Golden Sun Dark Dawn black screen at launch

[Stack3r]

This game gets stuck at a black screen after loading from dsimenu++, even an AP patched rom has issues loading

[ahezard]

I do not think this is AP (I mean not only AP)

[Stack3r]

Yeah i'm starting to think the same
Edit Just ripped a rom from my cartridge and had the same issue with and without the AP patch

[ahezard]

I have an issue in no$gba with this file : "jumped to empty wram", I am using a fat16 virtual sd card in no$gba so it may be the issue (the fat table cache is probably bigger than allowed)

[ahezard]

arm7 is not thumb and is properly patched

[ahezard]

arm9 is not thumb but I have some doubt on the card read patch here

edit : no, arm9 is thumb, it seems to be not properly detected because arm patch are applied instead of thumb

[Kalanyr]

Testing: Haven't tested with an AP Patch, but this still black screens on launch on an unpatched ROM.

[ahezard]

Could be linked to #517

[ahezard]

The RomId of the card have a very specific behavior :
Fomr user Jeod
"GS: Dark Dawn's card chip id is E080FF80
If I press a button to re-get card id, it changes to FF000000"

[ahezard]

Could be linked to #539

[ahezard]

golden_sun_card_commmand_dma.txt
Attached card command/dma log at startup (onlyfew seconds). The games sends a lot of card command (ap check?) and then the opening video start with dma card read command (AF000001).

[ahezard]

This can be linked somehow to chishm/nitrohax#3

[ahezard]

Wood contains a specific patch for this game
https://github.com/ahezard/woodrpg_forwarder/blob/e0280c91b21e28443c23f98a171012ef8a301b0c/akloader/arm9/source/patches_pr.cpp#L457
Related to CP15 / data cache management function at 4BA60 (US version)
Could be a good hint

{0x45354f42,0x0204ba64,KMemProtMe,0x02049850,true }, //BO5E: 5367 - Golden Sun - Dark Dawn (USA)

The patch applied is
https://github.com/ahezard/woodrpg_forwarder/blob/e0280c91b21e28443c23f98a171012ef8a301b0c/akloader/patches/unprot_015.s

[ahezard]

The cardId function is not properly matched :
findCardIdEndOffset:
Card ID end SDK 5 found: 0204994C

findCardIdStartOffset:
Card ID start SDK 5 not found
Card ID start SDK 5 alt 1 found: 02049850

[ahezard]

Card ID start should be : 02049904

[ahezard]

the game is looping on this code, blocking on irq forever :

02055DB4 EB000000 BL 0x02055DBC
02055DB8 EAFFFFFD B 0x02055DB4
02055DBC E3A00000 MOV R0, #0x0
02055DC0 EE070F90 MCR P15, 0, R0, CR7, CR0, 4
02055DC4 E12FFF1E BX LR

[firelad97]

Hello, hoping it's ok for me to post on this issue. I am still new to nds-bootstrap.

In all honesty, I really love Golden Sun series, even Dark Dawn (idc about the flaws). So, as of writing the time now is 4:43 pm EST, on Oct 4th. Using the latest nightly version included in Twilight Menu++ Updater, Dark Dawn still starts on the black screen with AP patched.

Any updates? Anything I can do to help? I'd love to see this game running on my 3DS, haha. Thanks!

[ChittendenLC]

Yeah i have the same problem with the black screen is there a solution?

[dubbz82]

Currently no. I know there was some work started on it, however at least as far as I'm aware, there's been no progress on this game yet.

[Kalanyr]

Yes, this still Black Screens on launch on the latest Stable as of this post (both with and without an AP-fixed ROM)

Same with the nightly (4b1258b )

[Rose22]

@RocketRobz Is it possible we can get twilightmenu/nds-bootstrap to be updated that we can add our own NDS firmware.bin to see if that fixes the GSDD launch issue?

i second this, would love that ability. most emulators have that ability, and by not including the bios with the emulator you are avoiding any legal trouble. it just might fix the problem with golden sun?

[gh0sti]

It was just a theory since thats part of its AP that it needs to see a valid bios file check. I'm wondering if that would fix other compatibility issued games as well.

[spellboundtriangle]

and by not including the bios with the emulator you are avoiding any legal trouble. it just might fix the problem with golden sun?

The BIOS and firmware are already on the console itself, so it isn't really a concern, I would figure

[RocketRobz]

After further investigation, the crash occurs in overlay 335.

Something in the overlay code is causing the game to branch to 0x021F7720 early before code gets loaded there.
This does not occur when running the game outside of nds-bootstrap.

One can find out by setting a breakpoint to 0x021F7E80 and 0x021F7EAC, the latter of which contains a second instance of BLX R12, where R12 is where 0x021F7720 is set to.

EDIT: Welp, it seems NO$GBA's breakpoint feature is causing issues, as without setting 0x021F7720 as breakpoint, it does branch to valid code, though it apparently branches to the code where it stops the game from running.

