Hacking NDSTokyoManager

[BrianTokyo]

Hi there guys,

There's a bunch of Rom managers around already, so you'll wonder why another one. Well, I've tried a few of them and (with the utmost respect to the programmers for their amazing work and contribution) I don't feel like any of them suits my needs, so here I am starting a new one. Just liked happened with my trimmer when I didn't find any suitable trimmers around that would trim 30 GB of roms, keeping the wifi info, and not locking up the computer in the process, so NDSTokyoTrim was born and is a today a very successful and known application in this community with thousands of downloads every month

"Why anounce it before it's ready" you'll ask. I have a very good reason. I want to ask you guys what you would like to see in it. What features you want and others lack, tell me your needs and expectations, and if they make sense I will work on them. Just like happened with my trimmer, most of the current features are requests and ideas from its users which I took very seriously and make today's tokyo trimmer

Here are my initial ideas:

- Support both NDS and GBA roms, using the same methods as my trimmer.
- Support rar, zip and 7-zip without extra DLLs needed in the disk, just like NDSTokyoTrim does today, very portable!
- Compatible with Linux/wine (just like my trimmer)
- You can expect it to be extremelly fast. If you use my trimmer you know what I mean

- Trimming of both NDS and GBA roms in a batch. Expect the same features of my trimmer here (bricker detection, proper wifi detection, fix of wrong trims, sram paching etc)
- Various tags to mark roms you've already played, set a score, some comments. I think this is very important because most people downloads 2000 roms and plays only a few.
- Many sorting options (size, region, name, trimmed, wifi, homebrew etc)
- Absolutely NO NEED FOR .NET framework. You will never see an app from me which requires that crap.


So here we start, let's discuss this!

(btw, this is the trimmer I'm talking about if you don't know about it yet: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=55162)

 

[Maikel Steneker]

Well, NDSTokyoTrim is awesome, so I'll watch this one

I currently only use OfflineList to rename my roms and 7zip them. If your software can do the same and support OfflineList dats, I will certainly try it!

 

[Narin]

I love NDSTokyoTrim and use it all the time, it is by far, one of the best trimmers I ever uased and I can't wait to see how this project turns out. I will be keeping my eye on it. Hmm, perhaps you can intergrate the cheat database I maintain into it or such. Download the the cheat.xml file and show what games have cheats and whats cheats are available for that Nintendo DS game, ect.

At any rate, I like the proposed features so far, keep up the good work.

 

[helpme]

i use offlinelist & RToolDS & i think there awesome togetter but RToolDS does not support GBA management so ill give your nds/gba manager a go when you make it

 

[Maikel Steneker]

i use offlinelist & RToolDS & i think there awesome togetter but RToolDS does not support GBA management so ill give your nds/gba manager a go when you make it

I tried to use RToolDS, but I didn't really like it.

Oh wait, that would be a nice feature: an option to view nfo-files, combined with the awesomeness that OfflineList is

 

[dogman]

shared comments and reviews (votes from 0 to 10)
Favorites list (to mark best roms.. maybe a local voting system and a worldwide voitng system based on the average of the local ones)
Automatic .sav management (when I delete a rom from my SD, make it copy the sav to the hard drive. When I copy the rom back to the SD, show a list of the .savs available, with the last one selected by default, and copy the rom along with the .sav to the SD)
Read roms from different sources

That's it for now... I would love to see those

 

[Saylient_Dreams]

One reason I was looking for a manager before was to check if the rom was clean. Perhaps a feature to check the CRC or some value to see if the rom is clean. I'm guessing that this would be hard to implement for compressed roms? Also, maybe a way to add your own entries into the database. I stopped using a manager because I couldn't really edit the database easily to add roms that I patched (like the JUS patch, and others of the sort).

 

[Narin]

One reason I was looking for a manager before was to check if the rom was clean. Perhaps a feature to check the CRC or some value to see if the rom is clean. I'm guessing that this would be hard to implement for compressed roms? Also, maybe a way to add your own entries into the database. I stopped using a manager because I couldn't really edit the database easily to add roms that I patched (like the JUS patch, and others of the sort).

