Hacking Rominator for NDS

[hankchill]

Rominator v1.0.6 is NOW available

Newest additions include:
• Added multiple renaming options -- You can now choose to include the rom number, country code, or release group in the name
• Added .sav association. Rominator will automatically backup or restore your save files
• Added a Missing Box Art menu. It's just so you can see what is missing and help contribute to the database

Here's how the Sav Association works:
When you select a game, there will be a circle below the 'Flash It' button. If the circle is RED, then there is no save for this game available. If it's GREEN, then there is a save file associated. If it's RED and you want to associate a .sav to the game, just click the circle. It'll ask you for a save file. Pick your save and it'll automatically get backed up to Rominator's Data and associated with that rom.

Another way to associate a save file is by Deleting a game off of your Flash drive through Rominator. It will automatically back up any associated .sav to the game you've deleted.

When you have a save file associated to a ROM, if you flash the game then it will automatically write your backup up save file to the card.

If you want to change a .sav association, then in the File menu, go to 'Save Manager'. This will let you associate your save files with different games, as well as delete any saves you already have backup up.

The Missing Box Art menu is under the 'Help' menu. If you can contribute any box art that I don't have, then please use this and follow the instructions. I've just added about 80 more box arts, so please update your databases with the 'Check for Updates' option if you are already running Rominator.

You know where to get it... and if not, just go to the start of this thread

Regards,
--Henry

 

[Sekkyumu]

Really nice work but... it doesn't even launch on my macbook Core Duo

 

[hankchill]

Really nice work but... it doesn't even launch on my macbook Core Duo

That's strange, because it was designed on a MacBook Pro

It's possible that what you're using to uncompress it is messing it up. Someone else had the same issue. It is in fact a Universal Binary.

--Henry

 

[Sekkyumu]

Really nice work but... it doesn't even launch on my macbook Core Duo

That's strange, because it was designed on a MacBook Pro

It's possible that what you're using to uncompress it is messing it up. Someone else had the same issue. It is in fact a Universal Binary.

--Henry

Weird. Just used Stuffit and now it works... thanks

.

 

[hankchill]

Really nice work but... it doesn't even launch on my macbook Core Duo

That's strange, because it was designed on a MacBook Pro

It's possible that what you're using to uncompress it is messing it up. Someone else had the same issue. It is in fact a Universal Binary.

--Henry

Weird. Just used Stuffit and now it works... thanks

.

Like I said, some unzippers don't extract the App correctly.

And yes, Stuffit will do the trick for anyone else who has the issue

Let me know what you think of it, or what I can do to improve on it.

Regards.

 

[Sekkyumu]

Like I said, some unzippers don't extract the App correctly.

And yes, Stuffit will do the trick for anyone else who has the issue

Let me know what you think of it, or what I can do to improve on it.

Regards.

Sure thing !!!

 

[Arkansaw]

Which dat file is this program using?
Would be even better if it can work with GBA

 

[hankchill]

Which dat file is this program using?
Would be even better if it can work with GBA

It doesn't use any DAT files. It uses my own database, which is an SQL database. And it only recognizes released, clean roms. Not nukes, demos, homebrews, betas, etc. Mind you, you can still use them, but you just can't get the program to rename them.

And it won't do GameBoy Advance. Ever. I designed it to be for Nintendo DS, and Nintendo DS only. Gameboy Advance is so yesterday

Regards.

 

[Arkansaw]

Ah, I hate proprietary products lol
but it's good, no harm done really

 

[Arm73]

Outstanding job !
Really, it's getting there...
But I'd like to point out a few minor things that you should consider to fix:

As of version 1.06, and by the way I'm using XP, not a mac, so probably some things are different:

• If the application window is positioned too low on the screen, when you bring up the Settings menu the 'OK' button is not visible and the application won't scroll up and down to reach it, making it impossible to exit the setting menu.
• When dragging an .nds file from the rominator data games folder, an error comes up saying that it's possible that my game directory does not exist anymore, it should simply over write it.
  Also by doing so one file got accidentally deleted, living me with a file name.nds of a 0Kb size.
• There is no way to find out where the default games folder is, it's not in the help and it's not visible on the settings window.
  It should at list display the full path in the settings, instead of just saying ' default', or you could right click on a game file and be able to open the game folder. Ihad to perform a computer search to find out where the games were stored !
  Also the various settings and files associated with rominators, probably would be better off in a subdirectory of the main application, instead of the generic application data in Window's documents and settings folder, this way one could easily edit it.
• Some games( the ones that miss the box art) display the wrong box art,shouldn't they display nothing ?
• It would also be nice to be able to decide which character would be placed between rom number and name when renaming, for example having just an empty space or a "-" or a " - " or a "_" for example.

I also had a couple of minor glitches when moving and renaming a few roms , and at one point rominator wouldn't let me modify the game's file name anymore, saying that a file with the same name already existed, but I wasn't able to replicate it again.
Well those are a few suggestions, that should make the application more 'solid' , but as it is , is still a great effort

 

[redx113]

Just wanted to say many thanks for making this application. I had many roms with the scene names and I would have to open the nfo to find out what game it was. Your app came to the rescue big time with organizing.

Thanks and keep up the great work!

 

[hankchill]

Outstanding job !
Really, it's getting there...
But I'd like to point out a few minor things that you should consider to fix:

As of version 1.06, and by the way I'm using XP, not a mac, so probably some things are different:

• If the application window is positioned too low on the screen, when you bring up the Settings menu the 'OK' button is not visible and the application won't scroll up and down to reach it, making it impossible to exit the setting menu.
  
  
  
• When dragging an .nds file from the rominator data games folder, an error comes up saying that it's possible that my game directory does not exist anymore, it should simply over write it.
  Also by doing so one file got accidentally deleted, living me with a file name.nds of a 0Kb size.
  
