ROM Hack Is there a way to patch an original ds cartridge?

[Arthur_Dent42]

So I just bough a copy of Jump Ultimate Stars and would love to know if there's anyway to patch the fan translation into the original cartridge?

Is that something doable? How?

I tried to look in the forum for a similiar thread but couldn't find any...

Thanks!

 

[rastsan]

Not to break a rule with a one word answer but... No.
You could use an online service to "make" your own cartridge but what is the point?

 

[Rydian]

ROM = Read-Only Memory

You can only play the patch via a flash cart or emulator.

 

[Auryn]

Easy answer: NO.
The only way to do that would be by changing the hardware of the cartridge and then it probably don't matter if you would flash any cartridge with any game.
Apart that it would probably cost you more than buy a flashcart.

 

[SKJmin]

I had imported a savegame into a real cartridge once, but I forgot how...
It was Order of Ecclesia, I think I had used my EZ-Flash cartridge [bottom of DS] to modify, but I really forgot. It was 3 or 4 years ago.

 

[Arthur_Dent42]

Yeah, I do have the thingy that you use to extrac and replace save files in DS or 3DS games. I have a R4 Save Dongle or something.
Well, I'll have to make due with gamefaqs. haha

 

[Rydian]

Save data is in a rewritable portion, the game ROM is not.

 

[Auryn]

Confirm what Rydian said.

 

[RandomDSdevel]

Could a hardware dongle be created that converts the one DS Game Card Slot in all DS models into two such that one could insert a flashcart into one of this dongle's slots and an ordinary DS cartridge into the other such that the hardware could patch the inserted cartridge with a ROM hack at runtime?

 

[raulpica]

Could a hardware dongle be created that converts the one DS Game Card Slot in all DS models into two such that one could insert a flashcart into one of this dongle's slots and an ordinary DS cartridge into the other such that the hardware could patch the inserted cartridge with a ROM hack at runtime?

That is SO unpratical that I'm baffled at just the thought. It's obviously a "no" since the DS is unable of on-the-fly patching and it'd still require an ASIC of some type to accomplish that. You're better buying a flashcard, soldering a microSD directly to the slot, hack the menu to run directly the menu without showing the ROM selector - fit that in the original game's case, and that's it.

 

[RandomDSdevel]

That is SO unpratical that I'm baffled at just the thought. It's obviously a "no" since the DS is unable of on-the-fly patching and it'd still require an ASIC of some type to accomplish that. You're better buying a flashcard, soldering a microSD directly to the slot, hack the menu to run directly the menu without showing the ROM selector - fit that in the original game's case, and that's it.

Couldn't the hardware dongle have a processor and some memory with which it could patch the game at launch and stabilize this temporary ROM while it's running? The device could send a loading screen to your system while its doing that patching and then send the patched ROM to this same device's internal memory. Maybe that would be a bit bulky, but I don't care as the proud owner of an original ('Phat') Nintendo DS.

 

[raulpica]

Couldn't the hardware dongle have a processor and some memory with which it could patch the game at launch and stabilize this temporary ROM while it's running? The device could send a loading screen to your system while its doing that patching and then send the patched ROM to this same device's internal memory. Maybe that would be a bit bulky, but I don't care as the proud owner of an original ('Phat') Nintendo DS.

It'd bulky and horrible to see, but yes, that could work. I'm still missing the point though since having a processor and some memory pretty much makes it a flashcard... which do already exist

 

[The Riolu]

As raulpica said, flashcarts are here for a reason.

Also, you are bumping up the price if you would want something like that. Only a certain percent of people would even buy it anyway, because it would check for the actual cartridge to verify it, and that's a pirate's nightmare.

 

[Rydian]

Couldn't the hardware dongle have a processor and some memory with which it could patch the game at launch and stabilize this temporary ROM while it's running? The device could send a loading screen to your system while its doing that patching and then send the patched ROM to this same device's internal memory. Maybe that would be a bit bulky, but I don't care as the proud owner of an original ('Phat') Nintendo DS.

You've never actually used a flash cart, have you?

