Homebrew Lameboy Save State trouble

[h8uthemost]

I'm using the latest Lameboy version(believe it's v.0.12), and after I choose to save through Lameboy's menu and then try to Load the save the screen then becomes garbled. It doesn't matter which save slot I use.

I only have three .gbc games right now(Link DX, Seasons/Ages) but this happens with all three games whenever I save then load.

Has anyone else came across this? If so is there some kind of fix?

And by the way, what's another really good GBC emulator for the DS? I've done a search on my garbled screen/emulator freezing problem when loading a save and it looks like others have ran into the same problem, but I'm not seeing any kind of fixes for it. People are saying it happens randomly(although it happens every single time for me). So I'd rather just use another emulator that saves/loads like it should.

 

[StarWolf3000]

Alternatively to Lameboy DS I use Goomba Color on both my GBA/DS and GB Player (the latter running with my SuperCard SD in GBA Mode).

The problem with the latest "official" build by DWedit is, that is doesn't support Save States (Menu Entries shown but not accessible). There have been "unofficial" builds made by Kuwanger, "Goomba Paletted", which MAY support Save States, but do not support "GBC Only" Games (Super Mario Bros. DX and Pokémon Crystal for example) and no 56/32 Color Modes on Dual Mode Games.

 

[h8uthemost]

Ok, thanks for that info, Star. I did give Goomba Color a try last night. But like you said the official build also doesn't have save states. Which took me forever to figure out since the option is there in the menu. And unlike Lameboy, it also doesn't support a fullscreen scale. And the fullscreen stretch that Lameboy offers is much appreciated. My eyes started to hurt staring at that small GBC screen on the GBA. I don't know how I used to do it when the GBC was out(i was much younger back then though).

I wonder why the Lameboy dev never released the source? I mean there hasn't been an update for a couple years, and I'm sure people around here or elsewhere would be more than happy to improve on that already great emulator. Lameboy would be pretty much perfect in my opinion if it weren't for the save state problem...

EDIT: By the way, are you also having problems when loading a save state or is just me?

 

[redfalcon]

EDIT: By the way, are you also having problems when loading a save state or is just me?

It works for me most of the time, but sometimes my state would just disappear or won't load at all. Haven't tried the Zelda games though.

 

[h8uthemost]

Alright then maybe it's just the Zelda games that's giving me this problem. I'll have to test out others.

 

[redfalcon]

I just tried Oracle of Seasons, and a simple Save/Load worked for me.

 

[StarWolf3000]

In Lameboy, I only have some Savestate Issues with the Pokémon G/S/C Games. But this seems to depend on they were originally created by the v0.12 or an older release. They won't load (or scramble screen) when older than v0.10 in my cases.

 

[h8uthemost]

I just tried Oracle of Seasons, and a simple Save/Load worked for me.

Are you using an older version? Thanks for testing it for me.

And thanks Star, I'll downgrade to v0.10 and see if Loading is going to work for me.

I appreciate the help you two.

 

[Geren]

I wonder why the Lameboy dev never released the source? I mean there hasn't been an update for a couple years, and I'm sure people around here or elsewhere would be more than happy to improve on that already great emulator. Lameboy would be pretty much perfect in my opinion if it weren't for the save state problem...

EDIT: By the way, are you also having problems when loading a save state or is just me?

Apparently, Nutki was a group of devs. I tried e-mailing them some time ago and never got a response.

I also get some issues like high pitch music and garbled graphics when loading states. When playing pokemon puzzle challenge it even locks up sometimes. I really think the ds deserves at least a better gb/c emu but as I am no coder I better shut up

 

[h8uthemost]

I really think the ds deserves at least a better gb/c emu but as I am no coder I better shut up

I agree completely. But as i'm not a coder either I'll also shut up.

Too bad they never responded to your email though. I don't see what the big deal is with releasing the code if they're no longer working on the project. I have no doubt that other people would be more than happy to take that emulator farther...

And nah, I tried saving/loading with v.0.10, and I got the same garbled screen after a load as I did in v.12. So I'm not going to try with any other versions as I'm assuming that this kind of bug exists with the others as well.

At least the regular in game saving/loading works just fine though. Couple that with the fullscreen scaling and I still think it's a great GBC emulator, it's just that if save states worked like it should then this emulator could be pretty much perfect...

