[ASM & Hex] Problem with save on Fire Red hacked ROM

Hello, as much as it seems to be a simple question with answers like "turn your emulator save type to flash 128k" etc. it is NOT an emulator problem. I' ve given the ROM to 3 people, all of them had the very same problem.

First, right before I enter the screen says "The 1m sub-circuit board is not installed", after that I play the game and when I save it gives me that there already another saved game and asks me If i want to delete it, I press yes and it gives me a save error(Note: I don' have any save file about fire red and I have isolated the game into another folder to try it"

I've tried the following guides

http://forums.qj.net/rom-discussion/69514-how-fix-pokemon-firered-save-problem-gpsp.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIhAVH1yMG0&t=1s

https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial-fix-all-save-problems-for-pokémon-games-vc-gba.433266/

most of them makes the ROM reset right after it tries to save.

Any help is appreciated, I am trying to solve it for months and no one has any solution

bump

https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=350443

Try this, it reduces the save type to 64k (I know you said the problem isn't the save type, but give it a shot anyways, for all you know it might work)

Did u apply rtc? In that case you need to enable REAL TIME CLOCK

PokemonAce123 said:

https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=350443

Try this, it reduces the save type to 64k (I know you said the problem isn't the save type, but give it a shot anyways, for all you know it might work)

Click to expand...

that's the same as the link i posted above, right?

https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial-fix-all-save-problems-for-pokémon-games-vc-gba.433266/

Sakib66 said:

Did u apply rtc? In that case you need to enable REAL TIME CLOCK

Click to expand...

I did nothing that has to do with save type at all, I never edited any asm script nor did i apply rtc (i don't need it anyway XD)

maybe advancemap replaced the bits that are responsible for saving at map data or something, would that be possible?

Aenaos said:

that's the same as the link i posted above, right?

https://gbatemp.net/threads/tutorial-fix-all-save-problems-for-pokémon-games-vc-gba.433266/

Click to expand...

You're right, totally didn't realize, sorry! :P

try use save block hack patch :)

Ahmed Riki said:

try use save block hack patch :)

Click to expand...

Hmmm... sounds promising but I can't find anything about what you proposed, could you please provide me with a link about it?

Tried the patch via lunar ips, nothing happened. I am starting to think there is a giant problem there...

Aenaos said:

Hello, as much as it seems to be a simple question with answers like "turn your emulator save type to flash 128k" etc. it is NOT an emulator problem. I' ve given the ROM to 3 people, all of them had the very same problem.

First, right before I enter the screen says "The 1m sub-circuit board is not installed", after that I play the game and when I save it gives me that there already another saved game and asks me If i want to delete it, I press yes and it gives me a save error(Note: I don' have any save file about fire red and I have isolated the game into another folder to try it"

Click to expand...

Sounds like your ROM got corrupted. Grab a clean ROM, and you should be good to go.

If you had a project done on it, I'm sure the last year and half or so since you made the thread was more than enough time to carefully recreate all the changes in a clean ROM.

Hey Lunos, Happy to see you again, especially regarding that problem. The solution you are giving is a good way to get rid of the problem although as you may imagine it is the most difficult one. I've been working with this project with several people since 2013 (slowly but steady) and we are both kind of fed up with the project, we will not be able to recreate it that easily. Anyway I'd like this to be the last solution for the problem, hope I'll find a way to get through this otherwise.

I am happy to announce I've finally fixed the save bug!

I'd like to thank the guys above who tried to help me. I'd like to post the process I followed in order to fix the bug, I hope this post to be useful to other people with the same problem as I had.

First of all I tried to follow Lunos' instructions and I started over my ROM to a fresh one, I've inserted all the new sprites, all the overworld sprites, maps etc. and everything was working fine. Thing is, I was backing up the ROM every time I changed anything in it, and suddenly, when I was editing the MUSIC, it happened again! The very same error message. I repeated all the steps I followed, inserting music in order to see what was wrong with that.

Seemed like while I was importing music tracks from SAPPY, by the time I imported a new song on the "TRAINER TOWER" offset, probably the bytes went overflow and deleted everything that was nearby. (and yeah probably I was doing it wrong all this time)

Solution: I did a simple but effective method, I used my HxD program and I opened the corrupted Fire red (my rom) and an unedited fire red. went to the table of the song offset, the header of the song offset and the voices of the song offset (0x04A3D8C, 0x06FB570, 0x490B74 respectively) and then I replaced every byte that was different from the unedited fire red on the nearby areas of the offset(of course with mass copy-paste of the bits). It worked and the only thing that seems that changed was that the Trainer tower song went back to it's default.

Note: Maybe someone can research those offsets in the future as they seem they play a big part on the save mechanism, don't know if it is already been established.

Cheers!

Thanks a LOAD, Scarlet D.! I had the same problem and did exactly what you said (although my TRAINER TOWER has a different song offset) and finally my ROM works again! But I'm wondering now what else I destroyed by adding songs with SAPPY... And I wonder if the problem only occurs with TRAINER TOWER...

To be honest besides save, the only thing I found out it got corrupted is some other music soundtracks of the ROM, presumably due to hex overwrite, due to that, the maps that had those corrupted music parts would freeze the game when entering them.