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Introduction Downloading VBA Installing VBA Installing Games Setting Up VBA Playing A Game Image Gallery

Introduction

VBA is one of several emulators to emulate the Nintendo Gameboy Advance handheld console. This is a great achievement as the GBA has only been out for a couple of months. I chose VBA as it seemed to be more complete that any of the others although as with any new emulator it's a little slow. As always as time progresses it'll speed up and become more compatible. The Gameboy Advance if you don't know is a 32Bit version of the Gameboy. It probably has more in common with the Snes or Super Famicom as it can utilize 3D graphics and is full colour. If you've had a Snes then you will see alot of the games crossing over to the new system. You can already get Super Mario and FZero and they play better than the Snes equivalents. I'm getting seriously into GBA at the moment and I can't wait until Pokemon comes out. Have Fun ;) Update 10/01 - VBA has evolved yet again as it now supports the original Gameboy and Gameboy Colour. Also you will find that there have been significant speed increases and GBA compatibiliy is now very good. Top

Downloading VBA

You can get Visualboy Advance from its homepage here. I have made a small file that contains all the necessary folders here. Top

Installing VBA

To install VBA you will need a copy of Winzip. All you have to do is to open the zipfile, press the extract button and type C:\VBA into to the path area of the window that opens. If you have downloaded VBA from easyEmu then it will automatically create all the necessary directories VBA needs. Heres whats set up... VBA also requires a Gameboy Advance BIOS image to run certain games. Try a search engine like Google with the keywords Gameboy Advance BIOS or GBA BIOS. Top

Installing Games

Because VBA is a handheld console emulator there aren't many sites around holding roms for it. You could try a search engine like Google with the keywords Gameboy Advance Roms or Nintendo Roms. The best place for games is on IRC at the newnet server on #emuchina. It's updated daily. All you need to do to install roms is to copy the zipped roms to the C:\VBA\Roms directory. If you are not sure how to do this then check out the basics tutorial. You will also have to extract the BIOS into your C:\VBA folder. To do this right click over the zipped BIOS file and select "extract to..." . Now type C:\VBA. You will find that alot of early GBA games will work without the BIOS as VBA emulates most of the BIOS commands but newer games definately require it. Top

