Hacking Rominator for NDS

[Dazimus]

Excellent program, well done!

Just a few things I'd like to mention:

- When copying multiple roms onto my flash card, the progress bar stayed on the second rom (although it was still copying)

- Progress/Info bar could be made a bit bigger and stand out a bit more

- When highlighting multiple roms, is it possible to show the total size of the selected roms?

- Any chance of making the Games and Flash lists a bit bigger? Maybe include an icon? Just making it easier to copy games to the flash card really, as opposed to dragging roms to a word (Yes I'm lazy hehe)

- An indicator showing untrimmed and trimmed rom difference in file size?

But yea, superb program and I wonder how I got by without it! Looking forward to 2.5!

 

[hankchill]

Excellent program, well done!

Just a few things I'd like to mention:

- When copying multiple roms onto my flash card, the progress bar stayed on the second rom (although it was still copying)

- Progress/Info bar could be made a bit bigger and stand out a bit more

- When highlighting multiple roms, is it possible to show the total size of the selected roms?

- Any chance of making the Games and Flash lists a bit bigger? Maybe include an icon? Just making it easier to copy games to the flash card really, as opposed to dragging roms to a word (Yes I'm lazy hehe)

- An indicator showing untrimmed and trimmed rom difference in file size?

But yea, superb program and I wonder how I got by without it! Looking forward to 2.5!

Everything you mentioned has already been fixed or added

Regards.

 

[colheath]

It's fab, thank you.

 

[Amything]

Right now the thumbnails are not working, I guess the server is down? Not a big deal, however I can't add any games to it now either "The information for the file ... does not exist in the database and cannot be added". Is this because of the same reason?

 

[hankchill]

Right now the thumbnails are not working, I guess the server is down? Not a big deal, however I can't add any games to it now either "The information for the file ... does not exist in the database and cannot be added". Is this because of the same reason?

I *really* need you guys to read previous posts.

You *MUST* update to v2.1.2 and have the LATEST DS Database. I've already said this THREE times and it's solved people's problems each time..

v2.1.2 is in my Signature, and you can get the database by running the 'Check for Updates' option.

If you have an older version but update the database, it will not work anymore.
If you have 2.1.2, and an older database, you need to update the database.

Either way, you MUST update.

Regards.

 

[mavis]

First of all, a big THANKS!!! for this software - I just started plaing around with it last night, and it is very cool!

I do have a couple of questions, though, if you don't mind ...

1. Would it be possible to be able to export cover art to a directory in JPG format (ie, 0001.jpg, 0002.jpg, etc)? I need to have the JPEGs because I can use Adobe Lightroom to make HTML galleries of the box art, it makes it easier to identify DVD backup contents for friends, etc - they can SEE what files are on each disk by looking at a gallery. It would be nice to be able to export the cover art from your program.

2. Rominator is showing 0891-0896 as unidentified ROMs, but they are already in ADVANScene's release lists ... How often is your database updated?

Thanks again for your hard work, the program is very cool! Much appreciated!

 

[hankchill]

First of all, a big THANKS!!! for this software - I just started plaing around with it last night, and it is very cool!

I do have a couple of questions, though, if you don't mind ...

1. Would it be possible to be able to export cover art to a directory in JPG format (ie, 0001.jpg, 0002.jpg, etc)? I need to have the JPEGs because I can use Adobe Lightroom to make HTML galleries of the box art, it makes it easier to identify DVD backup contents for friends, etc - they can SEE what files are on each disk by looking at a gallery. It would be nice to be able to export the cover art from your program.

2. Rominator is showing 0891-0896 as unidentified ROMs, but they are already in ADVANScene's release lists ... How often is your database updated?

Thanks again for your hard work, the program is very cool! Much appreciated!

All of the box arts are available at http://www.projectnds.com/ FAST6191 pointed me in that direction to find all the ones I was looking for

So there's really no need for my program to be able to export.

The database is updated 2-3 times a week. It's scheduled to update tonight (up to 0897), so just hang tight

Thanks for the positive feedback

Regards.

 

[R-Unit 4]

so it will trim the rom, but the saves with the untrimmed rom will still work even without renaming it?

