ROM Hack Beginner at gba asm hacking, question about break points

[Zalor]

I'm fairly new to the gba asm hacking scene, and have mostly been learning through trial and error and from tutorials here and there. Additionally, I have very little programming knowledge. I understand how hexadecimal works, and have some knowledge of memory hacking. Just to give an idea of where I am coming from.

My question is about setting breakpoints in no$gba's special debugger emulator. I am having trouble where I will set the debugger to break at a certain value, and nothing happens. Specifically, I know a character's hp address in the game's memory is in 02007a14, but when I type this address as a break point, I get nothing. Even when the character takes damage and I know that the value in the address is getting modified, the debugger doesn't break. I apologize for such a noob question, but could somebody explain what I am doing wrong?

Additionally, could somebody also give me some general advice on how to learn asm hacking as a beginner. The few other times I asked for help regarding asm for the gba, people just linked me to this: http://re-eject.gbadev.org/files/thumbref.pdf, which doesn't really explain much for me. So if somebody could help a noob such as myself figure out how to start off, I would really appreciate it.

 

[Pablitox]

Hi there! check this thread: https://gbatemp.net/threads/gba-arm-instructions-disassembler-and-debugger-ida-pro-mgba.413251/

second post, there's tons of links about ASM hacking there.

 

[FAST6191]

For a beginner then I like
http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/asm.htm
It will not cover much for hacking and I hesitate to link the following if you are using no$gba debugger as it is for another GBA debugger but it does cover some of the breakpoints available in lots of debugging tools such that you might get a better idea. https://web.archive.org/web/20150428020823/http://labmaster.bios.net.nz/vba-sdl-h/
Depending upon what breakpoint you have set then you might not get anything -- if you set an execute breakpoint when you instead want a read or write (or access) breakpoint then it is not going to do much.
no$gba help is pretty good as well, the reference guide to GBA hardware that most of us use is drawn from them ( http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm ).

I cover some basic assembly, though with a slight DS focus (not that is matters hugely), in http://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentation-project-new-2016-edition-out.73394/ as well.

 

[Normmatt]

I'm fairly new to the gba asm hacking scene, and have mostly been learning through trial and error and from tutorials here and there. Additionally, I have very little programming knowledge. I understand how hexadecimal works, and have some knowledge of memory hacking. Just to give an idea of where I am coming from.

My question is about setting breakpoints in no$gba's special debugger emulator. I am having trouble where I will set the debugger to break at a certain value, and nothing happens. Specifically, I know a character's hp address in the game's memory is in 02007a14, but when I type this address as a break point, I get nothing. Even when the character takes damage and I know that the value in the address is getting modified, the debugger doesn't break. I apologize for such a noob question, but could somebody explain what I am doing wrong?

Additionally, could somebody also give me some general advice on how to learn asm hacking as a beginner. The few other times I asked for help regarding asm for the gba, people just linked me to this: http://re-eject.gbadev.org/files/thumbref.pdf, which doesn't really explain much for me. So if somebody could help a noob such as myself figure out how to start off, I would really appreciate it.

Your setting the breakpoint wrong most likely.... it should be "[02007a14]!" if you want to break on changed writes to that address or "[02007a14]!!" to break on any writes or "[02007a14]?" if you want to break on any reads.

 

[Zalor]

For a beginner then I like
http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/asm.htm
It will not cover much for hacking and I hesitate to link the following if you are using no$gba debugger as it is for another GBA debugger but it does cover some of the breakpoints available in lots of debugging tools such that you might get a better idea. https://web.archive.org/web/20150428020823/http://labmaster.bios.net.nz/vba-sdl-h/
Depending upon what breakpoint you have set then you might not get anything -- if you set an execute breakpoint when you instead want a read or write (or access) breakpoint then it is not going to do much.
no$gba help is pretty good as well, the reference guide to GBA hardware that most of us use is drawn from them ( http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm ).

I cover some basic assembly, though with a slight DS focus (not that is matters hugely), in http://gbatemp.net/threads/gbatemp-rom-hacking-documentation-project-new-2016-edition-out.73394/ as well.

Thanks for all the links to the resources. The first link is great, and I actually started reading it a couple days ago. Also your guide is really extensive, and I plan on working my way through it as well.

Your setting the breakpoint wrong most likely.... it should be "[02007a14]!" if you want to break on changed writes to that address or "[02007a14]!!" to break on any writes or "[02007a14]?" if you want to break on any reads.

Thank you so much, you were correct. I was setting the break points wrong. I tried your suggestion for when the game writes to the address, and it worked! Is there an instruction set for setting breakpoints in the no$gba debugger like there is for the vba one?