Posted on 20-08-21, 11:07 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #1 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
Since codes don't always work for unknown reasons, its possible that trying to use SNES Game Genie rom to enter cheats would be useful fail-safe, so why don't developers have an option to load actual Game Genie rom image they have -they are out there as I'm one of them.
Posted on 20-08-22, 00:53 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #2 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
Well, actually...Tomman like reading an individual legal statute without contexts, you might be right technically, but the devil-in-the-detail is you seem to assume that rom's internal offsets define addresses that position any value, but there are Super Nes roms that took shortcut by only dumping the MAIN chip (usually on cartridges PRG-ROM -Sega CD is another thing), but skip onboard co-processors when available. This changes rom's size...and at least if put on "wrong end" of PRG-ROM (again usually) it would seem to shift the absolute address a bit (on PC memory in ultimate picture?), so even if you are both nerdy and savvy enough to change the cheat code or even try RAW hex codes it might not run same on other PCs - even with same emulator/game combo...and down the rabbit hole we go. Ideally, it seems safest bet to at least mitigate this lost-in-translation problem. True I used raw hex code for Batman Returns, but I don't know if it would work on YOUR PC-SAME-GAME-SAME-EMULATOR CONFIGURATION (Emu-hawk SEGA CD), so its just ideal to use a rom dump clone image of cheating device. EVEN WITH HOMEMADE CODES YOU SEARCH YOU CAN FIND OUT: "OOH! SEGA CD RAW HEX ADDRESSING IS A CONVOLUTED MESS...SOMETIMES ITS PRG-ROM...BUT OTHER TIMES ITS WORD-RAM!" BTW, I FOUND OUT AFTER WEEKS OF WONDERING WHY RETROARCH'S SEGA-CD-EMULATING GEN PLUS GX CHEAT SEARCH IN HOOK WON"T ACCEPT -WAS IT ADDRESS OR VALUE- GREATER THAN 7FFFF! IT WAS ROM SEARCHING...IT CAN'T DO RAM SEARCHING! SEGA CD RAM WAS GRAFTED INTO ROM COUNTING...WTF?!
Posted on 20-08-22, 01:45 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #3 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
HUMOR IS THE ONLY WAY TO KEEP YOUR SANITY WITH THESE LAYERS UPON LAYERS! It's like Murphy's Law...ha-ha-ha. I'll be grateful if eithor my codes work "out-of-box" or if the genius with a stomache-of-iron just is so kind to all hardcore pc-emulating retro-gamers like me and does to SNES GAME GENIE what Genesis Plus GX did to Genesis port...and FCEUX did to NES port. That felt cathartic...ha-ha-ha!
Posted on 20-08-22, 08:15 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #4 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
Sega CD though had many splitting of just ROM...and weirdly RAM was blurred together by an unified memory counting of addresses...SNES was less counter-intuitive by not having split-rom but still actually for addressing purposes didn't differentiate cartridge ROM (sometimes also onboard SAVE RAM) and SYSTEM RAM...unlike general-purpose PCs or maybe modern gaming generation of consoles, games (being analogously PC Firefox) have to fit into a rigid memory "hole" reserved for loading ROM to RAM mirror - like the say PC-BIOS or now UEFI, just higher level.
Posted on 20-08-24, 11:47 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #5 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
UPDATE After trying for a week to find bsnes-sx v.008 since I iniatially got rid of it, because I thought it was not working as far as loading routine code goes. The reason I was so interested in that was the cart "swap" emulated action, and thought maybe if I paused emulated after three pause-unpause timings...AT PRECISE BLACK SCREEN after emulating Start button on SNES, where it would go into game on real console...and then click "swap" of Batman Returns rom - I entered infinite lives code on entry screen. But the code had no effect as if swap just emulates litterly JUST that - 'hot swapping' cartridges! I'm throwing in the towel after three weks of this almost all day...but anyone out there wants to take over from here...BE MY GUEST...or if you know an emulator that supports native game genie emulation like Fceux nes emulator...joshua < > gnitecki <AT> hotmail.com.
Posted on 20-08-25, 07:09 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #6 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
Yes, but it did not work...if you have any ideas let me know...but it looks like it won't be viable anytime soon. It was an interesting learning experience though. And of course, even if Funkyass is right, or either way, I thought I heard that even real Game Genie codes had issues when SNES games started having co-processor pins on sides...emulators maybe need to have option toggling between two major revised versions of Game Genie. Though I now remember also that infinite health code only froze health DISPLAY, not actual values...I had this very issue a year ago on -I think- SNES9X emulator...and I read recently that someone else had that issue and actually it is at least one counter example to assumption that co-processors had main code routines on main chip. I think only Action Replay or its Pro cousin worked on that Super-FX SNES game. So maybe SNES was unintentionally hostile to Galoob's cheating device implementation.
Posted on 20-08-25, 09:26 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #7 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
"Neither device is capable of doing anything to the state of any coprocessors, whether they used the side connectors or not. Coprocessors have their own in-cartridge RAM that they work out of that no cheat devices can reach. And coprocessors don't go through the cheat device when they read a ROM, because they are inside the cartridge with the ROM." "Neither device is capable of doing anything to the state of any coprocessors, whether they used the side connectors or not. Coprocessors have their own in-cartridge RAM that they work out of that no cheat devices can reach. And coprocessors don't go through the cheat device when they read a ROM, because they are inside the cartridge with the ROM." https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=29487.0 ;second post that replies gets into the weird SFX-2 chip mapping of health value on game..."No, Action Replay codes covered RAM addresses in the system instead of ROM addresses in the cartridge*. Rather than changing the game's behavior, they forcibly held values at a predefined point. That's really the only difference.
Both devices work fine with SuperFX games, assuming the necessary connections are made. In fact, as I recall Galoob and Code Masters offered official codes for Yoshi's Island." Actually, we both were wrong here I think: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=29487.0 3rd post. I think Game Genie was more adaptive than Pro Action Replay in co-processor games like Doom...and if I'm right that after Sega Genesis 32X, Nintendo pushed co-processors being used in most SNES games to offer cheaper alternative to 32X add-on and avoiding its new system stress. I always wondered how Nintendo's SNES survived even during Fifth Generation birth of gaming. "Emulating a Genie without the side connectors would be utterly pointless." Probably, but would it be so much trouble to include that variation in case. "https://forum.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?155628-Game-Genie-SNES-Problems" 6th post at least makes me ponder the horrifying possibility of what is mentioned could happen (mid-game failure of Yoshi's Island).
Posted on 20-08-26, 07:58 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #8 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
Silly people! I meant emulating 'hot swap' during precise moment when I pressed start from Game Genie version 2 code entry screen - I was HOPING that it would actually not clear SYSTEM RAM of precise point I paused limbo between that and the game I was hoping to cheat on (using bsnes-sx v08/9). Why do you think I spent a FULL week trying to redownload it after I deleted it completely!
Posted on 20-09-11, 11:22 in game genie "special load" option...
Post: #9 of 9
Since: 08-21-20

