ROM Hack Avoiding game deletion...

[Joseph Reddington]

Hello everybody, this is my first post on a new forum so please be gentle. Might also be in the wrong place, so directions to a play where I could find the right sort of people would be much appreciated...

In the spirit of http://thecontrollerproject.com/, I have a case where I have a man with learning disabilities who is having some problems with his Nintendo DS and I was looking to you guys for some helpful advice.

The user plays a lot of homebrew games using an R4 card for his Nintendo DS. The homebrew games are great because they are (mostly) about the right level of cognitive difficulty for him. The problem I have is that the R4 menu system is overly complex and that if you press 'X" rather than 'A' when highlighting a rom to play then you delete the rom rather than play it. Obviously if you are pre-literate then you regularly end up deleting the game- this is very frustrating for everybody involved.

So I'm looking for advice on any of the following

a) write protecting the MicroSD so that nothing can be deleted (not formated for Chmod at the moment )
b) using a different menu system for the micoSD that doesn't have the delete option
c) anything I've not considered.

I'm happy to write code, and I'm happy to get a soldering iron out. I'm just not sure what about overall plan. Help me Obi-wan Kenobi...

Joe

 

[yusuo]

You could try ysmenu I think its a little more complicated to delete games with that but still completely possible mind you.

You can't write protect the card cause then it'll stop creating save files.

Other then that you could try a different card like acekard or dstwo as far as I'm aware there no one touch delete button on either of those as far as I can remember both cards have a deletion method that involves navigating through menus

 

[bowser]

There may be a way to boot directly into a game the moment you turn on the DS. This will skip the R4 menu entirely. I don't know how to do it, perhaps someone else will know.

 

[yusuo]

I know what your on about bowser its if you name the .ends file to boot or start or something like that I do know it only works on some cards though, some cards just don't support this feature. I used to use it on one of my cards to auto boot ysmenu which I then used for pokemon

 

[windwakr]

My solution to the problem would be to just remove the bit of code that checks for an 'x' button press. Probably something as simple as nop'ing out a few bytes, or inserting a branch.

What menu are you using?

 

[Joseph Reddington]

Thanks for the responses guys - I'll look into ysmenu, although I'm not sure that will be enought - Would love the nop'ing solution - but randomly scrubing bytes is going to take a me a while - any idea how I'd find the relevent area?

 

[retrogamefan]

Thanks for the responses guys - I'll look into ysmenu, although I'm not sure that will be enought - Would love the nop'ing solution - but randomly scrubing bytes is going to take a me a while - any idea how I'd find the relevent area?

If you're cart can use YSMenu, the NO_DEL=true in YSMenu.ini disables the "X" button delete option

 

[Joseph Reddington]

retrogamefan - Perfect! That was exactly what I was looking for - thank you so much! You've made some people very happy at this end...

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Obviously if you are pre-literate then you regularly end up deleting the game-

I don't think this is true. My cousin has had a Wii for a couple years now and he just started school. He knows what to press even though he can't read English. Once he learns what to press he'll remember it, regardless of what the text says. Also, if you know what the letters on the buttons look like, you don't have to be literate to recognize them.

I can't help you with your problem, though - but now that you mentioned it, this feature should be standard on flashcarts since there are a lot of children using them. CFG loader on the Wii has it, so why doesn't a single DS flashcart have it?