EZ-Flash USA Forum

Did a multiplayer patcher ever get made, or is it still one at a time?

Did you ever figure out exactly what causes multiplayer to fail? Is it just the patching or something else?

So, I'm guessing these multiplayer link patches will not work when applied to a ROM that has already been patched? Like the Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire clock patch? Or should I test it out?

Is there any way you could make a step by step guide for how to make multiplayer link patches so that everyone could do it for all the other games out there, or would we need special programming skills and hardware, like an EZ2?

I decided to merge the posts a bit.

Nothing standalone ever was made and indeed I have not really researched it any more. Kuwanger theorised it was more to do with latency associated with extra code that might be running (to do with soft reset and what have you) and the EZ2 was a bit of a lighter touch so the patches for it would work where the others might fall short.

If it was just a save patch carry on (save patching on the GBA is a simple affair and involves changing a few locations all in place with nothing extra), this one I am not so sure about but by all means give it a go and I would certainly not be surprised to see it all work fine (the save and clock code should not really collide but who knows what was done either on the EZ2 side of the patching side).

I also made a Ruby patch for someone the other month
http://www.4shared.com/file/RPekE9ng/09 ... h__U_.html (pure US version of the game).

I guess there would have to be a separate patch for Sapphire?

Can you make one for Advance Wars 1 and 2? That is one of the top games. It's definitely the patching that causes the issue including the save patch. If I don't patch the ROM with anything, I can play multiplayer with a single pak in Advance Wars, but if I even use the save patch only then it won't make a connection right and it will mess up. Of course you always need the save patch to be able to save though, right?

I find it very odd that just a save patch did it ( even with just the SRAM patch from http://www.no-intro.org/tools.htm )- is it but a minor tweak all in place and no extra hooks that could mess with timing.

Still all pure roms to start with (no intros or other hacks).
Advance wars (U) Rom number 290 or thereabouts- might as well use the 1.1 version.

Advance wars 2 (U) Rom number 1245 or 1260 or something around there depending upon your numbering.

Pokemon sapphire (U) Rom number 885/898 depending upon your numbering.

My GBA link cables are buried deep in my cupboard of wonder I think (I do have some GBC cables right to hand though for some reason) so I am unable to test right now but it is the same method that made all the others.
You might still want to trim the roms if you care about space (I had to add the trimmed sections back in to make the patches smaller).

0898 - Pokemon - Sapphire Version (U).gba - says "The save file has been deleted..." when starting game
0299 - Advance Wars (U) (v1.1).gba - single pak connection fails garbled sound, maptrade says nobody found to trade with, multi pak seems to work
1060 - Advance Wars 2 - Black Hole Rising (UA).gba - single pak connection fails garbled sound, maptrade says nobody found to trade with, multi pak seems to work

If I start a new game with Pokemon it creates a 128k save file. I noticed the ones that I had used with the EZ4 save patch are 160k, not sure if that is only because it's a new file or if there is a difference. But it doesn't seem to recognize my previous 160k save files. If I play on a new game for a bit and get a pokemon and save, then it creates a 160k save file. But the next time I load the game it says the save file is corrupt and it reverts back to the new save which is 128k. Never had this problem without the multi player patch.

Am I supposed to transfer the Advance war roms with the EZ4 client after patching in order to add in the save patch? If I copy and paste without transfer they don't seem to save, but the single pak connection works. Maptrade fails both with the save patch and without - saying there is nobody found to trade with (maybe I'm not doing it right).

Theoretically it should have not needed patching with EZ4client or but who knows- I have not reverse engineered any of this yet.

160K is an odd size (save sizes should be as those in http://www.pocketheaven.com/ph/wiki/ind ... =GBA_Saves 0.4.8,16,32,64,128..... unless they are homebrew). I imagine it has something to do with RTC (I had to use an EZ2 for this which did have RTC and would have got the patch). Perhaps try patching the already patched roms with GBATA (you want the SRAM patch option)- http://www.no-intro.org/tools.htm
As far as I was aware the ruby patch worked though which is odd. I am now onto guessing so I attached another one for ruby (will probably need gbata to do a save patch).
If you do not want to download and fiddle the only thing that changed was part of the header (b4 hex) changed from
0000 0000 0000 0000 0055 0000
to
00C0 0000 D601 2000 039B CF00
This is a reserved area in the header (well b5 onwards) and should not make a difference to the running of the rom.

Also I should mention with regards to advance wars saving it might be a problem with it- several people have mentioned it but neither the EZTeam or anybody around here that favoured fixing things and pulling them apart could ever manage to replicate it. Usual advice was to try 8:3 naming (it sorted the problem for the super mario advance titles that had issues as well as a few others).

Also do I take it that the patch broke single pack (that previously worked on a raw rom) but allowed multipak which did not work at all otherwise?

I have a bunch of stuff to do over the next couple of days but I will return to this.