AP-Patching Tutorial

By: GlaZed_Belmont

Hi, in this tutorial, you will learn how to patch nds roms to make them playable in Twilightmenu++. This guide will guide you through dumping your cart to ap patch the rom.

What you will need:

Please note that Twilightmenu++ now applies AP patches to most games, however, you're free to manually apply them yourself, especially if you're using romhacks.

Click here to see if your game requires AP patching or not

Note that you can skip Section I if you've already dumped your cart to an untrimmed format

Section I: Dumping

  1. Boot your 3DS console while holding the Start button to boot into GodMode9.

    If GodMode9 1.8.0 hangs to a splash screen, has blank screen(s), or its just not booting at all, make a copy of the GodMode9.firm and rename this copy to whatever you'd like, so after that, you will have two .firm files in luma/payloads.

  2. Navigate over [C:] GAMECART and press A on it.

    3. You will most likely be seeing 2 files (trim.nds and .nds)

  3. Hover your .nds NOT your .trim.nds, if you continue this guide with the trimmed rom, you will not be able to ap patch your rom due to the software not recognizing it correctly and press A on it.

  4. Press A on Copy to gm9/out

  5. Your rom will now be in SD:/gm9/out

Section II: Patching

  1. Find your rom in SD:/gm9/out

    2. if you planned to use your sd card at the same time, you can move your rom onto your PC but for the sake of simplicity, I'll keep it there.

  2. Extract the contents of the 7z of DS-Scene (since the files aren't in a folder, I'd say you make a new folder for them so you dont mix the files with your other stuff.)

  3. Go to the folder you've extracted the contents to and double click DS-Scene Rom Tool.exe

  4. You will now be in DS-Scene. DO NOT UPDATE THE AP DATABASE , that will download an outdated version and some games wont be supported anymore.

  5. Click File -> Open File... and select the rom that you've dumped.

    6. Note that the other steps will vary depending if your game has an ap patch available in DS-Scene's database.

If it is supported by DS-Scene:

There would be a on the AP Patch tab.

  1. Move to the Export tab.

  2. (Optional) Enable Trim Garbage and then Safe Trim so the rom will be trimmed in size and be AP patched.

  3. Make sure Apply AP Patch is enabled.

  4. Don't change the Repack Options

    No repack (.nds|.3ds) by default)

  5. Click on Export Rom, select where you want to save your rom and click Save

  6. Your rom has been AP patched and optionally trimmed.

If it isn't supported by DS-Scene:

By clicking on the AP Patch tab, you would see this:

  1. Download the xDelta Patcher.

  2. Check if there is a patch for your rom there

    3. If there is one, continue to step 3.

    If there isn't one, then either your rom does not need to be AP patched or no patches have been found for your gamr/region. For both of those options, you cannot continue this guide.

  3. Open the xdeltaUI.exe , select your .xdelta patch that you got from the OneDrive, select your rom and select where you want the patched rom to be saved.

    4. DO NOT OVERWRITE YOUR ORIGINAL ROM

    If you get any type of errors, please verify that you are using the right patch for your game and region.

  4. If the patching succeeds, your rom has been AP patched.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to RandalHoffman#0687 for giving me the task to do this guide.

Please join this server for further assistance

props to the eiphax gang

~ GlaZed_Belmont