Hacking New Theme for EZ-Flash Omega!

[lowfidelity]

Just now finding this great project and I am curious if there is a repository of custom skins made for the Simple kernel anywhere?

I am very interested in trying this kernel out and did find the tutorial on creating custom skins, but am curious if there are any that have been made and are floating around out there.

 

[uuupah]

i just spent a couple of hours troubleshooting pokemon coral on the ezflash omega definitive edition, so i though i'd just leave a message for other internet travellers who were maybe trying to do the same thing. on stock ezflash firmware the game has all kinds of weird issues with the foreground sprites, such as certain menu elements not showing properly, and characters disappearing when a dialogue box popped up. long story short, the simple firmware fixes all my issues, no doubt due to the hard work of the jagoomba devs. the included jagoomba 0.5 works just fine, i didn't need to include my own in the PLUG folder.

some further observations:
- there is still some stutter on foreground sprites, such as npcs sliding in a bit of a jumpy manner when the player walks around, or some glitchy transitions when opening a dialogue. these are normally only one or two frames and completely ignorable. i assume the issue is down to ezflash hardware and emulation overhead.
- i couldn't get the game to launch in sgb mode so those cute frames arent available. i believe this is an issue with stock pokemon crystal as well.
- saving is a little flakey, which i think is more of a universal ezflash issue. leaving it for five seconds after saving, as well as taking a save state via L + R seems to work. i also tend to exit via the same L + R menu. while typing this out i actually had a save disappear, but loading it from the save state allowed me to make a new standard save.
- i didn't see this said in as many words, but formatting your card before installing simple appears to be the way to go. i tried to do an install on top of all the other artifacts that were already on my card and it took gbc performance from bad to non-existent. backing up the sd card and nuking it before installing simple got it working for me.

anyway, big ups to sterophonick, zoelain and anyone else involved in the project, you saved me a load of time and fiddling

 

[Wolfscowl]

I recently bought an EZ Flash Omega Definitive Edition cartridge and tried the firmware right away. Many thanks for the great firmware Sterophonick great job !!! But I encountered two problems.

1. When I go to the recently played menu, I often only see part of the file path but not the name of the rom. That's a shame, because I have a relatively complex folder structure. It would be nice if you could set somewhere that only the file names are displayed, but not the file path. (see attachmen screenshot recently.jpg).

2. I tried to put the manual for the custom firmware on the cardrige as jpg files. For this I used the tool ps2jpg_linker. Unfortunately, the jpg files are all displayed incorrectly (see attachment screenshot jpgviewer.jpg). I also tried it with different resolutions. Can someone possibly look at it? I have the jpg files in the attachment fw_manual_jpg.zip. It would be great if someone could test the jpg files on their EZ-Flash Omega cartridge. Then I would at least know whether my hardware (cartridge, sd-car) might be the problem.

 

[Ularaliek]

I'm having trouble playing gb and gbc games on my ez flash omega. The games do not save when using this custom firmware (gba works fine) and i cant get rid of the borders. They work on the official firmware and by doing that I've confirmed its not the roms. I've reformatted by 4gb sd card to fat 32 allocation 32 kilobytes and 4096 bytes and re-flashed my cart and am stuck. I'm upset because I really want this and i don't want to have to stay on the official firmware.

Post automatically merged: Feb 5, 2023

I'm having trouble playing gb and gbc games on my ez flash omega. The games do not save when using this custom firmware (gba works fine) and i cant get rid of the borders. They work on the official firmware and by doing that I've confirmed its not the roms. I've reformatted by 4gb sd card to fat 32 allocation 32 kilobytes and 4096 bytes and re-flashed my cart and am stuck. I'm upset because I really want this and i don't want to have to stay on the official firmware.

it kinda works when i use the definitive firmware but is a little buggy outside the game (obviously).

