ROM Hack TLBT Debug Menu

[Deleted User]

I saw on this website that Tingle's Love Balloon Trip has a debug menu-
http://tcrf.net/Irodzuki_Tingle_no_Koi_no_Balloon_Trip

Does anyone know how you would enable it?

 

[FAST6191]

By the looks of things it has the text for a debug menu. This does not mean there is an actual debug menu -- it is quite easy to remove the debug functionality from software and that text looks like just a file rather than actual code which could easily be left in there.

Figuring out if the functionality was actually removed, is still there in full just awaiting the right button combo, still there but all in game methods to access it were removed or some combo of the lot gets to be tricky. If you suspect it is just there but awaiting a certain button combo then there are things you can do, the others will typically warrant you going into some depth pulling apart the game's binary to figure it out, especially on a console like the DS which works the way it does.

This need not mean slogging through a full disassembly and you could use a modified version (you would have to do the modifying) of something like http://gbatemp.net/threads/unofficial-desmume-build-unused-memory-finder-tool.349332/ ; the debug menu code will likely not be accessed in normal game but may be in the binary or an overlay, you run through the game, the menus and the other parts and what remains is probably where the debug menu, if any, goes. On older consoles you would look for anything that accessed the debug text in a disassembly and then work from there.

If you know how to get the debug menu from games from the same dev, games using the same engine or something similar you might have an in as well -- devs are often creatures of habit.

 

[Deleted User]

This game -
http://tcrf.net/Freshly-Picked_Tingle's_Rosy_Rupeeland
has a debug menu, and is made by the same developer.

 

[FAST6191]

There seems to be a list of action replay codes to launch that, though it does mention at least one of those is for infinite rupees to allow the debug sections to work (something about 0 rupees seeing you die).

http://doc.kodewerx.org/hacking_nds.html#action_replay so you can debug them.
http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#dsmemorymaps for the memory maps.

From TCRF

02007444 0A00000E
94000130 000000FF
02007444 E3A02008
020012E8 E3A05001
D0000000 00000000

02XXXXXX is in the main memory region, the 0 means do a 32 bit write to it. The 9 is a check if equal command and the D is a terminator.

From NDSTS
ARM9 execute address 0x02000800
ARM9 copy to address 0x02000000
ARM9 binary size 0x000BB478

02007444 and 020012E8 is then well within the binary (which even before overlays ends at 020BB478). I have not checked properly to see what the changes are (I do not know if it is ARM or THUMB mode when it would happen).
04000130 is the location of the button register which means the 9 command is checking the button presses (a crude way to do it but it will mostly work).

All this tells you not a lot about how to do it on the other game. That comment was more along the lines of "wait so Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 both have cheat/debug modes accessed from the sound test menu, I will go look at that for Sonic and Knuckles".