/TempGBA

TempGBA, GBA emulator for the Supercard DSTwo

Primary LanguageCOtherNOASSERTION

TempGBA version 1.43.1, 2013-06-19

A Game Boy Advance emulator for the Supercard DSTWO.

Based on:

  • gameplaySP (gpSP) 0.9 by Exophase, with help from various GBA developers
  • gpSP Kai unofficial 3.3 by Takka
  • The CATSFC GUI by ShadauxCat and Nebuleon (improving over BAGSFC) with language files contributed by the GBAtemp community for CATSFC

Installing

(If you got the source code and want to compile it, see the Compiling section at the end of the file.)

To install the plugin to your storage card, copy tempgba.plg, tempgba.ini and tempgba.bmp from the release archive to the card's _dstwoplug directory. Then, copy the TEMPGBA subdirectory to the root of the card.

The GBA BIOS

To function properly, TempGBA needs a dump of the GBA's BIOS. It is not distributed in the release archive because of legal issues. Do not ask the author where to find this file; any questions regarding the BIOS will be quickly ignored. You, the user, are responsible for your use of the BIOS.

The file you dump or find should be 16 KiB (16384 bytes) and have the following checksums:

  • CRC32: 81977335;
  • MD5: a860e8c0b6d573d191e4ec7db1b1e4f6;
  • SHA-1: 300c20df6731a33952ded8c436f7f186d25d3492.

Once dumped or found, name the file gba_bios.bin, and place it in the TEMPGBA directory of your storage card. So the path should look like this: /media/Your-Card/TEMPGBA/gba_bios.bin on Linux; E:\TempGBA\gba_bios.bin on Windows.

Improving game compatibility with game_config.txt

Included with this release is a file called game_config.txt. The file is the same as the one included in gpSP Kai. It goes in the TEMPGBA directory on your storage card when you extract the release.

This file contains information to enhance game compatibility in two ways.

  • Firstly, it tells TempGBA about the save type used by a certain game, so that battery-backed saves may be read and written correctly.
  • Secondly, it tells TempGBA about idle loops in a certain game, so that it may stop emulating when the game reaches them. It runs the game faster.

game_config.txt receives updates from the community occasionally. For the latest version, see: http://filetrip.net/nds-downloads/flashcart-files/latest-x-f12630.html

Using NDSGBA saved states

The NDSGBA saved state format was not suitable for modifying the emulator, because each vew version meant that older saved states could corrupt the new version's memory.

To play a NDSGBA saved state, you may do the following:

  1. Load the version of NDSGBA you used to create your saved state.
  2. Load the game, then the saved state. Save in-game, then exit NDSGBA. (Exiting NDSGBA is what creates the .sav file. TempGBA would not need to exit.)
  3. Using your computer, copy the .sav file from the /NDSGBA/GAMERTS directory on your storage card into /TEMPGBA/SAVES. You can do this step for multiple games at once if you repeated steps 1 and 2 for them.
  4. Load TempGBA.
  5. If you want to create a saved state (a .sav file works too), load the game, which will load the .sav file, and then create a TempGBA saved state.

Game compatibility

The GBATemp community maintains a compatibility list for TempGBA. You can see and edit it here: http://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/TempGBA_Compatibility

Cheats

The cheat support in TempGBA is untested, but should be equivalent to that of the official NDSGBA, version 1.21.

Rewinding

You can rewind the game up to 10 steps of a user-defined duration, ranging from a quarter of second to 10 seconds. You are granted 100 seconds of rewinding by default, in steps of 10 seconds, using the button combination L+Y. This allows you to quickly back out of a dangerous situation in a game.

You can adjust the step time for rewinding in the Tools menu.

You can adjust the hotkey used for rewinding in the Tools menu's hotkey submenus. See the Hotkeys section below for more information about these.

Frame skipping

In the Video & audio menu, the Frame skipping option allows you to select a number of frames to skip between rendered frames.

For some games, you may need to adjust frame skipping.

