Homebrew OPEN_AGB_FIRM discussion thread

Maximumbeans

3DS is love, 3DS is life
Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2022
Messages
705
Trophies
0
Location
England
XP
1,581
Country
United Kingdom
I was concerned if this might damage the 3DS, but if not then I guess it's ok.
Nah, it's okay, but I do understand why you might feel that way. OPEN_AGB_FIRM basically 'silences' the 3DS part of the 3DS, and only loads the GBA hardware built inside, which is why it turns off so quickly when you're using it. Unless you're constantly playing a GBA title for five minutes only to close and reboot and open another one over and over, it should be alright.
 
  • Like
Reactions: tiger139

ghjfdtg

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Jul 13, 2014
Messages
1,360
Trophies
1
XP
3,282
Country
Should be perfectly safe to just turn off. It will write the game save to the SD card if needed and then power off normally. Since Nintendos OS is not involved it happens much faster than with GBA VC.
 

Larfleeze

Member
Newcomer
Joined
Sep 8, 2022
Messages
8
Trophies
0
Age
30
Location
Earth
XP
17
Country
United States
Is there any way that I can take a save I created on my N2DS with this, load it on my PC to use some cheats, and then move it back onto my DS? Just thought I'd ask for the sake of some things that can't just be done in games, or things that are tediously time consuming.
 

CoolMe

"Who am i, what am i?"
Member
Joined
Apr 16, 2019
Messages
7,495
Trophies
1
Age
29
XP
33,367
Country
United States
Is there any way that I can take a save I created on my N2DS with this, load it on my PC to use some cheats, and then move it back onto my DS? Just thought I'd ask for the sake of some things that can't just be done in games, or things that are tediously time consuming.
Ok, you want to go 2DS>PC>DS? Sure.. i think the emulator (GBARunner2) you'll be using on the DS could read .sav without the need of any conversion.
 

Larfleeze

Member
Newcomer
Joined
Sep 8, 2022
Messages
8
Trophies
0
Age
30
Location
Earth
XP
17
Country
United States
Ok, you want to go 2DS>PC>DS? Sure.. i think the emulator (GBARunner2) you'll be using on the DS could read .sav without the need of any conversion.
Oh, I meant going back to the same N2DS. So N2DS -> PC -> N2DS. If there's a way to add the cheats on the console as is, maybe through a different emulator, that'd be fine as well, but I read that it wasn't possible with open_agb_firm.

I just have a couple saves I want to edit for the sake of sparing myself the tedious grind of hunting for some enemies that almost never show up, and maybe add some trade evolution Pokemon to a save, so I thought I'd see if it was doable.
 

AleronIves

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Nov 17, 2016
Messages
460
Trophies
0
Age
36
Location
California
XP
2,244
Country
United States
OAF isn't an emulator. It runs games natively using the GBA that is built into every 3DS, which is why performance is perfect.

You can run mGBA on N2DS, which probably (?) supports cheats. Depending on the game, the FPS may be pretty poor, but it should be enough to apply the cheats.
 

Larfleeze

Member
Newcomer
Joined
Sep 8, 2022
Messages
8
Trophies
0
Age
30
Location
Earth
XP
17
Country
United States
OAF isn't an emulator. It runs games natively using the GBA that is built into every 3DS, which is why performance is perfect.

You can run mGBA on N2DS, which probably (?) supports cheats. Depending on the game, the FPS may be pretty poor, but it should be enough to apply the cheats.
I get that, which is why I chose to use OAF in the first place. I was just wondering if it's possible to take the save created while playing the game with OAF, load it somewhere else that does support the cheats just long enough to get the desired benefit, and then return to playing it on OAF. I did find a .SAV file while exploring my SD card, but it wasn't recognized when I tried loading the game on my laptop with an emulator.
 

Sono

cripple piss
Developer
Joined
Oct 16, 2015
Messages
2,821
Trophies
2
Location
home
XP
9,321
Country
Hungary
Is there any way that I can take a save I created on my N2DS with this, load it on my PC to use some cheats, and then move it back onto my DS? Just thought I'd ask for the sake of some things that can't just be done in games, or things that are tediously time consuming.

Depends on the save type of the game. If my memory serves correct, then some save formats (flash? and EEPROM?) require swapping before they can be loaded into an emulator. Test your save first in an emulator, and if it behaves wrong, or it is rejected, then it most likely requires swapping.

You can try [this] or [this], at least one of them should work.
The tool should work on desktop, mobile (except iOS, and Android browsers which don't have their own built-in downloaders), and also Internet Explorer 10+.

Oh, and apparently open_agb_firm stores the save data correctly, so the reason you must swap your savefile is because all emulators store the save data wrong :P
 

Larfleeze

Member
Newcomer
Joined
Sep 8, 2022
Messages
8
Trophies
0
Age
30
Location
Earth
XP
17
Country
United States
Depends on the save type of the game. If my memory serves correct, then some save formats (flash? and EEPROM?) require swapping before they can be loaded into an emulator. Test your save first in an emulator, and if it behaves wrong, or it is rejected, then it most likely requires swapping.

You can try [this] or [this], at least one of them should work.
The tool should work on desktop, mobile (except iOS, and Android browsers which don't have their own built-in downloaders), and also Internet Explorer 10+.

