megaman battle network cheats are driving me bonkers

[espee]

hey, guys, long time fan, first time poster.

first off, i'm an openemu (2.0.5) user, which, i believe, uses mgba 0.5.2 as its gameboy advance core. i realize that my not necessarily line me up to get some help on this.

second, i'm trying to use cheats from this page (at openemu's recommendation):

https://gamehacking.org/game/5288

i'm just trying to get anything to work. i've been told to avoid actionreplay (ar) 3-or-4 codes. which has caused me to maybe wrongfully avoid actionreplay (ar) 1-or-2 codes, so i've been trying to stick with codebreaker (cb) codes.

(i'm also a little confused on whether i need "enable," "master" or both; also confused if i need "one line" or "all lines.)

so, here's what i'm trying

enable code (must be on) (cb)
96F9940E 4C3F
A9C45784 AA2C
FA99D53C E926

[m] must be on (cb)
971181CD4EE1
3FFA80599274
27FB8522914B

infinite zenny (cb)
1A0A2B602680

i've tried just about every imaginable combination of the above, but to no avail.

the first three have spaces between 8+9, the rest do not. i'm told this doesn't matter. but i don't know if i need just one line of any of the first 6, or all 3 of either group, or all 6, and then finally the actual thing i'm trying to pull off.

there are more codes i'd like to do, but i thought i'd know right away if this one worked (don't have to be in battle, etc.)

thanks, again, so much. the fact you're giving this away and providing all this support is a gift to the world.

[endrift]

Generally what's best to do is to use the pulldown and paste in the "unencrypted" versions of the codes, e.g. the Infinite Zenny code becomes 82000284 C350. Also, with the unencrypted versions, the master/must-be-on codes are not needed. There was a discussion about this on Twitter recently that may provide some insights: https://twitter.com/endrift/status/883390447271280645 (scrolling in either direction).

[espee]

wow, thank you so much!

i'll give it a whirl and reply to this.

how do you "know" if a code is encrypted on unencrypted? (why would anyone ever want to do encrypted?)

[endrift]

It's a bit hard to tell without knowledge of how the cheats are formatted and the memory layout of the GBA, but usually encrypted cheats look more "random", especially the first letter or number. Encrypted cheats were created as a means to prevent competing products (e.g. ActionReplay) from just lifting and reformatting the codes, most likely. Not sure, but since the encryption was cracked, it's all just the same thing now.

Note that the "master codes" usually just contain information about the game and are only needed on hardware, although sometimes they contain encryption keys (especially on Codebreaker) that are needed to decrypt further codes. When you have decrypted codes, the master codes are entirely unnecessary for emulators.

[espee]

@endrift!

that worked. it was perfect. now comes the long, slow, arduous task of trying out different ones. and documenting them for future use.

i followed your pattern/method and most of the ones i tried, worked (i also figured out a little bit of confusion on the outdated openemu cheat "documentation".).

so, if i understand correctly:
mgba works
• with unencrypted codebreaker/gssp codes
• with unencrypted actionreplay-1-or-2/gsa codes

it does not work with
• encrypted anything
• unencrypted actionreplay-3-or-4/gsa codes

thank you so much for your explanation(s) and help.

[endrift]

It's SUPPOSED to work with all of those, but sometimes the heuristics for detecting what type of encrypted code something is breaks.