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metapatcher - create your own patching tool (sort of)

(This is an idea I just had a few hours ago. Sorry if this post doesn't make sense, I'm half asleep.)

FLIPS is a fantastic and elegant tool, but... is it just me, or is applying patches with it a bit of a hassle? Even with .bps files set to auto-open in FLIPS, in order to apply a patch I have to go through the same three windows every time:
  1. the "select unmodified file" dialog
  2. the "select modified" file dialog
  3. the "successfully patched" window
It doesn't seem like much, but it gets tiring really fast - I'd probably download and play more hacks if it weren't for the prospect of "going though that patching again".

Most of the time I just copy a clean ROM to the desktop and apply the patch to that — so all I really need is a simple "bps to ROM" conversion, with no user input.

Luckily FLIPS has a command-line interface, so you can set up a .bat script to do that. From what I can tell, it works like a charm!

I could post the source code of that script here so you could tweak and use it, but, uh... I may have gone a step further and made a tool that generates those .bat scripts.

metapatcher


Okay, so, long story short: Enter the paths to FLIPS, your default clean ROM and your default output folder, and it'll generate a tool that puts the patched ROM into that folder, with no user input required. The tool is a .bat script, and you can open BPS files with it just like you can with FLIPS itself. It's basically your own custom wrapper around FLIPS, no more, no less.

Give this tool-creating tool a try, and let me know why it's utterly useless!

(There will probably be bugs, but I won't get around to fixing them until tomorrow.)

 


 
Actually there's an option in flips that allows you to skip the "choose base file" when applying patches. It will ask you for the base rom once and after that it will try to use that file before asking you for the base file. This means that double-clicking a BPS will either open the ROM in an emulator without any flips dialogs at all (if you have the corresponding option set in flips's config) or will create the ROM right next to the BPS with only the "patched successfully" dialog.

unless this is meant for ips patches in which case nice tool #smw{:TUP:}

shameless plug: my tool "SMWC preview" adds a button on the hack details page to download the ROM, extract the BPS patch, apply the patch and open your emulator, so it takes only 1 click to play hacks
Thanks for the reply!

Originally posted by randomdude999
Actually there's an option in flips that allows you to skip the "choose base file" when applying patches. It will ask you for the base rom once and after that it will try to use that file before asking you for the base file. This means that double-clicking a BPS will either open the ROM in an emulator without any flips dialogs at all (if you have the corresponding option set in flips's config) or will create the ROM right next to the BPS with only the "patched successfully" dialog.

Ah, I was sure I was missing something. #ab{^^;;;} (though it's still a tiny bit different from my workflow, which is to put the patched ROM on the Desktop for the hell of it.)

Originally posted by randomdude999
shameless plug: my tool "SMWC preview" adds a button on the hack details page to download the ROM, extract the BPS patch, apply the patch and open your emulator, so it takes only 1 click to play hacks

Neat! I never knew about that.