VisualBoy Advance Save Problems

[Haldrie]

darn... ohwell, just two hours, and I don't think Mystery Dungeon Red Rescue has any elite four XP... does it? You're farther than me no doubt. I'll have to check on the vba-over thing I guess, shoot I'll just make a list of things to do tomorrow for this thing. Gah I'm so hopeless on my dreams of ever becoming a game designer.

 

 

 

Holy crap yes it worked! hehe tons-o-thanks Haldrie *huggles*

Good to hear you got it working. Also, Red Rescue Team does do a reset thing and after that a whole bunch of new things open up such as the ability to evolve.

[sameer]

hey guys ma name is sameer!! i am new bie here ... i justed read all the tutorials in this thread about save problem, i started playing pokemon fire red today and got the folowing problem ...hope u could help me out...

 

When the game first starts, i get the message:

 

"The 1-M Circuit Board is not Installed"

 

if i actually try to save the game with the in-game save option, it says "Save error. Please exchange the backup memory"

 

i have followed all the procedure given above and created a vba-over.ini file and kept in the same location as my VisualBoyAdvance.exe is kept...

 

i have checked my Game Code, with the my rom and made my vba-over.ini file perfect but i get the same error as explained above ..can any one help me..

 

my vba-over.ini file is located vba-over.ini file

 

thanxs sameer

[Deoxys]

1. delete the .sav and .sgm file of your pmdrrt(pkmn mystry..bla..bla..)

2.start a new game, don't do a file ->save or ctrl+s

3.save @ bed

4. you're free to save with ctrl+s and anything else

[sameer]

wow...great problem solved thanxs Poké Master and other for their support and help in providing the articles..

 

thanxs a lot.in save game is happening now.....

 

sameer

[Haldrie]

Yet another satisfied Pokemon player. Just to let everyone know I am now working on an online step by step tutorial that will be hosted on my website explaining exatly what has to be done to create and manage a vba-over.ini file going over everything that is accumulated in this thread and will include all of the games effected by this problem and not just the Pokemon and Dragon Ball games.

 

[EDIT]

Project is being delayed due to my large work schedule this week. I have almost all the screenshots I need, all taken from VBA 1.8.0 beta 3, but I think I need a couple more before I start work on the pages themselves.

Edited September 12, 2007 by Haldrie

[matariel]

sup guys. Alright Im new here and as usual, I have a problem that I need some help with!

 

Alright so this is the story: Ive been playing pokemon emerald US for quite a while now. I downloaded the rom and it came with an ips patch. The rom itself is unpatched although vba (or vba link in my case as that is what I am using, version 1.8.0 non-beta) autopatches on the fly [options -> emulator -> Automatic IPS Patching], I believe that vba doesnt modify the original rom file; the original rom file should be unaffected such that if I delete (or rename) the ips file and re-load the rom file I will infact have an unpatched version of the rom in memory. Anyhow, I didnt realize that so much trouble went into making poke emerald work, what with the ips patches and what not and so ive been battery saving with the ips patch loaded up until now without realizing.

 

And Ive always wondered, why does this game keep telling me my save file is corrupt when I load it up!

 

So this morning I stumble onto this thread as Ive been trying to find a fix for the "save file is corrupted..." message that the game shows me every time I load up my game (ingame load using the battery file; I always use ingame load and ingame save, I never use save states). So after reading Hal's first and ninth post (and then the rest of the thread) I decided to try and convert my corrupted 64k save to a legit 128k save using the outlined method!

