Problem applying Fire Emblem 4 Patches

[Dirtfall]

Hello. Recently discovered the Fire Emblem 4 hacks on this site and, wanting to try the game again, thought I'd give them a go. I've tried Shin's FE4 patch and Camus' Remix patch and been having problems with both, was hoping someone could advise.

With Shin's patch I can't really get the game working at all (using the most recent version, 1.94). I have a clean headered version of the game and a clean non-headered version of the game (both of which run fine normally - wasn't sure which one was required for Shin's patch) but once the patch is applied by Lunar IPS patcher neither will run. I've tried it on the most recent versions of SNES9x and ZSNES, both result in the same dark screen. The only way I can get it to run at all is to apply the patch, load up the game in either of the emulators, have the emulator create an .srm file for that version, then close the emulator and delete the patched game. Then I take the original game, change the name to the name of the patched rom but WITHOUT applying the patch (so the old .srm will apply to it) and then load up the game. Somehow this seems to effectively load up the game but I have been wary to make any progress this way - I'm assuming this will lead to problems down the road, certainly once I get past the prologue and the game has to load data from the patch from a rom that doesn't actually have a patch. I'm assuming I screwed something up somewhere, but I'm not sure what. Is there something I have to do other than apply the patch to the game, maybe a setting on the emulator? Also, I've seen that Shin wrote to use ZSNES instead of SNES9x but that trick seems to work on both emulators, is SNES9x really unusable for the Shin patch?

I tried Camus' patch as well, have been enjoying it and have made some progress but in chapter 3 I've run into a glitch I can't seem to get around. When Tiltyu and Claude show up in the middle of the chapter, the game suddenly crashes right before Claude's sprite appears on the screen. Tiltyu appears just fine but I hear a horse clopping noise when the game crashes, so my best guess is that this patch gave Claude a horse to ride and for whatever reason the emulator didn't know how to load it and crashed. This happens with both SNES9x and ZSNES. That trick I mentioned earlier about applying the .srm to an unpatched version of the game with the same name doesn't seem to work either (used that to get past a crash at another part of the patch) so I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure if this is a common problem with the patch or if fiddling with the emulator would provide any relief or... I don't know.

Anyway, thanks ahead of time for the help and thanks to all those people for doing the work making these patches, hoping to find a way to enjoy them.

[Lamia]

just to let you know, you successfully loaded the ROM with the srm file because you aren't actually using the patch at that point and the game will play the regular version normally

I have a feeling that perhaps you don't actually have a clean (J) version? make sure you're not patching an already-translated/modified ROM (user error more often than not)

personally I'd say make a savestate on a vanilla ROM at the title screen or file select then rename the savestate to the patched ROM and load from there, although it's just a workaround I suppose and not a solution

as for camus's patch, that sounds like a character/event issue so it's probably nothing wrong on your end

Edited October 27, 2015 by Lamia

[Dirtfall]

Thanks for the reply Lamia. Yeah, with Camus' patch I guess I'm pretty much done due to technical issues; shame I was really enjoying it.

As for the Shin patch, I tried your workaround and it just froze once the savestate loaded. I've tried it with two separate roms, which both seem clean (J) to me (playing them for a couple minutes shows they're in Japanese and don't seem to have any tinkering done to them). These same roms have no issues separately loading up any other patches: Gharnef's, twilkitri's, Camus' (mostly, until my chapter 3 bug). None of these patches were applied before or after Shin's patch was applied (I tried them separately just as an experiment to see if they had problems with other patches). I thought Shin's patch had twilkitri's built into it, but am I supposed to apply that first, is that the problem?

I tried applying previous versions of Shin's patch to see if that might work but I can't seem to find any. All working links I've found on the internet lead to his forum post in Serenes Forest which has the most recent, 1.94 (which would probably normally be a good thing). Would anyone else mind applying 1.94 to a clean rom and seeing if they have any problems? The only thing I can come up with is that maybe the version that's up right has a kink in it (unlikely I know, but it's the only reason I can think of for why it seemingly has worked for everyone but me).

[Lamia]

if the game freezes as soon as you load a savestate, you definitely have an improper ROM and/or patch

the 1.94 patch works perfectly fine for me, on a headered (J) ROM

one thing I hope you're not doing is stacking patches (easily corrupts...) since I knew someone who did that and didn't get a fresh copy each time

additionally, what are you using to apply the patch

Edited October 28, 2015 by Lamia

[Dirtfall]

Hey Lamia. No, not applying more than one patch to a rom that I intend to use. I'm using Lunar IPS to apply the Shin Patch. For my clean rom, the file size is 4,194,304 bytes. This doesn't have a header, so I'm using nsrt 3.4 to open the file and the clicking "add headers to selected" to apply the header, which then has a file size of 4,194,816 bytes (though the "size on disk" value reads 4,198,400 bytes - not sure what that means, why the discrepancy, or how to change it). Once the header is applied I then use Lunar IPS.to apply Shin Patch 1.94, which then has a file size of 4,194,828 bytes (though again, the "size on disk" value reads 4,198,400 bytes - is this causing some sort of problem?). Do those numbers match up with yours?

Thanks again for taking the time to help me with this.

[Lamia]

size on disk is pointless to look at, what matters is how many actual bytes the file has, but all of the counts you have sounds correct

I would say try finding a different clean ROM

Edited October 30, 2015 by Lamia