[Rose22]

EDIT: Welp, it seems NO$GBA's breakpoint feature is causing issues, as without setting 0x021F7720 as breakpoint, it does branch to valid code, though it apparently branches to the code where it stops the game from running.

what happens if you test running golden sun in Twilight Menu using the official nintendo DS bios (or a file dump of it, if it differs from the one installed on 3ds)? it might just solve the problem... considering one of the people in this issue thread said that adding the bios in no$gba solves the problem

[Rose22]

This appears to be in part related to the absence of nds firmware. No$gba stalled at black screen without firmware.bin in same path, but booted the game without issue after firmware.bin was added to same path as no$gba exe. Speculate nds firmware has an irq handler.

i'm referring to this post

[NightScript370]

I wouldn't rely on that conclusion, to be frank. It could be a piece of code that got branched earlier because of the lack of firmware.bin and our issue would be solely because of something else.

Even if you still want to do it....how? You're loading the same thing already provided to you by the DS itself. After all, the firmware.bin originates from the same device we're hooking into directly.

[Rose22]

I wouldn't rely on that conclusion, to be frank. It could be a piece of code that got branched earlier because of the lack of firmware.bin and our issue would be solely because of something else.

Even if you still want to do it....how? You're loading the same thing already provided to you by the DS itself. After all, the firmware.bin originates from the same device we're hooking into directly.

oh, i forgot twilight menu doesn't just run on 3DS but also on original DS's.. i figured it might be a subtle difference between the firmware.bin file and the DS firmware included with the 3ds.

perhaps you guys could do the firmware.bin thing that person described, and use breakpoints to see why it successfully runs?

[RocketRobz]

Unfortunately, even with breakpoints, it is unclear how it successfully runs.

[JeodC]

I wouldn't rely on that conclusion, to be frank. It could be a piece of code that got branched earlier because of the lack of firmware.bin and our issue would be solely because of something else.
Even if you still want to do it....how? You're loading the same thing already provided to you by the DS itself. After all, the firmware.bin originates from the same device we're hooking into directly.

oh, i forgot twilight menu doesn't just run on 3DS but also on original DS's.. i figured it might be a subtle difference between the firmware.bin file and the DS firmware included with the 3ds.

perhaps you guys could do the firmware.bin thing that person described, and use breakpoints to see why it successfully runs?

I used my firmware.bin ripped directly from my own 3ds. There is no difference.

[hubert-skowronek]

@RocketRobz what about forking desmume source code and use it as a debugger? Doing so helped me to create Bowsers Inside Story AP patch

[Ch3ck3rM0n]

I used my firmware.bin ripped directly from my own 3ds. There is no difference.

So this means, still no way or workaround to get my golden sun image working and I still have to use my hard copy?

[RocketRobz]

So this means, still no way or workaround to get my golden sun image working and I still have to use my hard copy?

Right. This is something that other (possibly more experienced) nds-bootstrap or DS(i) homebrew developers would know what to do.

[gh0sti]

Would it be possible to try using a donor rom header?

[RocketRobz]

Would it be possible to try using a donor rom header?

How, exactly?

[worstperson]

I found that MelonDS in DS mode is advanced enough to boot the flashcart version of TWL Menu and launch retail roms via nds-bootstrap. My idea is to add a bunch of logging to the interpreter (for example, every branch and it's destination) so I can directly compare code flow between a working state launched directly and broken launched through bootstrap. Just wanted to check with others if this approach has already been tried, or is even viable, since I have little arm reversing experience and basically no knowledge of the NDS platform.

[RocketRobz]

I found that MelonDS in DS mode is advanced enough to boot the flashcart version of TWL Menu and launch retail roms via nds-bootstrap. My idea is to add a bunch of logging to the interpreter (for example, every branch and it's destination) so I can directly compare code flow between a working state launched directly and broken launched through bootstrap. Just wanted to check with others if this approach has already been tried, or is even viable, since I have little arm reversing experience and basically no knowledge of the NDS platform.

To my knowledge, this hasn't been tried yet.

[gh0sti]

Would it be possible to try using a donor rom header?

How, exactly?

Could we patch the rom with a good header to see if that would work? Tricking the emulator to boot up a good known header of a rom?

[NightScript370]

The game code is problematic in the overlay area, which is unique to each game. This will do nothing to change the compatibility for the better.

[chrisssj2]

Would love to see this finally updated to work

[RocketRobz]

Fully works as of cadf553

[gh0sti]

What fixed it?

[RocketRobz]

What fixed it?

Basically, the AP-fix included with TWLMenu++ was broken, so a new better AP-fix has been implemented into nds-bootstrap.
A writeup is coming soon.

[gh0sti]

What fixed it?

Basically, the AP-fix included with TWLMenu++ was broken, so a new better AP-fix has been implemented into nds-bootstrap. A writeup is coming soon.

Thank you for not giving up and the work is appreciated!

[RocketRobz]

New version with GSDD support is now available, along with the write-up: https://github.com/DS-Homebrew/nds-bootstrap/releases/tag/v1.0.0

[Sukotto-1999]

All done!