Last post: 1294 days
Last view: 1291 days
UPDATE: Interesting article I came across that might add to this debate: https://earthboundcentral.com/2013/01/keeping-buzz-buzz/
"HexploringUser said on Jan. 16, 2013
Why would a Game Genie code behave differently depending on whether a ROM has a header or not? The Game Genie was built to work with actual SNES Game Paks, and they decode to addresses in the SNES memory map, so if a Game Genie code will only work with a headered ROM and not also with a headerless ROM, then something is wrong with the emulator in which the code is inputted.

In ZSNES v1.51 and Snes9X v1.53, I tried inputting the Debug Menu code, which is composed of 3 parts, on both a headerless ROM and a headered ROM, and all 4 times, I was able to access the Debug Menu. The ROM I used has this sha256 hash when headerless: a8fe2226728002786d68c27ddddf0b90a894db52e4dfe268fdf72a68cae5f02e (remove any spaces or line feeds caused by the comment box), which was personally verified by byuu in his database and is probably also in No Intro’s database. The headered ROM I used is identical, except padded with 00’s at the beginning.

So improper handling of Game Genie codes would be in an earlier version of either emulator or a different emulator that is not higan/bsnes (such as SNEeSe). If the emulator is not the problem, then the headerless ROM that the Buzz Buzz code was tested against must differ in some way from the headered ROM that it was developed for. To test that, strip the header away and then compare their hashes (sha256 preferred if you want to compare with byuu’s hash).

P.S. I must agree with everyone who says that headers in ROMs are annoying and pointless. Every time I see a tool that works only on headered ROMs and not also on headerless ones, I sink a little. I have only ever gotten 1 program to work with header-magic (http://byuu.org/files/header-magic_v01.tar.bz2), and that program is the one that header-magic was originally created for: Lunar Magic, because header-magic requires the user to specify an entry point to work. The only exception I will tolerate is iNES headers (key word: tolerate)."
    Main » joshua » List of posts
    Yes, it's an ad.