 

So I setup the vba-over.ini properly, infact to be safe I downloaded yours, hal, just to be sure that I didnt make any bothersome spelling mistakes or anything of the sort; I then deleted vba1.ini and vba2.ini from vba link's directory (I use vba link so that I can trade/battle/etc) so my settings are effectively defaulted. If you want to be sure, here are the differences between my current vba1.ini and a default vba1.ini

 

frameSkip=0
autoFrameSkip=1
vsync=1
soundQuality=1
pauseWhenInactive=0
rtcEnabled=1
recent0=C:\Emulators\GBA\roms\games\Pokemon Emerald.gba
RFU=1
LAN=1
Joy0_Left=256
Joy0_Right=257
Joy0_Up=258
Joy0_Speed=389
Joy0_Capture=387
Joy0_GS=388
Joy0_Down=259
Joy0_A=384
Joy0_B=385
Joy0_L=390
Joy0_R=391
Joy0_Start=392
Joy0_Select=386
Joy1_Left=203
Joy1_Right=205
Joy1_Up=200
Joy1_Speed=42
Joy1_Capture=29
Joy1_GS=56
Joy1_Down=208
Joy1_A=30
Joy1_B=31
Joy1_L=16
Joy1_R=17
Joy1_Start=44
Joy1_Select=45

 

The next step was to rename the ips file so that when vba link loads emerald it does not patch it in memory. At this point I backed up all my original files (emerald's .gba, .sa1, .sav, .ips).

 

And heres where I encounter an interesting problem...

 

If I delete the original (64k) save file and start a new game then save, the new save file is 128k. When I reset the game then load, the game doesnt show me a "save file is corrupted..." message which means that everything is working so far! Keep in mind that right now the loaded emerald is unpatched.

 

So now I close vba.

 

However if I restore the original 64k save file from backup and attempt to load up the game without it's ips, the game locks up before the intro copyright image and shows me a big white screen inside vba link's window. If I restore the ips file and try again the game loads up correctly and I am able to load my old 64k save however it gives me a "save file is corrupted...". If I ingame save afterwards, the produced save file is 64k.

 

So, what can I do to save my old save? please excuse the horrible pun

 

thanks for all the help.

 

edit: and sorry about the lengthy post, my bad

 

edit2: nvm! I read the thread at dgemu and fixed the problem myself. If anyone is having a similar problem I recommend you read that thread, its quite informative. See I tried the save slot workaround initially to see if I can get it to work (I didnt think of using the save slot to bypass the white screen, that was a smart move on atomicknight's part) but what I didnt think of doing was manually setting save type in vba to 128k RIGHT before I ingame save. That produced the required 128k save (I changed savetype in vba back to 64k right after the game was done saving) and everything was functional afterwards! great eh? Note that I DIDNT have to change the savetype in vba to 128k afterwards as the vba-over.ini is now able to perform its function.

Edited September 13, 2007 by matariel

[Haldrie]

Wow that is a lot of reading. Well I was going to help you out here...up until I saw the second edit. Anyway good to see you got it working. My last experiece at actually fixing a corrupted save from an IPS patch was with Fire Red so you actually taught me something about the save state part. I'm sure a lot of people will find this useful and I will be sure to include this info (while crediting you and the poster in dgemu) on my tutorial that I plan on making once I finally get the time to work on it.

[matariel]

excellent! thanks a lot for making this thread, I owe you one

[solieus]

Hey guys Ya I'm new around here but I have years of frustrated vba pokemon experience

 

Ok I made a "native save" and everything works smoothly for me, but I want to save multiple files. How do I do that? Can I use save states after I have one normal save which is 128k? Do I have to have a different folder (with the gba game file in each) so it'll automatically put a diferent native save file in each? If I do that though it means I always have to start a new game when I wanna make a new sav file. I like making preset sav files to try out different things and it's much easier if I can just use save states.

 

Thanks

[Haldrie]

It is safe to use save states as long as the normal save feature is working for you but if you want to get multiple saves you can always just backup the old saves into a different folder so that VBA doesn't load them.

 

Also you can set which folder VBA uses to read and write saves by going to Options->Emulator->Directories...

[peroikos]

Hey, I was directed over here from the EMUTalk forums, and I was having all the 1-m circuit/save error problems with the Fire Red. I had been using save states because the native wasn't working, and then I added the vba-over.ini.

 

When I deleted the save state and ran the game in the VBA-M build, I was able to get it to work.

 

So, glad this thread was able to help me. Good work guys.