Newbie: Mac Emulator/Rom help.

[AmbientEternity]

Hello, I understand that this is my first post, I just have an issue I need help with.

I am completely new to this whole emulator thing, and I understand almost nothing about it.

I own a Mac(Aluminum unibody 10.5.6) and just downloaded Visual Boy Advance(1.7.4) for Mac to my computer.

While messing with it, I learned that Rom's are the games. I set out to find a pokemon game since that's all I really want to play on it.

For some reason, when I go to open the rom, it says:

I tried Silver as well.

After I click it, it asks me to choose an application to open it with, but I don't know what to pick since Visual Boy Advance is grayed out.

I noticed that there's usually issues with pokemon games while I was browsing the forums, but this looks to me like it's just my stupidity


Heh... Some help would really be appreciated. If there's anyone willing to walk me through the process, I'll be on MSN messenger and AIM messenger. My handles are in my profile.

 

[jmann]

I see in the first screen shot that you are trying to load a .rar file into the emulator. .rar is a compressed file like .zip, and it needs to be unarchived. You can find rar unarchiving apps on google.

 

[AmbientEternity]

I see in the first screen shot that you are trying to load a .rar file into the emulator. .rar is a compressed file like .zip, and it needs to be unarchived. You can find rar unarchiving apps on google.

Wow, what a quick response.

Hmm, I really want to play silver/ crystal, but let's tackle this one step at a time.

New questions

Thanks for the advice. I figured everything was being done right since files usually extract themselves when I double click them. (That may also explain my torrent problem I've been having )

I downloaded The Unarchiver 1.6.1 from the apple website.

It unarchived my file, and when I opened VBA and selected it, it launched successfully!

So, when it launched and went to the start menu, I realized I didn't know what my start button was. I had to close the rom to change my button settings. when I closed the rom, this screen popped up:

I have no clue what happened there. Was it trying to save my game? I can only guess since I don't know how to save rom games yet.

Next, I attempted to configure my rom settings. I figured that out, but when I closed that window, another pop up came up...:

Any kind of help is appreciated.

 

[jmann]

Wow, what a quick response.

Hmm, I really want to play silver/ crystal, but let's tackle this one step at a time.

New questions

Thanks for the advice. I figured everything was being done right since files usually extract themselves when I double click them. (That may also explain my torrent problem I've been having )

I downloaded The Unarchiver 1.6.1 from the apple website.

It unarchived my file, and when I opened VBA and selected it, it launched successfully!

So, when it launched and went to the start menu, I realized I didn't know what my start button was. I had to close the rom to change my button settings. when I closed the rom, this screen popped up:

I have no clue what happened there. Was it trying to save my game? I can only guess since I don't know how to save rom games yet.

Next, I attempted to configure my rom settings. I figured that out, but when I closed that window, another pop up came up...:

Any kind of help is appreciated.

I have never personally used vba, but most emulators have an auto save feature to save your game when you exit. I would try looking looking for an option to save your game or save freeze state manually, so that when you open it up next the game will continue where it left off. In sixtyforce my N64 emulator for my mac saving the game is called saving the "freeze state". Also the second screen shot means that vba crashed (which programs sometimes do) and it is just informing you. If you have a lot of problems with it crashing I would look for an alternative GBA emulator.

 

[AmbientEternity]

I have never personally used vba, but most emulators have an auto save feature to save your game when you exit. I would try looking looking for an option to save your game or save freeze state manually, so that when you open it up next the game will continue where it left off. In sixtyforce my N64 emulator for my mac saving the game is called saving the "freeze state". Also the second screen shot means that vba crashed (which programs sometimes do) and it is just informing you. If you have a lot of problems with it crashing I would look for an alternative GBA emulator.

I see.

VBA does have a Freeze and Unfreeze option in the menu. The only issue is, if I freeze the game state and it crashes, will I lose everything?

Unless you have any suggestions/links to a different GB/GBA emulator, I'm going to give Boycott Advance(v0.3.6) and/or MESS 0.101b a try.

Thanks again.

 

[waffle911]

I've been having great difficulty getting VBA to even play .gbc files (read: it doesn't). .gb and .gba files run fine, though. I'm beginning to wonder if loading up the GBA BIOS (gbasys.bin) might help with stability and performance. As it is, Ruby crashed my early '07 MB with the craptacular GMA950 due to overheating. Oddly enough, even though GS wouldn't even play yesterday, it's starting right up today.

update: Disable Gameboy Border. I have isolated it as the culprit.