 

[Ularaliek]

DO NOT USE DE ON NORMAL OMEGA IT WILL CORRUPT YOUR SAVES

Post automatically merged: Feb 21, 2023

tried exfat and fat32 and am now trying fat

Post automatically merged: Feb 21, 2023

fat does not work

 

[xxNathanxx]

After speaking with Sterophonik I have taken over as a new maintainer for Simple and SimpleDE.
New Repo can be found here since the old one is archived:
https://github.com/zoelilylain/omega-de-kernel

and I encourage bug reports and help wherever possible! Stero handed the torch off to the community an I intend to keep that so, I'm just gonna continue to work on it in my spare time because I like this kernel fork quite a bit.

current plans are currently me just stepping through the code and reading through it at the moment before I start breaking things making changes.

No new builds at the moment.
I'll be looking through the thread for bugs to file under the Issues section on github but if I miss anything please do file it yourself or let me know!

Hey, just bringing your attention to a visual glitch that probably slipped under the radar:

Small bug @Sterophonick: accented characters like é show up with a space next to them. For example 'Astérix' shows up as 'Asté rix'. This is also present on the original theme (@EZ-Flash2) so I'm not sure who would have to fix it.

 

[KFox109]

For the record, the bump up to Goomba Color's latest version caused it not to save my GB or GBC games. I downgraded one version of this (awesome) custom kernel and I can now save!

Post automatically merged: Mar 20, 2023

For the record, the bump up to Goomba Color's latest version caused it not to save my GB or GBC games. I downgraded one version of this (awesome) custom kernel and I can now save!

Note: I just tested this and I want point out: you HAVE to exit the game with the emulator menu (L+R) or the save for GBC/GB games will not stay.

 

[QcHyperShock]

is there any way to update the old pocket nes emu to this newer build /Dwedit/PocketNES (add githubDotCom) or do you need to edit the firmware to do it ?

 

[Jaffo1234]

I’m struggling with GB sound with the latest version, missing lots of sounds whilst planting, games run and look good however. Can anyone advise on settings in Jagoomba Color 0.5

 

[pparan0idd]

Hello Everyone;

Really big thanks to Sterophonick, EvilJagaGenius, and everyone else who helped to develop this firmware and gbc emulator!

I've been playing the Polished Crystal ROM Hack v2.2.0 on the jagoomba v0.5 for what I believe to be the SimpleLight v3.7 for non-DE EZ Flash Omega on a GBA SP and it had been working fine up until recently. I ran into an issue with my save file where it looks like the memory for previous saves is not being overwritten (I'll attach some images to clarify). Upon pressing L+R, the emulator (I think?) sent me to a screen to delete previous saves by using the 'select' button; however, when I press the select button nothing seems to happen. Also, the names of some of the saves seem to be corrupted as well as the background tiles while the options menu is active. Attempting to return to the previous screen causes the message (shown in images) to appear again. The game seems to run fine, it's just the saving that is a problem.

It might be important to note that the RTC didn't seem to be working the entire time I was playing the game and I just ignored the issue since the game seemed to play well regardless of the eternal nightfall in Johto. I eventually took my save file off of the cart and placed it onto my desktop while deleting both save and backup save files on the cart. Starting a new save in Polished Crystal seems to allow the RTC to function normally. When I try to replace this new save with my old save, the same memory overflow issue occurs.

Is there anyway to circumvent this issue? I am very new to the flash cart / emulation scene and it is more than possible that I have made a mistake somewhere. I will try to provide as much information as I can and hopefully this helps someone else having the same issue or provides insight to the developers!

Hopefully this is the right place to ask this question and sorry for the long winded post.

 

[ShadowOne333]

Hello Everyone;

Really big thanks to Sterophonick, EvilJagaGenius, and everyone else who helped to develop this firmware and gbc emulator!

I've been playing the Polished Crystal ROM Hack v2.2.0 on the jagoomba v0.5 for what I believe to be the SimpleLight v3.7 for non-DE EZ Flash Omega on a GBA SP and it had been working fine up until recently. I ran into an issue with my save file where it looks like the memory for previous saves is not being overwritten (I'll attach some images to clarify). Upon pressing L+R, the emulator (I think?) sent me to a screen to delete previous saves by using the 'select' button; however, when I press the select button nothing seems to happen. Also, the names of some of the saves seem to be corrupted as well as the background tiles while the options menu is active. Attempting to return to the previous screen causes the message (shown in images) to appear again. The game seems to run fine, it's just the saving that is a problem.

