Flash Cards for Hacks?

[Jubby]

Hey everybody, I don't know if this is a hacking question, necessarily, but it's a question, and it involves hacks so... What the hell.

I'm a huge fan of the idea of GBA flash cards, being that it's pretty hard to find actual GBA cartridges nowadays so you're mostly stuck with ROMs, and I prefer to play on the console itself. So, I bought an EZ Flash IV. But the problem is, it doesn't seem to like hacks very much. For whatever reason, it plays only certain hacks and the others freeze. Specifically, it plays TU and MK404's FE7 hack, but if I load Sacred Contention, Dream of Five, Elibian Nights, and probably others (those are the only ones I've tried) they freeze as soon as I get to the player phase.

Basically, my question is:

a) Does anyone know how to fix this problem? or,

b) Can anyone recommend a flash card that they have used, which definitely works, to play DoF and EN.

P.s. I might also add that it's not simply the size of the ROM that's the issue for EN and DoF because my own hack is expanded to around 22 MB also and still works for some reason.

[Nintenlord]

Was TU made with FEditor? Maybe FEditor applies ASM hacks that don't actually run on original hardware. MK404's FE7 hack was made before FEditor, but the Sacred Contention, Dream of Five and Elibian Nights are newer hacks. Try my hacks, NLSaga and Athos mode, just to see if they run.

[Celice]

Try running them in some other emulators, like no$gba. The newer programs may be fucking up and running through faulty emulation in VisualBoyAdvance. This same thing happened with Super Mario World when people were abusing loop-hopes in ZSNES's sound emulation, making virtually all hacks which edited the music unplayable on actual hardware (or in otherwords, if the sound fuckup was ever fixed, all the hacks would have fucked up noises for music). By checking the hacks with other emulators, you can verify that VBA is the culprit (and the author's overlooking their errors) rather than your flashcart.

Flashcarts rarely alter the data it loads, so it's probably not an issue with your flashcart, but with the hacks themselves.

[Jubby]

I gave DoF a try in No$gba and it seemed to work fine, but when I played Elibian Nights in it and it asked me if I want to play Lyn's tale, it froze when I hit yes. Also, Nintenlord, Athos mode worked better than the others when I tried them, it at least didn't freeze but it didn't give me a cursor....?

Edit: And I haven't tried NL Saga yet, I still need to download Stealth Patch.

[Crimson Red]

There's no reason for TU to work but not SC to work, that I can think of. I DEFINITELY used FEditor Adv on TU--so many times it makes me sick to think about it (not that it's a bad thing given how much its helped)--but the same could be said of Sacred Contention.

My point being that there's obviously a reason for this but it seems like it's going to be hit-and-miss with most of these. If it matters I test my hacks on VBA v1.8.0.3 and my flashcart SuperCard DSTWO (which I was using on an NDS Lite but am now using on my 3DS), though TU is the only hack that I've gone the extra step to test VBA v1.7.2., the Wii port of VBA, and I used to test the iTouch/iPhone GBA emulator but I stopped a long time ago. I don't test no$GBA because it's too buggy for me in general and too inconvenient. Most people see it as obsolete to VBA though Celice has a point that sometimes VBA "overlooks" problems that would make other emulators crash (though IMO that's an advantage to hackers since it makes it easier to not have game-breaking glitches show up :P).

P.S. I'm fatigued (mentally and physically) and might have said something silly, please excuse me.

[Jubby]

Have you played any of these other hacks on your SuperCard DSTWO? Christmas is coming up, I might just say screw the whole thing and get one of those (I have a NDS Lite and 3DS as well, so it'd probably work out better for me anyway) but I'm hoping to make sure they work on it first, considering the last one, and this is primarily the reason I'd be buying the card. XP

And it IS an older version of TU, I think, but it still has some custom animations, so I don't think it's FEditor that's the problem.

[Celice]

(though IMO that's an advantage to hackers since it makes it easier to not have game-breaking glitches show up :P).

Ah, but then, what happens is the moment the emulator has its oversight fixed, every hack which abused the faulty emulation will be put out of commission.

And you want to be careful about the SuperCardTWO. If the GBA game is being run through an emulator on the flashcart, you might not see a problem if the emulator is a port of VBA, or has its own issues. Not everyone who ports to code is there to make sure it runs effectively--they just want to transcribe the code into an equally working state as it was in its original form. This can mean bringing bad emulation code over without noticing it's necessarily bad.

I gave DoF a try in No$gba and it seemed to work fine, but when I played Elibian Nights in it and it asked me if I want to play Lyn's tale, it froze when I hit yes.

That could indicate something to do with the music, or text, or graphics. I don't keep up with all the stuff, but are there any special patches that some of the hacks might have used, like an anti-huffman, disabling the tutorial, or music patches? Something has been created since MK404's hack, and it's something which people are either applying themselves or a program is applying for them, it might be.

[Jubby]

It's entirely possible, the problem is, there's a ton of them :/ Anti Huffman patch, Blazer's Instrument Hack, disabling the tutorial too, it's hard to even guess what it is....

