Homebrew OPEN_AGB_FIRM discussion thread

[DSoryu]

Thanks to all for making this possible, a dream come true really! I was wondering, is there a Game Boy Color version of this? It would be legendary to have this option as well.

The best option you have to this is by using Gambatte or mGBA, since the 3DS lacks the original GB/C hardware to work similarly as open_AGB_firm

 

[Doomguy]

Thanks to all for making this possible, a dream come true really! I was wondering, is there a Game Boy Color version of this? It would be legendary to have this option as well.

You're probably better off making custom GBC VC injects or using a homebrew emulator.

 

[Kwyjor]

is there a Game Boy Color version of this? It would be legendary to have this option as well.

The 3DS is fully capable of emulating the Game Boy Color accurately and at full speed, so why would you need this option?

You could use Goomba Color (or more preferably Jagoomba Color) to run GBC games in GBA mode, but that wouldn't be as good as, say, mGBA.

 

[Nintendoswitchmodfan]

The 3DS is fully capable of emulating the Game Boy Color accurately and at full speed, so why would you need this option?

You could use Goomba Color (or more preferably Jagoomba Color) to run GBC games in GBA mode, but that wouldn't be as good as, say, mGBA.

I love the bottom screen not having the backlight on, it's really nice and more immersive. Sadly, Goomba Color is just not perfect, the game does look better but it runs like butt. I will just use Injector until some madlad creates something crazy like this for Game Boy!

 

[DSoryu]

I love the bottom screen not having the backlight on, it's really nice and more immersive. Sadly, Goomba Color is just not perfect, the game does look better but it runs like butt. I will just use Injector until some madlad creates something crazy like this for Game Boy!

You can use retroarch to have the bottom screen turned off, afaik the GBC cores work just fine even on old3DS.

 

[Nintendoswitchmodfan]

You can use retroarch to have the bottom screen turned off, afaik the GBC cores work just fine even on old3DS.

Really?! I will try this tonight, thank you ever so much for the epic news!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[PoliwagLo]

Is there a way to add gba vc frames like gb or gbc？​

 

[Nintendoswitchmodfan]

You can use retroarch to have the bottom screen turned off, afaik the GBC cores work just fine even on old3DS.

Brother, THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH!! IT worked, my dream come true!!! What core is the best for Game Boy Color? The one I am using is running kind of slow. THANK YOU again <3

 

[pokota]

Brother, THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH!! IT worked, my dream come true!!! What core is the best for Game Boy Color? The one I am using is running kind of slow. THANK YOU again <3

Which core are you using? I don't remember having issues with GBC even on OG o3DS but I don't think I was using retroArch back then either.

 

[Nintendoswitchmodfan]

Which core are you using? I don't remember having issues with GBC even on OG o3DS but I don't think I was using retroArch back then either.

I will let you know; I think I picked the first option, will try the other 3.

Post automatically merged: Feb 24, 2023

Which core are you using? I don't remember having issues with GBC even on OG o3DS but I don't think I was using retroArch back then either.

Brother, I figured out what was going on! I am play on a Nintendo 3DS and if the bottom screen is on it runs really slow, after it turns off it runs perfect! Thank you for this information, I am truly happy!! The final dream will be when they get the widescreen Nintendo DS algorithm fixed, then it will be a glorious day!

 

[tartarsauce]

how do i change the clock? when i play pokemon unbound the clock is always 1 hour ahead of my 3ds

 

[Deleted member 42501]

Do we need any of the ghosting settings using OAF? IIRC there were some issues with some titles that could damage the screen using VC injects.

 

[xsdfr]

is there any way to implement color correction in open_agb_firm?

 

[tomkatt]

is there any way to implement color correction in open_agb_firm?

I'd like to know this as well. open_AGB_firm is amazing but GBA colors look bad on 2DS XL and no gamma settings for GBA input or LCD output have been ideal for me. Some kind of color correction that makes it like the VBA-Colors or GBA-Colors Retroarch filters would be amazing.