 

[FAST6191]

Most modern flash carts handle the saving by name (if you have an old GBA style cart like the F2A, EZFA, EZ1/2 it sorts it via the writing software) so provided the name does not change you should be good: trimming merely removes the useless bytes from the end of the rom added to make dumps the same size as the memory chips they come from.

 

[OSW]

no zip support has put me off this. think of the space saving!

 

[Deleted User]

no zip support has put me off this. think of the space saving!

'Normal' Zip support would so rock. Since all my ROMs are zipped, this is the one feature that puts me off from using it the whole time too. But I guess HankChill is already working on that (or was that 'just' 7zip)!?

But anyways, with or without Zip-support, I wanted to thank you, HankChill, for your amazing effort on this application!

 

[hankchill]

Zip support will be coming. 7Zip may come*later*

But remember one thing: Having Zip support will be *much* slower, because it has to extract some data from each game in the archive to read it, so for it to do all that work, and if you have a large list of games, it could take a while, so using Zipped games is up to you.

Besides, we're in the age 0f 500+GB Hard Drives, why not have them uncompressed

@OSW: I don't understand why a measley feature such as Zip support could turn you off from a feature-packed application

And to everyone: 2.5 is getting there. I found a bug in trimming though that would cause the output game to be 3MB larger than it actually should (for example, Advance Wars should be 27.2MB Trimmed, and it even says so, but the actual output file is 30.X MB) Although it does no damage to the game (it writes the same last 3MB of the file twice), it's still an extra 3MB that is just waste. Either way, it's been fixed, and a lot of fun features are on the way with it

Regards.

 

[arman68]

remember one thing: Having Zip support will be *much* slower, because it has to extract some data from each game in the archive to read it

Not true: without zip the whole rom needs to be scanned to work out the CRC. With zip, it's already there. Of course that will only work if you base your tool on CRC, and not on reading the ROM headers.

 

[Dazimus]

Any expected release date of 2.5 Hank?

 

[hankchill]

remember one thing: Having Zip support will be *much* slower, because it has to extract some data from each game in the archive to read it

Not true: without zip the whole rom needs to be scanned to work out the CRC. With zip, it's already there. Of course that will only work if you base your tool on CRC, and not on reading the ROM headers.

I'm not using CRC

Rom header, cartridge code, and ROM Version has done justice for me, because if someone patches a rom and tries to load it in a program that checks CRC, then it will be unrecognized.

What I *may* do is add in limited ZIP support, and add the CRC info into the database. Only downfall is, is that it would be only good for clean roms. If it's not clean, then it won't work. We shall see...

@Dazimus: I can't give an *exact* date, but it will be this week. Good things are to come

I'm working hard at it!

Regards.

 

[FAST6191]

Just to add into this is is incredibly easy (4 seconds on a GUI and leave your machine for a period of time to make the file) to fake a CRC16/32 but the known data method makes it that much more difficult.

As for patching breaking the rom I can well understand that (some of the early patchers can even break the method being used now) but with regard to people storing trimmed roms could you not just overlay a bunch of 00's or FF's to match the original size and CRC that?

 

[s0ldats]

Hi, great program, but it's not working at all on my computer.

I downloaded the mac version for my 17inch PPC powerbook. Is it compiled for intel only or both ppc/intel?

when i double click the app, it flashes for a split second in the dock, and then disappears. no error messages nothing. any ideas?

thanks

 

[freemdoom]

Don't auto expand, use Stuffit Expander.

 

[Dazimus]

Good stuff, keep up the work mate

 

[mavis]

Just wondering: does anyone have a boxart.rsd with ALL of the ROMs' art loaded? I have all 896 ROMs on an external USB drive that I use daily on my laptop - I'm not always connected to the internet, though, so I can't download the box art 'on demand' as I browse through my collection with ROMinator ... I can host a complete boxart.rsd on my site, if anyone else wants it (I've got about 299GB of disk space and 2800GB/month of bandwidth to spare) ...

Also (for Hank) I have a question about the way this program scans my ROM directory every time I open it, or even when I switch to a different game list. Would it be possible to implement a database system so that ROMinator doesn't have to scan every ROM EVERY time I open the program? It would make startup MUCH faster ...

Anyway, thanks again - great program!!