It might be important to note that the RTC didn't seem to be working the entire time I was playing the game and I just ignored the issue since the game seemed to play well regardless of the eternal nightfall in Johto. I eventually took my save file off of the cart and placed it onto my desktop while deleting both save and backup save files on the cart. Starting a new save in Polished Crystal seems to allow the RTC to function normally. When I try to replace this new save with my old save, the same memory overflow issue occurs.

Is there anyway to circumvent this issue? I am very new to the flash cart / emulation scene and it is more than possible that I have made a mistake somewhere. I will try to provide as much information as I can and hopefully this helps someone else having the same issue or provides insight to the developers!

Hopefully this is the right place to ask this question and sorry for the long winded post.

View attachment 364633View attachment 364634View attachment 364635

How did you get Polished Crystal running at all?
From my tests, I didn't even got it to boot, unless it's a v3 thing only.

 

[pparan0idd]

How did you get Polished Crystal running at all?
From my tests, I didn't even got it to boot, unless it's a v3 thing only.

From what I read in the past comments it looks like it's a v3 thing. v2.2.0 F works well for me!

 

[OilFreak]

Just now finding this great project and I am curious if there is a repository of custom skins made for the Simple kernel anywhere?

I am very interested in trying this kernel out and did find the tutorial on creating custom skins, but am curious if there are any that have been made and are floating around out there.

I'm also wondering this. A theme database would be nice. Even a google doc would do.

 

[TechieSaru]

@timdmackey Are you still working on your custom theme? It would be really sad to see something so promising fade into obscurity.

 

[Soundtoxin]

Are there any major known issues with running this on the Definitive Edition? I saw mentions of corrupt saves, which I have never experienced on stock, but it sounds like that's just the original Omega maybe. I'm considering installing this, but I don't want a worse experience. I'm also looking at zoelilylain's fork and so far the commits are just changes to the readme adding links as far as I can tell, with no commits at all since last year. Is there a more active fork?

 

[dantist]

Every time I start a PC Engine game, it is muted. I have to open the option menu with L+R and turn on the sound. Is there a way to default it to enabled?

 

[pparan0idd]

Can anyone better explain how save files function with the jagoomba emulator for the EZ Flash Omega? I believe another post on this thread explained that one should create a save state with the emulator, use the in-game save option (for example this is regarding a save in Pokemon Crystal), open the emulator menu using L+R and wait 5-10 seconds before turning the game boy off.

Problem is, I accidentally hit the macro for 'load save state' (L+select in my case) and it reset my entire progress in the game to where I originally created that save state; however, I was saving with the in-game save option just fine throughout my playthrough and was able to continue to where I left off up until that point. When I tried to load up the game again, it then did not even detect that a save had been made. This is strange though, because the SAVER file includes a save of my game in .esv format.

I tried to put this file to my PC and open it in an emulator (BGB), but it doesn't seem to recognize .esv files. I tried a exec that someone made allegedly to convert .esv to .sav and vice versa (unfortunately it does not work to just simply change the extension name to .sav due to something about how the data is stored in either file types) called goombasav_cs.exe, but no luck (totally possible that I'm just not using the executable correctly).

I don't seem to be able to find a PC emulator that has support for .esv format data files, so I don't know to date if my save data is completely lost or stored on the .esv file that is on my EZO. Can anyone who has more experience help me out with possibly being able to read this save file with the jagoomba emulator?

 

[PlantedWave5190]

Is the firmware still being supported and worked on? I know it's July 2023, but there might be more issues that need fixing or features to be added...

 

[izder456]

Is the firmware still being supported and worked on? I know it's July 2023, but there might be more issues that need fixing or features to be added...

if you look at the repos for both the definitive and the original fork in OP’s github, they are both archived read-only.

i did not personally see anything from OP announcing that, but it looks to be unmaintained unfortunately.

i can say- it functions perfectly fine as is- and its not like there are any new features or fixes i would like.

its pretty good as is.

 

[hippy dave]

Is the firmware still being supported and worked on? I know it's July 2023, but there might be more issues that need fixing or features to be added...

OP announced he was no longer gonna work on it, but someone else said they would. Read back through recent pages and you'll probably find it. No update just recently, but it might have got an update with jagoomba iirc.