#140129 - f33ldead - Thu Sep 13, 2007 7:57 pm
I think I remember someone talking about a free version of no$gba with debugging capabilities, for non-commercial purposes.
Am I just day-dreaming or is it really available somewhere?
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#140131 - keldon - Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:14 pm
It's not free, but it's as good as free being so cheap
#140135 - kusma - Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:23 pm
| f33ldead wrote: |
I think I remember someone talking about a free version of no$gba with debugging capabilities, for non-commercial purposes.
Am I just day-dreaming or is it really available somewhere? |
No, it's not. The cheapest version is 15$, but that does not include source level debugging. To get that, you need the 1750$ version.
#140136 - f33ldead - Thu Sep 13, 2007 8:32 pm
1750$?!? Wow! Well, gdb does source level debugging probably better than no$gba :) I just wanted to see a visual VRAM in order to see how commercial RPGs handle large maps (issued in this thread).
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#140160 - kusma - Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:07 am
| f33ldead wrote: |
| 1750$?!? Wow! Well, gdb does source level debugging probably better than no$gba :) I just wanted to see a visual VRAM in order to see how commercial RPGs handle large maps (issued in this thread). |
VisualBoy Advance can do this as well
#140210 - keldon - Fri Sep 14, 2007 7:20 am
| f33ldead wrote: |
| 1750$?!? Wow! Well, gdb does source level debugging probably better than no$gba :) I just wanted to see a visual VRAM in order to see how commercial RPGs handle large maps (issued in this thread). |
No different to how homebrew RPG's handle large maps!
#140406 - wintermute - Sun Sep 16, 2007 4:44 am
| f33ldead wrote: |
1750$?!? Wow! Well, gdb does source level debugging probably better than no$gba :)
|
Actually, you'd be very wrong about that. no$gba is pretty close to a very expensive hardware debugger which allows you to freeze the entire system at any given point in it's execution. There's nothing else available that comes even close to how well no$gba performs.
A homebrew programmer will rarely have the need for the advanced features available in the commercial versions so don't feel I'm trying to convince you that you need one of the high end editions. I'm just pointing out that no$gba is good value for commercial developers.
| Quote: |
I just wanted to see a visual VRAM in order to see how commercial RPGs handle large maps (issued in this thread). |
As it happens, the $15 home debugger version can handle this task very well.
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#140408 - Dwedit - Sun Sep 16, 2007 5:18 am
I think VBA has a much nicer VRAM viewer than NO$. NO$ refuses to display graphics which have not actually appeared on the screen, it picks a black palette and doesn't let me change it.
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#140410 - wintermute - Sun Sep 16, 2007 5:31 am
| Dwedit wrote: |
| I think VBA has a much nicer VRAM viewer than NO$. NO$ refuses to display graphics which have not actually appeared on the screen, it picks a black palette and doesn't let me change it. |
So mail Martin & suggest he changes it. I've found him quite receptive to such constructive criticism.
Personally I find VBA ridiculously inaccurate for general use.
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#140412 - Dwedit - Sun Sep 16, 2007 5:48 am
I've never gotten a reply from him once, aside from him sending me my registration key. Is his hex-coded email address still correct?
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#140413 - wintermute - Sun Sep 16, 2007 6:19 am
#140439 - f33ldead - Sun Sep 16, 2007 12:50 pm
It's a sad thing that only windows version of VBA has stuff like VRAM viewer. Even the GTK+ version doesn't have these features.
| Quote: |
| Actually, you'd be very wrong about that. no$gba is pretty close to a very expensive hardware debugger which allows you to freeze the entire system at any given point in it's execution. There's nothing else available that comes even close to how well no$gba performs. |
I really doubt that. We're talking about gdb, not a mid-term project of CS undergrad. Out of curiosity, how superior is no$gba's source-level debugger to gdb, except gba specific commands? (And you can set breakpoints in any debugger, what's the point?)
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#140745 - Miked0801 - Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:04 pm
From a developer who chose to use No$GBA over the hardware boat achors from Nintendo, I can attest to the power and accuracy that is no$gba. The speed at which is allows me to load new builds, load and save snapshots into problematic code areas, the break-point system, the vram viewer, etc. All are so far beyond what the hardware debugger can do it's not funny. No$ is a bargain - we'd have paid x10 his price for what it does. On the GBC, it made me 50x more productive than with the crap from N. On GBA, about x5. On DS, if he'd ever send us an invoice so we could buy the best version, I know it would be a large increase again - though the DS hardware debugger isn't too bad.
VBA is pretty good and has some nice features, but its best features are copied from no$. I can't tell you how many bugs were found with just the exceptions dialog. The writes to ROMs, or writes to mirror RAM when accidently playing with NULL ptrs is just awesome. Our publishers are amazed at how stable our games are and a large part of the can be attributed to No$'s debugging ability.
Yes, I like No$ just a bit :)
#140752 - Kyoufu Kawa - Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:33 pm
Miked0801, you inspire me to hack warnings about writes to ROM and mirror RAM into VBA.
