Hacking Circle Pad patches for Super Mario 64 DS and other games (in TwilightMenu with TWPatcher and RTCom)

[Crito]

No, I don't think so. It's only possible by patching the game directly. Unlike buttons, the touchscreen doesn't go through Arm11.
Actually, it looks like Arm7 always stores the touchscreen data in the same place (0x027fffaa) where Arm9 can get it later and use it for a game. If we overwrite this location right after Arm7 writes to it and before Arm9 reads from it, we could probably "remap" the touchscreen. But the default position of the cheat engine in nds-bootstrap is not suitable for this. So you still have to patch the game manually.

How did you got SM64DS and Metroid to allow for camera to work with the Nub? That solution should be enough to make it work with the Kingdom Hearts games.

 

[shoco]

How did you got SM64DS and Metroid to allow for camera to work with the Nub? That solution should be enough to make it work with the Kingdom Hearts games.

I meant an automatic approach applicable to any game, like I did with buttons in "3DS-NDS Key Remapper". Of course, by targeting a specific game almost everything is possible, but this is not simple

 

[SmartIsh]

Thanks! It's great to know that this thing is playable from start to finish.
As for the hacks. It's impossible to answer ahead of time whether something will work or not. There must be a lot of hacks for this game.
But I've tried Another Super Mario 3D before and it worked. Did you choose the correct version of the cheatcode?
If I remember correctly, this mod was based on the version USA v1.0. But you could try some others. The signature (game code + checksum) of the patched rom is "ASME-8A9B0FD0" if it means something to you (it is shown in R4CCE)

I got it working! I had two things wrong:
1. I hadn't added the correct ROM code, I added the code for the base game which I incorrectly assumed would be the same.
2. ASM3D doesn't support widescreen on the 3DS, so I had to add the second TwlBg.cxi thingy.
Thanks again for the mod, I'll let you know if this hack is playable too

 

[steval_beaning]

I think the problems I was having with sm64ds controls actually don't have anything to do with your patch, and are moreso inherent to the game itself. this video summarises them quite well:

 

[pankostain]

sup, tested almost all of these codes and only one didn't exactly work, the code in question being the one for animal crossing, the character kept moving downwards, do i have to enable widescreen for it to work cause i had the exact same problem with rayman ds and when i enabled widescreen it was totally fixed, as far as i know widescreen doesn't work with animal crossing, is there any kind of solution to this that you know of?

 

[Vendicatorealato]

@pankostain This:

Try to make two TwlBg versions in TWPatcher, one with widescreen and one without (both should have RTCom). Put the one with widescreen in "/_nds/TWiLightMenu/TwlBg/" and rename it to "Widescreen.cxi" (as usual, according to the official guide). And leave the one without widescreen in "/luma/sysmodules" as "TwlBg.cxi".

 

[Jayro]

How can I add these AR codes into the SM64DS ROM, as a patch? It's just the in-game controls edited. Mostly an A/B swap and crouch to L+R, not just R.

1207403c 00000002
1207403e 00000001
12074040 00004000
1207404e 00000400
1207405c 00000002
1207405e 00000001
12074060 00004000
1207406e 00000400

 

[CountBungus]

How did you make the metroid one? would it be possible to make a similer patch for dementium II?

 

[shoco]

sup, tested almost all of these codes and only one didn't exactly work, the code in question being the one for animal crossing, the character kept moving downwards, do i have to enable widescreen for it to work cause i had the exact same problem with rayman ds and when i enabled widescreen it was totally fixed, as far as i know widescreen doesn't work with animal crossing, is there any kind of solution to this that you know of?

Yeah, as Vendicatorealato linked in my post. There can be two versions of TwlBg (widescreen and non-widescreen). You need to make and patch both, in case TwilightMenu wants to swap them unexpectedly

How can I add these AR codes into the SM64DS ROM, as a patch? It's just the in-game controls edited. Mostly an A/B swap and crouch to L+R, not just R.

