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profi200 / open_agb_firm

open_agb_firm is a bare metal app for running GBA homebrew/games using the 3DS builtin GBA hardware.
GNU General Public License v3.0
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3ds 3ds-homebrew gba

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open_agb_firm

open_agb_firm is a bare metal interface for natively running GBA games and homebrew using the 3DS's built-in GBA hardware.

open_agb_firm is also a complete and better alternative to GBA VC injects (AGB_FIRM), allowing for:

Unlike AGB_FIRM open_agb_firm is not affected by the famous bug where the video output wraps around leaving garbled lines at the bottom of the screen. SD cluster size doesn't matter.

Disclaimer

open_agb_firm is currently in beta. While open_agb_firm is relatively stable and safe to use, some quirks that have not been fixed. See Known Issues for more information.

Additionally, we are not responsible for any damage that may occur to your system as a direct or indirect result of you using open_agb_firm.

Setup

Controls

A/B/L/R/START/SELECT - GBA buttons, respectively

SELECT+Y - Dump hardware frame output to /3ds/open_agb_firm/screenshots/YYYY_MM_DD_HH_MM_SS.bmp

X+UP/DOWN - Adjust screen brightness up or down by backlightSteps units.

X+LEFT - Turn off LCD backlight.

X+RIGHT - Turn on LCD backlight.

Hold the X button while launching a game to skip applying patches (if present)

Hold the power button to turn off the 3DS.

Configuration

Settings are stored in /3ds/open_agb_firm/config.ini.

General

General settings.

u8 backlight - Backlight brightness in luminance (cd/m²)

u8 backlightSteps - How much to adjust backlight brightness by

bool directBoot - Skip GBA BIOS intro at game startup

bool useGbaDb - Use gba_db.bin to get save types

bool useSavesFolder - Use /3ds/open_agb_firm/saves for save files instead of the ROM directory

Video

Video-related settings.

u8 scaler - Video scaler. 0 = none, 1 = bilinear, 2 = hardware.

float gbaGamma - GBA input gamma

float lcdGamma - Output LCD gamma

float contrast - Screen gain

float brightness - Screen lift

string colorProfile - Color correction profile. none, gba, nds or nds_white.

Audio

Audio settings.

u8 audioOut - Audio output. 0 = auto, 1 = speakers, 2 = headphones.

s8 volume - Audio volume. Values above 48 mean control via volume slider. Range -128 (muted) to -20 (100%). Avoid the range -19 to 48.

Input

Input settings. Each entry allows one or multiple buttons. Buttons are separated by a , without spaces.
Allowed buttons are A B SELECT START RIGHT LEFT UP DOWN R L X Y TOUCH CP_RIGHT CP_LEFT CP_UP CP_DOWN.
TOUCH reacts to all touchscreen presses. The CP in front is short for Circle-Pad.

Note that button mappings can cause input lag of up to 1 frame depending on when the game reads inputs. For this reason the default mapping of the Circle-Pad to D-Pad is no longer provided.

A - Button map for the A button.

B - Button map for the B button.

SELECT - Button map for the SELECT button.

START - Button map for the START button.

RIGHT - Button map for the RIGHT button.

LEFT - Button map for the LEFT button.

UP - Button map for the UP button.

DOWN - Button map for the DOWN button.

R - Button map for the R button.

L - Button map for the L button.

Example:

[input]
RIGHT=RIGHT,CP_RIGHT
LEFT=LEFT,CP_LEFT
UP=UP,CP_UP
DOWN=DOWN,CP_DOWN

Game

Game-specific settings. Only intended to be used in the per-game settings (romName.ini in /3ds/open_agb_firm/saves).

u8 saveSlot - Savegame slot (0-9)

u8 saveType - Override to use a specific save type, see values for defaultSave (0-15, 255)

Advanced

Options for advanced users. No pun intended.

bool saveOverride - Open save type override menu after selecting a game

u16 defaultSave - Change save type default when save type is not in gba_db.bin and cannot be autodetected

Patches

open_agb_firm supports automatically applying IPS and UPS patches. To use a patch, rename the patch file to match the ROM file name (without the extension).

Known Issues

This section is reserved for a listing of known issues. At present only this remains:

If you happen to stumble over another bug, please open an issue or contact profi200 via other platforms.

Hardware Limitations

open_agb_firm using the 3DS's built-in GBA hardware. Unfortunately, this comes with limitations compared to GBA emulators. This is a list of limitations we can't solve in software or are very hard to work around.

EEPROM Fixer

Most emulators output EEPROM saves differently than what open_agb_firm expects, making them incompatible. Fortunately, they are very easy to fix, using this tool by exelotl.

The tool also works vise versa, if you want to use a save generated by open_agb_firm with an emulator.

FAQ

Q: Why isn't open_agb_firm a normal 3DS app?\ A: To access the 3DS's GBA hardware, open_agb_firm needs to run with full hardware access, which can only be provided by running as a FIRM.

Q: Is this safe to use?\ A: Of course! While open_agb_firm does run with full hardware access, a lot of work has been put in by several people to ensure that nothing unexpected happens. Some backend code from open_agb_firm is actually used in fastboot3ds!

Q: What games work with open_agb_firm?\ A: In theory, all of them, except those that fall within the hardware limitations.

Q: How can I increase the brightness?\ A: Increase the value of the backlight setting in config.ini. See Configuration for more information.

Q: Why do the colors look off?\ A: The default gamma settings are intended to make up for the washed out colors the 3DS LCD has. If they look weird to you, setting the outGamma setting to 2.2 might help.

Q: Why do some of my ROM hacks/homebrew games have saving issues?\ A: open_agb_firm resorts to save autodetection when it can't find an entry for the game it's running in gba_db.bin (which only contains data for official games), and it's a bit wonky for games that use EEPROM or misleading SDK save strings.

Q: Why doesn't my save file from an emulator work?\ A: There's a good chance that the save you're having issues with is an EEPROM save, which most emulators output differently. See EEPROM Fixer.

Q: My game doesn't save properly!\ A: First, please ensure that the GBA ROM you are playing is not modified in any way, and matches its No-Intro checksums. Second, make sure you aren't using an existing .SAV file, because some may have issues for various reasons. Third, make sure your gba_db.bin is up-to-date. If everything seems to be in order but the game still doesn't save properly, please open an issue so it can be fixed. In the meantime, the useGbaDb and saveOverride settings may be useful (see Configuration for more information).

Nightlies

If you want to test the latest changes you have 2 download options. The first is recommended.

With GitHub account\ Log into your account, go to the Actions tab at the top, click on the first entry and download the file under Artifacts (open_agb_firm_nightly).

Without GitHub account\ nightly.link is a thirdparty site to make builds available to everyone. I'm not affiliated with nightly.link or their developers and neither are they with GitHub. Use at your own risk.\ https://nightly.link/profi200/open_agb_firm/workflows/c-cpp/master/open_agb_firm_nightly.zip

Compiling

To compile open_agb_firm, the following needs to be installed:

Additionally, p7zip (or if available, p7zip-full) needs to be installed to make release builds. Also, make sure that the dma330as and firm_builder/firmtool binaries are in the PATH environment variable and accessible to the Makefile.

Clone this repository using git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/profi200/open_agb_firmand update via git pull && git submodule update --init --recursive.

Build open_agb_firm as a debug build via make, or as a release build via make release.

License

You may use this under the terms of the GNU General Public License GPL v3 or the terms of any later revisions of the GPL. Refer to the provided LICENSE.txt file for further information.

Thanks to...

Copyright (C) 2024 derrek, profi200, d0k3