Is there a way to auto-select the B/W palette in GBA-SP?

[keropi]

Hiya!

just got my ED-GB and it's just awesome like the rest of the EDs 
I am using a GBA-SP 101 with it, but unfortunately Nintendo in their infinite wisdom decided to make a puke-palette autoloading in GB classic games... and do add to the insult, the normal b/w one is accessible via LEFT+B in the gameboy bios logo... not even a single button shortcut like the rest of the puke-palettes , someone decided that having ridiculous colors by default is great 

So, is there a way to make the ED-GB or the GBA auto-select the B/W palette? Or are we doomed to press Left+B each time a game loads?

TIA for any info! 

[nuu]

I don't think you can save your palette setting. Where would that information be saved to anyway? Best way is to play them on a DMG Gameboy.

[keropi]

^ that's why I ask if it's possible to do that with the ED-GB , maybe there is a value to write when the GB/GBC game boots or some register or something else 
Also an old DMG is painful to my old eyes, hardly the best way for other reasons as well.

[wilykat]

Some of the pre-defined color palette are stored in GBC and GBA bios. It loads specific palette when it detects certain games. That's why some games like Metroid 2 looks very nice on GBA.

I don't know how GBA tells what palette to use, checksum or header or something. If you could figure that you might be able to hack the ROM to trick GBA into loading b&w palette.

[nuu]

^ that's why I ask if it's possible to do that with the ED-GB , maybe there is a value to write when the GB/GBC game boots or some register or something else 
Also an old DMG is painful to my old eyes, hardly the best way for other reasons as well.

OK I thought you meant saving it on the GBA itself.

Some of the pre-defined color palette are stored in GBC and GBA bios. It loads specific palette when it detects certain games. That's why some games like Metroid 2 looks very nice on GBA.

I don't know how GBA tells what palette to use, checksum or header or something. If you could figure that you might be able to hack the ROM to trick GBA into loading b&w palette.

The boot rom uses the internal title found inside each rom to identify the classic gb games. But there probably is no game that has a b&w default palette.

[keropi]

yeah, I think that the default palette is that puke-colored one 
I would gladly re-flash the GBA bios with a hacked one that changes the default palette 

[mrpopsicleman]

The boot rom uses the internal title found inside each rom to identify the classic gb games. But there probably is no game that has a b&w default palette.

Argonaut Software's X does. but it's the only one.
http://tcrf.net/GBC_BIOS

So I suppose if you wanted a game to play monochrome without the hassle of pressing B + Left, just change the ROM's internal filename to X. The Super Game Boy also recognizes X, and gives it a blue monochrome palette, but you can of course change the colors to whatever you want on SGB.
http://tcrf.net/Super_Game_Boy_1_and_2

[keropi]

^ amazing! is there a way to mass-change the internal names on roms? I see that name starts at offset 134H

[mrpopsicleman]

Glad I could help. I'd don't know any method for mass name changing, maybe someone else does. Anyone?

[keropi]

I  assume (with the limited knowledge I have in the matter) that there should be a tool that mass-changes the header/name to the X one and that it re-calculates the rom checksum as well to reflect that change...
maybe a coder here can come up with such a tool if he finds it interesting enough to do... 

infact I'm gonna start a new thread asking if such a tool is available

[Localhorst86]

Sorry to bump this old topic but since the OP is still active and I just came across this tool, I thought I'd share it. This tool allegedly does exactly what the OP wants to try to accomplish but I can not say for sure since I have not tested it.

http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/30/