  
  
• There is no way to find out where the default games folder is, it's not in the help and it's not visible on the settings window.
  It should at list display the full path in the settings, instead of just saying ' default', or you could right click on a game file and be able to open the game folder. Ihad to perform a computer search to find out where the games were stored !
  Also the various settings and files associated with rominators, probably would be better off in a subdirectory of the main application, instead of the generic application data in Window's documents and settings folder, this way one could easily edit it.
  
  
• Some games( the ones that miss the box art) display the wrong box art,shouldn't they display nothing ?
  
  
• It would also be nice to be able to decide which character would be placed between rom number and name when renaming, for example having just an empty space or a "-" or a " - " or a "_" for example.

I also had a couple of minor glitches when moving and renaming a few roms , and at one point rominator wouldn't let me modify the game's file name anymore, saying that a file with the same name already existed, but I wasn't able to replicate it again.
Well those are a few suggestions, that should make the application more 'solid' , but as it is , is still a great effort

• In regards to the Settings window being non-closable, just press the 'Enter' key. Done

I'll fix it though if it's positoned too low, to adjust itself accordingly.

• You shouldn't have to drag any games from the Rominator Data Games folder. If you have the Games folder set as Default, then it'll read from that folder. I need you to be more precise though on how you created this error.

• I didn't want people to have *direct* access to the Data folder. I originally had it inside of the Rominator folder, but it kept causing too many problems because people were deleting things and complaining, so I just store it inside their Local Settings folder. As of right now, there's no documentation, but very shortly there will be.

• Games that do not have Box Art should display a box that says 'No Box Art Available'. I've never had an issue with this, both Mac and PC alike. What happens sometimes if a game does have a box art, it'll try and connect to the internet to download it and just ends up hanging on the previous box for the game you were looking at.

• I'll definitely take into consideration the number and name separator character. Maybe I should make static choices so that the user can't muck it up with special characters. What separators would there be besides Space, Hyphen, and Underscore that people would use?

Just for a heads up as well, Rominator v2.0 will be released possibly tomorrow, and there are a bunch of new features:
• Reorganized the Layout (yet again!) -- Cleaner and simpler
• Multiple themes are now available
• No more 'Games', 'Trimmed', 'Flash', and 'Favourites'. It's now been replaced with your own User-Made lists!
• Smart-List feature -- Filter the smart list with only the attributes you want (example: Roms larger than 32MB that have 'Mario' in the title, from 'USA' only)
• Drag & Drop your games from the list onto another list or your Flash card
• Small bug fixes
• Fast-Find -- find the game name you want as-you-type

Regards,
--Henry

Edit: I just added the feature to change the Name Separator. They are available as follows:
Spaced Hyphen ( - )
Hyphen (-)
Underscore (_)
Space ( )

Edit #2:
Sorry folks, looks like the release'll take longer than expected. It works perfectly in Mac OS X, but unfortunately does not work at all correctly in Windows XP. Windows XP does not double-buffer the window, so when you drag and drop a rom, you can't see the progress. Also, I found that with some games not all of the game information shows correctly, and with the box arts, sometimes doesn't show anything at all.

And the big kicker, is that Windows will not allow the Drag & Drop onto the lists. This is an essential part of the software and I cannot release it until I can find a workaround. It may be a possible bug in the IDE I'm using, I'll have to find out.

Maybe I'll release the Mac version early and work on it until I can get Windows operation up to snuff.

Regards.

 

[hankchill]

Looks like I underestimated myself; I kicked the bugs' asses

The drag & drop from the game list to another list has been corrected.
So has the Double Buffering issue when dragging roms onto Rominator. Now instead of a blank screen on Windows XP, you'll actually see the progress in the Message Bar.

Without any further adieu, I present Rominator v2.0

You know where to get it

Regards.

EDIT: Whoops, found a couple buggeroos

Got 'em fixed, now we're at 2.0.1. Huzzah.

 

[mr_blonde_88]

one thing, when assosiating saves;

a: its a pain in the arse doing it one at a time, cant you have an option to say where the saves are at and then link the .nds files with the .sav files with the same name?

b: if you can't do that, at least when we select the saves, allow us to say 'the files of type' otherwise we get every file in the flashcard directory and its a pain


awesome app thou

 

[hankchill]

Well, how many games do you really need to associate saves with?

Plus, when you delete the game off of the flash card, the save is automatically associated with the game you deleted, and gets backed up.

Regards.

 

[mr_blonde_88]

well i had to assosiate 48, so....

a fair few
lol

 

[hankchill]

Allright, I'll add a feature to choose a folder for Save Association, it'll scan through it and copy all of the save games into Rominator's Save Folder.

But for now, thanks to hack777 for discovering a bug with displaying a couple games, namely 0107 - Tak - The Great Juju Challenge (U)

The bug has been fixed

I didn't do a version update since it's not a big enough update for a version update, so it still stands at 2.0.1

Regards.

 

[mr_blonde_88]

i dunno if its the program of my pc refreshing

but Children Of Mana & Magical Starsign's ICON are mixed up...

 

[hankchill]

i dunno if its the program of my pc refreshing

but Children Of Mana & Magical Starsign's ICON are mixed up...

I'll take a peek into that. I may have had them mixed up by accident. Currently it's loading from a database so a mixup is possible. Hopefully soon I can have it read the icons, thanks to the help of FAST6191 *Gives FAST a cookie

*

Regards.

 

[FAST6191]

woot a cookie, I have been following the progress of this but have not had time to play around with it since the first versions you posted. I need to actually sort this machine out though so consider it added.

Feature request: could you have an option to output names of roms owned, missing, in total and results of a search to a text file please? even better if you can give the option for a mask to add in size, saves, release group etc.