Hello everyone.
I played this hack about over 5 years ago, back then on my pspgo and loved it, but dropped it when I didn't have the time to replay it again with every new update.
today, tried to play this again on my psvita, only to find out that the clock doesn't really work on retroarch.
It does on the standalone mgba, or at least it does so with the rtc patch, but I kinda hate that emulator and it's clunky interface.
So I messed around in retroarch until I found the following way to enable the clock in VBA-Next.
This may or may not work on other older, less supported ports of retroarch running vba-next.
First, you need either one Adventure Red rom where you hex edit the game id from BPRE to AXVE. The ID can be found on Hex Adress AC - AF.
Alternatively, you can just use any normal Pokemon R/S/E rom, but I prefer the edited one for file organization reasons.
Second, you need an unedited Adventure Red rom that patched with endrifts rtc patch.
When opening the Hex-Edited rom in Vitas VBA-Next, it should get stuck on the Bios screen (you know, GAME BOY - Nintendo with the little jingle) I assume, if you don't use a bios file, it'll just get stuck on a black screen, give it a few seconds before you contintue.
Afterwards, when loading the RTC Patched version (it'll get stuck on black screen for a couple of seconds, give it a moment), the clock will then run as it should in-game. Savestates, soft-resetting and sleep mode work fine and won't break the clock.
Note that while you can use any option (load content, load recent, from favorites list) to start the hex-patched rom, you have to go the long way through load content - start directory - whatever folders you sorted your games in - rtc patched rom file, or you'll be stuck with the 12:00:00 clock again.
I guess the reason this works is that vba-next in general does support rtc functionality, but only for games that actually had rtc functionality in the first place, and it enables or disables it based on game id.
While I have no idea why hex-editing the game id makes the game get stuck, I guess it's enough to kick vba into rtc mode. And if you load another game from there, it just stays on and can be used even if it's not supported by the original game (i.e. FireRed)
Loading a game through Load Recent or Favorites unfortunately reloads the whole emulator, so the rtc mode gets wiped.
Since vba-next activates rtc based on some kind of hard coded game id list, there might be a way to compile it so that it activates rtc for pokemon fire red naturally, but I have no idea how all of that works to be honest. It'd certainly be much more of a hassle.
Maybe there's already a more comfortable way that I just couldn't find, if so, please tell me about it. If not, maybe this will help some people trying to get the timed events and such. Unfortunately, I've only been playing for a couple of minutes and have no idea if any of this causes bugs down the line, but I'll report back if I run into any problems.
