This is a followup on my footers thread, I have succeeded in getting back the original colors instead of the washed out/dark/mute colors every GBA VC has.

It's actually quite simple; every string of numbers that go like this: 00 00 00 00 00 00 in blocks of six are now changed to blocks of three until you reach FF FF FF.

I have already gone through the trouble of writing all the values out in a separate file ORIGINAL.bin
Simply go through the process of making a footer, open it in a hex editor and open original.bin as well, select everything in it and copy it to the footer starting at offset 0x24.

Should look like this:

Spoiler

Ideally the GBA footer generator should get updated with this option to avoid hex editing and name the other settings something more accurate than "Memory Config".

Comparison shots

Spoiler

Bonus: Remove or add more ghosting/blur
Edit byte at offset 0x20

0xFF/255 = No blurring/ghosting
0xF0/240 = Very little ghosting
0xC0/192 = Official value, standard ghosting
0x80/128 = Official value, more ghosting, highly noticeable
0x20/32 = Insane ghosting
0x01 = MAX

 

[zekepliskin]

Also a huge number of gba games are ports from other systems, and their gba colors are actually the incorrect colors

Most notably (for me) Donkey Kong Country. Serious sacrifice of colour palette. The Super Mario Advance titles don't suffer too badly in terms of colours, but the Super Mario World port you can tell it was made for the SNESs nearly square aspect ratio not the GBAs nearly widescreen ratio due to the tilt and scan effect that the original games didn't have and the squashed HUD elements.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Okay, dunno if I did this wrong, but I tried this on Shining Soul II, and while it did actually get brighter, it also screwed with the colors a good bit, as if someone dialed the contrast and sharpness to 11.

 

[CeeDee]

Okay, dunno if I did this wrong, but I tried this on Shining Soul II, and while it did actually get brighter, it also screwed with the colors a good bit, as if someone dialed the contrast and sharpness to 11.

Compare it to the same game running in an emulator.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Compare it to the same game running in an emulator.

No, I mean it actually caused incorrect colors. I've run that game in an emulator and played my cartridge of it enough to instantly see that it was not functioning properly.

 

[SuperrSonic]

@Arecaidian Fox Please post the footer.

 

[SuperrSonic]

Duplicate post

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Duplicate post

Uhhhhh... Looks like I deleted it and cleaned my recycle bin already XD . I still have the .CIA I made, though. Can the footer be taken from that?

 

[SuperrSonic]

You can use ctrtool but for the sake of simplicity use the hacking toolkit, select the cia option, open the extracted code.bin in a hex editor and extract the footer from there. I think it would be faster to just make the cia again.

 

[piratesephiroth]

Here's a modified footer generator, so you don't have to hex edit anything:

Outputs footers with the proper color settings and has settings for ghosting (a quick hack)

https://files.catbox.moe/nssads.zip

And here's a pack to fix your old CIAs. Drag and drop them on top of the bat file and new ones will be created in the FIXED_CIAs sub folder.

https://files.catbox.moe/n2gr4m.zip

 

[SuperrSonic]

Is there a way to reduce/remove the ghosting effect most fast-paced games seem to suffer from?

I just figured it out, it was actually a lot easier to find than I initially thought. It's the byte at 0x20, changing it to whatever should work, high values are less, low values are more ghosting. Setting it to 0xFF removes it completely.

It became pretty obvious when I tried Super Mario World(my first eeprom inject), the footer tool selects value 0x80 (lots of ghosting) because it's an eeprom game, because officially Yoshi's Island(also eeprom) had this value, but in reality Nintendo sets the amount on a per game level which is why it's set on the footer and not the firm; in other words it has nothing to do with saves, and the 3dbrew page is wrong.

I have added this info to the op and some examples.

 

[piratesephiroth]

I just figured it out, it was actually a lot easier to find than I initially thought. It's the byte at 0x20, changing it to whatever should work, high values are less, low values are more ghosting. Setting it to 0xFF removes it completely.

It became pretty obvious when I tried Super Mario World(my first eeprom inject), the footer tool selects value 0x80 (lots of ghosting) because it's an eeprom game, because officially Yoshi's Island(also eeprom) had this value, but in reality Nintendo sets the amount on a per game level which is why it's set on the footer and not the firm; in other words it has nothing to do with saves, and the 3dbrew page is wrong.

I have added this info to the op and some examples.

So the "Save Chip Manufacturer" is actually the ghosting configuration...

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

I just figured it out, it was actually a lot easier to find than I initially thought. It's the byte at 0x20, changing it to whatever should work, high values are less, low values are more ghosting. Setting it to 0xFF removes it completely.

It became pretty obvious when I tried Super Mario World(my first eeprom inject), the footer tool selects value 0x80 (lots of ghosting) because it's an eeprom game, because officially Yoshi's Island(also eeprom) had this value, but in reality Nintendo sets the amount on a per game level which is why it's set on the footer and not the firm; in other words it has nothing to do with saves, and the 3dbrew page is wrong.

I have added this info to the op and some examples.

Okay, I apologize in advance for the super n00b thing that's about to happen here, but I've never had much reason to do hex editing. So, to double-check myself, byte 0x20 would the the following, correct?

 

[SuperrSonic]

Yes, that's right.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Yes, that's right.

Okay, thanks

 

[piratesephiroth]

Update my modified footer generator, changed the save chip manufacter into ghosting settings

 

[Feffe]

Update my modified footer generator, changed the save chip manufacter into ghosting settings

Thank you! That's so useful! Could you add an option to enable/disable the dark layer? Some games were created with the dark screen of the original GBA in mind (e.g. the second Castlevania)

 

[Yuuyuun]

[...]

Thank you so much for your findings! I hated how dark the screen was when playing gba games, and damn the ghosting effect too, it gives me headaches after while.

Update my modified footer generator, changed the save chip manufacter into ghosting settings

Thank you for compiling the tool! I've tested it with some games and had no problems.

 

[CeeDee]

Is there any way to patch this to already installed GBA CIAs?

 

[Stack3r]

Is there any way to patch this to already installed GBA CIAs?

I also want to know this

 

[piratesephiroth]

Is there any way to patch this to already installed GBA CIAs?

I also want to know this

Nope. You must rebuild the CIAs and reinstall.

 

[CeeDee]

Nope. You must rebuild the CIAs and reinstall.

What about editing (via hex, decompiling, etc) already compiled CIAs to change it?