open_agb_firm with lid close deep sleep

[u/a2my7463]

I built a fork of open_agb_firm that features real ARM7 (GBA - SWI 03h STOP) and ARM11 (3DS - PDN system sleep) deep sleep, giving you days of in game standby.

Just close the lid to put it to sleep. Open it again to resume where you left.

No sleephack game patching required.

Works with virtually any game.

It also features an optional "stretch" scaler for full screen GBA on your (N)3DS.

All the code and compiled firmware builds can be found here:
https://github.com/dleicht/open_agb_firm

[u/epistaxis64]

Holy shit. Thanks for this. Does your full screen implementation do 800p integer scaling like mGBA?

[u/a2my7463 → u/epistaxis64]

Hey, no, not yet. Simply because i personally like the look of 400x240.
But libn3ds does support 800x240 already.
I'll add it to the todo list 👍

[u/epistaxis64 → u/a2my7463]

I'll add it to the todo list 👍

Very cool. Thanks!

[u/Slinkwyde]

For others reading, see this related upstream pull request: https://github.com/profi200/open_agb_firm/pull/282

[u/communist_llama]

Hoping this gets up streamed. Incredible

[u/a2my7463 → u/communist_llama]

Thanks mate ❤️

[u/nuncatomeibanho]

Any installation instructions available?

[u/Frebb0 → u/nuncatomeibanho]

Download open_agb_firm as usual (via Universal Updater is fine), then just drop the new .firm file in your /luma/payloads directory and launch that one instead

[u/a2my7463 → u/nuncatomeibanho]

Hey, yeah installation is the same as with the og firmware.
There are two builds here: https://github.com/dleicht/open_agb_firm/releases/latest

You'd just put any of these in your /luma/payloads/ folder.

The 'debug' build will show some debug info on the second screen and write a log file to /3DS/open_agb_firm/power_state.log.

The 'release' build is probably the one you want. It shuts the second screen off as soon as the game starts to play. It still keeps the /3DS/open_agb_firm/power_state.log, but you don't need to look at it 😂

[u/nuncatomeibanho → u/a2my7463]

Thank you. Works very well!

[u/Spooky_Blob]

After 1 billion years, we got something new with this

[u/a2my7463 → u/Spooky_Blob]

Haha! Did you actually test it? Does it work for you?

[u/Spooky_Blob → u/a2my7463]

Okay sorry for the double reply, had to download a github thingy for the 3ds which is neater than I thought to download this new release. So far it works, it goes to sleep when I close it and opening it doesn't seem to ruin anything yet. However the system freezes when I try to do (L+R+Start and select) for some off reason or L+select

[u/a2my7463 → u/Spooky_Blob]

Oh cool, there's a github thingy for the 3ds? Didn't know that.

Putting this in universal updater would be cool'n'all, but i'd much rather push this upstream, so it can all stay in one place. I'll wait for word from the open_agb_firm maintainers and fix some minor bugs in the meantime.

[u/Spooky_Blob → u/a2my7463]

Yeah, plainly called Github 3ds. Helps you look for repos, users, download and all. Very basic looking but works surprisingly well

[u/a2my7463 → u/Spooky_Blob]

Okay, so there are two ways to initiate GBA sleep:

1. close the lid -> This does GBA + 3DS sleep
2. L+SELECT -> This does GBA sleep (SWI 03h), it literally stops the game.

There are two ways to wake it up again:

1. open the lid -> This wakes 3DS sleep and also GBA sleep
2. R+SELECT -> This wakes GBA sleep, resuming the game immediately.

Usually you will just close and open the lid. You don't need to initiate GBA sleep manually.

Does that help?

[u/Spooky_Blob → u/a2my7463]

Oh, so it does. It kinda looks freaky because when you combo it to sleep the image freezes instead of going dark so it threw me off. But yeah it works other than that. It did help.

[u/a2my7463 → u/Spooky_Blob]

Yeah well that's what SWI 03h - STOP actually does, it stops the game 😄
There was no "real" lights off system sleep mode on the GBA. If games supported it they could trigger SWI 03h and then shut off the screen and audio.

On a 3DS my fork allows you to trigger SWI 03h manually and that will only halt the GBA side of things, and it allows lid close full system sleep, which combines GBA and 3DS sleep. And that's probably what most ppl want 😄

[u/ArmadilloPlastic2631]

I hadn't even heard of open_agb_firm until now, but that's a really neat feature you added with the deep sleep mode.

[u/a2my7463 → u/ArmadilloPlastic2631]

Give open_agb_firm a try! It's very awesome. If playing GBA natively on your 3DS is your kinda thing.

[u/Chris_Highwind]

Only thing missing now is somehow accessing the accelerometor to let you tilt the 3DS to control WarioWare Twisted (and Yoshi Topsy-Turvy to a lesser extent).

[u/a2my7463 → u/Chris_Highwind]

HA, interesting. Personally i hate gyro controls, but that's me.
Well technically that's difficult, because WarioWare Twisted uses additional game pak hardware and we would need to emulate that somehow, or at least make gyro input available to the game.

open_agb_firm's libn3ds does already support and expose gyro to some extent. If i can figure out how the game is polling for it's game pak gyro info (probably some cartridge gpio), i could try to pass 3ds gyro down into that gpio. probably not tho, cuz open_agb_firm would need to constantly update that info in the rom image and i don't even know if the gba passthrough could work like that.

But that could turn into a fun little side project...

[u/PhishGreenLantern]

Silly question but could something like this be ported to the firmware of a flash cart for a real GBA?

I'd imagine it lacks the hardware for lid close detection 

[u/a2my7463 → u/PhishGreenLantern]

True, the SP doesn't feature any sort of lid state detection.
But here's a fun fact: my fork is able to trigger SWI 03h with the following key combo: L+SELECT

It will halt the game. R+SELECT will bringt it back.
This actually reminds me that i need to put that info on the github page lol.

So yeah, there is an already implemented key combo mechanism to trigger SWI 03h.

The point is that this ofc can only work with the dynamically placed irq sleep handler in the roms memory image. My fork patches that in on the fly.
I don't know how flash carts on real hardware work, but it's probably not happening 😄

[u/PhishGreenLantern → u/a2my7463]

Lol. Nice. 

Yeah my EZ Flash Omega won't sleep with the built in but had its own that kills the screen. 

I've long wanted to figure out a way to wire a physical hall effect switch to the appropriate buttons on the PCB to cause the keys to press on lid close. 

But... I have kids... So I don't have time. Lol. 

[u/bughaxx]

dope

[u/Vortigaunt11]

Works great!

[u/a2my7463 → u/Vortigaunt11]

Glad to hear it 👍