Actually, its easier to implement rom validation with compressed ROMs simply due to the compressed archives store the CRC value of the game in the archive of the file to validate against once its decompressed to verify its not corrupted. So its simply a matter of checking the stored CRC value in the archive against that in a database,

 

[BrianTokyo]

One reason I was looking for a manager before was to check if the rom was clean. Perhaps a feature to check the CRC or some value to see if the rom is clean. I'm guessing that this would be hard to implement for compressed roms? Also, maybe a way to add your own entries into the database. I stopped using a manager because I couldn't really edit the database easily to add roms that I patched (like the JUS patch, and others of the sort).

Actually, its easier to implement rom validation with compressed ROMs simply due to the compressed archives store the CRC value of the game in the archive of the file to validate against once its decompressed to verify its not corrupted. So its simply a matter of checking the stored CRC value in the archive against that in a database,

NDS roms also have a header CRC though, you need the uncompressed rom for that.

 

[Narin]

One reason I was looking for a manager before was to check if the rom was clean. Perhaps a feature to check the CRC or some value to see if the rom is clean. I'm guessing that this would be hard to implement for compressed roms? Also, maybe a way to add your own entries into the database. I stopped using a manager because I couldn't really edit the database easily to add roms that I patched (like the JUS patch, and others of the sort).

Actually, its easier to implement rom validation with compressed ROMs simply due to the compressed archives store the CRC value of the game in the archive of the file to validate against once its decompressed to verify its not corrupted. So its simply a matter of checking the stored CRC value in the archive against that in a database,

NDS roms also have a header CRC though, you need the uncompressed rom for that.

Oh I know, but most ROM auditors I found store the CRC value of the actual NDS file instead of the internal CRC header to verify that the entire file is clean instead since its not that hard to edit the game and add in false headers into it.

 

[krazykirk]

I really love NDSTokyoTrim, so I'll defintely use NDSTokyo Manager!

 

[Rayder]

All I want is a program that works offline (updated online, of course, but....) where I can type in a game name and it will tell me what ROM number it is.

If such a program already exists, please tell me what it is.

 

[kazumi213]

All I want is a program that works offline (updated online, of course, but....) where I can type in a game name and it will tell me what ROM number it is.

If such a program already exists, please tell me what it is.

1. Download a numbered DAT file
2. Open in text editor
3. Press CTRL+F
4. Type the game name
5. Click OK

 

[BrianTokyo]

All I want is a program that works offline (updated online, of course, but....) where I can type in a game name and it will tell me what ROM number it is.

If such a program already exists, please tell me what it is.

1. Download a numbered DAT file
2. Open in text editor
3. Press CTRL+F
4. Type the game name
5. Click OK

If people wanted to bother doing that there'd be no purpose in making rom managers.

 

[Saylient_Dreams]

One reason I was looking for a manager before was to check if the rom was clean. Perhaps a feature to check the CRC or some value to see if the rom is clean. I'm guessing that this would be hard to implement for compressed roms? Also, maybe a way to add your own entries into the database. I stopped using a manager because I couldn't really edit the database easily to add roms that I patched (like the JUS patch, and others of the sort).

Actually, its easier to implement rom validation with compressed ROMs simply due to the compressed archives store the CRC value of the game in the archive of the file to validate against once its decompressed to verify its not corrupted. So its simply a matter of checking the stored CRC value in the archive against that in a database,

NDS roms also have a header CRC though, you need the uncompressed rom for that.

Oh I know, but most ROM auditors I found store the CRC value of the actual NDS file instead of the internal CRC header to verify that the entire file is clean instead since its not that hard to edit the game and add in false headers into it.

Wow, forgot that archives store the CRC value, lol, and I just used that to verify something >.>

 

[matriculated]

I love to see DAT file support for renaming, 7z archiving, filename filtering (type something in a text box and the manager will show files that contain that text).

My dream function would be rom merging using No-intro's parent rom dat. This would archive the roms into one 7z/rar file that are the same game but from different regions using 7z/rar solid compression. This sames a ton of space.

 

[BrianTokyo]

What's this no-intro thing?

 

[matriculated]

They're a group of people that make DAT files for roms but are incredibly anal/accurate about how they're named. They also make a dat using a parent-child (P/Clone) relationship (like how MAME catalogs their roms) so that a game is grouped with its regional counterparts.

http://datomatic.no-intro.org/?page=download

 

[BrianTokyo]

Hmm are these dat files some sort of games database? I plan on making my own for this manager.

 

[matriculated]

Dat files are used by rom managers like clrmamepro and offlinelist to identify and rename roms. I don't really know much more than that but I'm guessing they contain the roms crc, release number, filename, region, languages etc. Why make your own when the work has already been done?