Patches?!?...headers

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JBDUDE
Posts: 21
Joined: October 28th, 2015, 12:23 am

Patches?!?...headers

Post by JBDUDE » September 4th, 2016, 10:07 pm

Hello ¨again¨ everyone!

It's been a few months now since that I got the Retro Freak console and I still have a few questions about it....mostly about the patches.

My library is taking expansion and I am now into patches, or if you prefer, ¨hacks¨ for mostly every games that i have.

Nes games have no problem loading patches. Simply load the main game, go in game settings, select an IPS patches and VOILÀ!!!! DONE!

SNES on the other hand.....?#&*?$)&@ :evil:
Now before I go raging, a good friend on this forum (R9delta) once told me about something called ¨header¨. I'm not even sure what header means, but it appears that some IPS patches only works with Roms with ¨headers¨...
I have heard of a program called ¨snesROMUtil¨ and it's suppose to help me about that ¨header¨ issue but I simply don't know how to run it.

Most important, i'm trying to keep all the hacks under the game setting menu. I know how to ¨merge¨ a rom with an ips patches with LunarIPS, but they will show up in the main game menu and i'd prefer to keep the hacks in a different folder menu, if possible.

Is the Genesis, PCE, Game Boy, GG all have the same issue with patches? :?

Hope I gave enough info.

Thank you all! :D

Note: every patches that I have are from Romhacking.net
PS: i'm using the latest firmware (2.0)

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R9delta
Patch Master
Posts: 474
Joined: September 14th, 2014, 12:07 pm

Re: Patches?!?...headers

Post by R9delta » September 5th, 2016, 1:47 am

All the roms get mixed together other than the fact they are sorted by system and alphabetized, unfortunately there's no way to really have them display by themselves in a different section. As for the header issue, this is pretty much an snes exclusive thing (although other systems can have roms that need adjusted too but its not as common and i wont get into that right now).

As for directions on how to use snesROMUtil the best I can explain it is that you need to use it to open a rom you wanted to originally patch and then click the remove header option (assuming it's not greyed out, if it is then the rom doesn't have a header) and save the new headerless rom. You can then apply the patch to that rom assuming that patch wants it to be headerless in the first place.

If the patch requires that your rom actually has a header and that's the problem then you need to use a different program to actually add one instead. The program NSRT works well for this. Then you apply the hack/patch to the headered rom and then use a program like lunarIPS to create a fixed patch between the romhack and an original unheadered rom.

I realize these is not the directions to follow but I can't really give you specific directions because they can change depending on what specific hack/patch you're trying to use, what rom you're trying to apply it to, and what version of the game/rom the patch needs. This is not a long process to do but it's hard at first and takes trial and error and plenty of mistakes made. The best I can do is describe the general process I go through as I did above and maybe link you to a youtube video I did of me making a patch so see if maybe it'll help you understand:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmc6Bu3LsD4

Download a rom of Tetris Attack and Panel De Pon for the SNES, the translation for Panel De Pon (http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1144/), snesROMUtil, and LunarIPS and follow along this video and see if you can maybe replicate what I did. If you can I think the general process might click in place for you.

The thing you need to keep in mind when making a patch is a simple premise:

-When you use your cartridge on a Retron 5 or Retro Freak it dumps it into memory (or saves it to an SD card) WITHOUT a header
-So the above means that for a patch to work it has to be based on a rom that does NOT have a header

So with that premise in mind you need to look at these factors when trying patches:

-Does the patch/rom hack i'm trying to use require a header
-Does the patch/rom hack i'm trying to use require a particular version of the game i'm trying to apply it to (version 1.0, version 1.2? etc...), is my cartridge or rom that I have match that?

Sometimes when you download patches they don't always say whether they work on a headerless or headered rom, sometimes you don't know what version of a game they require and even if you do you may not even know what version of a game you have. The only way you can find out is through trial and error on occasion, and that may mean just making fixing a patch for every version of the game you have that exists.



So all in all try your hand in using this info and see if it'll help you any but honestly if not that's why I'm around in the patch section of this forum, a lot of people have trouble with this kind of thing or just do not have the time to learn and that's alright.

I'll be honest though, the fact that you have a Retro Freak can complicate things compared to the Retron 5. The Retron 5 you ONLY have to worry about the cartridges you have and you also ONLY have to worry about unheadered roms because of that (because that's the only way it dumps them to memory and it can't play roms otherwise normally). The Retro Freak can make things twice as hard because it doesn't care what roms you have and where they came from, you can copy ones with headers and ones without and you have no idea whether they have one or not unless you open them with snesROMUtil or see if they have an extra kilobyte on them. My advice is that you have a separate SD card and use that for all your ROM hacks and be content with that because otherwise you're going to have a bad time trying to get them and fix them all in patch form just simply to keep things organized.

JBDUDE
Posts: 21
Joined: October 28th, 2015, 12:23 am

Re: Patches?!?...headers

Post by JBDUDE » September 5th, 2016, 8:17 pm

Hey thanks bud!

I did have my share of trials and errors, but your instruction really helped me out again and i finally made it!
...
I don't want to be a pain in the a*s, but, believe it or not, now I'm having a hard time with the sega genesis patches.
I thought the ¨headers¨ were only for the snes, but the patches that I have downloaded for the genesis doesn't work so far.

The roms files have the (.bin) extension, while the patches have the (.xdelta)...weird?!? When i dump the patches on my sd card, the retro freak won't recognise the format and the patches will be invisible.

I did try to convert the (.xdelta) files into (.ips) files. I can now see them on the screen, but once loaded, it's eternal darkness :lol:

So I'm kind of confuse trying to figure if it's a format issue or header issue.


Thanks a lot for your patience man, i really appreciate it!

PS: can we install the PCE-CD Bios in the retro freak?

JBDUDE
Posts: 21
Joined: October 28th, 2015, 12:23 am

Re: Patches?!?...headers

Post by JBDUDE » September 7th, 2016, 12:52 am

Never mind,

I figured it out myself.
Like you said, no need for headers. Genesis can run ips patches perfectly, but for some reasons, there are .xdelta patches on romhacking.net that simply won't work on the Retro Freak. Even after I convert the patche with the ips extension, still doesn't work. Too bad.

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R9delta
Patch Master
Posts: 474
Joined: September 14th, 2014, 12:07 pm

Re: Patches?!?...headers

Post by R9delta » September 7th, 2016, 11:11 am

It's possible to indirectly use patches written in xdelta format. You need to download an xdelta patcher on your PC, use that to patch the rom it's made for, and then basically remake the patch in ips format by using lunarIPS to create a patch between the patched rom and unpatched rom. Same concept as remaking a headered ips patch into an unheadered ips patch really.

JBDUDE
Posts: 21
Joined: October 28th, 2015, 12:23 am

Re: Patches?!?...headers

Post by JBDUDE » September 7th, 2016, 9:28 pm

Yeah,I kinda learn about that yesterday, and I manage to get it to work this morning.
Thanks!

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