" in the mod directory and then you can put cheats for the game in plain text in the folder.

you can also mess with the graphics settings, use an input device (probably an xbox/playstation/switch controller), change datetime (although i find it doesn't allow you to make the date out of sync with your device's date, so you may want to go to your computer settings and manually change it if you want to do that), etc.

redditors even on piracy subs treat actually pirating things like it's voldemort, so when i wanted to emulate switch games it was a pain in the ass for me to find out what i needed to do, i hope this helps you not run into those issues lol.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

Is there a full set of title keys anywhere? I can only find a small set out of all the titles in the eShop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (3 children)

If one owned a real switch would that alter any of the steps? Like, I imagine whatever keys you need would be on it?

For the record I know nothing and am just guesstimating based on 90's PS1 emulation.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah, you can technically extract your own keys from your own Switch, and (at least with current laws and court precedents) that would be legal. But extracting the keys requires hacking your Switch, which either requires an early generation Switch (early Switch models have an unpatchable exploit that allows them to be hacked via the USB-C and MicroSD ports,) or installing a modchip in newer/current Switch models. And that’s probably more involved than you’d like to be.

There’s also the whole issue with Lockpick (the homebrew utility used to actually extract the keys from a hacked Switch and dump them onto the MicroSD card,) being taken down by Nintendo months ago. So even if you tried to get the keys in a more legit way, you’d still need to visit some sketchy sites just to get the Lockpick homebrew. This is also how you could acquire the firmware files in a legit way. You can just extract the files directly from your Switch.

But that’s a lot of extra effort (and a lot of potential for bricking your Switch when trying to install a modchip) when you can just download all the necessary files.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'm pretty sure the only difference would be that people with a jailbroken switch can extract prod.keys from it. But afaik most of the tools people made to assist with that got obliterated so I don't think it's worth doing for most people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Good luck getting a switch that can be modded. Only certain models are able to be.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Any model should be hardmoddable, but if you want to stick to soft mods, then yeah, you need an older model

[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Since Yuzu went down you might want to try Ryujinx https://youtu.be/0DxK7wEVTVo

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I've always preferred it, but last time I used it was because yuzu wasn't yet on flathub (it still is)

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/0DxK7wEVTVo

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This is my go-to guide for Ryujinx:

aHR0cHM6Ly9naXRodWIuY29tL0FiZC0wMDcvU3dpdGNoLUVtdWxhdG9ycy1HdWlkZS9ibG9iL21haW4vUnl1amlueC5tZAo=

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (2 children)

For anyone who doesn't know what this string of characters means (because I also wouldn't have before yesterday), try using this

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

btw, if you're using a system with the GNU coreutils, you can echo "<base64 encoded string>" | base64 -d.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

im prety sure you can just do base64 -d and type it in after running the command and then do ctr d

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thank you! I wish it were more obvious what random strings of characters meant. Sometimes I see them and I have to hunt around in community rules and mega threads and I still can't find a solution as to how to decode them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

you can identify base64 encoded strings by the = (or sometimes ==) at the end

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

you can also identify it as a b64 string by the way that it is

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

depending on the implementation this may be optional or not allowed though

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I wasn’t gonna hack my switch, buuuuut.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Right now, yuzu emulator is being forked and taken over by multiple developers, re-releasing and promising to continue its development in spite of Nintendo lawyers. For example, nuzu. All this is to say that is not the best time for a newbie to jump in, unless they are willing to re-jump in whatever fork out there turns to have a good community of developers and resists Nintendo efforts to shut them off.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

I don't know about switch but for psp and shit :

You just download an emulator on your phone like dolphin,ppsspp or lemuroid on your phone choose the emulator that support the platform you wanna play on for eg: ppsspp helps you play psp (you can got to fdroid and search emulators for a couple of em to select from ). Now go to a search engine and type psp roms and that should bring up a site filled with roms .

Now download the rom of the game you wanna play and if it is a .zip extract it if it is not create a folder called psp or something and put the rom there and now open psp and give it acess to that folder and done .

(I just did it one or two times for curiosity and have never played more than 10 minutes as i don't like games)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The Switch is a little more involved, simply because it requires firmware and encryption keys from a switch. Sort of like the BIOS files that PSX emulators need, these files tell the emulator how to actually decrypt the game. Because Switch games are encrypted, so they can’t be played without extracting keys that are stored on a real Switch. There’s also the issue of game updates, DLC installation, etc… So it’s not as simple as just “download the ROM” anymore.

Sure, you’re 90% of the way there. But that’s not super helpful when everyone knows (and expects) that 90%. It’s the last 10% that trips up newcomers, and it’s what causes the most questions, (just like OP’s.)

[–] [email protected] -2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Not super helpful.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

What more info do you want ? I'll help

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

While that doesn't cover every aspect of emulation, it is most of it. I'm curious what else you would need to know. Everything about emulation is extremely easy to find, nothing about it is hidden away. I've been using emulators since the 90's and it's not complicated.

I would add to make sure you map your controller buttons in the emulators settings. And if you need a bios/key you can find them by searching for "[game system] bios" and "[game system] keys".