#52590 - mrnull - Thu Sep 01, 2005 5:21 am
Ahh! It's killing me. I just got Nintendogs and I'm only allowed 1 save. Those of you with a girlfriend know my frustration. So my question is, has anyone created a (GBAMP) application that can backup and restore save games from EEPROM? I think that'd be killer.. app..
#52594 - deltro - Thu Sep 01, 2005 5:48 am
I don't think we can write to GBAMP yet.
#52597 - knight0fdragon - Thu Sep 01, 2005 6:02 am
I believe there is one for the supercard
#52600 - chishm - Thu Sep 01, 2005 6:27 am
| deltro wrote: |
| I don't think we can write to GBAMP yet. |
Yes we can. Have you tried the GBAMP builds of PocketNES or Goomba? They both support saving. Trust me, you can do it.
#52622 - lambi1982 - Thu Sep 01, 2005 1:12 pm
mrnull, what you can do is get another dog ( in the game that is) and have one for you and one for your girlfriend.
Now take one of the dogs to the dog hotel, now only one dog is active.
When you are finished with one dog and she might want to play, goto the hotel and do a swap now you get to re-train the second dog but still keep you other one.
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#52625 - M3d10n - Thu Sep 01, 2005 1:37 pm
One or teo of these newer DS-targeted flash carts seem to be capable of backing up/restoring DS SRAM saves straight from original carts. Check their feature list.
#52641 - Mr. Picklesworth - Thu Sep 01, 2005 4:35 pm
You play Nintendogs with your girlfriend?
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#52674 - IxthusTiger - Thu Sep 01, 2005 8:50 pm
Get her her own copy of Nintendogs! Easy as that!
My girl has a Pug (Begoy) and a Beagle (Cuya), I have a Corgi (Shiggy) and a Shiba (Diogi.)
#52684 - The 9th Sage - Thu Sep 01, 2005 10:59 pm
| IxthusTiger wrote: |
Get her her own copy of Nintendogs! Easy as that!
My girl has a Pug (Begoy) and a Beagle (Cuya), I have a Corgi (Shiggy) and a Shiba (Diogi.) |
That's cool...I have a Corgi and a Shiba as well. Ein, and Ryoko respectively. :)
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#52689 - skabio - Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:09 am
I remember reading a post on here about a save backup utility that came out just after chishm released his CF FAT code. I searched but I couldn't find it. You might check with chishm however as I remember his post about how he thought they used his code without giving him credit. I don't think it allowed for restoring the save though so it may be a wasted effort.
Edit: I did find this code however but I'm not sure if its for the gbamp:
http://www.few.vu.nl/%7Essstolk/temp/main.cpp
Edit2: I found the utility looks like it was writen by chishm (taken from a post in the CF FAT Driver topic)
New demo - A save game copier. Warning - this could ruin your CF card or your game save.
Instructions to use:
1. Download from here:
http://www.geocities.com/chishm1/gbamp/mp_save.zip
and extract the file to your CF card.
2. Put the GBAMP in your GBA (or NDS) and run MP_Save.gba.
3. Remove your GBAMP, insert your game then press A once.
4. Remove your game, reinsert your GBAMP then press A again.
5. Turn off your GBA, put your CF card in the computer and then use the save file for whatever purpose you want.
#52690 - Puppet - Fri Sep 02, 2005 12:55 am
| skabio wrote: |
Edit2: I found the utility looks like it was writen by chishm (taken from a post in the CF FAT Driver topic)
New demo - A save game copier. Warning - this could ruin your CF card or your game save.
Instructions to use:
1. Download from here:
http://www.geocities.com/chishm1/gbamp/mp_save.zip
and extract the file to your CF card.
2. Put the GBAMP in your GBA (or NDS) and run MP_Save.gba.
3. Remove your GBAMP, insert your game then press A once.
4. Remove your game, reinsert your GBAMP then press A again.
5. Turn off your GBA, put your CF card in the computer and then use the save file for whatever purpose you want. |
I'm pretty sure that's just for GBA games.
#52694 - skabio - Fri Sep 02, 2005 1:54 am
Woops I suppose it is. Sorry about that. I guess you could use this:
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=6103
But you would need a flash cart and some way to play the dump.
#52695 - josath - Fri Sep 02, 2005 2:00 am
that doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with game saves (eeprom) as far as i can tell.
#52701 - The 9th Sage - Fri Sep 02, 2005 3:12 am
| josath wrote: |
that doesn't seem to have anything at all to do with game saves (eeprom) as far as i can tell. |
nope, it doesn't. Just a dumper of NDS card images, doesn't touch the EEPROM at all.
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#52705 - skabio - Fri Sep 02, 2005 3:21 am
Oh I just assumed it dumped the whole thing. Guess not.