  • If a game runs at about 10 frames per second, setting frame skipping to 1 will allow you to jump, move or shoot at the right times.
  • If you want to show more frames per second in a game that already shows 20, setting frame skipping to 1 or 0 will cause more frames to appear. If using frame skipping 0 and the audio crackles too much, the current game may crash the Supercard DSTwo itself, and may require rebooting your Nintendo DS.
  • Setting this to 10 will skip 10 frames and render one. You will find yourself unable to perform actions during the correct frame with the DS buttons. It is advised to set frame skipping to the lowest value with which you can play a game.

Hotkeys

Important: Hotkeys are resolved as DS keys, not remapped GBA keys. You can set hotkeys to use buttons that are left over from button remapping if you don't use the rapid fire A and B buttons.

You can set buttons to press to perform certain actions. For each action, there is a global hotkey and a game-specific override hotkey. You might, for example, want to have the DS R button bound to Rewind, but a specific game uses a button mapped to it (see the section Button mapping below for more information) for something important. In that case, you can set the global hotkey to R and make an override with X for that game.

Hotkeys are sent to the current game, after being remapped, as well as to their corresponding action. The criterion for a hotkey is met when at least all of its buttons are held. Additional keys are sent to the game and can trigger another hotkey. For example, setting a hotkey to L and another to R+X, then pressing L+R+X+Y will trigger both and send all GBA buttons mapped to L, R, X and Y to the game.

Available actions are:

  • Go to main menu. In addition to tapping the Touch Screen to return to the main menu, you can set a hotkey to do the same.
  • Temporary fast-forward. While this hotkey is held, the fast-forward option will be forced on.
  • Rewind. A hotkey needs to be set here if you want to use the rewind feature in a game. After each second the hotkey is held, the game will rewind one step. See the Rewinding section above for more information.
  • Toggle sound. Each time this hotkey is held, the sound will be disabled if it's currently enabled, and vice-versa.
  • Save state #1. Each time this hotkey is held, saved state #1 will be written, without confirmation if it exists.
  • Load state #1. Each time this hotkey is held, saved state #1 will be loaded.

Button mapping

A Nintendo DS has more buttons than a Game Boy Advance. This emulator allows you to remap your GBA buttons to different DS buttons as well as use rapid fire A and B buttons that trigger at 30 Hz (held for one frame, released the next).

You can find the button mapping configuration in the Tools menu. For each mapping, there is a global mapping and a game-specific mapping override. This allows you to keep your usual mapping, but change it if you are more comfortable with another mapping for another game; for example, a platformer which is best played with Y and B, or a re-release of a game from the SFC/SNES which you would like to play with the original controller arrangement.

Buttons are sent to the GBA after mappings are applied.

The default is to map DS buttons to the like-named GBA buttons: A to A, B to B, L to L, R to R, Start to Start and Select to Select. The DS buttons X and Y are unused; you can set them to be rapid fire buttons or use them as hotkeys.

When a game-specific mapping is present, it cancels a global mapping for the same GBA button, not the same DS button.

Here's an example:

Global mappings | Game-specific overrides

GBA key A = DS key A | GBA key A = DS key B

GBA key B = DS key B | GBA key B = DS key Y

GBA key Start = DS key Start | GBA key Start = No override

GBA key Select = DS key Select | GBA key Select = No override

GBA key L = DS key L | GBA key L = DS key R

GBA key R = DS key R | GBA key R = No override

Rapid fire A = DS key X | Rapid fire A = No override

Rapid fire B = DS key Y | Rapid fire B = No override

Here's what each DS button would do in this example:

  • DS button A would not send any GBA buttons.
  • DS button B would send GBA button A.
  • DS button X would send GBA button A in rapid fire mode.
  • DS button Y would send GBA button B and GBA button B in rapid fire mode. The behavior is undefined in this case; it may decide to send button B always or only in rapid fire mode. The solution is to override Rapid fire B.
  • DS button L would not send any GBA buttons.
  • DS button R would send GBA buttons L and R. You may want to do this, but if you didn't, the solution would be to map DS button L to GBA button R or remove the override on GBA button L.
  • Select and Start behave as expected.

