Hacking Rominator for NDS

[hankchill]

Nice app though how do i get multi games folder i have roms on a DVD and roms in a Roms folder i use windows it says in the manual you can have multi folder but i cant seem to get any

also merry christmas.

Yep, all you need to do is select the 'root' folder of all the games. If your games are on disc organized into different folders from there, you would set the game location to the root of your disc. It will then scan up to 5 subfolders deep for games within the location you provided. Merry Christmas to you too, I'm at work, nothing's happening here, so I'll be programming Rominator today

QUOTEYeah it's a very nice application, love using it. It has made my life a lot easier.
Also, my gratitude to hankchill for taking the time to respond to any (stupid) questions I have posed via mail.

Some questions:

• * If you select multiple roms (10 or so) and then do Actions > rZip, the program closes after zipping the final rom. No idea if that's intended or not. There were one or 2 occasions where it didn't happen. I'm thinking that it closes if you include the last rom from your list.
  * The new right click menu is very cool, but (though this is probably intended behavior) if you have multiple selected roms, any action from the right click menu only applies to the rom you right click on, not the entire selection.
  * Do you think there will be ever a possibility that a screenshot (or several) of the game can be included as well?
  * Is it feasible to add some kind of custom action to the menu's? Being able to assemble command lines and having filename, rom id, game name etc as possible variables would be very handy. I would use it to add a link to release sites with more rom info & screenshots. Unfortunately they don't seem to use the actual rom ID, so that might be hard to accomplish since there's no way of knowing the correct URL.

Just to be clear: the program is awesome and extremely usable as is, only attempting to help improving it

• I'll check into the contextual menu (right click)... Last I checked it worked, but things have been modified after adding it, so bugs do arise

• Screenshots is a possibility

• Yeah, this suggestion would be really difficult to implement, and if it were to be done, it would have to be catering to a specific website, only because of the scheme they use for the game URL's. It's different for every site. If a site used the game's number in the scheme, that would be easy, but yes, it is hard

Any and All suggestions are always welcome

--Henry

 

[Rocky5]

its not that what i have is roms on a dvd and roms on my hdd i found a work around i selected the dvd drive first scanned the selected my roms folder on hdd and scanned again this work but it would be easier to have the option for more than one directory as this way is a pain.

 

[hankchill]

Thought I'd give you all a little teaser of v5.4. I'll try and have it ready for the new year, but there is a lot that is going into it. You'll see what I mean

Here's the "teaser"

--Henry

 

[dannywill]

there are some invalid database entries (most because proper versions were released):

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| REASON      | ROM                                                                          | DB-CRC   | Actual-CRC |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Bad CRC     | 0032 - Bomberman (J)(Legacy)                                                 | 6ABC6705 | 0F805B72   |
| Bad CRC     | 0033 - Kenshuui Tendo Dokuta (J)(Trashman)                                   | 39DBD5EC | 82FF50C5   |
| Bad CRC     | 0111 - Advance Wars - Dual Strike (E)(M5)(FCT)                               | 4376F370 | C42D8E67   |
| Bad CRC     | 0246 - Dragon Ball Z - Bukuu Ressen (J)(SCZ)                                 | 9C118C6D | 9EEA277C   |
| Bad CRC     | 0247 - Harobots Action!! (J)(SCZ)                                            | A764C6A0 | E497D7BD   |
| Bad CRC     | 0248 - New Rainbow Islands (J)(SCZ)                                          | C8819280 | 80DB7665   |
| Bad CRC     | 0249 - Urusei Yatsura - Endless Summer (J)(SCZ)                              | 8D5C18F2 | C5F44614   |
| Bad CRC     | 0253 - Super Black Bass - Dynamic Shot (J)(SCZ)                              | 6692E0BC | 7958D28C   |
| Bad CRC     | 0267 - Manga-ka Debut Monogatari DS - Akogare! Manga-ka Ikusei Game (J)(SCZ) | 1E9A6AE7 | 2270555F   |
| Bad CRC     | 0275 - LostMagic (J)(SCZ)                                                    | 0E10EDDD | 67A10FC7   |
| Bad CRC     | 0429 - LostMagic (E)(M4)(Endless Piracy)                                     | ED54CC40 | 0E34F28E   |
| Bad CRC     | 0993 - Gyakuten Saiban 4 (J)(eZ)                                             | 3774F54B | 34721814   |
| Invalid CRC | 1098 - Naruto - Saikyou Ninja Daikesshu 3 (K)(Romar)                         | F0308FA  | 0F0308FA   |
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'll check those games and compare CRC's to my DB to the official ones.