And if it runs in the SuperCard's emulator, then would it matter if the code was bad? If it works like it does in VBA then it'd still work perfectly fine, wouldn't it?

[Celice]

It would be fine, until the emulator is fixed. Running bunk programming isn't really an efficient method of dealing with the problem, it's more like appeasing it and just dealing with broken stuff. The best fix would be to stop the problem, and to try and work as closely to the actual system as possible. There's less chance for something strange like this to happen that way, while if you base all your work on erratic, unusual emulation, you're entirely strapped to that unstable emulation in order for your stuff to work.

I would suggest you ask each of the author's of the bunk hacks what things they applied and what programs they used. That can separate some of the potential problem-causers. Another more brute-force method is to apply each of the patches/programs individually and see which ones have heart attacks which ones don't.

[CT075]

I can imagine that the Anti-Huffman and/or Hex's spell patch (the one FEditor automatically applies) would cause the biggest problems. Blazer's patch is mostly just regular brute-force repointing, which *shouldn't* cause anything major. Disabling the tutorial could have some adverse affects.

But yeah, what Serisu said is probably the best solution. That is, brute-force it and see what does or doesn't work.

[Jubby]

Yeah, I just tried my own hack again, and I've definitely used FEditor (so all it's auto patches are fine) and Blazer's instrument hack. I'll try the tutorials one and work from there, see what might be causing the problem. Thanks guys XP I'll let you know what I discover, and if I can't find anything, I'll try asking the authors of the hacks.

[Crimson Red]

The Supercard DSTWO plays 95% of games correctly. Fire Emblem games only have one emulation error which is with the color of the boxes during map battles, but it's not game-breaking, it's just a color error, the colors are a little off. It plays most other GBA games fine as well, hacks or not, the only exception I can think of right now is Golden Sun which has a slight lag in battles, but even that still works. I've played most of my hacks, EN, MK404's hack, and a couple other hacks with my SCDS2's GBA emulator and they all worked fine. The flash card itself is relatively expensive but it's also one of the highest quality ones, and given that buying a flash card already saves you a ton of money, to me it was worth spending the extra $10-20 to get a high quality flash card I knew would work 95% of the time than buy a cheap one that I'd have to waste time with maintenance every other game. Not to mention the SCDS2 has a lot of other awesome features and you're missing out on very little by getting it, plus with the latest firmware it also works on the 3DS and is relatively easy to install/setup as long as you have some very basic computer knowledge (pretty much copy/paste files into an external harddrive).

[Jubby]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm well then, I'll probably get one, thanks Blazer xD I'll still try to figure out what causes my current problem though, too :P

[Celice]

Make sure you only get the SuperCard you need for your DS. You don't need the 3DS version is you're not going to have a 3DS. The emulation the 3DS version has is also something only usable on the 3DS (if memory serves, the card includes a little bit of extra processing on the card itself).

If you don't get the right version, you may find your card is incompatible with your version of DS. Just make sure you read up and get the newest info, because I can only remind you of issues others have had--I personally don't have the experience to verify if you'll find a problem or not.

[Jubby]

Well I DO have a 3DS, but I still use my DS Lite sometimes, so I should get the DS one, right?

[Celice]

I don't know if the DSone is blocked by the 3DS firmware, and if the DSone has ways around it. GBAtemp is a good site to ask this question at, as it's one of the many hubs which deal with... well, pirating of this nature.

[Ryrumeli]

This is very interesting to know then. We should test our hacks more so they do work with the hardware, I know I try my hacks with as many emulators as possible so I make sure it works with any given situation(And to be honest this already happened with my own hacks; The first implementation of Half Bodies worked perfectly in No$GBA's emulation, and borked on VBA's). Think that it would be worthy it to check which are the patches or apps which could be conflicting with the hardware and work on solutions, because I don't know about you guys but I will love to play my personal hack on the hardware once it is done. :)

Could the people that do own flashcarts test the current hacks we have, so we can make a "Flashcart compatibility list" for all available hacks? That would be a cool information to have.

Also, this hint could be useful. "Freezing right before player phase" might imply it is a patch which might run before the player phase. And the only one I can think of is Hex's "Make all attributes break 31 range". But it couldn't be that one, I think it is the same ever since the early days of FEditor I believe. I think it would be worthy to try to pinpoint it if all of them have issues in the exact same point, but the fact that DoF works and that EN doesn't, shows it isn't our tools, since I believe both patches use the most up-to-date versions of those tools.

[Crimson Red]

Celice, stop trying to undermine me with your skepticism XDDD

Get the DSTwo, it works on everything, 3DS and DS Lite, DS1 doesn't work on 3DS and has no GBA emulation, probably not even SNES emulation. >_>

If the SCDS2 fails then you just have bad karma, the whole point of the card is to be the end-all be-all of awesome DS flashcards. You can't play 3DS games on the flash card, but no flash card can so that's beside the point.

[Celice]

You can't play 3DS games on the flash card, but no flash card can so that's beside the point.

[Jubby]

Ahhh sorry for causing this debate, I just meant the DS version of the SuperCard, i.e. the DSTWO... Bad wording on my part :$ I'll probably go with the DSTWO then, thanks guys XP