#52710 - deltro - Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:44 am
| chishm wrote: |
| deltro wrote: | | I don't think we can write to GBAMP yet. |
Yes we can. Have you tried the GBAMP builds of PocketNES or Goomba? They both support saving. Trust me, you can do it. |
I actually fell behind in caring about my GBAMP, it's been my flash cart ^_^, I guess getting my CF corrupted is a nice wake up call to- hell yes we can write to the GBAMP ^^;;
#52711 - mrnull - Fri Sep 02, 2005 5:57 am
Thanks for the replies guys. I'd imagine that my situation isn't unusual to others out there. I had originally decided to buy an Action Replay Duo, but found out that all of my local shops had stopped carrying them. Has anyone heard anything about the product being discontinued?
Anyway, I think a save/restore app would be pimp. I e-mailed the creator of MoonShell asking for the added functionality. That's usually what I'm running on my GBAMP anyway.
#52824 - DsPet - Sat Sep 03, 2005 4:37 pm
Nintendogs has 256KB to store the game save (using the "E2PROM" interface, although technically it is Flash ROM)
If you have a GBA cart with 64KB of SRAM, you can backup the Game save with *two* steps
[the 1st 64K block is about the dogs, the 2nd 64K block is about the owner, the 3rd and 4th block are duplicates as far as I've checked]
Check this thread for code to read the E2PROM.
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=6657
Writing the E2PROM is more complicated (it isn't regular E2PROM, you need to erase blocks first)
#52832 - josath - Sat Sep 03, 2005 7:25 pm
| DsPet wrote: |
[the 1st 64K block is about the dogs, the 2nd 64K block is about the owner, the 3rd and 4th block are duplicates as far as I've checked] |
The speculation i've heard, is that it keeps duplicates of the save data, in case you shut it off while it's writing to the save area and one of them gets corrupted, at next boot it just uses the backup save data (and assuming it saves quite often, you probably wont notice anything being missing)
#52847 - knight0fdragon - Sat Sep 03, 2005 9:58 pm
There is a program out that lets u go from EEPROM to GBA SRAM for the nds, then all you would have to do is go from SRAM to GBAMP, then reverse the process to load it
#52881 - Dark Knight ez - Sun Sep 04, 2005 12:19 pm
My program code listed in one of the first couple of posts here, was ment to copy an NDS savefile to a GBA flashcards SRAM. However, the code to access an NDS savefile wasn't complete in ndslib at the time (is it still that way?), so the program wasn't finished. It might be one day though.
#52934 - DsPet - Sun Sep 04, 2005 8:15 pm
'josath' wrote:
> ...it keeps duplicates of the save data, in case you shut it off while it's writing to the save area and one of them gets corrupted,
That's my guess as well. The data blocks must be erased first and with 128KB of critical data to save, there is a significant period of time the Flash storage being updated is in an invalid state (another reason why there is an explicit Save command)
'Dark Knight ez' wrote:
> My program code listed in one of the first couple of posts here, was ment to copy an NDS savefile to a 1GBA flashcards SRAM. However, the code to access an NDS savefile wasn't complete in ndslib at the time (is it still that way?)...
The NDSLIB version is seriously broken as mentioned above. See that thread for working "cardReadEeprom" code.
BTW: I've got it work running using the ARM7 processor. Not sure of the exact limitations but I suspect your program will need more changes.
If someone writes a fixed "cardWriteEeprom" please let me know.
#52995 - Dark Knight ez - Mon Sep 05, 2005 11:42 am
It does need more changes, true. I put in your piece of code, in order to get the reading part to work (which remains pretty much useless without the writing back part, but okay ;), but I got an error trying to build the program.
After deleting all of your code, the problem remain (probably was there even before I put in your code). I get the error:
make[1]: *** No rule to make target '[...]/main.cpp' needed by 'main.o'. Stop.
make: *** [build] Error 2
where [...] is the path to my main.cpp. Does anybody know what is needed to undo this error?
Oh, DsPet, since you've got it working already, are you planning on releasing your code once the write-part is complete as well? It will probably be better than my own code, since I'm new at as well C as programming for a handheld, I'm just fiddling around. ;)
#53053 - DsPet - Mon Sep 05, 2005 8:10 pm
re: build problems
My advice is to install/reinstall the "devkitPro" NDS tools. Then clone one of the examples (including the templates)
re: "cardWriteEprom"
I broke down and wrote a version just for Nintendog (256KB)
Rather simple, writing in 256B blocks/pages. Separate function for erasing sectors (1 sector=64KB)
re: backing up Nintendogs
There is a lot of empty space in the 128KB of data, so it can be compressed to well under 64KB. Will fit on typical carts with SRAM (no page banking tricks needed)
My game saves are ~6KB each compressed [don't play the game much, and I can't afford more than one dog ;-]
re: releasing the utility
Eventually, it needs more features and more testing.
I'd like it to be a "Nintendogs dog trainer"
Before that I need to find out how they are checksumming/validating the saved data [ie. so you can add a few thousand dollars to your virtual bank account, and many other possibilities]
Right now if you change a data byte it rejects the game save.