FF 5 Advance .. big problems -.-

popopopopo · November 13, 2006, 09:37:46 PM

Hi Guys,

I got a normal (non-lite) DS with a Supercard MiniSD.

So far every NDS game worked perfectly with saving and stuff, and GBA games worked when I manually saved (L+R+SELECT+A) after making my in-game save.

But FF 5 Advance runs horribly with very very big lag and slowdowns. Being the smart guy that I am I browsed the net for help. People told me to deselect "Enable Restart" because that somehow slows the GBA roms down. I did that and indeed, the game ran SMOOTHLY with no lags at all.

But now I can't save anymore. I can save ingame, but they are gone when I fire up the game next time, because I can no loner press L+R+SELECT+A !

Again, I read on the net that I can still keep my save by doing the "QPC" trick. Well, I turn off/on my DS in less than a second and instantly go the the menu and "Save to SuperCard" ... but that does nothing. The in-game saves are gone :-(

Any ideas?

MukiEX · November 14, 2006, 12:27:56 AM

Save to Supercard? I think you got it wrong.

What you wanna do is go right once to the save tab (will look almost exactly the same, so make sure that tab is highlighted, probably red). Then look for where you put the FFV rom. Ignore the .gba file for FFV and go to the .sav file. Hit the button you normally open roms with and it'll ask if you wanna overwrite/save that file. Hit okay and now it should be saved.

liquidnitrogen · November 14, 2006, 02:30:25 AM

QPC doesnt work for FFV (perhaps its the firmware?) anyways i've tried with my supercard lite with prefetch patch and no. it doesnt work.

SAVER -> .sav, save -> nothing.

....

popopopopo · November 14, 2006, 05:10:54 AM

MukiEX: I know, thats what I did.

I tried it with 1.62 first and then upgraded to 1.70. Nice new interface, but changed nothing about QPC not working for me. And believe me I DO reboot my DS fast after trying 50 times ... :evil:

bionicspider · November 14, 2006, 05:50:56 AM

It seems QPC saving fails with the new firmware; I've tried the QPC with FFV and GoldenSun, which both fail.

In my opinion, this actually brings the SC one rung down the ladder when it comes to GBA games now.

When a GBA requires you to save and has major slowdown, a common remedy is to disable "restart" when you patch it, but without "restart", you can't do the button combo in-game save and you can't "save the state"; QPC saving doesn't work with the new firmware, so you're basically screwed.

I hope the SC team is aware of this issue and fixes this in their next firmware update.

strells · November 14, 2006, 03:11:55 PM

Quote from: "bionicspider"It seems QPC saving fails with the new firmware; I've tried the QPC with FFV and GoldenSun, which both fail.

In my opinion, this actually brings the SC one rung down the ladder when it comes to GBA games now.

When a GBA requires you to save and has major slowdown, a common remedy is to disable "restart" when you patch it, but without "restart", you can't do the button combo in-game save and you can't "save the state"; QPC saving doesn't work with the new firmware, so you're basically screwed.

I hope the SC team is aware of this issue and fixes this in their next firmware update.

I've confirmed QPC not working for me with 1.7 in Juka and Lego SWII.

Steve

popopopopo · November 15, 2006, 05:13:23 AM

Hey guys, I fixed my FFV Advance problem. I just used fastrestart.exe wrong. I applied the fastrestart patch AFTER going thru the patcher, but you're supposed to do it BEFORE (and then uncheck "enable restart" when patching of course)

Now the game runs smoothly (so far I played until the Ship Graveyard) AND I can write my saves to the .sav file.

dai_uk · November 15, 2006, 07:36:58 AM

Can you tell me your settings -
Would this work

Quick restart patch rom
Enable Save + Compress in SC Patcher (NO RESTART)

then you play game but to save you reset and select the sav file ? or can you use the L+R+Select+A in game ?

bionicspider · November 15, 2006, 10:02:27 AM

Quote from: "popopopopo"Hey guys, I fixed my FFV Advance problem. I just used fastrestart.exe wrong. I applied the fastrestart patch AFTER going thru the patcher, but you're supposed to do it BEFORE (and then uncheck "enable restart" when patching of course)

Now the game runs smoothly (so far I played until the Ship Graveyard) AND I can write my saves to the .sav file.

This doesn't work. I drag and drop the FF V rom into fastrestart.exe, and then I patch it with "Enable Restart" unchecked; when I attempt to save with L+R+A+Select, it goes through the process and just freezes at the "Please Wait" screen. Since "Enable Restart" was disabled, I can't do a L+R+Start+Select to reboot and save from the "saver" menu, and the QPC method was already established as not working with the SC Lite's new firmware.

Can anyone else confirm that the method described above works?

liquidnitrogen · November 15, 2006, 01:01:47 PM

perhaps it works for him because he's using miniSD?... fastrestart was made for SD and miniSD seems to function the same

microSD doesnt.... i did this before and it didnt work - testing it again.

-----

HM wow fast restart does work... still seems a bit slower than prefetch patch...

yeah -.- Saving Doesnt work. it freezes with the black screen

----

ALRIGHT! woot! it does semi-work with fast restart patch

anyways, fast restart patch will speed it up but not as fast than prefetch patch.. but with QPC disabled that seems to be the only choice.

best way to do this for SCL (or others i suppose)

get FFVA rom, trim it with GBATA (because it doesnt trim after fastrestart patch)

then you drag and drop it onto the fast restart patch

then you put it into the Supercard Patcher and you ONLY need to enable Saver

play it normally, save

and then ..... restart to the supercard menu with L + R + Select + Start
(suprizing eh? haha man, found out by accident. fast restart i suppose left in the restart function)

go to saver, select your sav, and tahdah.

bionicspider · November 16, 2006, 06:18:53 AM

Quote from: "liquidnitrogen"
ALRIGHT! woot! it does semi-work with fast restart patch

Thanks for the instructions; it's working now

I can finally save, and while there's still slowdown when too many sprites are on the screen, the restart patch speeds the action up a bit during battles.

meangreenie · November 16, 2006, 06:54:37 AM

heres a thought.. after doing the fast restart patch and pacthing with the client.. drop the patched rom onto the prefetch patch as well.

Mota · November 20, 2006, 07:50:01 PM

I'm pretty sure fastrestart patch incorporates the pfpatch... i tried to patch fastrestart-ed roms with pfpatch, but the filesizes don't change and it didn't seem to effect the games at all.

SkmNet · November 21, 2006, 06:23:19 PM

first DS organize and now this.

many devs drop the SC lite..

the solution from above (going to sc menu and manually save) works randomly !!!! for me.

for some games it works, for some it does not.
and for FF 1&2 eg it works sometimes only. sometimes it wont load the save, and after resetting a few times it does load it. very strange :_/

any hints?

bionicspider · November 21, 2006, 08:59:37 PM

Quote from: "SkmNet"first DS organize and now this.

many devs drop the SC lite..

the solution from above (going to sc menu and manually save) works randomly !!!! for me.

for some games it works, for some it does not.
and for FF 1&2 eg it works sometimes only. sometimes it wont load the save, and after resetting a few times it does load it. very strange :_/

any hints?

I'm not having any trouble with FF 1&2, and I've all the settings in the patcher enabled--restart, saver, cheats, and real-time save. With all these settings, I don't experience any slowdowns. How are you saving FF 1&2? I always do the L+R+Select+A combo; I'm about 90% done with the game, and I haven't experienced any loss of saved data.