Hacking EZ-FLASH OMEGA K 1.03 FW 5 released

[EZ-Flash2]

Super happy to hear that the firmware will be open source. I may two of these now. I hope multi-coloured shells for the OMEGA are still in the works as hinted at before.

It is the very limited version only for elite users in Chinese tester group, not for sale.

 

[Hyro-Sama]

It is the very limited version only for elite users in Chinese tester group, not for sale.

Would you reconsider for the future? A totally clear option would be really neat.

 

[viral777]

anyway now to get gbc games to run in fullscreen with the L+R buttons?

 

[Tadas]

Bug report
1. Game console type: Game Boy AGB-001
2. Firmware version: 5
3. Kernel version: 1.03
4. MicroSD type: Kingston 8Gb class 4
5. MicroSD format: FAT32
6. MicroSD cluster size or allocation unit size: 32K
7. Bug description: after save and back to game, screen rotates 90 degrees
8. Bug reproduce steps:
- Launch Ecks vs. Sever BOOT WITH ADDON mode (here Save, Reset and Sleep functions activated)
- In game display the Omega menu with L + R + Start
- Save game
- Exit this menu
- Notice that the display is rotated 90 degrees

 

[Drumaster]

Hello,

I have 2 questions and 2 suggestions about thumbnails.

My questions:
- I'm trying to make my own thumbnails for my demos and homebrew games. As far as I understand, you get the 4 letters code of each game inside the file itself (very clever BTW) and you name the bmp file the same way through folders (using the 1st 2 letters). But regarding to Bust-A-Move game made by Russ Prince, it contains 'BUSTAMOVEAGBDEMO01–' in it, so how do I have to create folders and what will be the name of the bmp? I tried 'BUST' and 'BUSTAMOVEAGBDEMO' in 'B' > 'U' folder but in vain.
- also, I noticed that the BMP format is 120*80 16bit color but I can't get the same result when converting mine into the same format. How can I get easily the same color palet/format?

My suggestions:
- when there is no thumbnails for a game, you should just display nothing because the 'missing' thumbnail image is not very nice.
- add a true game reset function in Omega menu (to restart directly the game) and rename 'Reset' to something like 'Back to menu'

Other than that, great feature for a great piece of hardware.

 

[kuwanger]

The Game Code starts at 0xAC so it should be DEMO. I haven't tested if it actually works or not. As for image conversion, I've tried some fiddling with Imagemagick but can't seem to get the same results. :/

 

[Localhorst86]

It uses part of the game serial. The serial for the game you're talking about is "AGB-DEMO-" so the file name should most likely be "DEMO.bmp" and go into the D/E/ folder. I haven't been able to try, though.

As for the image format: I haven't looked into what it is, but wouldn't you be able to open one of the sample images with GIMP or Photoshop and use this as a base with the correct settings already in place? I.e. layering your image on top?

 

[Drumaster]

It uses part of the game serial. The serial for the game you're talking about is "AGB-DEMO-" so the file name should most likely be "DEMO.bmp" and go into the D/E/ folder. I haven't been able to try, though.

As for the image format: I haven't looked into what it is, but wouldn't you be able to open one of the sample images with GIMP or Photoshop and use this as a base with the correct settings already in place? I.e. layering your image on top?

DEMO.bmp in /D/E folders works, thanks.

About the format, I already tried yesterday to use GIMP and use an actual bmp from IMGS archive as a base but in vain, it does not seem to convert my new image to the base one palet, don't know why.... I'm pretty sure this way worked in Photoshop when I had it a few years ago. Even though I save the palet of the base and import it in a new canvas, that still does not work. I don't know what I'm doing wrong here.

 

[Localhorst86]

yeah, it looks like the images use some weird color palete that gets converted. This is what the madden thumbnail looks like on the PC, pretty sure the blue skin color is not correct.

 

[Drumaster]

yeah, it looks like the images use some weird color palete that gets converted. This is what the madden thumbnail looks like on the PC, pretty sure the blue skin color is not correct.

Yeah, some blue tint appears when viewing from a PC. I looked a few of them, they are all like this one. I'll try with a trial version of Photoshop then, unless EZ-Flash2 can help me on that.