Either way, amazing work on this. Open_AGB_firm's been a huge boon, I probably spend more time on GBA on my 3DS than I do with native games.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Not sure what color correction supposed to do. By the name of it, "Correct colors" but what even is the correct colors? I figured most portable systems had some screens that just made the colors look different between them. As reference, mGBA has a shader that supposed to mimic AGB-001 launch gba and also one for the GBA sp. Weather I would call it "Color Correction" not sure honestly.

Wasn't it just the screens those models use the reason each system had different colors? Because if each one presented different colors, then which one is the "Correct color"?

Few weeks ago, nintendo launched the GBA games on switch, I noticed the colors didn't look like how mGBA shows them. So I compared it to 3DS using the open agb firm. Since open agb firm has a screenshot function, I can easily compare the colors in paint.net to see each color value and compare. (But as a note, changing gamma or other settings are not shown in screenshots.) Some reason the screeenshots open agb firm makes are closer to what Visualboy advance and mGBA uses by default. Very Vivid ones, compared to what mGBA shader trying to copy the AGB-001 and GBA SP, or nintendo switch GBA games.

Think the point I was trying to make is what are the "correct colors" for gba games? Besides assuming that the original 2001 launch model is the correct colors because "It's the first one, that just makes sense" I'm still blaming this mess on nintendo for the poor quality screens they used in these systems.

 

[DSoryu]

Not sure what color correction supposed to do. By the name of it, "Correct colors" but what even is the correct colors? I figured most portable systems had some screens that just made the colors look different between them. As reference, mGBA has a shader that supposed to mimic AGB-001 launch gba and also one for the GBA sp. Weather I would call it "Color Correction" not sure honestly.

Wasn't it just the screens those models use the reason each system had different colors? Because if each one presented different colors, then which one is the "Correct color"?

Few weeks ago, nintendo launched the GBA games on switch, I noticed the colors didn't look like how mGBA shows them. So I compared it to 3DS using the open agb firm. Since open agb firm has a screenshot function, I can easily compare the colors in paint.net to see each color value and compare. (But as a note, changing gamma or other settings are not shown in screenshots.) Some reason the screeenshots open agb firm makes are closer to what Visualboy advance and mGBA uses by default. Very Vivid ones, compared to what mGBA shader trying to copy the AGB-001 and GBA SP, or nintendo switch GBA games.

Think the point I was trying to make is what are the "correct colors" for gba games? Besides assuming that the original 2001 launch model is the correct colors because "It's the first one, that just makes sense" I'm still blaming this mess on nintendo for the poor quality screens they used in these systems.

That's a good way to ask for this.

In its first days, the first GBA model (AGB-001) had one if not the first screen of its kind.

Despite the success of the Gameboy color which featured a very similar tech for the screen, color lcd panels were still far away to be the usual standard, and there weren't too many options in the market to choose from. The best option was the screen used in the GBA, despite the lack of a proper backlight or any light source to make it easier to see:

On top of this, the color space those types of screen used was not the standard RGB, so instead of purple you would see a washed out tone of blue, or instead of proper yellow, you would see a saturated tone of chick yellow. You can see the difference in the following example, using a GBC game as an example:

Normal RGB (left) vs GBC/GBA unlit screen RGB (right). The Pokémon Logo and Pikachu look closer to the official art with color correction.​

So developers had to work with this limitation in mind, having to use saturated and bright colors to compensate, so their games would look better on those types of screens. This was made for nearly all of the early game lineup in the GBA library.

The tables would turn soon after the AGS-001 and AGS-101 were released. People noticed that the colors looked wrong in the newer AGS-101 model. You can see the difference in the following photo:

Golden Sun looks darker on the AGS-001 (left) and brighter in the AGS-101 (right). The AGS-101 was the first model to showcase a proper RGB color-space screen.
​

The AGS-001 added a frontlight, but kept the dark-weird color space "feature". Despite of that, the front light solution made the screen look purplish and weird. In the other hand, the AGS-101 used a backlight, and as of this date, it kept being used as a standard lighting solution for LCD screens, and now used a proper RGB color space.

