Hacking Longer file names

Baggins

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Is it possible to add longer file name support in a future firmware? Some of the no-intro sets and a few games have very long titles, or include information about the game's language support, or revision number, etc. To to avoid having to rename a bunch of files it would be nice if there was support for longer file names to begin with.
 

BlastedGuy9905

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Hey. I don't exactly know what firmware you mean, but you should try Advanced Renamer. It helps to rename things in bulk and it takes like 20 seconds once you set the options. Hope this helps.
 
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Baggins

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A good example of games where renaming wouldn't be a good idea, are games that have more than one game in them together...

Like the various 4 in one or double pack, etc... The file names gotta kinda list all the games avaiable in the pack.. You can't simply rename them' double pack' because there are many of them with that title that come with two other GBA games.

THen there are games that simply have long names... like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, etc etc...

Or this one...

Crash & Spyro Superpack - Spyro Orange - The Cortex Conspiracy + Crash Bandicoot Purple - Ripto's Rampage (USA).gba
 
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Localhorst86

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A good example of games where renaming wouldn't be a good idea, are games that have more than one game in them together...

Like the various 4 in one or double pack, etc... The file names gotta kinda list all the games avaiable in the pack.. You can't simply rename them' double pack' because there are many of them with that title that come with two other GBA games.

THen there are games that simply have long names... like The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, etc etc...

Or this one...

Crash & Spyro Superpack - Spyro Orange - The Cortex Conspiracy + Crash Bandicoot Purple - Ripto's Rampage (USA).gba
But why bother with the double packs? The games are available as individual roms, why not just use those instead?

I'd recommend not just slapping a full romset on an SD and call it a day, rebuilding a 1G1R set seems like a better approach or even better: only add those titles you are actually going to play.
 
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Baggins

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But why bother with the double packs? The games are available as individual roms, why not just use those instead?

I'd recommend not just slapping a full romset on an SD and call it a day, rebuilding a 1G1R set seems like a better approach or even better: only add those titles you are actually going to play.

It's more for weirdness and testing. They aren't in my main categories... more under 'special' or unique category. They are more there so can mess with the weird variants.

I categorize two ways, under 'series', and under genres... I've spent hours categorizing them... so its not just "having a full rom set and calling it a day"....


I have movie rom sets too, not because intend to actually watch them in that format, LOL, but more out of the novelty of them. But those are in a folder in my special folder too... Also trying to find a complete list of all the games that have 'movie/cartoon/animation clips' built into them...
The games are available as individual roms, why not just use those instead?

You'd be surprised there are a number of them that don't have stand alone games... Like for examples, the three/four in one hasbro/milton bradley board games carts, or Dr. Mario & Puzzle League. There is even a two pack Looney TUnes game that never got seperate releases for each game, and a Matchbox game collection with two games not released individually.
 
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alivebacon

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Is it possible to add longer file name support in a future firmware? Some of the no-intro sets and a few games have very long titles, or include information about the game's language support, or revision number, etc. To to avoid having to rename a bunch of files it would be nice if there was support for longer file names to begin with.
You can use PowerRename to batch rename files. IDK how you'd use it in this context tho
 

FAST6191

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When programming on the GBA there are tradeoffs to everything, and if you are going to want hundreds of ROMS with hundreds of characters (as opposed to the 50 something you have now, up from 8:3 of older eras) you brush up against read speed limits, RAM limits, CPU limits and more all in your kernel that most want to spend as little time as possible looking at.

The ? in one stuff has long been a problem though. Remember having to redo things a lot on the various lists I used to maintain.

On not being released as singles then yeah there were a few that got bundle or nothing type setups. I will say though that there are a few patches out there both to remove the health and safety screens so often seen on them (yeah they appeared in ROMs on the later GBA) and also at least make it so a give game autobooted (might not be a smaller ROM but you did not have to have a flash cart and then another selection). Making autoboot patches is also not the hardest thing in the world most of the time, but enough that you are starting to get your hands dirty in assembly.
 

Baggins

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When programming on the GBA there are tradeoffs to everything, and if you are going to want hundreds of ROMS with hundreds of characters (as opposed to the 50 something you have now, up from 8:3 of older eras) you brush up against read speed limits, RAM limits, CPU limits and more all in your kernel that most want to spend as little time as possible looking at.

The ? in one stuff has long been a problem though. Remember having to redo things a lot on the various lists I used to maintain.

On not being released as singles then yeah there were a few that got bundle or nothing type setups. I will say though that there are a few patches out there both to remove the health and safety screens so often seen on them (yeah they appeared in ROMs on the later GBA) and also at least make it so a give game autobooted (might not be a smaller ROM but you did not have to have a flash cart and then another selection). Making autoboot patches is also not the hardest thing in the world most of the time, but enough that you are starting to get your hands dirty in assembly.

Surprisingly, Everdrive GBA x5, doesn't have any issue with lenght of file names as far as I remember.. It might be my main go to for testing weird multi-collection games anyways... The only problem with GBA x5 is that it doesn't sort files on its own, you need to use file sorting program, otherwise things tend to be out of order.

As for speed of the roms, generally not a problem as none of them play off or read off the Micro SD, that's what the Flash Ram is for.... Long gone are the days of SUper Card GBA, and its slow direct to micro sd loading scheme.
Not so surprisingly the ezflash Jr is getting a larger file count In folders (up to 7000) and increased file naming sizes as well (up 256 characters). Should be easy to do on ezflash omega de firmware too...
 
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