Just out of curiosity, why not use the AR code?
This is a bit complicated, so I assume you are asking from a developer's point of view. The controls table (which is patched by this cheatcode) is located in the Arm9's part of the rom. And it is compressed with the Reversed LZ algorithm (or something similar). I suppose it could be decompressed, edited, and then compressed and put back.
Although, I think the easiest way would be to hook into the VBlank IRQ or some other place (whatever romhackers do when they patch roms statically), wait for the table to load, and then change its values. Or just use the AR cheatcode

By the way, you can't map things to L+R with this table. The way it works in the game is that there's a simple loop that checks all keys in order, and if any of them is pressed, the corresponding action is activated. So here crouching could be activated by either L or R, or both. I think, to do what you want actually requires writing code.

How did you make the metroid one? would it be possible to make a similer patch for dementium II?

As for how I did it, though not interesting. You essentially just spend dozens of hours (or just a couple in the case of cpad-only mods) in an emulator and a decompiler trying to figure out how and where a game uses the input, and where you can insert your code most gracefully to make the game do what you want (change the character's direction, position, etc).

I haven't looked at other fps games, but I believe anything is possible (by anything I mean patches like this). I'll keep this game in mind if I ever do it again.

 

[Cragdore]

TLDR list of patches I've made so far​

a bit more lengthy description is probably somewhere below in the text

• 3DS-NDS Key Remapper: generates patches to remap keys in any NDS game (probably?). Additionally allows to map the CPad, CStick and ZL&ZR buttons. To use visit the page, click some checkboxes, copy the resulting cheatcode, and insert it into your game in R4CCE. Requires the latest version of nds-bootstrap (v70.0 or newer).
• Animal Crossing: Wild World
• Chibi-Robo! Park Patrol
• Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
• Final Fantasy III
• Final Fantasy IV
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• Kingdom Hearts: 358-2 Days
• Kingdom Hearts: Re-coded
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
• Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times
• Metroid Prime: Hunters (CPad + CStick + Gyroscope, New 3DS only):
  • ZR to toggle the Scan Visor
  • ZL + Down to enable/disable the gyroscope
  • ZL + Up to recalibrate the gyro
  • ZL + Left to switch the gyro's axis (from Y to Z and back) responsible for turning the camera left/right
• Mini Ninjas
• Nostalgia
• Okamiden
• Rayman DS
• Rune Factory 3: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
• Solatorobo: Red the Hunter
• Star Fox Command:
  • A to boost
  • B to brake
• Super Mario 64 DS:
  • CStick, ZL&ZR to rotate the camera (in a separate New 3DS version)
  • Key remapper
  • Source code
• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks:
  • CPad is additionally used to rotate the camera around the train/ship
  • L + R + Down to unmap/map the CPad from the DPad (useful if you're using the DPad mods (i.e. Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks))

---

Hello.
I couldn't find info about whether someone has already done this or not. My searching skills are terrible these days.

Anyway, I made this thing that allows playing sm64ds on 3DS using the Circle Pad like an almost normal human being. It was relatively simple, albeit time consuming. It requires TWPatcher (the last version, preferably) with RTCom enabled (as well as the Luma's config option "Enable loading external FIRMs and modules"), although it's enabled by default and probably impossible to disable at that point. And If it doesn't work, it may help to update the TwilightMenu app to the last version.

The patch is in the form of Action Replay code. It's in the zip file. Just select one text file from it with the cheat code for your rom. Get the cheat database file `usrcheat.dat` from your 3DS. It's supposed to be at `/_nds/TWiLightMenu/extras/usrcheat.dat` . If it's not there, then it can be downloaded somewhere on the internet. After that, open the cheat database in the program "r4cce" (or maybe somewhere else, i don't know), choose or add your game rom, and copy/paste this Action Replay code there. Save it and copy the file back to the device. By the way, there is also an already prepopulated `usrcheat.dat` (useful for quick testing). All what's left is to enable the cheat in the TwilightMenu menu. And it should work. Or maybe it won't, I don't know. It works for me (I've got New 2DS XL, the OS version is 11.12.0). There are too many things that can go wrong.