 

[kuwanger]

RGB -> BGR 555 (IIRC). My problem is imagemagick keeps outputing BMPs that are 50% bigger than the ones including in IMGS and identify calls it "data", so I'm not quite sure what's up with that. Other than that, using -colorspace sRGB and swapping B and R works.

 

[Drumaster]

RGB -> BGR 555 (IIRC). My problem is imagemagick keeps outputing BMPs that are 50% bigger than the ones including in IMGS and identify calls it "data", so I'm not quite sure what's up with that. Other than that, using -colorspace sRGB and swapping B and R works.

I have no idea how to exchange R and B in GIMP although I tried a few things. I found a tuto but very unclear to me. Not sure if it helps (it's in French, sorry for that):
https://docs.gimp.org/fr/plug-in-exchange.html

Downloaded ImageMagick too, but can't find the editor .exe (I'm under Windows 10) but only an image viewer instead in the folder. Is it a command line image editor or what?

 

[Localhorst86]

Is it a command line image editor or what?

yes, you got it. Imagemagick is a command line utility.

 

[kuwanger]

For GIMP Colors->Components->Decompse (Use defaults), Colors->Components->Compose (Swap Blue/Red). I think Imagemagick might not be able to output 16-bit BMPs in some circumstances?

 

[FAST6191]

anyway now to get gbc games to run in fullscreen with the L+R buttons?

In hardware that is a feature of the hardware. For GBA code emulators then it is not. Theoretically you might be able to write some kind of stretching algorithm but given how much of a pain it was to even get GBC running it might have to remain a theoretically.
Would you really want it though? It is not full screen as much as stretched and distorted to fill the screen.

I don't know about the onboard version offhand but there are versions of goomba (not sure about goomba color) that support borders if you are one of those OCD types about filling screens.
http://kuwanger.altervista.org/gba/goomba/tutorial/ for a bit more, though it is probably out of date.

 

[Drumaster]

For GIMP Colors->Components->Decompse (Use defaults), Colors->Components->Compose (Swap Blue/Red). I think Imagemagick might not be able to output 16-bit BMPs in some circumstances?

Thanks for that but I can't get some good results even when exporting in 16bit R5 G6 B5, even with X1 R5 G5 B5.

Here is the best I can get:

It appears reversed (horizontaly and vertically) and shifted but is fine from a PC as you can guess. Colors seem fine though.

I tried all those settings available in export popup:

 

[kuwanger]

BMP files are nominally stored from bottom to top. I presume later versions of BMP support loading from top to bottom and set a flag in the header. I further presume that GIMP stores from bottom to top and EZ-Flash Omega blindly presumes all thumbnails are from top to bottom.

Ie try flipping the image upside down.

 

[Drumaster]

BMP files are nominally stored from bottom to top. I presume later versions of BMP support loading from top to bottom and set a flag in the header. I further presume that GIMP stores from bottom to top and EZ-Flash Omega blindly presumes all thumbnails are from top to bottom.

Ie try flipping the image upside down.

I won't try to flip it and shift it (moreover there is this shifted image thing as well) as it's not a clean way to do it.

After some search, it appears to be Windows OS/2 Bitmap V3 UNCOMPRESSED, a very old format introduced in Windows 3.x.
I used this online tool to have those details: http://exif.regex.info/exif.cgi

I managed to get a Bitmap V3 but unfortunately I can't get rid of the compression ('Bitfields' as it's called).
I searched a lot to find an old util for Windows to convert to bmp v3 uncompressed but in vain so far.

I think that the easiest way would be that EZ-Flash2 tells us the way those thumbnails have been converted...

 

[kuwanger]

I think that the easiest way would be that EZ-Flash2 tells us the way those thumbnails have been converted...

I tend to agree. The funny thing is that Imagemagick team claims BMP3 doesn't support 16-bit images. Oh, and I think I figured out how it supports an upside down image: "PC bitmap, Windows 3.x format, 120 x -80 x 16". So, yea, negative height. From a practical level, I presume copying the first 56 bytes from one image for a header and using something like GRIT to produce a binary for the actual image data would work, but that's obviously messy.

 

[Drumaster]

I just sent a pm to EZ-Flash2, wait and see...

 

[EZ-Flash2]

I'm using the offlinelist thumbnails.

here is my photoshop batch command

imagemagick sucks.

 

[Drumaster]

Great, thanks, works for me with all those settings, I can now create and display properly my own thumbnails.