GameBoy rom verify?

[alexian]

I went out to Zophar's Domain and found that -- you're right. There's not much in the emulation scene for Mac users.

I know that this is probably heretical on these boards to even mention this. But -- something you may want to try just to make sure your ROMS are what they say they are:

http://www.allgoodthings.us

Look on the forum+files, topic Downloads for the various system you're looking for. The gbx files would audit both your gb and gbc roms. I believe these are true DOS-based tools (as opposed to windows console tools).

You'll need to unzip the tool into the directory you want to check. Then type 'goodgbx rename'. That will create a new folder call GoodRen with all the renamed files. Any ROMs left behind in the original folder are ones that it does not recognize. (Note: The GoodTools and No-Intro disagree on which ROMS are truly the "right" ones in some cases. And the two disagree often on the proper names for ROMs. You've been warned)

You can also do a 'goodgbx rename dirs' that will place roms in separate folders according to their original distribution area (Europe, USA, Japan, etc), or whether the ROM's are hacks, translations, etc. You can tweak goodinfo.cfg to better sort roms into the various folders.

One last word of warning: No-Intro and tools like NSRT will not recognize any hacks, translations, or otherwise altered ROM's. Their goal is truly to just audit the actual true ROM. Where they have been able to find such things, No-Intro *will* document true beta and prototype releases, as these are actual physical obtainable roms. On the other hand, Cowering and his GoodTools attempt to document every true and hacked / altered rom that they can find available anywhere.

[donefor]

Thanks, I've tried so hard to get a Mac Solution, this is Windows only - trying to run it in DOSbox (DOS on a Mac) it will not run. Ironically your heretical gamble paid off, THAT is exactly all I was trying to do all along - to verify my ROMs; to make sure they are what they say they are.

It looks like GoodTools is a simple solution, nice to read they cater for all ROMs that exist, I understood that there was a little rivalry between no-intro and Cowering. Maybe there is a front end GUI for Mac, although I doubt it as the executable requires Windows. Are you sure that NSRT and uCON64 are not going to do what I want, I had been hoping they would.

[alcoatjez]

I understood that there was a little rivalry between no-intro and Cowering.

I really appreciate all the great work Cowering has done on the GoodTools, but if redumping proves that some [!] (verified) dumps are actually not good they're not suited if you want accuracy.

[donefor]

Actually thats true, but can they be told apart? Will a hack, even if verified as 'that hack', be segregated as a hack. So the official ones are all together and then the hack kept separately?

[alexian]

One benefit that No-Intro has over GoodTools is that the No-Intro project is a community of people all trying to maintain dat's for the true Roms. So, that's many people working on a finite set of games. Note that no-intro only maintains the dat's, not the software that uses the dats. Which again lightens the load.

The GoodTools on the other hand are the work of one person (Cowering) trying to document every version of every game for every system, plus maintain the software that processes the auditing tools. That's a lot of work for one person. And realize that you still have multiple teams and individuals out there building new hacks, translations, and (yes) honest games.

As you might guess, the no-intro tools are kept more up-to-date. GoodSnes hasn't seen a release since 2004. Even just looking at the translation world, that's old news. The latest translation of Final Fantasy 6 wasn't available until 2005. Star Fox 2's translation was late-2004 (after the last GoodSNES). This year we saw a perfect amazing translation for Der Langrisser. That's not mentioning the couple dozen other game translations in between. And that doesn't count any of the hacks.

NSRT is not a general use tool. It was specifically for SNES and SNES only. It doesn't help you at all for gameboy or any other platform.

If you can get UCON64 working, then by all means use it. Kazumi213 and I are trying to get the major platform's added to Dat-O-Matic. (I saw that Clrmamepro dat's were not working for you) Game Gear and SNES should be about ready. Master System, Genesis, and 32X (all Sega) platforms have skeletons ready to be converted and tested. GB, GBC, and NES are next on the docket.