There are also cheat versions that allow camera rotation with the Nub stick X, ZL and ZR buttons. Nothing fancy here, they are just mapped to the buttons Left arrow / Right arrow on the touchscreen and obviously work only on the New 2DS/New 3DS devices. Plus, it looks like the Nub stick requires some additional preprocessing as its values seem to be rotated 45 degrees, so more chances of not-working, but whatever.

In case something doesn't work ​

(you get freezes, can't control your character, or it feels like all the buttons are pressed at the same time, etc)

• Games that don't support widescreen (or just mods for games that otherwise support widescreen) may need a separately patched TwlBg. Make two TwlBg versions in TWPatcher, one with widescreen and one without (both should have RTCom). Put the one with widescreen in "_nds/TWiLightMenu/TwlBg/" and rename it to "Widescreen.cxi" (or whatever the official guides say to enable widescreen). Leave the one without widescreen in "/luma/sysmodules" as "TwlBg.cxi". That way, TwilightMenu should swap them when a game has widescreen support and 16:10 mode is set, and not touch them otherwise.
• Make sure the "external FIRMs and modules" option is enabled in Luma's configuration screen.
• Update TWPatcher, TwilightMenu, Luma3DS, ...
• Get the correct cheatcode .txt file for your version of a game. Just as an example: "ASME-F486F859 (USA v1.1)". "ASME" is a rom code (bytes 0xC-0xF), "F486F859" is a bitwise NOT of CRC32 (aka CRC-32/JAMCRC) of the first 200 bytes of the game's header (the cheat engine uses it to identify a game). "v1.1" means the second revision (aka "Rev 1", byte 0x1E)

Update 2022-12-20:
The current version has a problem with the game's music slowdown by about 10-15%.
I've made an alternative version "v2" that uses slightly different faulty approach. Instead of working with the RTCom to communicate with the Arm11 all the time, it only uses it to upload a piece of code that would overwrite some RTC functionality of TwlBg (not permanently, of course) and would hijack the RTC regs to pass the CPad data instead of actual time.
Although, there are two problems with my implementation.
Firstly, in super rare cases it may (or maybe it can't anymore, I'm not sure) crash the console (because it modifies code at runtime, probably in front of another thread that theoretically can execute it at that moment; and I don't even want to think about caching). But it seems fine for now, I've relaunched the game like 40 times and it was okay.
Secondly, it overwrites part of functionality that may be actually important, but I've never seen this code executed myself (my guess is it has something to do with alarms, but I don't use them). In either way, I think this is an interesting idea when executed properly

Update 2022-12-23:
New version v2.3. This time the patch won't replace any potentially useful functionality of TwlBg (it most likely didn't before anyway). I've also changed a bit the way ZL&ZR work. They are no longer hardcoded to the camera rotation. They can be swapped or remapped to other functions such as crouching or jumping. To remap these two keys (and half of the others), just go here, select your version, set preferred controls, and copy the AR code. Then the code can be added as usual in "r4cce" (as the new one, no need to extend this patch). However, I don't think this feature is very helpful.
In addition, I've added support for the iQue version of the game. And if someone's interested in the "technical" details of this project, there is also a Github page for this whole project. The code may not be exactly understandable, but if one had enough motivation to include CPad, CStick, or Gyroscope support to another game, this part certainly wouldn't be the hardest.

Update 2023-01-03
v2.4. a few mostly cosmetic changes.
- Reduced the cheatcodes' size by half by using the "EXXXXXXX NNNNNNNN" AR instruction to copy bytes in bulk instead of word by word. The speed should also increase similarly. Before, I thought that these codes get somehow optimized or converted into ARM, but it seems like nds-bootstrap has a piece of code that simply interprets them directly at runtime, 60 times per second, over and over again.
- The clock in nds-bootstrap's in-game menu now works properly. Solved by passing the CPad data through other RTC registers (alarm time 2 and DSi's counter).
- Reading RTC regs from NDS usually requires some kind of delay (gbatek says 5us for each bit transferred; nintendo puts a ~40 cycles there). But it looks like it's unnecessary in this case, everything works without them. That's naive, but I'd like to believe the reason for that is, as these legacy RTC registers are emulated, there are no real hardware behind it, thus delays aren't needed (on 3ds). The removal of these delays might be important, because some games (not this one, except for music) are hypersensitive to delays in their VBlank IRQ handlers.
- The problem with the sound distortions that I've mentioned somewhere around here has been finally solved (again). This time I rely on Arm11's RTCom autorelease feature (if I understand it correctly) to asynchronously initialize all the stuff and dynamically patch TwlBg. I think it used to take 20ms which was too much for Arm7 to swallow and so the distortions could pop up. Now Arm7 just sends one command to Arm11 to do all the work and doesn't wait for the answer (that frame).

