GBA ROMS Compress
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[edit] About
This tutorial will guide you through the process of trimming and compressing your GBA ROMs for your M3. This can be done with any GBA ROM and it should work for any too! :)
[edit] What You Need:
- M3 Game Manager (Usually the latest version is best)
- This Zip (GBATA & M3 Self Extractor & a BAT file),
- Your GBA ROMzz ;)
[edit] Step One - Preparation
Unzip my bundle or get the files separately and put everything in a folder somewhere. We are going to use this folder to do all our patching/compression stuff so put it somewhere where you won't lose track of it!
[edit] Step Two - Patching Your ROM
OK so we want to make sure the ROM is working on the M3 with clock support etc... so what we do is we use the Game Manager and instead of choosing our SD/CF card we choose the same folder you created in Step One. Use the Game Manager to patch your ROM and it should put the ROM in the Step One folder.
[edit] Step Three - Trimming The ROM
Fire up GBATA and open the patched ROM. Click on Rom Trimmer. It should show you the trimmed size (hopefully it will trim a lot!) Click on Trim. It will spit out the trimmed ROM as "output-ROMNAME.gba"
[edit] Step Four - Compressing The ROM
Rename "output-ROMNAME.gba" to "in.gba" then double-click "compress in gba.bat". You should see a console window with "Compressing..." and some numbers. This will be displayed for quite a while so try to be patient. Once this is finished, rename "compressed.gba" to "ROMNAME.gba" and copy it directly onto your SD/CF card.
[edit] Step Five - Creating A Save File
You will see a gamesave folder in my ZIP. in there are two blank save files copy whichever size you want to your GAMESAVE folder on your SD/CF card and rename it to ROMNAME.dat
[edit] Step Six - Run ROM
The screen should go red then blue when you load the ROM then the game should start. Hopefully everything will work as normal ;)
[edit] Potential Problems
- If you have an NDS save in the M3's SRAM that hasn't been updated to file for whatever reason, this can cause the compressed GBA ROM to crash.
- The compression can take a LONG time.
- Linkage between DS- and GBA-roms doesn't work anymore (tested with Gyakuten Saiban 3).
- It's not possible to return to the game after opening the M3 Special Effect Menu.