* is off to get source *
#140757 - Miked0801 - Wed Sep 19, 2007 6:40 pm
There are already some sorts of warnings in there right? I've used VBA a few times and many of our testers prefer it over No$ due to No$'s tendency to memory leak over time.
BTW, any progress on a VDS type emulator?
#140929 - Kyoufu Kawa - Thu Sep 20, 2007 7:52 pm
| Miked0801 wrote: |
| There are already some sorts of warnings in there right? |
True. I just checked. Illegal writes, illegal reads and unaligned memory. And undefined instructions too.
#142907 - Lazy1 - Mon Oct 15, 2007 12:00 am
| Dwedit wrote: |
| I've never gotten a reply from him once, aside from him sending me my registration key. Is his hex-coded email address still correct? |
Same problem here, I sent an email asking if he could re-send my key since my files got lost and so did the CD I burned them to.
I also sent in a bug report with that request, hopefully it got read.
I don't expect him to resend my key since it was my responsibility not to lose it (though I did try, that backup cd has to be somewhere) but it would be nice.
It's a shame since it's really a very useful tool and I can't afford to buy it again.
#144639 - Lazy1 - Mon Nov 05, 2007 5:59 am
Is he even responding to emails at all?
I know it was pretty careless of me not to make a thousand backups but some kind of response would be nice.
The only other thing I can think of would be that my ISP changed the email system to use hotmail and either my email or the response was junked.
#144643 - keldon - Mon Nov 05, 2007 8:04 am
I think he gives guidelines as to message title, did you follow those? Check his website to see.
#144690 - Lazy1 - Mon Nov 05, 2007 7:57 pm
The message title was fine, it's weird though since I had sent a bug report not long after I bought it and it was responded to.
Even if I could afford to purchase the debugger again what guarantee is there I would even see it?
#145083 - Lazy1 - Sun Nov 11, 2007 9:03 am
Has anyone been in contact with the no$ developer at all recently?
Even if I have to re-buy the emulator it would be nice to know. There is a weird bug in wolf3d's mp3 code that crashes no$gba and I need the debugger to track it down.
#145085 - Dwedit - Sun Nov 11, 2007 11:05 am
Recently, he started responding. I think the trick is to use the email address he gives in the program, not his publicly displayed one.
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#145108 - tepples - Sun Nov 11, 2007 7:21 pm
| Lazy1 wrote: |
| There is a weird bug in wolf3d's mp3 code that crashes no$gba and I need the debugger to track it down. |
Is your program crashing inside NO$GBA, or is NO$GBA itself crashing? If NO$GBA crashes, this is a defect in NO$GBA, so follow these steps to isolate and report the defect: - Upgrade your emulator. Older versions had problems with power management code. Make sure that the emulator's about box shows the latest version.
- Reduce your program to the smallest example that exhibits misbehavior.
- E-mail the .nds file, along with a report of what it does in NO$GBA and on a DS, to Mr. Korth. (EDIT: Peter is right. Use a link, not a MIME attachment.)
(EDIT: step 1 replaced with what was really my problem)
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Last edited by tepples on Mon Nov 12, 2007 3:03 am; edited 3 times in total
#145122 - Peter - Sun Nov 11, 2007 9:37 pm
| tepples wrote: |
| E-mail the .nds file, along with a report of what it does in NO$GBA and on a DS, to Mr. Korth. |
I recommend not to send emails with attachments to Martin, include a download link instead. Otherwise it's very unlikely to get a response from him.
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#145138 - Lazy1 - Mon Nov 12, 2007 12:08 am
The problem is it may be caused by other "hidden bugs" in the program so I don't want to send something if the problem is my fault.
What happens is it plays the first second of the MP3 then says "The ROM image has crashed" or something similar.
I'm not sure if any emails I send would get through since my damn ISP switched my account to hotmail.
Maybe that's why my first message went unanswered but I'm not sure.
#145146 - wintermute - Mon Nov 12, 2007 12:27 am
| tepples wrote: |
- Remove all power management code from the ARM7 code, and try again. NO$GBA will close when it detects that the DS has turned off, which some people might confuse with a crash.
|
Please don't spread nonsense like this, that's not what caused the problem. It was fixed in no$gba 2.5b
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#145156 - HyperHacker - Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:05 am
You mean it doesn't close itself anymore when the emulated DS turns off? If it does, then the suggestion seems valid. I've had faulty power management code turn the system off unexpectedly before. (Really, it should just show a message box and return to the debugger or something...)
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#145160 - wintermute - Mon Nov 12, 2007 1:09 am
No, I mean the power management code in the default arm7 core wasn't faulty, nor was it switching the DS off.
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#145172 - tepples - Mon Nov 12, 2007 3:02 am
| wintermute wrote: |
| It was fixed in no$gba 2.5b |
My fault. It turns out I had different versions in different folders. Fixing my comment...
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#150538 - nipil - Wed Feb 06, 2008 1:15 pm
I received my version yesterday and startd using it.
I find it ... "feature-complete" from what i saw by
navigating through the different windows.
It's been a while since i used a debugger (was x86
dos asm) so i have to learn/get used to ds asm.
And get used/learn how to use this tool.
So far i'm quite happy, it's very well worth the money !
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