Update 2023-01-18
I've created patches for several additional games.
Half of the patches are rather dumb and only use the CPad to control the direction of the main character, not their speed. Also, the cheats are mostly untested, I've only checked a few places here and there

• Metroid Prime: Hunters (New 3DS/New 2DS only) - the CPad controls Samus' movement (in both the morph ball form and the "normal" FPS form). The nub stick controls the camera's left/right and up/down movement. ZR opens/closes the Scan Visor. There is also a gyroscope support for controlling the camera, albeit super awkward. Pressing ZL + Down toggles the gyroscope, but it needs to be calibrated first. To do that, place the console on a flat surface (or just hold it still) and press ZL + Up. Pressing ZL + Left toggles between the gyro axis responsible for the camera's horizontal rotation (Y or Z). Essentially it depends on how you hold the console, probably the right way would be to interpolate between them based on the accelerometer data, but that's too much for a hack. Overall, just a dumb gimmick.
• Rayman DS - generally meaningless since the 3DS already has a native port that doesn't run in 16 fps (the DSi mode makes things just a little bit better). However, as a 3D platformer, it may be the best use case for such mods
• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks - the CPad also controls the rotation of the camera around the train. Additionally, CPad is unmapped from the dpad keys (because by default they open the menu, map, etc). But if you're going to play with the DPad mods (one and two), you'll need to put it back. For that, press the "L+R+Down" combination, it will map or unmap the dpad
• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass - same, but for the ship
• Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars
• Dragon Quest IX
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
• Mini Ninjas
• Okamiden
• Animal Crossing: Wild World

Update 2023-01-25
- There was a problem when 3DS could just crash when starting a game (with 3-5% chance). I've fixed it and updated all patches (it's solved by flushing the data cache and invalidating instruction cache after patching the TwlBg at runtime). UPDATED: it's a lie. The crashes still happen.
- In Metroid, the camera could start moving in the opposite direction if you pushed the nub stick too hard. That also is supposed to be fixed now

Update 2023-02-19
- 3DS-NDS Key Remapper is a patch generator that allows you to map/remap any 3DS key to one or a combination of NDS keys. Furthermore, it's possible to map the CPad and CStick with ZL & ZR (for the New 3DS family); essentially, the sticks can behave as four separate keys (like CPad usually does when emulating the DPad). And, most importantly, it should theoretically work with any NDS game.
- To use just visit the page, click some checkboxes to setup mappings, copy the resulting cheatcode, and insert it into your game in R4CCE. Normally, this cheat should get activated after about 20 seconds (to avoid conflicts with my other patches). Due to this "late" initialization, there may be sound distortions (you'll know when you hear them). If this happens, just open and close nds-boostrap's in-game menu several times and the sound should eventually shift back. Or change the sound mode in a game's settings to something other than "Surround" or "Headphones" (if that's possible). Or change the start delay on the generation page to something like 10 if you're not using any CPad patches. Actually, there is another thing where it can interfere with the CPad patches. For simplicity's sake some patches (notably Metroid, Zeldas and Star Fox) unmap the CPad from the DPad (because the DPad isn't responsible for movement in those games and does something else (or it was just easier for me)). This remapper, when enabled, will override those settings.
- The Key Remapper works exactly like my other patches (uploading code to arm11, patching TwlBg at runtime, inserting a hook, etc), except here I don't pass any data to Arm7, but simply use Arm11's LGY_HIDEMU_MASK register to override native NDS keys (normally used to map CPad to DPad). The interesting thing here is that a cheatcode can be executed directly from nds-boostrap's cheat engine. It's useful in this case, because I'm patching TwlBg (that doesn't differ from game to game) rather than a specific game, so I don't need to know its layout. Also not sure about any performance implications. Won't be surprised if there are some timing delays, etc, because each key is funneled through that register.
- This thing requires the latest version of nds-bootstrap (currently v70). Older versions had a bug that didn't allow the C2 instruction to be used (it lets us execute arbitrary ARM code directly from a cheatcode, without uploading it into the game's memory).

