Saving in Goomba Color

Try running it from the M3 Lite directly without using the M3 Real at all. You might need to patch with the Game Manager software for it to work. After that, it should be able to handle in-game saves fine. Just make sure if you're playing a game with a 32 KB save file that you press L+R after saving in-game to forcefully update the SRAM.

Beyond that point, I don't know how the M3 Lite handles saves, but it should function like any other standard GBA save file.

Have you ever been successful in getting the M3 Lite's "built-in" GBC emulator to work? If you did, we can easily upgrade the emulator core to the latest version of Goomba Color by replacing a single file.

 

I wasn't even aware you could launch *.gbc files directly from the M3 Lite menu. I highly doubt that's going to function correctly.

Okay, so you can get it to save when using the Game Manager to convert the game to *.gba format? Excellent, now all we need to do is update the emulator core used for that to support GBC games as well. Download the latest version of Goomba Color from the dwedit.org main site, and have the goomba.gba file from that handy. From there, go to Game Manager's folder in Program Files and find the "INTRO_GB.BIN" file. This is the emulator core, so either delete or rename it and replace it with the goomba.gba file, renamed to INTRO_GB.BIN. Then try re-converting your games and hopefully it should work.

You may need to setup Windows Explorer to always show file extensions to do this properly. If so, go to Tools - Folder Options - View tab - uncheck "hide extensions for known file types" and hit Okay.

 

I don't have an M3 myself, so no it wasn't common knowledge. I gained this particular solution from Covarr's first post at http://www.pocketheaven.com/boards/viewtopic.php?t=5599

You could also use the Goomba Frontend to create a *.gba compilation with your GBC games, but as long as it works currently, it would probably be best not to change it. Basically, the M3 Game Manager does the same thing the Goomba Frontend does except it only adds the one game to the *.gba file rather than several at a time.

Glad you got it worked out.

 

can't you use real-time save for gb/gbc games now?

 

Goomba supports savestates, Goomba Color does not. I've never experimented with using a Supercard's or M3's on-board real-time save capability in either one.

 

Is this still the case? (and why?)
Using Goomba Color with my M3 Perfect now and when I press L+R I'm not able to select Save or Load...
Should I use Goomba instead of Goomba Color then?


Related search results:
http://gbatemp.net/t...r-saving-issue/
http://gbatemp.net/t...color-problems/
http://gbatemp.net/t...-color-4212009/
http://gbatemp.net/t...ith-save-state/

EDIT:
Reading Pocketheaven I read:

Doesn't that mean we should be able to save with Goomba Color?

 

why did you bump a 4 yr old thread?

-another world

 

You can save with Goomba Color, just like you could with the actual cartridge, like opening the Start menu and pressing Save or something

Savestates are still only supported in regular Goomba and not Goomba Color

 

Yeah I got that. Is that what the 32k saves are for?
Then again, still, the release notes say "Added 32k saves, Enter the menu with L+R to save the game's sram". So I guess I still don't get that part. If I do L+R in Goomba Color I can't do anything with Save/Load state nor Sram, so what does that line say?

 

32k saves are for Pokemon games and others that store large amounts of data.

Regular save files are your normal in game "save menu" type. Savestates are different, it's where your exact emulation state is remembered.

 

Ok, so 32k saves are for the Pokemon games. And the "Enter the menu with L+R to save the game's sram" is specifically for that too?
So if I play a Pokemon game (never played them), press L+R then the Save state and/or sram functionality is available?
Or is it so that if you use the internal save of a game, THEN the Goomba Color Sram functionality comes available? (haven't tested that, will try that when I get home)

 

Regular saving consists of going to the in-game menu and saving there. This data is kept in the sram and is not actually saved to your microSD (supposedly). By saving the sram, you move your save data onto a more permanent place, or the microSD, thus the 32KB file. If you don't save the sram, and it is not automatically saved at some point (I have never used goomba color), then you shouldn't end up with any 32KB file as well as not having the save data available when you start the game after a hard reset.

This is in no way anything like a savestate, and saving the sram is more of just a requirement to perform if you wish to play the game as you would on a legitimate game cartridge and retaining the save data across play times.

-edit-
Btw, the sram is a temporary thing. It stays as long as there is energy to keep it there (battery power ftw). Hopefully this clarifies everything.

 

Dwedit's language is confusing. Just the mere act of pressing L+R to go to the menu "finalizes" the internal save file within Goomba Color. Again, we're talking about just normal in-game saves here. I don't know the technical details, but basically all you have to do is make sure that for those specific games, after using the in-game menu to save, just go into the Goomba Color menu at least once before turning off the GBA.

The "Save State" and "Load State" buttons do absolutely nothing in the Goomba Color menu. They are simply left over from when the project was forked from the regular black-and-white Goomba emulator. Pretend they never existed.

Goomba color takes care of getting the save game data from several emulated games into a single SRAM save for an entire compilation, and the M3 is responsible for getting that data onto the *.sav file on your SD card. Never having an M3, I don't know exactly how it does it, but I suspect it's automatic since the M3 Perfect was very advanced for its time.

 

If you have AutoSave 'on' with the M3 Perfect it writes the data to the [gamename].dat file in the GAMESAVE folder when you reboot the GBA or when you go to the main menu via L+R+A+B. Manually you can dump the sram to any .dat file with SELECT when you're in the Game menu.
At least, that's how I understand it.