Hacking Rudolphs/3in1 O_o ???

[IdiotCow]

Ok, I'm running advance wars (1.0, 1.1) - which patching for some reason has been giving me trouble...

1st - 1.0 unpatched - strange save stuff going on (to be expected) played a bit, lost my save... my own dumb fault for not patching

2nd - 1.0 patched with GBATA - crashes on save in 3in1, boots to whitescreen & locks up in VBA - wierd... GBATA SRAM patching funky?

3rd - 1.1 patched with GBATA - same as 2nd

4th - 1.1 patched with EZ4 - same funkyness as original (maybe didn't really patch?)

5th - 1.1 patched with EZ4 - but this time I loaded a save from Gamefaqs (converted with VBA) - when I booted through rudolphs I got nothing, but when I booted straight to the 3in1 *IT LOADED THE SAV FILE*

I thought hey, progress! we're in buisness... one final test though - I loaded another game to the NOR, and then back to AW - and that killed my SAV... so rudolphs is NOT going to back up my progress...

anyone have anything to add to this? am I just screwed or is there a solution here I'm missing?

-J

 

[IdiotCow]

Solution: don't use rudolphs, use GBALDR - seems to be working fine, loaded AW to NOR played, saved, and loaded another game and then BACK to AW... it loaded fine...

hope it works and I don't get 1/2 way though only to lose my save

maybe I'll backup every now and then

-J

 

[Destructobot]

Advance Wars works just fine with the 3in1 Expansion Pack Tool ("Rudolph's"). I tested it just now, and both 1.0 and 1.1 work as they should when patched with GBATA.

 

[IdiotCow]

with the R4? what version of the R4 software? I'm using the latest everything... and it's still being strange...

This problem is so weird - now I can save/load just fine when I use GBALdr, but when I boot straight to NOR the game hangs when I try to save...

it works for now.. so I guess I'm ok... still confused why its doing this...

 

[Destructobot]

I'm using an M3 Simply, which is the same as an R4. I tried it with loaders 1.10 and 1.11, which are equivalent to 1.14 and 1.15 on the R4.

 

[IdiotCow]

Ok, just tested again with the euro version - and it works better (for some weird reason) I can save & load just fine as long as I'm booting from the loader (both loaders, PSRAM/NOR, the works). However, if I try to boot directly from slot 2 (using NOR) - when I try to save it hangs... is this documented at all? or is this some weird problem with my DS/3in1?

I'm mainly curious at this point... I can easily play the game - but it would be nice to know what's going on...

 

[Destructobot]

I had been running the game from PSRAM when I tested it earlier. I just tried running the game (US v1.1) from NOR, and I get the same behavior you described. If I boot the game from the 3in1 Expansion Pack Tool it works properly, but if I run it from the R4/Simply menu or the DS menu it hangs on the 'saving data' message.

This seems to be a problem with the "FLASH_V121 (512kbit)" save type. I tested Chu Chu Rocket (which uses the same save type) and it won't save properly when I run the game from NOR, but it does work when I run the game from PSRAM. I also tried Golden Sun, which uses a different 512kbit Flash save type, and it saves properly regardless of how I run the game. I SRAM patched both games with GBATA.

Fortunately, there are only twelve different GBA releases that use this save type, and half of those are different regions/versions of Advance Wars and Chu Chu Rocket.

 

[IdiotCow]

Well... I guess that's good - that my hardware isn't behaving completely out of the ordinary (aka something broken)

it's strange that it works from the loader, but not straight from the exp pack... I wonder what the deal is...

oh well - its working enough for now

thanks for the help / confirming the bug

-J