Plus some lazy CPad patches:

• Chibi-Robo! Park Patrol
• Final Fantasy III
• Final Fantasy IV
• Kingdom Hearts: 358-2 Days
• Kingdom Hearts: Re-coded
• Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times
• Nostalgia
• Rune Factory 3: A Fantasy Harvest Moon
• Solatorobo: Red the Hunter
• Star Fox Command - A to boost, B to brake. This one is essentially a dpad patch by Cracker, except that I modified it to use the CPad.

xdelta (static) version of the patches for SM64DS by @DeadSkullzJr
Action Replay cheatcodes or usrcheat.dat are not required

Hello! tried to combine your "all patches combined" urscheat file with DeadSkullzJr 's NDS(i) Cheat Databases
https://gbatemp.net/threads/deadskullzjrs-nds-i-cheat-databases.488711/
into one usrcheat file, and then deleted duplicate game ID entries. I can see all the cheats for the games except metroid prime hunters. For that game, only the CPad Patch cheat shows up, but the rest won't. Not sure why, I even put it in a folder like that game's other codes, but it still just showed up alone without the folder. I attached what I was using, do you get the same issue? I'm using a N3DSXL btw.
Thx!

 

[Kitsune_sempai]

I tried to invert the L/R in metroid prime hunter so I used 3DS-NDS Key Remapper and created a code only inverting L/R and upon adding it to you cpad patch it crashed the game when loading my save file.

The code generated by the remapper seems to be very long only to invert two input, would that be the problem?

 

[shoco]

I can see all the cheats for the games except metroid prime hunters. For that game, only the CPad Patch cheat shows up, but the rest won't. Not sure why, I even put it in a folder like that game's other codes, but it still just showed up alone without the folder. I attached what I was using, do you get the same issue? I'm using a N3DSXL btw.

It works for me (if I understand you correctly). I see a bunch of folders in TwilightMenu, including one with my patch. I can enable my patch as well as some others and everything seems fine. Maybe updating nds-bootstrap and twilightmenu would help? Or there is a maximum size restriction (in your TwilightMenu theme) or something

I tried to invert the L/R in metroid prime hunter so I used 3DS-NDS Key Remapper and created a code only inverting L/R and upon adding it to you cpad patch it crashed the game when loading my save file.

The code generated by the remapper seems to be very long only to invert two input, would that be the problem?

No, it's just a weird bug. The code is big because it does a lot of things (almost the same things as the usual cpad patches), the remapping table is just a small part of it.
Can you try the remapper again? I think I've fixed it. Also don't forget to unmap the Cpad there (not exactly important, but my cpad patch expects it for this game). And thanks for testing

 

[Kitsune_sempai]

It works for me (if I understand you correctly). I see a bunch of folders in TwilightMenu, including one with my patch. I can enable my patch as well as some others and everything seems fine. Maybe updating nds-bootstrap and twilightmenu would help? Or there is a maximum size restriction (in your TwilightMenu theme) or something



No, it's just a weird bug. The code is big because it does a lot of things (almost the same things as the usual cpad patches), the remapping table is just a small part of it.
Can you try the remapper again? I think I've fixed it. Also don't forget to unmap the Cpad there (not exactly important, but my cpad patch expects it for this game). And thanks for testing

Woah absolutely amazing, it just works now!

Thanks for your help and I gotta say that patch blows my mind, motion on a DS game and responsive to boot.

