Re: POWDER: GBA newbie
- From: Jeff Lait <torespondisfutile@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 07:20:59 -0700 (PDT)
On May 28, 5:48 pm, Clare Boothby <cla...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Addict that I am, I find myself wanting a GBA so that I need never be
far away from a source of roguelikes. I have my eye on a GBA-SP, but
never having owned anything of the sort before I am bewildered by the
array of slightly dodgy websites offering flash cartridges. Can
anyone recommend a brand and/or provide simple instructions for how
to actually get Powder onto one of these things?
Hmm... It is a tough market. Unfortunately, the dodgy websites have
all pretty much moved to the DS as their primary target. To make
matters worse, the flash cart makers for the GBA ignored the homebrew
market, unlike the DS cart makers who actually have stuff like auto-
DLDI linking as a selling point.
There are two distinct generations of flash carts. The ancient ones
had there own real-flash + battery backed SRAM and an big external
linker. You need windows for the drivers to write to the linker and
are pretty much using a crazy proprietary interface to reflash the
cart for each version of POWDER. The good news is that since they
have battery backed SRAM on the card, POWDER save games tend to work
as expected.
The newer generation use an actual flash card, like Mini-SD or Micro-
SD, to store the game. Since these cards aren't fast enough to act as
a game ROM, they actually copy the game into RAM on the cartridge at
game start time. And, since they have RAM, they use that for the
SRAM mirror. Of course, this means that when you turn off the GBA it
isn't battery backed and you lose the save game. They work around
this by having a key combination, iike A-B-Select to trigger a save
game manager that copies the SRAM stuff to the flash card. However,
that requires patching the program, which requires the game be a real
Nintendo ROM. With the Supercard DS that I've tried, there is a crazy
hot boot sequence where you power-cycle very quickly, hoping to keep
the SRAM in the RAM, and then save that out from the main menu. I've
heard various reports about this working or not working.
So, unfortunately, I have no idea what modern GBA flashcarts work with
POWDER :< Most players of the GBA build seem to actually be people
running GBA emulators on more crazy platforms, so they save/restore by
full memory dumps.
Now, as to what sort of GBA, I've only used the GBA and GBA SP. My
GBA had the afterburner installed for a "backlight", but the colours
are still practically black. When it cracked when I dropped it down a
flight of subway stairs, I really didn't want to move the SP. I was
convinced the ergonomics would suck. In practice, I found the SP
better than the GBA at ergonomics. And its clamshell design renewed
my belief that any electronics with a screen must come with a
clamshell design.
(Don't say 'get a DS', I haven't got the money.)
The other big problem with the GBA is that POWDER is skirting the
maximum memory limit for the GBA. This means long games tend to run
out of memory and then crash horribly :< There is a dungeon clean up
feature, which combined with Save & reload could keep this in check if
you use it preemptively (like every 10 levels?), but it is a known
problem.
Unfortunately, I've moved to the DS myself. Too bad the resale market
for the DS is so strong.
--
Jeff Lait
(POWDER: http://www.zincland.com/powder)
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