LaunchBox ROM Patch Manager 0.0.4

Exceptional work!

Thanks @Retro_Rage @Wally

Please let me know if you run into any problems or have ideas for new features. A few enhancements I’m thinking about for this plugin:

Option to patch an additional app

Patches often need to be applied to a specific version of a game. LaunchBox can combine different revisions of games into one game where the game points to the default revision and additional revisions of the same game are added to the game as additional apps. It would be nice to be able to select from the additional apps if you need to patch one of the revisions instead of the default rom. 
 

Option to add patched the game as an additional app

An option on the import rom hack screen that would allow you to specify if the new patched game should be added as a new game (current behavior) or if the game should be added as an additional app to the source game. 

Search/Download
This one, I’m not sure if/when it will ever happen but long term hope is to provide the ability to search and download rom hacks directly from the plugin. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Fry

The patchs are downnloaded of Romhaking?

56 minutes ago, Mongu said:

The patchs are downnloaded of Romhaking?

Yes I mostly download patches from romhacking.net. You could also get them from other places like smwcentral or anywhere that you can find IPS or PPF patches. 

I went a bit off specs:

Tried to patch Golden Axe (Master System) with a fresh bps patch.

https://www.smspower.org/forums/18151-SMSGoldenAxeTyrisFlareEditionROMHack

It did patch it, created the file as well but it semi-destroyed my Platforms: Only half of them were visible. Master System along with others just disappeared from Launchbox.

Fortunately Launchbox has the awesome backup feature of the XMLs and got everything restored back.

Oh god that’s horrible. Did you see any error in the log?  Really sorry to hear about that. I would like to try to reproduce this issue and figure out what happened. I don’t play master system so I’ll need to set that up. I’m glad you were able to use a backup of your data file to resolve this 

Dont be. Your plugin is very useful!

I noted that I went a bit out of specs.

What can I post so I can help you debug?

1 hour ago, Wally said:

What can I post so I can help you debug?

There should be a LaunchBoxRomPatchManager folder in your LaunchBox folder and in there any errors would be logged to the log.txt file. Could you check if there is anything in there and if so send it to me?  Also do you by chance have the bad data file where your platforms got messed up?  If so I would love to take a look at that. And if possible could you send me your good data file so I can see how you have stuff setup, if anything sticks out to me?  
 

lastly, when you say you went out of specs, what do you mean by that exactly?  I wasn’t clear on what you did there. 

The log is empty:

Log Entry : 12:06:12 μμ Κυριακή, 30 Ιανουαρίου 2022
  :Output length: 37
-------------------------------

Out of specs:I mean that I used a bps (not ips) in a platform that you have not listed.

I see. Bps files should be fine with floating IPS patcher and sega master system roms shouldn’t be a problem to patch either. I am curious why your log file seems to have an entry in it but no log message. Normally if there is a log entry, there would be something written in there. 

 

Would you be able to share your data file?  I’d like to confirm the data you have for golden axe in sms and try to reproduce the issue. 

By all means! 

Debug 2022-01-30 11-20-12 AM.log Debug 2022-01-30 12-08-49 PM.log Debug 2022-01-30 12-10-55 PM.log

Any chance we could get included xdelta support?

7 hours ago, ARandomMastodon said:

Any chance we could get included xdelta support?

Could you point me to an xdelta patch or two that I can use to test with?  It is possible we can get it to work without any code change by adding the xdelta patcher to the patchers list with the right command line arguments. It is also possible a code change would be needed to support the xdelta command line arguments. I’d like to test but all the rom hacks I ever tried use ips, bps, or PPF format. If you can link me some xdelta examples, I’ll test it out and report back. 

Edited April 11, 2023 by Fry

Gotcha. Xdelta, from my experience, tends to be used primarily for patching Nintendo DS games, and the patch/hack developer may or may not include a GUI tool to install it; otherwise, it requires command line experience.

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7116/
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1604/
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2235/
 

@ARandomMastodon I think it'll work fine out of the box.  To use xdelta, you can download it and place it in the LaunchBox\LaunchBoxRomPatchManager\Patchers folder like this: 

Then you need to add the patcher in LaunchBox under Tools > Manage ROM patchers with the command line -f -q -d -s {rom} {patch}

like this: 

I associated it with Nintendo DS to test the ROM hacks you mentioned.  

Then you can import the rom hack by right clicking a game and Import ROM Hack.  It doesn't default the patch (I could add a small code change to have it look for xdelta files) but you can manually pick the xdelta file like shown here: 

It was able to successfully patch the game and add the hack.  

 

Edited April 15, 2023 by Fry