Thank you for your fast response and amazing work

 

[Smoker1]

For SM64 DS, I am just getting a White Screen on my 3DS. Using a SuperCard DSTwo on my N3DS XL with Luma Sys 11.14.0-46E

 

[Cragdore]

It works for me (if I understand you correctly). I see a bunch of folders in TwilightMenu, including one with my patch. I can enable my patch as well as some others and everything seems fine. Maybe updating nds-bootstrap and twilightmenu would help? Or there is a maximum size restriction (in your TwilightMenu theme) or something



No, it's just a weird bug. The code is big because it does a lot of things (almost the same things as the usual cpad patches), the remapping table is just a small part of it.
Can you try the remapper again? I think I've fixed it. Also don't forget to unmap the Cpad there (not exactly important, but my cpad patch expects it for this game). And thanks for testing

I should have included pics, my bad. Here is SM64DS, works fine all codes show up including yours:

Metroid Prime Hunters though, only shows your code and suppresses the others:

Both codes are in there, turns our putting yours in a folder didn't help afterall :/ (did the same with Rev 1 codes too)

Hope that makes it more clear, im out of ideas...

 

[shoco]

For SM64 DS, I am just getting a White Screen on my 3DS. Using a SuperCard DSTwo on my N3DS XL with Luma Sys 11.14.0-46E

Unfortunately, I've never used any cards and don't really know how they work, how they differ from the regular way of starting a game rom in TwilightMenu, and if my patches even work with them at all. Could you try some game with one of my patches directly from TwilightMenu without a card? Just to make sure that the problem is not in the incorrectly patched TwlBg or something mundane like this

I should have included pics, my bad. Here is SM64DS, works fine all codes show up including yours......

I don't know about other rom versions, but the version "USA (Rev 1)" appears twice in your cheat database. Maybe try removing the duplicate and see if that helps? I assume that in the case of duplicates TwilightMenu would just show cheats for the first entry, ignoring the rest. Except for this duplicate, the cheats work fine for me (just like on your first sm64ds photo)

The name of the duplicate is "!AMHE-187B29B5" (you can search for it in r4cce). Also, you probably already know this, but r4cce can find duplicates if you give it a rom. There is a button for this.

 

[Smoker1]

I know I have the DS+ Twilight, so no idea of loading a DS Game from another way

 

[shoco]

I know I have the DS+ Twilight, so no idea of loading a DS Game from another way

Okay, I probably can't help you there. I don't remember if I've ever gotten just a white screen when starting this game. When you get this white screen problem, you can still exit the game by pressing the Home button, right? i.e. the patch doesn't completely crash your console?

Anyway, it's not much, but there are only two possible things to blame that I can think of. It's either cheats simply don't work or improperly selected (wrong version), or the TwlBg is not patched. For the first, you could try the delta patch made by DeadSkullzJr on the previous page . And for the second, do Sono's patches in TWPatcher work for you at all (like widescreen mods, for example)?

By the way, what is "DS+ Twilight"?

 

[Cragdore]

Unfortunately, I've never used any cards and don't really know how they work, how they differ from the regular way of starting a game rom in TwilightMenu, and if my patches even work with them at all. Could you try some game with one of my patches directly from TwilightMenu without a card? Just to make sure that the problem is not in the incorrectly patched TwlBg or something mundane like this


I don't know about other rom versions, but the version "USA (Rev 1)" appears twice in your cheat database. Maybe try removing the duplicate and see if that helps? I assume that in the case of duplicates TwilightMenu would just show cheats for the first entry, ignoring the rest. Except for this duplicate, the cheats work fine for me (just like on your first sm64ds photo)

The name of the duplicate is "!AMHE-187B29B5" (you can search for it in r4cce). Also, you probably already know this, but r4cce can find duplicates if you give it a rom. There is a button for this.

Fixed it, missed some duplicates. Attached is the final, working combined version of
@DeadSkullzJr 's NDS(i) Cheat Databases
https://gbatemp.net/threads/deadskullzjrs-nds-i-cheat-databases.488711/
and
@shoco 's Circle Pad patches for Super Mario 64 DS and other games (in TwilightMenu with TWPatcher and RTCom)
for anyone who wants it. Thank you both!

 

[Feffe]

@shoco Do you think it is possible to enable the gyroscope on AGB_FIRM for WarioWare Twisted?

I assume these patches work with NDS Bootstrap rather than with TWL_FIRM directly.