Emulation PocketNES, Goomba, Cologne, and SMSAdvance sram and exit patched *UPDATED

[Krem Quay]

Is there any possibility that the emulators will be improved a bit more? Just wondering.

 

[kuwanger]

AFAIK, Dwedit is the only one still working on any of the emulators still. Maybe FluBBa is? Hard to tell since he started making per arcade game emulators (which is some serious dedication) with a few infrequent updates. But that was literally years ago (again, AFAIK). I know that personally the only thing I was seriously interested in fixing was "The Smurfs" on Goomba Paletted (my fork), but after an extension amount of testing, I never really got anywhere, so I gave up. *sigh* Honestly, as much as I'm still seriously impressed with all the emulators for the GBA, I've basically moved on to using the 3DS. I still like my GB Player, though.

 

[Krem Quay]

Yeah I mostly moved on to 3DS as well. I don't think dwedit is that interested in GBA development anymore since I told about buggy graphics on DK Country for GBC in April, which he never got to fixing.

 

[kuwanger]

All I know is that on his own forum, he said development is not officially dead so long as he still has bug reports/issues. Whether that amounts to achieving much? It's hard to say since trying to fix GBC graphics on the GBA is really hard. I'm amazingly impressed running a ~2MIPs (optimally, IIRC) GBC emulator on a ~16.7MIPs (again, optimally, IIRC) GBA. Especially since a lot of games are timing dependent for stuff. Or they might use so much VRAM to leave none for the emulator's needs. Or whatever. *shrug*

 

[Krem Quay]

Yeah 3DS is generally the go-to point for emulation these days. I'm thinking about all the unsupported mappers with PocketNES as well--it's surprising how many have like just gave up on the good 'ol GBA. I kinda have a certain feeling from when I game on the GBA, know what I mean?

 

[DanTheManMS]

There are a few PocketNES font hacks that used to be hosted by PocketHeaven before it died. He re-uploaded a few of them here, I especially like the Zelda ones.

https://www.romhacking.net/community/2398/

 

[nibbles27]

So in conclusion to the questions on the 2.0 firmware it seems that is exactly what was going on repatching the header of these telling it to use 8kb's of save space.

EZ team have updated the patch system to generate the patch data on the card in the PATCH directory i believe to avoid longer load times.

I have looked into trying to edit the patch data and didn't get anywhere with that
i was thinking that the only way was for them to add a feature for skipping the patch process.

But seems someone has gotten SMSAdvance's .pat data to work
https://gbatemp.net/threads/ez-flas...-no-more-patching.473577/page-10#post-7577469
(Though this seems to tedious all these steps)

I will look into this further!!

 

[nibbles27]

There are a few PocketNES font hacks that used to be hosted by PocketHeaven before it died. He re-uploaded a few of them here, I especially like the Zelda ones.

https://www.romhacking.net/community/2398/

Thanks i wasn't tp sure where some of those originated.

 

[nibbles27]

So i figured out the EZ .pat data isn't so complex after all!
You should have GSS disabled *updated GSS no longer breaks this! (This was breaking it every time) (See KEYSET.CFG)

I do not own any 64kb saving games but a user at dwedit’s site was able to hex edit in part of the patch data of Mother 3 a 64kb saving game

I think I have it figured out. I was messing around with some values in the Mother 3 patch (A game that I know saves games with the full 64KB), and I copied the header from that patch file to one of the Goomba Color patches. It worked! It now saves the full 64KB instead of the 8KB and the saving problems are gone.

So here it is .pat file to be put in /PATCH/ directory renamed.
As far as i have tested it it just works with any of these EMU's ignoring the 8kb's patch processes and leaving the save type to be 64kb's.
Just rename to whatever your EMU compilation is. (Tested with all these exit patched ones)

(Thanks to Shinrai for providing the correct values)

Problem solved. (I believe)

 

[nibbles27]

Oh also to disable GSS - Global Softreset and Sleep Patch

Change this line in KEYSET.CFG:
DISABLE_GSS = 1 (From 0 - 1)

Or if you prefer GSS here is a list of exclusions for these (Add the following to the bottom of the file):
#GAMELIST TO SKIP GSS AUTOMATICALLY
COLG = 1
GMBC = 1
GMBA = 1
SMSA = 1
PNES = 1

 

[nibbles27]

Here is a brief rundown for 2.0 firmware

1. Extract Files
2. Copy appropriate emu (.gba) to appropriate menu maker folder.
3. Make compilation with the Menu tool

Then rename both the compilation and the *.pat file to the same name then copy *.gba compilation to card and *.pat file to the /PATCH/ directory.

Optional to disable GSS
(Though these emu’s have this built in so I would)

 

[nibbles27]

I felt like this was post was sacring people away from the EZ4 by making it look too incompatible I took down the topic post and left one simple step.
Plus i would like to depreciate people using this pack as a solution to all problems when all i mostly did was a couple of patches with the tools included.
If your still interested here is the old post.


Old 1.x Firmware Stuff

EZ-Flash 4 SRAM & Exit Patched *Updated

8-29-16
Updated collection of Loopy/FluBBa/Dwedit emulators, sram and exit patched for the EZ-Flash 4.

* Don't use the EZ Flash client to patch an included emulator or a resulting emulator+rom
compilation. A major point of this collection is to avoid having to constantly patch.