As far as whether you can tell hacks from good ROM's in Good Tools, yes -- you can. Cowering includes tags in the names of the files he creates. So, if the file name comes out with something like [h1] in the title, its a hack. This is where running the program with something like "goodgbx rename dirs" and editing goodinfo.cfg to your liking will dump games into appropriate folders. Its pretty easy to just delete the folders you don't want.

Lesson learned: As with No-Intro, don't be too quick to dump games marked with [a] (or [a1], [a2], etc). The "Alternate" indicates that the game is a true release. Especially when comparing numerous tools (like NSRT, GoodSNES, and No-Intro's dat), one may indicate these are just alternate versions, while another tool may indicate specific versions. It's worthwhile to cross-check such ROM's against multiple tools.

You may want to pester the boards for the other tools to make Mac versions of their tools. Zophar's Domain does list one Mac tool for auditing software, but its shareware, and looks like it has proprietary versions of the audit lists. Sad. I would have thought someone would have created a Rom editing tool for macs by now. Don't they have mac emulators?

[donefor]

Thanks for taking an interest in my thread, I would like to start of by saying that I still am holding out for a Mac OS X 'way'. For me NSRT and uCON64 are the way, they are 'Mac ready'. I know that NSRT is for SNES only and I have read that because it concentrates on one console only it has a lot more to it - dedicated to the SNES. So I was always going to use that. Concentrating on Nintendo I am only interested in their console releases and so uCON64 would be my only other option for the rest, NES dats as far as I know work with uCON64 on the Mac but, as this thread has concentrated on so heavily, its the GameBoy ones that I really need to get working. I can forfeit the VirtualBoy for a time, but GB is integral.

GoodTools seems simple and really appeals to me, it does all the hard work and batches everything thing, being a Nintendo fan I am a Mario fan (back then, when I was younger, and now) and so its more than likely those ROMs would be catered for in the dats. I can't imagine why Mr. Cowering has gone his separate way, its nice to see that kind of passion, but it leaves me unsure which route to take. Even more so when you recommend cross checking with different tools.

What really caught my eye about your post was the mention of continuing dedication with the dats, RomeCenter dats are said to be the ones that UCON64 will work with, not CLRMamePro, how come both are not kept up to date? Does dat-o-matic mean that certain aspects of the dat can be tailored, opposed to the kitchen sink approach of the CLRMamePro dats? Why is it that the dats listed on the uCON64 homepage work with uCON64, are they different from no-intro RC dats? because uCON64 is suppose to work with no-intro RC releases.

When you say GB dats are next on your list, how far down the road, if you can predict, will that be and will they work with uCON64? Will you test them for that? I know that the GBA dat-o-matic ones do, so assume that the other new ones will also. How much work is involved in proofing a dat just out of interest?

If I just stuck to no-intro dats then whatever came up as an [a] 'alternative' ROM would be accepted, its when using different systems that confuses matters - would it not be better to stick to one dat/program? I prefer [!] ROMs which are unquestionable but the wider a collection then I suppose the more these issues will arise. I'm left unsure when I've seen ROMs listed with several suffixes as to weather there is a copy that is of the unquestionable kind [!].. or are there some ROMs that never are perfect? Battle of Olympus for the NES being one.

[alexian]

Where we stand:

Game Gear and SNES Parent / Clone sets are already mostly ready for Dat-O-Matic. Kazumi213 is working the details out with the powers that be.

Genesis, Master System, and 32X files have been sent to Kazumi213 for converting into Parent / Clone sets. If the Game Gear file was any indication, there will probably be a few parent / clone sets that I neglected to join. I'll proof things once I get the files back, then post them for review by the community.

I have initial work done on Game-Boy and Game-Boy Color. Problem is that there are a LOT of games on these systems. Hand-parsing through the GoodMerge XMDB file will take some time. Kinda depends on my limited free time, and Kazumi213's resources, but I would expect that at least the Parent / Clone files should be ready for these sets by end of October. I don't know how long to move those into DoM after that.

