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Romhacking.net on Retron5 ?

Posted: June 29th, 2016, 5:54 pm
by JBDUDE
Hello,

I was just wondering if any of you guys/girls manage to make romhacking.net roms compatible with the retron 5?
I've been patching many roms into ips files and most of them works just fine. But every files from romhacking.net are already in ips format and doesn't work when loaded in the Retron 5. I've tried re-patching them with the bin2retron program but still won't make them work...

If any of you manage to make them working, please tell me!

PS: I'm using the latest firmware for the retron 5 (2.41)

Thanks all of you!

Re: Romhacking.net on Retron5 ?

Posted: June 29th, 2016, 7:23 pm
by R9delta
Most of the patches there...at least for SNES/SFC games...are made to be patched onto roms with headers. This is a problem for the Retron as it dumps Roms without a header. Meaning when you essentially try to apply a patch that expects a header onto a ROM that doesn't have one its not going to work.

One thing you can try is enabling the "patch expects header" option in the patch menu on the Retron. This can work around the issue. Unfortunately I've found thats not always the case though which is where what I do for people on this forum comes in...fixing the patch to work on the Return 5.

To do this you need to download a tool called lunar IPS and SNES ROM utility. You need to download the patch you want and the ROM its for and find out if the patch wants the ROM with or without a header. Using that information you can apply the patch and test it on the computer and then make a fixed patch using lunar IPS between your unheadered ROM and the ending result you want and use this new patch on the Retron.

There may be other issues beyond headers like a patch being written for a different version of a game than what you have but the above process will work for that too. The basic premise to fix a patch to work on the Retron is have the same clean unheadered ROM for the same cartridge you have and have a ROM that's the end result you want and use lunar IPS to make a patch between the 2.

I realize what I just gave you is a crappy excuse for a tutorial and that this can be hard and time consuming to do but the only other thing I can suggest is for you otherwise is to wait and see if I or someone else will fix a patch you want.

Re: Romhacking.net on Retron5 ?

Posted: June 30th, 2016, 3:38 pm
by JBDUDE
Thanks for the reply,

I must say that it looks extremely complex to do... but most of the patches that interest me are NES, so i guess that ¨SNES ROM UTILITY¨ won't be any good for me:(

But lets try to make it simple,
1. I always play roms with the Super Mario Bros + Duck Hunt cartridge in the retron 5
2. I have the bin2retron and lunar ips program to make my ips roms.
3. If someone could tell me, step by step, how to fuse an ¨.ips patche¨ on a ¨.nes rom¨ while keeping the Mario + Duck Hunt cartridge on the retron 5, that would make my day.

I know it must sound complicated, but I really wanna try those romhacking.net hacks without having the original game cartridge for all those games.

Thank you!

Re: Romhacking.net on Retron5 ?

Posted: June 30th, 2016, 6:50 pm
by R9delta
Alright. Yeah I can help you with that. The example we are going to use here is how to make a patch to turn your Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt cartridge into Mega Man Reloaded (http://www.romhacking.net/reviews/1237/)

1. You'll need 4 things here to accomplish this and I recommend putting these 4 things here in the same folder on your computer to work with.
-Lunar IPS.
-A clean good rom of Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt (I'll refer to this as Super Mario Bros. + Duck Hunt (U) [!].nes)
-The patch that I just linked above
-This last requirement is where you need to really pay attention. You need to find out in either the link or the romhacks readme which rom this patch actually requires to work. To spoil the answer for you it requires a original US rom of Mega Man 1 which i'll refer to as Megaman (U) [!].nes
-A 5th thing that's optional but might be a good idea if you want to do this a lot...an nes emulator on your computer to test roms. If not I would count on you wasting a lot of time making bad patches until you get used to what you're doing and it's going to add to your frustration when you try to use them on the Retron when you mess something up.

2. Open Lunar IPS and apply the Mega Man Reloaded IPS patch onto Mega Man (U) [!].nes. Rename the rom Mega Man Reloaded to keep yourself on track. This is where I would use an emulator and test this rom but that's up to you.

3. Keep Lunar IPS Open and click "Create IPS Patch". Your first selection (ORIGINAL Unmodified File) to use is going to be your Super Mario Bros + Duck Hunt rom. Double click that. Your second selection (NEW Modified File) to use is going to be your new Megaman Reloaded rom that you created just a minute ago. Double click that. Name your patch whatever you want and click save.


The patch that just came about from this is the goal that we set out to accomplish. It takes Super Mario Bros + Duck Hunt and patches it into Megaman Reloaded. If you had any issues the roms you grabbed were either not good or the instructions that were given were not closely followed enough. Here is my ending result from the tutorial I gave you: http://www.mediafire.com/download/wky3d ... loaded.ips

It's confirmed working and you can test your work against mine if you had any issues. You should have the same exact result that I did assuming everything was followed. This tutorial was just using a specific example as I stated but you can use it for other romhacks. Just fill in the romhack example I used with a different one you want to actually play and the rom it requires. This also works for other systems too but SNES/SFC games are going to require removing the header sometimes like I said in my last post so I would personally just stick to NES games for now until you get the hang of it.

Re: Romhacking.net on Retron5 ?

Posted: July 1st, 2016, 2:21 am
by JBDUDE
IT WORKED!!!

I can't thank you enough for all the instruction you gave me. Thank you so much!
Now I can finally play those sweet hacks without problems.

Thanks a lot friend!