Adding a game to the Flashback 8 HD

Some prerequisites:

• in this example I'm adding the Double Dragon Arcade ROM from KevinMos3 ( Available at http://atariage.com/forums/topic/154984-hack-project-thread-galaxian-arcade-double-dragon-xenophobe-etc/ ; also note that there is a very nice label he created
• you have to have added the USB connector the Flashback
• Android Debugger Bridge (ADB)
• a bit of patience
  

First a walkthrough ...

There are two key items to remember during this mod:
- the "all-games.ini" file contains the list of the games that the Flashback will display in its menu. It also contain instructions and tells the device what ROM file to load. You will find that file under "/system/atgames/all-games.ini"
- the actual games (and the menu images) are all stored in "/system/atgames/Atari"

Step 1: Plug in your Flashback to your computer

Use your USB cable and make sure that the Flashback adapter is plugged in. Turn on the device.

Step 2. Launching ADB

You need to run the DOS command prompt from Windows. I usually run under "administrator mode", but it doesn't seem to be a requirement.

Step 3. Connecting to the Flashback

Navigate to the folder where the ADB has been extracted; in my case, I kept it simple and it sits in "C:\adb\platform-tools"

Type in "adb devices"

It will find your Flashback and get it ready to be used.

Step 4. Let's Explore

This step is optional, but type in "adb root". This will give you higher privileges in case you run across any files you need. I suggest not to delete or modify anything unless you know what you're doing and/or made a backup.

Type in "adb shell", that will basically log us into the Flashback device and see the internal folder structure.

Use "ls" or "ls -l" to list all the files/folders

The Flashback installation is under "/system/atgames"; you can use "cd /system" or "cd /system/atgames" to move onto those folders

You see the "all-games.ini" file. Keep this one in mind, this is the most important file for this mod.

You can see the "Atari" folder. Let's navigate by using "cd Atari" and then listing the files:

You will see all the files with .a26 or a26.png. The ROM files are your usual ROM files with the .A26 extension; the respective .A26.PNG are the images for each game.

Another interesting location is the "app" folder; use "cd /system/app" . You can see the Frogger and Space Invaders Android APK files. It seems that these two are special cases and don't invoke the ROM files in the "/system/atgames/Atari" .

Type in "exit" to get out of the Flashback shell.

So now you know the basics



How to Add a Game

For this exercise I have copied the DD.A26 and DD.A26.png files into my ADB folder at C:\adb\platform-tools. You can place them anywhere, but I decided to keep things simple and reduce the amount of typing.

So let's continue where left off. The main thing we're going to do is to pull down the important all-games.ini file.

In the command prompt type in "adb pull /system/atgames/all-games.ini" . This will copy the file into your ADB folder on your computer.

MAKE A COPY OF THIS FILE!!! You may need to restore your set-up in case something goes wrong.

If you open the file (in notepad for example) you will see something like:

The format is somewhat self-explanatory. You have the name of the game within square brackets, followed by the ROM file location ("File="), "Platform" tells you what grouping on the Main Menu it should add it to (only "Atari" and "Activision" have sub-menus). Then you have the description and the instructions.

Here's an example:
[Double Dragon]
File=atgames/Atari/DD.a26
Platform=ActivisionGenre=Arcade
Description=Double Dragon Arcade Mod!!
Note= \test for atari 2600 games.

While we're here, let's take a look at the image files; let's pull a file for the Wizard game; "adb pull /system/atgames/Atari/Wizard.a26.png".

It's a 214x300 PNG file.

I created my Double Dragon PNG file based on KevinMos3's label he provided.

Let's copy our Double Dragon ROM onto the Flashback.

First of all, we need to add an entry in the all-games.ini file for Double Dragon:

I have the ROM and image file sitting in ADB folder:

We need to run these commands as root as we need to temporarily change permissions on folders so that we can upload files.


Run "adb root"

Next we will alter the permission of the "/system" folder. I tried just targeting "/system/atgames" but kept getting an error. So I copied a page from the Genesis Flashback mod.

Run "adb shell mount -o rw,remount,rw /system"

Next we're uploading (and overwriting the existing) all-games.ini; enter"adb push all-games.ini /system/atgames"

And next we're uploading the ROM and image into the Atari folder:
"adb push DD.a26 /system/atgames/Atari"
"adb push DD.a26.png /system/atgames/Atari"

Now, turn your Flashback device off and back on again.

You should see the Double Dragon ROM in the menu now!

You can basically add a bunch more games.

The odd thing is that the PNG file is not displaying. Strangely enough it does not seem to get saved into the Atari folder. Not sure what the issue is. I will have to do more investigation.




Updates:
1. I have been able to add 56 games so far to the Flashback.
2. The PNG files needs to have 24-bit colour depth. My original file was 32-bit.
3. Pitfall II does not work.
4. Looking at the Flashback APK file, it appears we have some hard-coded values for Frogger (and Space Invaders). Even Frogger II goes to the quasi-arcade version.
5. the All-games.ini is finicky, make sure you had linefeed/carriage return after each item for the game; Platform, Genre, etc. Notepad mangles this. Notepad++ is a good option.