NES is a bit of a different beast, and it has even more ROMs (and probably more true games) than either the GB or GBC. Most of the initial work is done, although I need to research some information on some of the ROM's.

Clrmamepro files are easier to create, because they don't use quite as many symbolic characters for everything. So, generally people build clrmamepro files, then convert those to Romcenter. Or just use the clrmamepro dats (Romcenter works with clrmamepro files just fine). But the Dat-O-Matic makes both available, along with being able to file down the dat to suit your liking. (If you want a dat with just the Sweden releases, DoM can do that!)

I really haven't looked at the dat's much from uCon64, so don't know what they contain or do not contain.

By, the way, you will never see a [!] in anything tied to no-intro. The intent is that no-intro only contains data that would be marked by Cowering as [!]. But, until you stop seeing posts calling for certain games to be redumped, that isn't strictly the case. Cowering, as I understand it, doesn't even want the [!] indicator. Basically, early attempts to dump roms were not always done right. They've perfected the techniques now, but unfortunately many Roms are floating around the web from those early invalid dumping techniques.

[donefor]

That's interesting, he doesn't want the [!] symbol but uses many others, why? No-intro I take it does not use any symbols then as I take it anything inside the no into dats is perfect? But you say that CLRMamePro does, what do you mean?

So is it the desire of no-intro to port all of their dats to dat-o-matic, its seems like the way forward.

Who'd have thought in 2008 that this would still be an issue, I mean for old systems, sure the new ones need attention but the Amiga, NES... I guess that what the internet does, one big mess, a lot of effort to sort things out.

The end of October for GBx/CGB is rather soon, I expected that it would be a long way away, of course that is not inclusive of it being ready for dat-o-matic but still quite soon. I wonder if people really appreciate the effort from those behind the scenes. Although I haven't seen a donation button anywhere, it might be novel to get people to donate paracetamol instead of money.

[alexian]

As you're wondering why things aren't exactly perfect in the emulation world, think about this:

I haven't found a computer yet that has built-in slots to accept SNES cartridges, Genesis cartridges, etc. My PC *can* accept Playstation CD's, but even that takes a bit of magic to read and dump them correctly.

How each of these systems gets dumped "correctly" has been worked out over the years. Various ways have been created, some of which create "overdumps" or interlaced dumps, or any number of other issues. So, yes, finding the "perfect" dump of a game is not always easy. If you've never tried *cough, cough*, then you really shouldn't even have any Roms on your system. If you have tried, then you probably understand the difficulty in dumping roms.

The point behind the [!] is that some of the ROM's were dumped prior to an accepted "perfect" method. The games marked with [!] have been verified through the "perfect" methods. Those not marked may or may not be right. Really, if everyone had used perfect methods from the start, there would be no need for [!] in any system.

As for whether all systems should be available via DoM. That's a matter of opinion. See this recent post: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=817.

I would prefer that dat's be available via DoM, because it allows for more consistent access to the various systems. But not everyone has accepted the move, and some may have good reason not to.

[donefor]

I don't understand when you say that ROMs with a [!] symbol are perfect, while I read that any ROMs in no-intro will never have this symbol, I do however understand that everything in no-intro will strive to be perfect. So then is it GoodTools that has those symbols and it alone? I have never run a tool with no-intro dats on anything like a collection that could throw up e.g. [a] suffixes, so I don't know -- do no-intro dats rename ROMs with symbols?

Thanks for the link, but that was my thread too. I would say, with only one post, that thread is not yet mature enough to convey any reasons why D-O-M would not be the evolved choice, why would there be any hesitation?

[donefor]

Right , well as an update I can tel you I was given this old GoodTools dat for the GameBoy (DMG) and works with uCON64! its an old one but it works! Get it here:

http://lovelago.googlepages.com/GoodGBX-1.020.0.dat

I am going to have to wait now though for the dat-o-matic dats that no-intro provide, my sources tell me that they will be uploading SNES dats very soon, then genesis and then GameBoy with proofing to start late October, so can't wait!