The downside of the new AGS-101 screen solution and EVERY type of LCD screen since then, was that older GBA and GBC games that were programmed with color palettes with the old GBA screen in mind, ended looking washed out, too bright and with wrong color schemes in some areas. Some notable examples:

​

And last but not least, a multimedia example that backs this info up:

Here, you can see the same media content displayed in different types of consoles/shadders. You can see how the GBA version compensated the color for the older unlit displays, by oversaturating everything and using a different shade of purple. Playing this in proper RGB screens results in a wrongly displayed image. This problem was carried onwards to the DS Lite and every console that featured proper RGB colorspaces.

Interestingly enough, the GB micro and the DS Phat launched with a better lightened screen, but keeping the old colorspace:

The DS Phat has a colorspace similar to the old AGB-001

The DS Lite, having a proper RGB colorspace screen, shows how washed and brighter old GBA games look.

Here you can see the GBmicro colorspace compared to the DS Lite and 3DS​

So in order to correct the color spaces of older GBA and GBC games to match how developers originally saw them, the emulation scene has implemented the correction in form of shaders.

At the end, it is up to the user to decide if they like them or not, as this is a completely optional feature, but a neat one to have.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

At the end, it is up to the user to decide if they like them or not, as this is a completely optional feature, but a neat one to have.

Yeah, that's kind what I was trying to understand. The images does help show the distinct differences. But at the end of the day, still nintendo's problem. Just as they made the nes that has widely different color palettes. Not just from people using that system and recording youtube videos, but every emulator and even nintendo's own emulators aren't consistent with the palettes between wii, 3DS, wii u, switch virtual console emulators. It's just a huge mess.

Calling it "Color correction" would be more like "What was the intention during the development" before they realized it wasn't going to look the way they wanted on consumer hardware AGS-001 making adjustments after the fact. The fact multiple revisions came out over time, newer games releases, developers might think less of the AGS-001 from 2001 and more about the AGS-001 from 2003, then another revision AGS-101 from 2005 and then Gameboy micro. By that time, the stuff became better.

In between that time, some games had compensation for the different screens. Some games advertised for gameboy player had alternate palettes that was used when playing the game on gameboy player for gamecube like super mario advance 4. The game is basically super mario bros 3 from the snes super mario all stars game. When played on GBA player, the pallet matches that more accurately than it does when played on any of the GBA handheld models. So it's a simple palette swap that only triggers automatically when loading game on different hardware.

Just like some GBC games, oracle of ages/seasons, Shantae, Mega Man Xtreme 2. Sonic advance 3 and Kingdom Hearts Chain of Memories has a trigger on the title screen to alter palettes for different systems as well. Unlike Mario advance 4, it's not automatic. It shows that by the end of 2003, they was thinking ahead of the AGB-001 and hopefully relying more on the newer models for the colors.

 

[ghjfdtg]

In my opinion the correct colors are the AGB/AGS-001 ones. Almost the entire library of games was developed for this LCD. You can argue the AGS-101 was also correct since it was official but it came quite late.

 

[Darkshadow1997]

I am really grateful to the creators of open_agb_firm. Recently, I got back into pokemon hacks and I noticed that for some reason injecting saves messes up the RTC of any hacks based on emerald, ruby and sapphire but on open_agb_firm, I have no issues on that and my saves from emulation shows the correct time. It is weird though, any RTC firered/leafgreen hacks has no issues with time from injected saves but ruby/sapphire/emerald does.

 

[tomkatt]

It's very much a color tone issue, with everything being overbrightened and slightly color shifted without adjustment. I captured some examples with and without shaders here: