Homebrew Lameboy supergameboy not working

[caribou007]

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I do have SGB mode turned on. The games still appear in black and white.

 

[iSubaru]

Hmm, I don't remember Lameboy very well, if there is something like "automatic" try turning it on, also some games maybe SHOULD be black-and-white?
For example if You would put on Pokemon Red to GB it will be black-and-white, however if You will put it into GBC it will gain some colors (one of 16 palettes)
Maybe post the title of the game You are trying to play and we will be able to investigate it more or less

 

[caribou007]

I believe Star Trek should have colour when played using a Super Game Boy, because I saw pictures of it in colour on an IGN feature of the best Game Boy games. I'll try testing some other games later, but I'm not sure if I saw any .gb games being converted to the Super Game Boy colour palette, only the .gbc games play in colour. I guess I could try changing the file extension from .gb to .gbc...

 

[DanTheManMS]

I just got out my DS and tested with Lameboy v0.11 since that's the latest version I have on my card. My test game was Azure Dreams, which is an interesting game in that it works in regular GB mode but also has a Super Gameboy border as well as full GBC colors. I could get it working in all three modes in Lameboy by changing the two appropriate settings before launching the game. Here's what I got.

SGB off and GBC "never": no border, black and white
SGB on and GBC "never" or "as needed": SGB border with limited 4-color palette (though I don't know if it's the standard SGB palette #1 or if it's a custom one included in the game)
SGB on/off and GBC "always": no border, full GBC colors

The only combination I could not get was to have the SGB border with GBC colors, which is an option I don't believe Lameboy supports (or if it does, it only does so in v0.12).

So I'm not entirely sure what the issue is for you. If it helps, all of my games end in .gbc and not .gb. The only other game I tested was Pokemon Red, but that too has a custom SGB border. Perhaps SGB mode only applies on Lameboy if the game was designed for it? I don't know if Star Trek was or not. It's likely that IGN took that screenshot from a GBC, which applies its own colors based on a hard list of games included on its BIOS. Lameboy does not emulate the GBC colorings of GB games in that way, because at the time when Lameboy was made, it was believed that the BIOS could not be dumped (it later was successfully dumped).

EDIT: According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Super_Game_Boy_games#S only "Star Trek Generations: Beyond the Nexus" had SGB enhancements. As there was at least one other Gameboy Star Trek game, I don't know if this was the game you tried.

 

[caribou007]

Hopefully someday there will be a Lameboy that includes the colour palettes which were used by the GBC BIOS (shouldn't it be 'firmware' instead of 'BIOS'?). In the meantime it appears the best way to run Game Boy games in colour is to use Goomba Color for the Game Boy Advance.

 

[DanTheManMS]

No, definitely the BIOS, though to my knowledge it functions similarly to a firmware. The BIOS is the "Game Boy" ding you get when first booting. The GBC and GBA show the BIOS at the beginning, while for the DS and beyond "firmware" is the more appropriate word. Surely the DS does have a BIOS, but it's not really visible to the user before launching the firmware.

Keep in mind that lots of what I said up in that post was speculation. I don't know for sure if SGB mode only works for SGB-enabled games in Lameboy, though if that is true then I can see why you're saying Goomba Color would be better for that purpose.

 

[iSubaru]

The "colors" for GB games in GBC is more like "let's change black to green and leave rest as it is"
It's still sort of black-and-white with just control to pick what is "black" and what is "white"
They do not get more colors because there is no information about it, unless GB games would use more than one grayscale "black" then we may get a little more colors
I haven't played GB games in a while, also I have Palm T|X which can emulate those games so no suprise I wasn't on DS for GB emulation from a long time

 

[LeRodeur]

if I remember well there are .ini file that tells which color to use, there were a contest on player advance forum a long time ago so you should find something there

 

[DanTheManMS]

...but that's not the point of this thread!

caribou007 just wants some color for his regular old GB games. That's what the SGB did, with 16 possible 4-color palettes to replace the 4 shades of gray of the original GB. He was asking if Lameboy could do that for at least one of those 16 palettes. Goomba Color can do it for 4 of the 16 palettes.

I feel like there's a communication gap between pretty much all responses to this thread, including my own.

EDIT: maybe 12, not 16 possible SGB palettes. I'm not going to drag out my SNES and SGB to make sure. The point still remains.

 

[DanTheManMS]

Though that does remind me, why on Earth don't I have "Revenge of the Gator" on my DS as a test experiment? I played the hell out of that game when my neighbors sold it to me alongside the Super Game Boy, so you'd think I'd have some good knowledge of it on the whole "SGB vs GBC/GBA" thing. *checks emulator folder* Okay, so it's on my computer, and has been for ages, so why isn't it on my DS? *mindboggle*

(though I will say, it's a fun pinball game. Definitely worth a shot if you're looking for something before Pokemon Pinball came out)

(also, avoid the hell out of Battle Bull. This was also sold to me with the Super Game Boy and it sucked balls. And the GB version of "Home Alone 2") EDIT: ...on second thought, most of the people who will read this message will have no idea what "Home Alone" even is, so this warning is useless. God I feel old.

 

[iSubaru]

most of the people who will read this message will have no idea what "Home Alone"

I believe that would be about Kevin being alone in the home because [spoilers]

EDIT: maybe 12, not 16 possible SGB palettes. I'm not going to drag out my SNES and SGB to make sure. The point still remains.

I still think 16 but I may be wrong

 

[caribou007]

DanTheManMS, I noticed you are admin on PocketHeaven forums, cool, maybe you can tell me then, what is the deal with Goomba Paletted and the GBC BIOS palettes? It has about 8 palettes which seem to be custom designed for specific games, such as Donkey Kong Land. Are those 8 or so palettes the only ones that are in the GBC BIOS, other than the generic GBC 1, GBC 2, etc? I expected the GBC BIOS to have specific palette support more games.

 

[Deleted-236924]

I believe Gooma Color does not support GBC Bios.
On the other hand, BGB is pretty much the only emulator that I know supports both dmg_bios and gbc_bios

 

[caribou007]

Oh god.. I'm just a noob, I have no idea what to use...

 

[DanTheManMS]

I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea. I've never used anything palette-related with Goomba Color. Sorry man.

 

[caribou007]

It's alright, I'll just try out BGB and see if there's any more palettes for it. If no one knows how many palettes the GBC BIOS had, I'll google it eventually, I just don't have time today to make the search through old forum topics, etc...

 

[Deleted-236924]

It had 12.

There were some other pallettes that were used only on specific games (I'm looking at you, Super Mario Land.)
Note that the blue-background/red-sprites pallette that is obtained by pressing left at the Gameboy logo is slightly different than the one that is automatically applied when playing Pokémon Blue.

 

[caribou007]

That's what I want to know about- the palettes for specific games. Goomba Paletted comes with palettes for about 8 games. Is that all the GBC BIOS had?

 

[caribou007]

I believe Gooma Color does not support GBC Bios.
On the other hand, BGB is pretty much the only emulator that I know supports both dmg_bios and gbc_bios

Seems like BGB is a Windows program, I was looking for one for NDS/GBA.