ROM Hack Unable to play my homebrew on real hardware

[DavidAHouse]

I'm taking a class in school this semester and we are making games for the GBA. For some reason, the .gba files that I've created so far for class will not run on my DS Lite. But other .gba homebrew files that I've downloaded seem to run just fine. I don't know if it is the hardware/software that I have running on the DS Lite, or if it is a specific compiler/linker flag or something in the code itself.

In the M3 software on the DS, it has a gameboy option. I open that and it has all my .gba files listed (They are in a sub-directory on the card named GBA). When I try to run one of my .gba programs, it shows the GAMEBOY logo on the top of the screen, but the word 'Nintendo' that should be right underneath is all garbage (it is the same color that the word should be, but is either trying to display kanji characters, or just random pixels where the word should be). That is as far as it goes. When I do the same exact steps on a .gba program that I didn't create, It shows the Gameboy / Nintendo logo just fine, and then runs the game.

Here is my hardware/software on the DS:
M3 Zero i (Slot 1)
GBA Expansion Pack (Slot 2)
M3 DS Real (M3 Manager v4.7h X version)

Any ideas what could be wrong with my files? Or is it some other problem?
TIA!

 

[ProtoKun7]

It might be something wrong with your files, or maybe just a bad connection with the hardware. Some of my GBA games had the same purple mess at the bottom sometimes; probably when they weren't connecting quite correctly.

 

[DavidAHouse]

It doesn't seem like a intermittent hardware problem because it happens every time on my .gba files, but never on the other ones. I should also point out that my .gba games work fine under two different GBA emulators (Visual Boy Advance and Boycott advance).

Just doesn't make much sense that the emulators can run them fine, but the DS itself can't.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Use GBATA to fix header CRC.

 

[DavidAHouse]

Downloaded GBATA and fixed the header. That works perfectly. Although does require an extra step. And since my dev toolchain is on Linux, hosted on a Mac, having to boot into Windows to fix the header is a total pain. Any links to modifying my build environment to include that fix when it is built? I'll do the research on it, just any pointers on where to start would be awesome. If not, then this is cool anyway. At least I found a way to make it work.

Thanks so much!

 

[kuwanger]

If you're using a dev toolchain under Linux, odds are good you're using devkitarm under devkitpro. Either way, gbafix is included to fix headers. If not, you can always go to devkitpro's Sourceforge page and download the latest build for Linux and simply use the gbafix file included. Admittedly, it might be faster to look through their svn repository here, download the gbafix.c file, and compile it yourself.