 

[redfalcon]

Are you using an older version? Thanks for testing it for me.

No, I'm using 0.12 on a M3 Real with 4GByte Sandisk SDHC card. Have you tried a different MicroSD and a different rom? Can't think of any other reason.

 

[h8uthemost]

I'm using mine on a Supercard DSOne with a 2GB microsd. Maybe I'll try a 1GB microsd and see if that makes any kind of difference, along with a different rom of the game. I'm hoping it's the rom that's giving me trouble. Because something definitely is if you're able to save/load OoS just fine but I'm not...

 

[StarWolf3000]

Fullscreen Scale with Goomba doesn't make much sense, because the GB/C has the same height in pixel like the GBA (compared with putting an original GB/C cartridge into the GBA and pressing L/R would only stretch it to the left and right but not to top and bottom).

 

[DanTheManMS]

Fullscreen Scale with Goomba doesn't make much sense, because the GB/C has the same height in pixel like the GBA (compared with putting an original GB/C cartridge into the GBA and pressing L/R would only stretch it to the left and right but not to top and bottom).

Not quite. The GB/GBC was 160 x 144 and the GBA was 240x160, so that's an additional 16 pixels of vertical height. That's how you can see some of the top and bottom of Super Game Boy borders when using Goomba Color. To be honest I never did know just how they did the screen stretching with authentic GB and GBC cartridges, since the L and R buttons shouldn't have even been active when in GBC mode. Either way, they likely could have stretched the image vertically as well, but for only 16 lines of difference it would look pretty bad without some bilinear filtering. Even Lameboy's screen stretching without the bilinear filtering looks pretty bad, and there you've got 192 vertical lines to work with.

EDIT: Also, regarding h8uthemost's post earlier about how you couldn't believe how you stared at the tiny GBC screen back in the day, remember that the individual pixel size is important too. The GBC had much larger pixels, so even though it has a lower resolution than the GBA, the screen size is actually pretty close to the same. Same thing with the DS - just by looking at my GBA SP and my DS Phat, I notice that the screens are still about the same size in inches. Running Goomba Color in GBA mode on a DS is going to give you a drastically smaller image than it would if played on a real GBC, so that's why the screen scaling helps with Lameboy. Now perhaps if you had a DSi XL with its huge pixels, you wouldn't mind so much about the size of the image with Goomba Color (ignoring for the moment that you can't run the program on the DSi since it has no GBA mode or slot) or the unscaled Lameboy image

EDIT 2: Hm, I could be wrong about the GBC having "much larger" pixels, looking at http://databoy.netfi...om/gba_gbc.html - I never owned one myself so I can't visually compare it with my GBA at the moment.

EDIT 3: Just as a quick test, I loaded up the same Goomba Color compilation on both my GBA and my DS - http://i.imgur.com/69txy.jpg
You can see that not only does the image on the GBA SP screen look larger because there is less black space on the sides, it actually IS larger by a small amount. I took the photo and opened it with Paint to get a rough estimate, and the Zelda image on the DS is roughly 90% of the size it is on the GBA SP (measuring the width and height, not the diagonal). So since the website I mentioned earlier already showed that playing a GBC game on a GBA is a very slightly smaller image than on a real GBC, and the DS is smaller still, it's not just your eyes going bad h8uthemost!

 

[h8uthemost]

Thanks for all that info, Dan. But I should have mentioned in my post about Goomba that I was in fact trying it out on the GBA, not the DS(i didn't even think about trying it on the DS). So yeah, unfortunately it's hard for my eyes to get used to that smaller screen of Goomba on the GBA. That's just yet another downfall of getting older though...

I tested out a couple GB games on Lameboy and Goomba. The two games I tried out were Ducktales 1 & 2(why didn't this fantastic series go any farther?). First I tried them out on Lameboy and I got lag throughout. I figured it was just Lameboy since the devs were lame and abandoned the app. But I got the same thing on Goomba as well. So it's either the emulators causing this lag(eventhough the Goomba compatibility list says these games run at 100%) or this is how the actual carts ran.

So eventhough Goomba supports savestates(and they actually work), Lameboy supports full screen, as long as both emulators are running most games evenly then I'm gonna go with Lameboy for the full screen.

But again, I appreciate the info. You're as helpful as always...