so, well it seems you didn't really checked the games until now. you can look them up in the advanscene's database because there you can find the ips and the proper's crcs..

regards
mrshl

Haven't really gotten around to it... been busy and all

No worries, I'll get to it soon

Some of these still don't seem to be right (eg. I have downloaded 0253 from many different sources, all have the CRC 7958D28C, rominator is excpecting 7958D28C)

There are others, let me know if you need a list.

 

[Salamantis]

Thought I'd give you all a little teaser of v5.4. I'll try and have it ready for the new year, but there is a lot that is going into it. You'll see what I mean

Here's the "teaser"

--Henry

Your teaser gives it all away

And btw Im still in CUBA!

 

[iritegood]

Thought I'd give you all a little teaser of v5.4. I'll try and have it ready for the new year, but there is a lot that is going into it. You'll see what I mean

Here's the "teaser"

--Henry

Wow. That's one exciting teaser. Now if only I could get my hands on an expansion cart.

 

[OmegaChrono]

I just wanna tell you that this app is just awesome. I'd love to donate if I had the money to spare, sorry. Well anyway I hope you keep this up!

 

[IBNobody]

The GBA database is interesting. It's good to see that you've adapted the DS database idea to other systems. When's the Wii DB coming out?

Anyways...

I wanted to throw out a suggestion to you. I'm posting it here rather than through e-mails because I wanted to hear other people's opinions on whether or not it would screw up a given brand of flashcard.

Suggestion: When copying games to a flashcard, have an option (in the options screen?) to have Rominator create a blank save file. (All 0x00's or 0xFF's) The option screen setting would let you set things like file size and extension.

There are two reasons for this.

1. It will prevent your R4 from prompting if you want to create a save.
2. If the FAT tables on the MicroSD get corrupted, you may not be able to play a new game.

I had #2 happen to me on my Christmas trip this year. A file on my R4 crapped out, and I had no way of fixing it. The side effect of it was that I was unable to write new files to the flashcard. (Overwriting files worked, thankfully.) This meant that any game I hadn't played yet (and didn't have a save file created) wouldn't load. If I would've had a premade blank save file created, I wouldn't have run into this problem.

What do you think?

 

[hankchill]

The GBA database is interesting. It's good to see that you've adapted the DS database idea to other systems. When's the Wii DB coming out?

Anyways...

I wanted to throw out a suggestion to you. I'm posting it here rather than through e-mails because I wanted to hear other people's opinions on whether or not it would screw up a given brand of flashcard.

Suggestion: When copying games to a flashcard, have an option (in the options screen?) to have Rominator create a blank save file. (All 0x00's or 0xFF's) The option screen setting would let you set things like file size and extension.

There are two reasons for this.

1. It will prevent your R4 from prompting if you want to create a save.
2. If the FAT tables on the MicroSD get corrupted, you may not be able to play a new game.

I had #2 happen to me on my Christmas trip this year. A file on my R4 crapped out, and I had no way of fixing it. The side effect of it was that I was unable to write new files to the flashcard. (Overwriting files worked, thankfully.) This meant that any game I hadn't played yet (and didn't have a save file created) wouldn't load. If I would've had a premade blank save file created, I wouldn't have run into this problem.

What do you think?

I actually like that idea. It seems pretty feasible to me, and can completely understand why you'd want such a feature. Sure, if I have time I'd be glad to add it in. Heck, there's always time

I'm just getting off my holidays so I'll be back to coding soon. I figured I needed a break just like everyone else, so I've got like 30 feedback emails to go through

--Henry

 

[iritegood]

The GBA database is interesting. It's good to see that you've adapted the DS database idea to other systems. When's the Wii DB coming out?

Anyways...

I wanted to throw out a suggestion to you. I'm posting it here rather than through e-mails because I wanted to hear other people's opinions on whether or not it would screw up a given brand of flashcard.