Oh, and apparently open_agb_firm stores the save data correctly, so the reason you must swap your savefile is because all emulators store the save data wrong :P
I appreciate it. One of them didn't load, the other didn't seem to work out, but it did help me know what to look for so I went back to the site I got OAF from and found this link:
https://exelotl.github.io/gba-eeprom-save-fix/
Just finished using it to convert my original save, doing some edits, and then converted it back, and it loaded on my N2DS perfectly. :P
 

ImaDireWolf

Member
Newcomer
Joined
Aug 16, 2019
Messages
14
Trophies
0
Age
24
XP
1,472
Country
Brazil
hi, theres a way to make open_agb_firm to read .sav files from rom folder? tried editing the folder dir with hex edit but with no success, i want to use the same sd and saves between gbarunner2 and open_agb_firm only needing to swap sd cards
 

Maximumbeans

3DS is love, 3DS is life
Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2022
Messages
705
Trophies
0
Location
England
XP
1,581
Country
United Kingdom
Couple of nooby questions:

1) If I wanted to back up my Pokemon Emerald save from playing a ROM on OAF, is it as simple as copy and pasting the save file somewhere? Or do I need an application to handle it in a more specific way?

2) Still talking about Pokemon Emerald, could I theoretically switch between save files by swapping them out in the save folder?
 

Kwyjor

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
May 23, 2018
Messages
4,323
Trophies
1
XP
4,454
Country
Canada
i want to use the same sd and saves between gbarunner2 and open_agb_firm only needing to swap sd cards
This is unclear. Are you saying you want to store save data on the NAND instead of on the SD card..?

1) If I wanted to back up my Pokemon Emerald save from playing a ROM on OAF, is it as simple as copy and pasting the save file somewhere? Or do I need an application to handle it in a more specific way?

2) Still talking about Pokemon Emerald, could I theoretically switch between save files by swapping them out in the save folder?
Why not just try it and find out..? (If you're worried about losing your save data, then you can always make a second copy of the ROM, or try it with a game you're less concerned about.)

Regardless, 1) Yes, it is that simple, 2) Yes.
 

Maximumbeans

3DS is love, 3DS is life
Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2022
Messages
705
Trophies
0
Location
England
XP
1,581
Country
United Kingdom
Why not just try it and find out..? (If you're worried about losing your save data, then you can always make a second copy of the ROM, or try it with a game you're less concerned about.)

Regardless, 1) Yes, it is that simple, 2) Yes.
Because there's no harm in asking the question in a thread dedicated to discussing the application in question. Why be passive aggressive if you're just going to give the two simple answers anyway?

Speaking of which, thanks.
 

Nothin

New Member
Newbie
Joined
Nov 5, 2022
Messages
3
Trophies
0
Age
35
XP
19
Country
Italy
Hi, i have a problem with saves.
I'm playing Final Fantasy Dawn of Souls and don't know why but sometimes the game lost the progress.
I'm using the in-game save method, save in all 3 save slots to be sure but, when i turn on the console and try to load i see a hours old saves, it seems that console/emulator don't update save file. What can i do? 😭
 

BeavisMacon

Member
Newcomer
Joined
Oct 26, 2022
Messages
7
Trophies
0
Age
40
XP
31
Country
United States
I just tried the KippyKip fork linked to on the main project's github which is supposed to come with the shareware episode but I only get a white screen after the GBA logo.
Thanks for trying it out. I got early versions to work as injects. Unfortunately they are from before most of the performance improvements were implemented. Oddly enough, gbarunner2 plays later versions, but the graphics are a mess.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • Julie_Pilgrim @ Julie_Pilgrim:
    the internet
  • Julie_Pilgrim @ Julie_Pilgrim:
    @Psionic Roshambo i have 16 gb in my pc and i run into issues with ram more than i'd like to admit
  • HiradeGirl @ HiradeGirl:
    I got only 8GB of RAM. But I want 32GB.
  • Sonic Angel Knight @ Sonic Angel Knight:
    Time to just download more ram
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Yeah search Google
  • Sonic Angel Knight @ Sonic Angel Knight:
    Or, I also heard that if you use flash memory, it can act as more "RAM" at least windows tell me when I stick a flash drive into it.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    It can act as a swap drive but that isn't more RAM, it's slooow.
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    I wish we could have 1Gbps external storage by now
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Like for micro
  • Veho @ Veho:
    New Myoo.
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    @Veho, Yooo noice
  • SylverReZ @ SylverReZ:
    Looks like a Famicom handheld
  • Veho @ Veho:
    Yeah, they were going for that.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    It's not very good though.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    I'm watching the review, the emulators it uses suck bawls.
  • Veho @ Veho:
    Software update might improve it.
  • Psionic Roshambo @ Psionic Roshambo:
    Or maybe someone will make like Emulation Station for it or something?
  • Veho @ Veho:
    That counts as a software update :tpi:
    +1
  • OctoAori20 @ OctoAori20:
    Ello
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    I can think of the design teams process another joystick and no audio or a joystick and mono audio
  • Veho @ Veho:
    "You think we can just put the speakers at the top
    ?" "NO!"
    +1
  • K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2:
    Pft stereo speakers you're fired
    +1
    K3Nv2 @ K3Nv2: Pft stereo speakers you're fired +1