ROM Hack How to extract .bar files?

bosskay

Active Member
Newcomer
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
30
Trophies
0
Age
28
XP
142
Country
France
After one hour try I could even did something relevant, because I didn't found any guide that explain how to use no$gba debugger, for example I'm in this case:
upload_2020-4-16_17-40-2.png


You can clearly see that the case z,c,i and t are ticked. But I don't know what it mean, I'm just a little bit suspicious about those case because they ticked only if I hit the opponent or the opponent hit me. So, I think there is a kind of link between the hit and those case. Also I don't know what's r1,2,3,4,5,6... I suppose it could be kind of variable and the adresses next to them is the address that contain the VALUE of the variable... But all of this is the just supposition... Same for the biggest square with a lot of addresses and value I don't know what's corresponding to each column, for example the last one I don't know if it's value of something or something else....
Is there any guide for no$gba debugger ?
 

FAST6191

Techromancer
Editorial Team
Joined
Nov 21, 2005
Messages
36,798
Trophies
3
XP
28,403
Country
United Kingdom
no$gba's help file is one of the better guides, though it will probably assume you are familiar with debugging in general.

The following is for the GBA, for another emulator and mainly about locating parts of a ROM but if you can follow along, and maybe convert it to no$gba commands it will get you somewhere
https://www.romhacking.net/documents/361/
The help file for vba-sdl-h is also not bad, though I don't have a link right now. Some might also look at some of the NES stuff as they tend to have the standard by which other things are measured here.
Still I mentioned breakpoints before, though you can also do watchpoints and logs.
They do much like the name implies and break (ever wondered what the pause-break key on your keyboard is? Generally useless nowadays but back in the day) when the thing they are set to do (bpw = break point write, bpr = break point read and so on) happens. If you know the exact thing that is messing with the piece of memory you want then you can see what is happening and work backwards, or go forwards and watch what happens next.

http://www.coranac.com/tonc/text/asm.htm is good stuff (while it is for the GBA the DS is not that much more than an overclocked GBA with a primitive 3d setup bolted on), and while for the X86 PC I have always liked http://www.plantation-productions.com/Webster/ and https://stuff.pypt.lt/ggt80x86a/asm1.htm for getting to grips with assembly in general.

That tick stuff is the status flag (Current Program Status Register if you want the technical name)
http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#armcpuflagsconditionfieldcond
You can read about it there but it is for noting things about maths operations, and its execution status with regards to interrupts and modes.

The R1,R2... is the registers. http://problemkaputt.de/gbatek.htm#armcpuregisterset
Normal memory in a computer is really slow compared to the CPU so for the sake of operations the CPU will have areas of super fast memory that instructions can use. Each CPU family will have different approaches and I will spare you that one as it will needlessly complicate things. Said registers usually have a certain size and thus we have the "bit" of a machine, unless you are in a marketing department but enough of that one for now. In this case they are 32 bit, even in THUMB mode (which uses 16 bit instructions to help speed things up and make code smaller, at a cost for certain abilities).
They are important as that is where numbers will be stored between steps as operations are done upon them. Said "stored between steps" is also one of the exceptions in the 99% of the time thing where a value may be plucked from ram and held in the CPU (or the "stack") before being returns however many instructions later when your simple "hold this value at full" cheat does precisely nothing for you.
Said numbers can be numbers to use, locations of things in memory, the programmer's date of birth... it is just numbers it can use. However some of the later registers have special names and uses beyond the simple numbers (R15 in this case being the PC or program counter, basically the address of where it is at in the program).
 
  • Like
Reactions: bosskay

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.
    SylverReZ @ SylverReZ: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4U-CrK4Hug