Suggestion: When copying games to a flashcard, have an option (in the options screen?) to have Rominator create a blank save file. (All 0x00's or 0xFF's) The option screen setting would let you set things like file size and extension.

There are two reasons for this.

1. It will prevent your R4 from prompting if you want to create a save.
2. If the FAT tables on the MicroSD get corrupted, you may not be able to play a new game.

I had #2 happen to me on my Christmas trip this year. A file on my R4 crapped out, and I had no way of fixing it. The side effect of it was that I was unable to write new files to the flashcard. (Overwriting files worked, thankfully.) This meant that any game I hadn't played yet (and didn't have a save file created) wouldn't load. If I would've had a premade blank save file created, I wouldn't have run into this problem.

What do you think?


I actually like that idea. It seems pretty feasible to me, and can completely understand why you'd want such a feature. Sure, if I have time I'd be glad to add it in. Heck, there's always time

I'm just getting off my holidays so I'll be back to coding soon. I figured I needed a break just like everyone else, so I've got like 30 feedback emails to go through

--Henry

If only you could add a feature so that the savs created would be the correct file size (and not all 512KB). You'll need to hack the R4 firmware though... but I think that's aready been done by iq_132

 

[SP0RK]

Hey hank, I recently started using the save manager in Rominator and I am really enjoying the amount of organization at my disposal with just one program. I have a few questions though about things I may or may not be doing correctly.

1) What's the difference between flashing and drag & drop? When I load a ROM into the queue and flash it, it creates a .nds and .sav of the game but the .sav is as big as the .nds instead of the usual 512 KB. When I drag & drop though the .sav is of the right size. This was all done with a backup save that I had saved earlier.

2) How does the "Append Date When Importing Save Files" option work? I checked it thinking it would add the date to the end of the .sav files whenever I backed them up from my cart but it doesn't do that. Is there something I'm doing wrong?

Anyways, thanks once again I really enjoy your program and am looking forward to future updates (especially a GBA database!).

 

[linuxsense]

Any progress on the Linux version? As of a few months ago I started to get libc.so errors but I just downloaded the current version and I still have the errors (show below). The system is Kubuntu 7.10.

../Common/loaderX86.cpp: 268
Failure Condition: lib->mLibraryHandle
Missing shared library /usr/lib/libc.so

../Common/loaderX86.cpp: 282
Failure Condition: functionEntry
Could not resolve function 'time' in /usr/lib/libc.so

../Common/loaderX86.cpp: 282
Failure Condition: functionEntry
Could not resolve function 'localtime_r' in /usr/lib/libc.so

Let me know if I can provide any additional information.

 

[Blizz]

I was thinking: Wouldn't it be handy to allow assigning a few keywords to a ROM? That way it could be given a score, a category and perhaps the name of the flashcard you put it on or so

 

[TinyBilbo]

I don't know if it has been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, but would it be possible to make Rominator support the M3 Real save games?
The M3 Real saves a 512k save file but has the extension .0 as opposed to .sav.
Thanks for a great app!

 

[starstremr]

ok this has probably been asked but here it goes it there a way to have it use 3 Letter Country code like (USA) , (EUR), (KOR) instead of just (U), (E), (K) and so on in the renaming feature.

 

[Salamantis]

ok this has probably been asked but here it goes it there a way to have it use 3 Letter Country code like (USA) , (EUR), (KOR) instead of just (U), (E), (K) and so on in the renaming feature.

Try to go to Preferences, click Renaming, and under String Replacement add (U) to (USA), (E) to (EUR), etc.

 

[starstremr]

Worked Perfect thanks

 

[Steevsee]

A big thank you to Hank for a fantastic program.
Downloaded yesterday and it has already saved me hours of manually renaming and moving files and adding pics etc.
Felt compelled to make a small donation in appreciation.
Can't wait for the new version!

Thanks again and keep up the good work!

Cheers!

 

[hankchill]

A big thank you to Hank for a fantastic program.
Downloaded yesterday and it has already saved me hours of manually renaming and moving files and adding pics etc.
Felt compelled to make a small donation in appreciation.
Can't wait for the new version!

Thanks again and keep up the good work!

Cheers!

Welcome to GBAtemp Steve! Thanks for the nice feedback!

Check your email

Regards,
--Henry

 

[revengebeast]

the linux link dosnt work for me