RAPatches

This is a patch repository for RetroAchievements.org. Please open issues for requests and/or error reports. However, please do not make hash-linking requests here; patches in this repo are for hashes that have already been linked.

Goals

• Provide patch back-ups for various hacks, translations, subsets, bug fixes, etc. This includes older versions or abandoned projects where the patches are no longer publicly available.
• Eliminate the need for referencing GoodTools. It hasn't been updated in years and needs to be phased out.

Contribution Guidelines

Bases and Formats

• Please do not submit patches to be used with GoodTools or TOSEC bases unless there are absolutely no other options. This should only be relevant with very few unlicensed or homebrew games, but even those are quickly becoming DAT'd by No Intro.
• Sometimes, patches have their own patchers. Please avoid these unless they're actually necessary. A good example are the patchers that are commonly used with Dreamcast patches.
• Patches that are over 100MB currently cannot be added to the repo. I'm open to options that will bypass this.

  Naming Convention

• Patches for subsets should be named according to their RetroAchivements entry. For example:
  • Mega Man [Subset - Bonus].ips
• Patches for translations, bug fixes, etc. should be named after the base ROM's name and region with the patch info added. If the base ROM has languages included in the name, these should be omitted since it'll make translation patches a bit confusing. Follow this format (not all tags will be applicable): Title -> (Region) -> (Base ROM Version) -> (Language/Patch Type) -> (Patch Version) -> (Patch Author) For example:
  • ToeJam & Earl (USA, Europe, Korea) (Fr) (v0.9) (sky2048).bps
  • Shaman King - Master of Spirits (Europe) (It) (v1.0d) (Mentz).bps
• Patches for hacks that have their own RetroAchievements entry do not need a special naming scheme, at least until we come up with one. If they're for a game that gets a lot of hacks, prefacing the title with the base (either normal or abbreviated) is fine. For example:
  • SMW - Super Marina World (v2.2.01) (kona).bps
  • SMW - Mario Forever (v1.4) (beasteye89).bps
  • Pokemon FireRed - Orange Islands (Beta) (v5.6) (kalarie).bps
  • Sonic 1 - Lunacy (Demo) (Masochistic Maniacs).bps
  • Sonic 1 - Jester's Challenge (v1.0) (MarkeyJester).bps
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Hellfire Saga (v2.0) (Red Miso Studios).bps
    • S3&K - Hellfire Saga (v2.0) (Red Miso Studios).bps is also acceptable
• Languages use ISO 639 codes (Set 1 with the first letter capitalized). A few examples:

  En English
  Ja Japanese
  Fr French
  De German
  Es Spanish
  It Italian
  Nl Dutch
  Pt Portuguese

• Version number should be formatted as such: (v1.4), (v1.4.1), (v2.3a), etc.
  • If a version number isn't available, then a patch date (YearMonthDay) will also work: (v20240120).
  • If a version number and patch date are unavailable, but the patch is listed as "Final", "Alpha", "Beta", etc., use those.
  • If you don't know the version number, then skip it. It's better to have missing info than inaccurate info.
    • If there are multiple patches with unknown version numbers, skip it for the first one and use (Alt 1), (Alt 2), etc. for subsequent versions.
• Author name(s) should be whoever released the patch.
  • If the author is unknown, then use (Unknown) instead of skipping it.
  • If multiple authors are credited, see if there's a team name. You can list multiple authors, but try not to get carried away. Worst case scenario is you can provide more info in the readme.
  • Abbreviation is your call, but sometimes it's necessary to keep the character count in the filename down. (Aeon Genesis) and (AGTP) are both preferable to (Aeon Genesis Translation Project).

Compression

• Patches are then compressed to either .zip or .7z, with those following a GAMEID-GameTitleWithoutSpaces naming scheme for linking purposes.
• Whenever possible, please group similar patches together. If a game has five different Russian translations, we do not need a separate link for each one. Just throw them all into the same .zip/.7z. This applies to language patches as well as patches with various versions.
• Please... please... stop using WinRAR for submissions. I always have to redo them because even .zips done with WinRAR do not allow editing the contents of the archive, which can happen frequently for some patches.

  Readme

• Be sure to include a readme.txt in the .zip/.7z that states which ROM the patch is intended to be used with.
• The readme.txt files should follow this format:
  Use with:

(Group, such as No Intro)
[ROM file name and extension]
[ROM Checksum]
[CRC Checksum]
• For [ROM Checksum], always use the MD5 of a file instead of the RA Hash.
• I recommend the following to make all of this easier:
  • GameHeader
  • RapidCRC

    Other Info

• While not required, people will forever remember you as a nice person if you include .cue files with patches for disc-based games. Filenames for .cue files should match the name of the patch. Same goes for .m3u files.