Kodewerx

As a casual game reviewer for a local website, I was wondering if there was a screenshot NitroHax code floating around. Probably not, though.
Is it even possible to make one? Thanks for answers.

well... i dunno

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I doubt it is possible. My technical knowledge is very limited, but AFAIK, and if the NDS works the same than the GBA/C, there are no 'framebuffer'. The gfx are drawn in realtime, and for each pixel the hardware looks everything (sprites, bg, special effects), and decide what the pixel color should be depending on the positions/priorities (for the info, some demos use this 'real time drawing' thing to create some 'impossible' special effects, by changing the color in real time). There are no ways to know afterwards what color a pixel was set to, thus making a screenshot feature impossible...
For the GBA, some chinese(/japanese?) compagny made an accessory that was reading the picture signal sent to the lcd screen, and allowed to display it on TV, making screenshots (of very crappy quality) possibles.

Brian Provinciano made something similar for a GBA video capture device, but his website (bripro.com) has been suspended. Not surprising since he disappeared about two years ago. But that's all done in hardware, as Kenobi explained.

To grab NDS screens in software, you'll have to dump all VRAM (and palette RAM, etc.) to a PC, then put all of that data through a program capable of simulating the GBA video modes using raw data. Then there's the GX (NDS 3D) video modes, which might use a bitmap frame buffer. That would be easier to dump and put together as an image.

(As a side note, the GBA video modes do have a few different 16-bit bitmap modes that actually are just simple frame buffers. Few GBA games used them [notably the "true" 3D games ... not the pre-rendered stuff like Iridon 3D] so even fewer NDS games will use them; NDS can just use GX for 3D graphics.)

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I have to return some video tapes.

Feed me a stray cat.

Or just get a camera.

Cameras look washed out and unprofessional in comparison to a direct frame buffer dump. Imagine if all game reviews you read only had screens taken with a camera. Would you honestly want to buy a game that lives on purdee graphics (see: PS3) when the graphics look terribly washed out due to an analog view of the game?

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I have to return some video tapes.

Feed me a stray cat.

About the VRAM DUmp...
I also though of grabbing all the VRAM infos, but there is still the problems of BG (/sprites/whatever) enabled/disabled (or gfx drawn) during the screen display, and also the inherent problems of emulation (you must know perfectly the hardware to emulate it perfectly).

For exemple, there was that Lady Sia 2 game on the GBA (but this should apply to a lot of games) : for the level water, the waves were on a seperate BG that was disabled during VBLANK and enabled at a particular VCOUNT so the waves would be displayed at the bottom of the screen. Not knowing when to enable(/disable) it (and the only way to know would be to emulate the whole game...) would either not display waves at all, or fill the screen with the waves' BG. And even if you knew when to enable them, you'll have to know of a particular GBA hardware bug (there is a delay of 3 lines between the time a BG is enabled and the time it's actually displayed), else you would have 'gfx glitches' on the screen...

Also, as far as I recall, the GBA japanese famicon series used the GBA sprite per line limit to render the screen all black on the emulators (which used to not ne emulated properly).

And finally, on the GB, the parodius's laser was drawn 'in real time' (the game changing the color of the lines at a precise vcount).

I know this doesn't apply to the NDS 3D, but still, it should show that emulating gfx only from the VRAM data might not give any good result at all...

No, it definitely will not work in all cases. But it's the best option for a generic screen grab in software.

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I have to return some video tapes.

Feed me a stray cat.

Even if my camera is this good ? :





ignore the text, i was just screwin around with the settings.

Id say this is pretty close to a actuall screenshot.

wow, your camera is really good. My sister's camera made it look like a large blur.

Ya, my camera ain't that good either. I doubt a code like that existing though.

Thats my camera greatly smaller than origional.

It was 2848x2184

6.1 mega pixels

thats a good camera too.

I was pretty wobbly though... So it's kinda blurry...

While we're having a digital camera circle-jerk, swinging our ePenises around, mine is a 7.1 megapixel Canon. And I use a tripod to get the best pictures possible.

But it's STILL not as good as a direct image capture. It's like comparing component video to HDMI. Component is great, no doubt. But in comparison to HDMI (a nearly flawless digital video signal), component's analog shittiness leaves much to be desired.

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I have to return some video tapes.

Feed me a stray cat.

There is a video capture function built into the DS but it uses VRAM to store the results, which means you'd need to tailor it to the specific game and hope that the game doesn't use all VRAM blocks.

DID SOMEONE SAY DIGITAL CAMERA CIRCLE-JERK?!

or you could get a rom most emulators have a built-in screen shot feature

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01101011 01101111 01100100 01100101 01110111 01100101 01110010 01111000 =kodewerx.
0110100001110010001000000110110001101001011011100110010100100000011101000110000101100111

The box said "Requires Windows 95, NT, or better", so I installed Fedora.

I have a camcorder, it has a still shot feature on my computer

I recommend, use no$gba emulator, for making screenshots of best quality *cough, with glitches, cough*...

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Chat with our AI here...
Don't blame me if it's offline temporary, it's fixed fast, because that's the fault of the hoster...
I changed the link in my sig image too...

The DS has hardware for display capture.
http://nocash.emubase.de/gbatek.htm#dsv ... isplaymode

4000064h - DISPCAPCNT - 32bit - Display Capture Control Register (R/W)

However, it can only capture one screen at a time. Also, it can only save it to VRAM from what I gather.

I think it's definitely possible. You'd take the display capture, then copy it out of VRAM into main ram somewhere and dump it with the trainer toolkit, I guess. But then you'd also have just destroyed whatever was in VRAM beforehand. I suppose if there's room, you could make a copy of what was in the VRAM you destroyed before destroying it, but you've still got the issue that you need room in RAM for the screenshot. I've actually wanted to try this, but uh... yeah, I don't see that happening anytime soon.


Edit:
I missed chishm's post above about this hardware. Oops.

There was another way I used to capture screens for GBA. I have a device Datel made for a limited time called the AR GBA Gameport that plugged into the Cube. It also had a code generator in it.



BTW...FNG tells me this device should you come across one will only work with older Cubes...DOL 100 (?). Model #'s DOL 101 will not allow the GP to operate....

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Ancient Code Sage

I'm 99% sure this thread was asking about DS screenshots, not GBA.

I own one of the original Datel Advance Gameport devices, before they updated it and added code searching. It's a total piece of shit. The sound seems like it's only 11khz mono, and the video is set on something like frameskip 6. It's choppy.

I was hoping to use it as an alternative to getting a Gameboy Player for my Panasonic Q, but unfortunately I only ended up using it once or twice and now it's sitting in the box.

Sappharad...I know the thread was about DS Frame capture...but I saw some talk of GBA and that reminded me of this device. I checked with FNG and sadly the unit was abandoned when Big N made a newer chip set for Cube. That was a mistake as the unit could have been improved to the point to work with Wii where composite video was added. Sorry your unit did not work out. Mine work like a charm in both video and code searching. I do agree with Para though in that direct image capture is the best you can get...

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Ancient Code Sage

Wait, what does the chipset have to do with anything?
Datel was able to update their AR discs to work with newer GC's and the Wii. The only other related thing is the GBA cart connector, and I don't see a way they could break that. I suppose I should try my AGP on the Wii and see if it actually works.

P.S. Dump your Advance Gameport disc and send me the ISO, so I have a copy of the software that isn't shitty.

Simple...Datel did not want to support the device. You are right, they could have easily answered Big N's feeble try to block the decent hacker. LOL. I will get the file to you soon. mac

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Ancient Code Sage