Patched Roms Not Working

[Orville Marquez]

Workingon patching a couple of games to run on the Flashback 9, thought this would be a good thread to keep track of patching incompatible ROM's and share ideas on making new games more compatible like we did for the Flashback Portable.

Games I'm working on fixing are SuperCharger Space Invaders and Defender III, not sure why these games come up scrambled; they also do this occasionally on the community build of the Retron77 but not under Hyperkin's default configuration.

These are CBS RAM games which have no problem in Stella 4.x or on the Flashback Portable. Anyone know what version of the emu is running on the FB9? One clue is that Kool-Aid man also needs to be patched.

I have a few more patched ROM's to post but if other ROM's are found not to work on the FB9 for this same reason, it is due to a bug in the emu where the decimal flag on the virtual CPU is getting set 100% of the time

This error has been corrected in later releases of Stella (the Atari emulator used on the Atari Flashback9 and Retron77 consoles) and there is an initiative underway to resolve similar incompatibilities where initialization is required for broadest compatibility with the real hardware:

Sorry, complete newbie here...just got my FlashBack 9 and wondering how I can get Pitfall II working on it. I downloaded what I thought was a 'stella' compatible ROM but it just brings up lines...if you can point me in the right direction to get it working or provide any info that would be most appreciated

Do you have the composite version of the Flashback9? That one uses the AtGames emulator and cannot play Pitfall II. If you have the HDMI version you should be able to play it. Both versions of the Flashback 9 are pretty good but need different hacks for the incompatible ROMs.

Hi, another newbie here, just got my Flashback 9 (HDMI output). Just installed the newest firmware from the AFZ player portal. It said install complete, Now I guess I'm ready to install some new games. Just so I am clear, are Hotfix.ben are they complete games or do I need to load the game first, then the hotfix to make the game work? Also can someone give me a link to games like Pack Man? Thank You very much!

I am running on a Mac; however, I have VMware Fusion installed so I download DeSmuME for windows (0.9.7). I was disappointed with the result: I attempted to load a pokemon platinum ROM, and the screen didn't change, even after 5 minutes (I know the sticky says pokemon isn't supported, but I've been told this is the only emulator useable to migrate with, so I think I'm missing something ... I also tried opening a Zelda ROM just to make sure it wasn't a pokemon issue and it failed too). I've looked at the FAQ page, but their solutions are only relevant to missing graphics with present sound (I'm missing everything). I'm unsure of what to do.

Are you sure that you are using the latest VMware updates? Also, DeSmuME uses DirectX for graphics, so you will need to make sure that VMware Tools is fully up to date so that the graphics work properly.

I'm running VMware Fusion 3.1.3, and I downloaded the latest version of DirectX, but when I tried installing it I was informed that I already had an equivalent version installed already. Would it be helpful if I posted a video to show what my process is?

When you try to run a ROM, does DeSmuME do absolutely nothing? Or does it actually run the ROM, but with a white screen? (e.g. You can hear music playing in the background, but the screen remains white.)

I have my comp's volume at max, and I checked under Config > Sound Settings, and DeSmuME's volume is at max as well. I can't hear anything. The only thing that changes is the "play" button changes to a "pause," and the "pause," "stop," and "reset" buttons become clickable.

It's starting to look like a configuration issue. Try setting your 3D Settings to default (should revert to SoftRasterizer). And in Emulation Settings, make sure that Advanced Bus Level Timing is checked, Use External BIOS Images is unchecked, and Use External Firmware Image is unchecked.

Nothing is working. However, I was searching around a bit, and I saw a list of compatible games (compiled for version 0.3.3) so I downloaded one of them, and it worked fine. There were only about 20 compatible games though, so I'm hoping that I won't be limited to those games.

*EDIT*: I got a Japanese version of pokemon platinum, and it works. I think it might be an issue with patched roms, but i'm not really an expert

anyway the main reason i need desmume to work is to migrate from my [english] emerald save file, so hopefully i'll be able trade pokemon from my english emerald to a japanese version, and then migrate them, if i can understand all the japanese ...

There are games which were never translated officially. Some talented people (this might include you) took these untranslated ROM images and altered them in a process known as ROM Hacking. They produced, in the end, a working English ROM (or whatever their language is).

But how would they distribute it? While Chinese ROM hackers don't care and just upload the translated ROM as-is, the rest of the world is another matter. Anyone doing this, especially ROM hackers since they're more... under the vengeful watchful eye of the publishers for the first legal slip, would be asking for legal hell. The ROM data is copyrighted data to the original company, and them not selling their product here doesn't mean they'll let someone pirate their games.

They upload just a patch. It's a file containing only the modifications, and nothing else. When applied to the original Japanese ROM, it produces the English-translated ROM the hacker has on their computer. Only a few megabytes generally, so very practical for sharing. This patch on its own is legal, it's meaningless without a copy of the ROM/ISO and hence harmless on its own.

In the early days of SNES emulation, headers were appended to SNES roms to help the emulator doing what it should do. However in these days, they're not needed and hence aren't expected to be included in ROMs nowadays.

The patch needs to be either on a headered ROM (with a header) or a headerless ROM (without a header). Readme file should clarify this. It's really important because if you get it wrong, the patch corrupts everything in-game.

IPS is a very common patching format for third and fourth generation ROMs. It replaces bytes at specific addresses in the file with bytes from the translation, so it's not suited to cases where the translation swaps huge quantities of data around (xdelta would be better) because then it would just include the data as-is in the patch and you might then as well distribute the ROM.

Due to how UPS and IPS work, assuming many patches alter different things (as in, they don't conflict and modify the same areas in the ROM) and work on the same base rom, you can apply them in succession. For example, a patch changing only the character sprites, and another changing only the text, should be okay to apply in succession. It's a very bad idea to apply two patches altering the same thing unless you know it's a fix (like a change to an ugly font or a nasty bug). Avoid applying in succession two patches which both change the programming and/or re-arrange the ROM contents (example: more than one fan-translation or hack) since they will conflict. Just use common sense.

Some emulators are compatible with IPS patches. You just need to put the untranslated game ROM in the same folder as the IPS patch, with both of them sharing the same filename sans file extension. When you play the game, the emulator applies the translation automatically during gameplay. Some of these emulators include:

Not all emulators support patching ROMs on the fly with IPS/UPS patches. Also, you might prefer a single ROM file with the translation. So you can do it the proper way and generate the English-translated ROM!

There are three fields to fill. The first is for the UPS patch file. The second is for the unmodified ROM. The third is for where you want to save a copy of the ROM with the translation applied. Once you fill them all, click "Apply Patch".

One of the main IPS/UPS format shortcomings is how they couldn't handle unchanged data moving around, and would just treat the whole data as "changes" and include all of it in the patch. xdelta solves this issue, bringing the size of the patch down considerably. Thus, it's very popular for recent translations on the PSP and DS.

In addition to modifications, beat patches can detect data insertions and deletions. Patch formats that can only detect modifications will fail completely, producing file sizes equal or larger to the original file sizes in these cases. This allows for substantially smaller patches on non-ROM based systems and certain ROM types (eg Mystic Ark is half the size this way.) beat patches can be used to patch either a single file or an entire directory full of files and subfolders, thus allowing the format to handle ROMs, CDs, PC games, etc..

3a8082e126