N64FlashcartMenu/README.md

N64 Flashcart Menu

An open source menu for N64 flashcarts.

Supported Flashcarts

Fully supported

• SummerCart64
• 64Drive

Work in Progress

• ED64
• ED64P

Current (notable) menu features

• Fully Open Source.
• Loads all known N64 games (including iQue and Aleck64 ROMs (even if they are byteswapped)).
• Fully emulates the 64DD and loads 64DD disks (SummerCart64 only).
• Emulator support (NES, SNES, GB, GBC) ROMs.
• N64 ROM box image support.
• Background image (PNG) support.
• Comprehensive ROM save database (including HomeBrew headers).
• Comprehensive ROM information display.
• Real Time Clock support.
• Music playback (MP3).

Video showcase (as of Oct 12 2023)

Aims

• Support as many N64 FlashCarts as possible.
• Be open source, using permissive licensed third party licensed libraries.
• Be testable, using unit and smoke tests in ares emulated environment.
• Encourage active development from community members and N64 FlashCart owners.
• Support as many common mods and features as possible.

Getting started

Using your PC, insert the SD card and ensure it is formatted for compatibility (We recommend FAT32 in most instances, though EXFAT is fully supported on the SummerCart64).

Save files

By default, all save files (whether FlashRam, SRAM or EEPROM) use the .sav extension and match the filename of the ROM.

Each save file can be found in the /saves folder located in the same directory as the ROM and shares the same file name, apart from the extension.

If transfering a file from a different flashcart such as the ED64, it will be necessary to change the extension of the file to sav.

i.e. for Glover (USA).eep you would need to change the extension to Glover (USA).sav

NOTE: certain emulator saves or saves created for a different ROM version or region may be incompatible.

ROM Boxart

To use boxart, you need to place png files of size 158x112 in the folder /menu/boxart on the SD card. Each file must be named according to the 2 letter ROM ID, or 3 letter ROM ID including media type. i.e. for GoldenEye 2 letters, this would be GE.png. i.e. for GoldenEye 3 letters, this would be NGE.png. A known set of PNG files using 2 letter ID's can be downloaded here.

Emulator support

Emulators should be added to the /menu/emulators directory on the SD card.

Menu currently supports the following emulators and associated ROM file names:

• NES: neon64v2 by hcs64 - neon64bu.rom
• SNES: sodium64 by Hydr8gon - sodium64.z64
• Game Boy / GB Color: gb64 by lambertjamesd - gb.v64 / gbc.v64
• Sega Master System / Sega Game Gear / Sg1000: TotalSMS - TotalSMS.z64 (Currently broken)

Menu Settings

The Menu creates a config.ini file in sd:/menu/ which contains various settings that are used by the menu. Currently these are read-only (can be viewed in the menu by pressing L on the Joypad). If required, you can manually adjust the file on the SD card using your computer.

SC64 Specific

• Ensure the cart has the latest firmware installed.
• Download the latest sc64menu.n64 file from the releases page, then put it in the root directory of your SD card.

64DD disk support

For the ability to load and run 64DD disk images, you need to place required 64DD IPL dumps in the /menu/64ddipl folder on the SD card. For more details follow this guide on the 64dd.org website.

Note: to load an expansion disk (e.g. F-Zero X) browse to the N64 ROM and load it (but not start it) and then browse to the DD expansion file and press the R button.

64drive Specific

• Ensure the cart has the latest firmware installed.
• Download the latest menu.bin file from the releases page, then put it in the root directory of your SD card.

ED64 & ED64P Specific

Currently not supported, but work is in progress (See PR's).

The aim is to replace Altra64 and ED64-UnofficialOS.

Developer documentation

You can use a dev container in VSCode to ease development.

To deploy:

SC64

• Download the deployer here
• Extract and place sc64deployer.exe in the tools/sc64 directory.

Make sure that your firmware is compatible (currently v2.18.0+) See: here

From the devcontainer

It is not currently possible to directly communicate with USB devices. BUT, as a work around you can use a proxy TCP/IP connection Set up a proxy: open a terminal window, cd ./tools/sc64 and then ./sc64deployer.exe server

Then in the dev container, use make run or make run-debug

From your host (Windows) OS

• Run ./localdeploy.bat from the terminal

Toggle the N64 power switch to load the ROM.

ms-vscode.makefile-tools will help (installed automatically in dev container). TODO: it does not yet work with F5: see https://devblogs.microsoft.com/cppblog/now-announcing-makefile-support-in-visual-studio-code/ WORKAROUND: in the dev container terminal, use make directly, i.e.: make The ROM can be found in the output directory.

NOTE: a "release" version of the SC64 menu is called sc64menu.n64 and can be created for when you want to add it directly to the SDCard. This is generated by running make all or running make sc64.

Ares Emulator

For ease of development and debugging, the menu ROM is able to run in the Ares emulator (without most flashcart features).

• Ensure you have the Ares emulator on you computer.
• Load the N64FlashcartMenu.n64 ROM.

Others

• Add the required file to the correct folder on your SD card.

Update Libdragon submodule

This repo currently uses the preview branch as a submodule at a specific commit. To update to the latest version, use git submodule update --remote from the terminal.

Generate documentation

Run doxygen from the dev container terminal. Make sure you fix the warnings before creating a PR! Generated documentation is located in output/docs folder and auto published to the gh-pages branch when merged with main.

Once merged, they can be viewed here

Open source software and licenses used

• libdragon (UNLICENSE License)
• libspng (BSD 2-Clause License)
• mini.c (BSD 2-Clause License)
• minimp3 (CC0 1.0 Universal)
• miniz (MIT License)