That's what flash carts do. You stick a MicroSD with some ROMs in the MicroSD slot of the flash cart, start it up, select the ROM, it gives you a loading screen for a second or two while it's doing on-the-fly patching, then starts up the ROM.

 

[RandomDSdevel]

It'd bulky and horrible to see, but yes, that could work. I'm still missing the point though since having a processor and some memory pretty much makes it a flashcard... which do already exist

Wait; flash carts already have processors and additional memory which they can use to do stuff like this? I do own one (an Acekard 2.1, to be precise,) and I'm pretty sure that it uses my DS's internal processor and memory to do its work. What I want is something that can take a ROM hack from an existing flash cart and, at least temporarily, apply it to the game read in from the cartridge without creating a ROM. If the respective save file couldn't exist simultaneously with the one for the normal game, then it could be exported to the flash cart. People could still use flash carts, but I just want to be able to play a derivative work, specifically the 'HGSS - Kris as Female Protagonist' hack, over my existing Pokémon SoulSilver Version cartridge without risking the legal hassles of downloading its ROM; I already have too many of those and am considering buying their actual cartridges. Maybe this could be averted by a device that first loads a program which can prevent cartridge assets from loading and replace them with hack assets from the flash cart before loading the cartridge. That, though, might require somebody to program something like Microsoft's Windows ReadyBoost into AKAIO, the Acekard firmware, in order to prevent the program stack from running out of memory.

 

[Rydian]

You can't patch DS things on the fly (outside of something like an ARDSi that can patch reads but you'd have a hell of a time implementing an entire ROM hack in the form of AR codes), and retail carts are read-only.

Also, anything that could do what your second suggestion is would be making a ROM out of your retail cart anyways.

Just use a flash cart and either download a ROM, or dump your own.

 

[raulpica]

Wait; flash carts already have processors and additional memory which they can use to do stuff like this? I do own one (an Acekard 2.1, to be precise,) and I'm pretty sure that it uses my DS's internal processor and memory to do its work.

AceKards do not, but Supercard DSTWOs do

 

[Rydian]

Well to be technical even the original R4 has it's own processor of sorts.

It's just they're generally not nearly powerful enough to give a damn about.

 

[FAST6191]

AceKards do not, but Supercard DSTWOs do

I think technically a few non iplayer/ismm/dstwo flash carts offload a tiny bit of CRC calculation for DLDI (and supposedly some aspects of general flash cart extras) to the cart itself which does get a nice speed boost. No chance of using such things for anything general purpose though.

As for the matter at hand sitting in between the game and the cartridge was what game genies used to do hence the rarity of the codes for them, the perceived difficulty in making them and why they are frequently more far reaching. The DS has an interesting aside in that the binary (as in ARM9.bin and co) ends up in writable memory and any files that aspire to do anything will do so as well which you can get to with conventional cheat engines; this is why cheats sometimes can bypass AP (you can patch the binary, which contains the checks, in RAM) and why some better cheats are almost gamegenie levels of change. Even ignoring that most AR engines have a limit of the amount of codes it can pull off I would hate to consider trying this for even a moderate file change and patching overlays is not much fun either (granted the "if - then" patch options of AR engines leave a lot to be desired for anybody that has the barest clue about programming which really does not help). Best case scenario you patch the game to read things from the GBA slot (32 megs of fast memory you control after all) but that is still not the nicest.

As others said though unless you are especially tied to your pokewalker then there is not a lot of point.

Just to add another thing to the pile- technically the passmes worked in such a manner. They were less patch 50 megs of ROM via onboard ROM reads and more patch a few kilobytes to get a jump to a user controlled location though. If I had to build such a device I would probably start with those (and maybe one of those blaze 3 game selectors).

 

[Cerberus87]

ROM = Read-Only Memory. Therefore you can't implement any modifications into it, since it's read-only, not read-and-write.

What people usually call just ROMs and you can download off the internet are actually "ROM images". An image is a file that accurately reproduces the contents of media such as optical disks and cartridges. Those, you can obviously edit, since they're extracted from their origin into a environment which allows their data to be rewritten.

You can play edited ROMs with flashcarts because they access a storage device which allows writing of data (flash memory cards).