If you plan on playing any games with time-based events like Pokemon GS/C or RSE/FR&LG, turn on "Use Real Time Clock". Otherwise it will report that the internal battery has run dry and that time-based events will not occur.

Also, VBA supports normal gamesaves, as you would save if you were playing an actual Gameboy.
Freeze/Defrost Game State also works for me now. Don't know why.

 

[aluminumapple]

I've been having great difficulty getting VBA to even play .gbc files (read: it doesn't). .gb and .gba files run fine, though. I'm beginning to wonder if loading up the GBA BIOS (gbasys.bin) might help with stability and performance. As it is, Ruby crashed my early '07 MB with the craptacular GMA950 due to overheating. Oddly enough, even though GS wouldn't even play yesterday, it's starting right up today.

update: Disable Gameboy Border. I have isolated it as the culprit.

lol who knew a gameboy would cause such an burst of heat.

 

[AmbientEternity]

I've been having great difficulty getting VBA to even play .gbc files (read: it doesn't). .gb and .gba files run fine, though. I'm beginning to wonder if loading up the GBA BIOS (gbasys.bin) might help with stability and performance. As it is, Ruby crashed my early '07 MB with the craptacular GMA950 due to overheating. Oddly enough, even though GS wouldn't even play yesterday, it's starting right up today.

update: Disable Gameboy Border. I have isolated it as the culprit.

If you plan on playing any games with time-based events like Pokemon GS/C or RSE/FR&LG, turn on "Use Real Time Clock". Otherwise it will report that the internal battery has run dry and that time-based events will not occur.

Also, VBA supports normal gamesaves, as you would save if you were playing an actual Gameboy.
Freeze/Defrost Game State also works for me now. Don't know why.

Yeah, I went back to VBA actually after testing the other two.

Thanks for the info on the time clock. I was disappointed that it "went dry", lol.

I've also figured a lot more about folder placement. I Haven't had many errors since and The Unarchiver is solving many problems left and right.

I just got my MacBook a few weeks ago, and it's my first.

The only new question I have is about language. I finally found a website that had a bunch of working pokemon Roms. The crystal I downloaded claimed to be english, but everything has been in Japanese now that I have it working... :/

I thought I saw it somewhere on this or another forum that the language can be affected for some reason, but I forget.

 

[waffle911]

The only new question I have is about language. I finally found a website that had a bunch of working pokemon Roms. The crystal I downloaded claimed to be english, but everything has been in Japanese now that I have it working... :/

I thought I saw it somewhere on this or another forum that the language can be affected for some reason, but I forget.

I don't think language would ever be affected for any reason on the part of the emulator. Some sites have ROM patches which fans create to replace the Japanese text with English. To tell you the truth, though, I have yet to find Crystal in English on decent site. All the other ones I've found just fine.

lol who knew a gameboy would cause such an burst of heat.

I figure its more a matter of the Mac port of VBA not being optimised for A) Macs and B) utilizing an actual GPU. On the upside, I figured something out about the MacBook's design. Q: The exhaust fan shoves hot air out. Where does cooler air come in? A: the spaces around the keys on the keyboard. I'm serious. When the fan ramps up, I start to feel a draft going by my fingers.

 

[AmbientEternity]

I don't think language would ever be affected for any reason on the part of the emulator. Some sites have ROM patches which fans create to replace the Japanese text with English. To tell you the truth, though, I have yet to find Crystal in English on decent site. All the other ones I've found just fine.

Hmm, well i recently found a great working copy of crystal in english.

E-mail me if you want me to send it to you.

 

[munson]

As far as "Battery Saves" go, you have to make sure that you moved the folders that came with the VBA installer into your Apps folder (you know, the "BAttery Saves" folder. This will be where your game save siles will be held.

 

[james-thescalie]

had the same problem! Bloody gameboy border!! thanks alot for that hint waffle911

 

[Shoesy]

Naughty!

Naughty naughty naughty!

Thou shalt not steal.

Naughty.

p.s. doesnt the new dsi thingy seem amazingly overpriced.

 

[munson]

Naughty naughty naughty!

Thou shalt not steal.

Naughty.

p.s. doesnt the new dsi thingy seem amazingly overpriced.

I think it's pretty reasonable. If you have read up on the tech it delivers, we will all be in store for some crazy handheld gaming soon enough.