* Exit patching was manually done so that the L+R Exit menu option would function in all
emulators. To be very clear, the exit patch does *not* enable L+U+A+B. Nor does it
attempt to apply a Start+Select+A+B reset patch. It is meant solely to allow the Exit
menu option to function properly.

NEW Notes
---------

* Exit patching came included in newer versions of emu's / others used reset_ez4 files.
* SRAM patching was done through cory1492's v2 patcher (EZ4-64-2)
* gbata7 was used to fix the rom header (emu's crashed on some firmwares without fix)

Included Files
--------------

* Updated Emulators sram and exit patched in following folders

/cologne08/ Cologne v0.8, sram and exit patched & fixed header
/goombapaletted240/ Goomba Paletted v2.40 (Kuwanger's Fork), patched & fixed header
/goombacolor2014/ Goomba Color 12-14-2014, patched & fixed header
/pocketnes2013/ PocketNES 7-1-2013 (Dwedit's Fork), patched & fixed header
/smsadvance250/ SMSAdvance v2.5, sram and exit patched & fixed header

*.sav Empty 64K save files, to be copied and rename into /saver/ for each .gba file *(No longer need to do this on Firm 2.0)

Spoiler: Included Tools

* Tools folder includes menu makers and tools used for patching emulators for saving

/tools/

CologneBin.zip Cologne Menu Maker
goombafront.zip Goomba/Goomba Color Menu Maker
pnesmmw12a.zip PocketNES Menu Maker
SMSAdvanceBin.zip SMSAdvance Menu Maker

EZ4-64-2.zip cory1492's v2 EZ-IV SRAM 64k Patcher
gbata7a-en.zip GBA Tool Advance (used to fix headers/ commonly used to remove rom intros)

Spoiler: Included Files From Old Exit Patched

------------------------------------

cologne_compile.py A simple python program to create a .gba file from cologne,
a Coleco bios, and Coleco rom
pocketnes_compile.py A simple python program to create a .gba file from pocketnes and an NES ROM
ggadvance_compile.py A simple python program to create a .gba file from smsadvance and a GG ROM
smsadvance_compile.py A simple python program to create a .gba file from smsadvance and a SMS ROM
reset_ez4.bin Binary to reset into ez4 loader
reset_ez4.s Code to reset into ez4 loader; copies itself into ewram before running
reset_ez4-2.bin Binary to reset into ez4 loader
reset_ez4-2.s Code to reset into ez4 loader; switches from arm to thumb and runs in-place
visoly.s Visoly.s, ripped from an older version of pocketnes

 

[Krem Quay]

Wouldn't this thread be outdated in any case, seeing as the EZ Flash Omega has released?

 

[kuwanger]

One, people still have/use the EZ4. Two, if you're wanting to use a different version of the emulators than the ones included or ones that simply aren't included with the EZ Omea, you'll want to use these. For example, I still use compilation for all my non-Gameboy Color games. And a few Gameboy Color games are glitchy with the latest version of Goomba Color, so I use the older 2013 version.

 

[korkri]

I can't get the GBC to save even though I followed the procedure. I have some GBA games that where previsouly patch on the card though. Should I erase those?

 

[nibbles27]

I can't get the GBC to save even though I followed the procedure. I have some GBA games that where previsouly patch on the card though. Should I erase those?

As far as I tested it was working did you extract the .pat file from the emupatch.pat.zip file then rename and move the resulting .pat file to the /PATCH/ folder. Sorry but you can not upload that type of file to gbatemp so it is compressed. You also should not need to delete other .pat files but the renamed file needs to match the spelling (upper case , lower case etc.) as the emu compilation and leave the file type at the end

Hence MyGoomba.gba and MyGoomba.pat

What does it look like when you reset it should say saving either 8kb’s like it does with the default .pat file it creates or 64kb’s with the .pat file supplied modified with the Mother 3’s save type.

 

[patters]

Where are the actual exit-patched emulators though? The Sendspace links are dead. Can someone re-upload them perhaps?

 

[patters]

Fortunately I was able to dig up a prior backup of this very page in Web Archive, and thankfully the original download had been scraped:
exit_patched_8-29-16.zip

People really shouldn't put files on external sites like Sendspace, they're way too ephemeral.

 

[patters]

I have updated the collection as follows:

• Added latest Jagoomba 0.4a (1-11-2022) fork of Goomba Color, patched to force 64K SRAM when using EZ-Flash IV firmware 1.xx
• Added Goomba Color 2019-05-04, patched to display the correct release date in the menu, and patched to force 64K SRAM when using EZ-Flash IV firmware 1.xx
• Gathered missing changelog information from Dwedit's forum and updated the Goomba Color history.txt file
• Added the latest PocketNES 1-4-2020, patched to force 64K SRAM when using EZ-Flash IV firmware 1.xx
• Gathered missing changelog information from various sources and updated the PocketNES history.txt file
• Added the documentation and tools that were originally bundled with each emulator - useful reminders of features, especially since some of these emulators are quite difficult to find these days
• Included the emupatch.pat file to force 64K SRAM when using EZ-Flash IV firmware 2.xx
• Updated the main Readme with additional info from this forum thread for EZ-Flash IV firmware 2.xx
• Updated the main Readme with some simple FOR loop examples to automate batch creating .gba files from a folder full of ROMs

 

[patters]

Updated the collection above with Jagoomba 0.4a, and updated the FOR loop examples for batch conversion of ROM collections.