Setting Up VBA

This is the screen that you will see when you first load VBA... Although VBA is fairly new, there are still several settings you can change. Here is a summary... File Menu Open Opens a game from your main roms folder. Open Gameboy Opens a gameboy game from a separate folder. Load Loads a saved game. Save Save your games position. Load Game Load you game from 1 of 10 saved slots. Save Game Saves your game to 1 of 10 slots Pause Pauses VBA. Reset Resets the current game. Recent Lets you run recently played games quickly. Import Imports save game battery files from othe emulators. Also imports gameshark cheat files. Export Exports battery files for use in other emulators. Screen Capture Captures the current game screen to a file. Rom Information Show information about the current rom in memory Close Close current rom without exiting Exit Exit from VBA. Options Menu Frameskip Sets how many fames are skipped to speed up a game if it is running slow. Video Vsync is if your games are too fast as it synchronizes them to 60hz. Render Method lets you pick how Vboy draws the game screen. Heres a description... GDI Uses windows to draw the screen (slowest) Direct Draw Uses DirectX to draw the screen which uses any accelerated features on your video card. Direct 3D Uses the 3D part of you video card to draw the screen which can be faster. OpenGL Same as above but uses OpenGL instead of D3D. DDraw Emulation Only Emulates the features of direct draw but doesn't give the blurriness of image found normally. DDraw Use Video Memory Uses your graphics cards memory to draw the game screen which is often faster than normal memory. DDraw Triple Buffering Helps to smooth out the game screen when scrolling. GL Nearest Sets the graphics filtering used when OpenGL is selected. GL Bilinear Same as above but different method. GL Triangle Sets how OpenGL draws the screen. GL Quads Same as above but different method. Select Skin To access this option you need to be in DDraw mode. Wah it does is let you select a picture skin for VBoy much like Winamp. Heres an example.. Normal Screen Skinned version Cool Eh? You can get skins from the Visualboy site. Once you have one just extract it straight into the Visualboy folder. Now when you select this option you can pick your skin from the list. The only difference is that you need to right-click you mouse to access the menus. Skin Turns the skin you select on or off. 1x..4x - Sets the amount of zoom used to display the game in a window. Fullscreen - Runs The game full screen Disable SFX - Disables rendering effects which can speed things up. Stretch to fit - Stretches the game to fill a full screen. Layers - Lets you switch off graphics layers. Useful for graphics ripping. Emulator Associate Associates all the Gameboy roms formats to Visual GBA Directories Lets you choose the directories for roms, save games etc. If you have downloaded VBA from easyEmu then the zipfile will create the necessary directories. All you have to do is match them up. Disable status message Disables the message that appears at the bootom of the scrren when you do something. Synchronize Makes sure that the emulator runs in sync with the current game. Pause When Inactive Automatically pauses VBA if the window is deselected. Speed Up Toggle Runs the game as fast as VBA can Remove Intro's (GBA) Remove the mini intros sometimes added by rom dumpers Automatic IPS Patching Applies a small file called an IPS patch which is sometimes used to overcome some games protection. Store Settings In Registry Stores Visualboys settings in the windows registry rather than an ini file. AGB Print For developers Realtime Clock Emulates the Gameboy Advance clock used by some games (e.g. Pokemon Ruby) Show Speed Determines how VBoy displays the game speed. Save Type Lets you override the save type used in games Use Bios File To play some commercial games you will need a GBA bios image. See above on how to find one. Select Bios File Lets you select the bios file you have downloaded. PNG / BMP Format Lets you select the format screen shots are saved in. Sound From this menu you can enable / disable the sound. You can also enable / disable individual sound channels as well as deciding the quality of the sound to be produced. You can also tell VBA to record the sound produced by a game to a file. Gameboy Lets you choose which Gameboy hardware is emulated by VBA including the Gameboy type and even the gameboy printer. The border option is used if you are trying to simulate the Super Gameboy enhanced borders seen on the SNES cartridge. You can also change whether the game is displayed in the original colours or what you would see on a Gameboy screen and even colours you select. Priority Sets the CPU usage for Visual GBA. Remember the higher the setting, the worse you windows performance will be when running Visual GBA. Filter Uses screen effects to smooth out the jagged edges on graphics. Joypad To change any of the keys simply highlight the key you want to change and then press the appropriate keyboard or joystick button. There is an option to set up motion detection that is used in some games. What it does is replace the motion with a key press. You can also set a button for autofire which is useful in shooting games. Language Lets you change the language of the GUI using downloaded translation packs.   Cheats Search For Cheats I've ripped this straight from the readme as it explains things well... The cheat search can only be used to search and modify values in the RAM areas, i.e., you can change your number of lives, money and life bar and you can freeze the value to get "infinite" result. To use, enter the cheat search dialog and start a new search (or reset any previous search). If you have 5 lives, select equal on the comparison type, make sure Specific value is selected, click on entered value, type 5 on the value to search and then click search. This will find all locations where the number 5 is present. Return to the game and lose a life. Once you lost a life, go back to the search dialog, click on less than compare type, select old value and click on search. This will search the previous found locations for values less then the previous value. You should now be able to identify the location that contains the number of lives. You can write it down and change its value by selecting it and clicking on add cheat button. If there are still too many options, continue loosing a life and refining the search. Cheat List Displays all the cheats available for the loaded games. You can add cheats by pressing the relevant buttons in the add section. You will be asked for the code and a description of the cheat. Automatic Save/Load Cheats Automatically Loads/Saves the cheats when you load/save a games state. Load Cheat List Load cheats for selected game. Save Cheat List Save cheats for the selected game.   Tools Menu Disassemble... Open a disassembler for developers to check their games. Logging... Opens a window that shows what gameboy chips and memory a game is accessing. Map Viewer Attempts to view the map of the current game. Memory Viewer Give a Hexidesimal view of the gameboys memory again for developers OAM Viewer Shows game sprites and characters. Palette Viewer Views the loaded games different colour palettes. Tile Viewer Views the tiles that make up game backgrounds. Next Frame Move onto the next frame when paused. GDB Lets you access a program called GDB which is used for Gameboy Advance development. Record Lets you record you game as a video or sound file. Customize Lets you set up keyboard shortcuts for the menu options. Top

Playing A Game

To play a game all you need to do is open the file menu and select load. Select the game you have downloaded and press the open button. The screen will go black and then the game will load. Keyboard Settings Cursor Keys Up, Down, Left, Right Z Button A X Button B A Button L S Button R Enter Start Backspace Select Space Speedup F1 .. F10 Load Saved State Shift+F1 .. F10 Save State Alt+1 .. 4 Autofire for buttons A, B, L, R Ctrl+R Reset Game Ctrl+P Pause Game F12 Screen Capture If you want to use a joypad then use the joypad option from the options menu and change the keys to your joystick buttons. Top

Image Gallery

Here is VBA playing a few games... Top

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