The font

The font used by TempGBA is similar to the Pictochat font. To modify it, see source/font/README.txt.

Translations

Translations for TempGBA may be submitted to the author(s) under many forms, one of which is the Github pull request. To complete a translation, you will need to do the following:

  • Open TEMPGBA/system/language.msg.
  • Copy what's between STARTENGLISH and ENDENGLISH and paste it at the end of the file.
  • Change the tags. For example, if you want to translate to Japanese, the tags will become STARTJAPANESE and ENDJAPANESE.
  • Translate each of the messages, using the lines starting with #MSG_ as a guide to the context in which the messages will be used.

If you are not comfortable editing C code, or cannot compile TempGBA after changes, you may instead test your translation in the English block and submit it. That allows you to look for message length issues and to align the option names and values to your liking with spaces.

If you wish to also hook your language into the user interface, you will need to do the following:

  • Edit source/nds/message.h. Find enum LANGUAGE and add the name of your language there. For the example of Japanese, you would add this at the end of the list: 
      ,
  JAPANESE
  • Still in source/nds/message.h, just below enum LANGUAGE, you will find extern char* lang[ some number ]. Add 1 to that number.
  • Edit source/nds/gui.c. Find char *lang[ some number ] =. Add the name of your language, in the language itself. For the example of Japanese, you would add this at the end of the list: 
      ,
  "日本語"
  • Still in source/nds/gui.c, find char* language_options[], which is below the language names. Add an entry similar to the others, with the last number plus 1. For example, if the last entry is , (char *) &lang[7], yours would be , (char *) &lang[8].
  • Still in source/nds/gui.c, find case CHINESE_SIMPLIFIED. Copy the lines starting at the case and ending with break, inclusively. Paste them before the }. Change the language name and tags. For the example of Japanese, you would use: 
      case JAPANESE:
  	strcpy(start, "STARTJAPANESE");
  	strcpy(end, "ENDJAPANESE");
  	break;

Compile again, copy the plugin and your new language.msg to your card under TEMPGBA/system, and you can now select your new language in TempGBA!

Compiling

Compiling TempGBA is best done on Linux. Make sure you have access to a Linux system to perform these steps.

The DS2 SDK

To compile TempGBA, you need to have the Supercard team's DS2 SDK. The Makefile expects it at /opt/ds2sdk, but you can move it anywhere, provided that you update the Makefile's DS2SDKPATH variable to point to it.

For best results, download version 0.13 of the DS2 SDK, which will have the MIPS compiler (gcc), extract it to /opt/ds2sdk, follow the instructions, then download version 1.2 of the DS2 SDK and extract its files into opt/ds2sdk, overwriting version 0.13.

Additionally, you will need to add the updated zlib, DMA (Direct Memory Access) and filesystem access routines provided by BassAceGold and recompile libds2a.a. To do this:

sudo rm -r /opt/ds2sdk/libsrc/{console,core,fs,key,zlib,Makefile} /opt/ds2sdk/include sudo cp -r sdk-modifications/{libsrc,include} /opt/ds2sdk sudo chmod -R 600 /opt/ds2sdk/{libsrc,include} sudo chmod -R a+rX /opt/ds2sdk/{libsrc,include} cd /opt/ds2sdk/libsrc sudo rm libds2a.a ../lib/libds2a.a sudo make

The MIPS compiler (gcc)

You also need the MIPS compiler from the DS2 SDK. The Makefile expects it at /opt/mipsel-4.1.2-nopic, but you can move it anywhere, provided that you update the Makefile's CROSS variable to point to it.

Making the plugin

To make the plugin, tempgba.plg, use the cd command to change to the directory containing your copy of the TempGBA source, then type make clean; make. tempgba.plg should appear in the same directory.