Untitled Document

VBA Setup

This is the screen that you will see when you first load VBA...

VBA Start

Here is a summary of the menu options...

File Menu
Open	Opens a game from your main roms folder.
Open Gameboy	Opens a gameboy game from a separate folder.
Load	Loads a saved game for the running game.
Save	Saves your current game.
Load Game	Loads your game from 1 of 10 saved slots.
Save Game	Saves your game to 1 of 10 slots
Pause	Pauses VBA.
Reset	Resets the current game.
Recent	Lets you run recently played games quickly.
Import	Imports save game battery files from other emulators. Also imports gameshark cheat files.
Export	Exports battery files for use in other emulators.
Screen Capture	Captures the current game screen to a file.
Rom Information	Shows information about the current rom in memory
Toggle Menu	Toggles the menu bar on or off.
Close	Close current rom without exiting
Exit	Exit from VBA.

Options Menu

Frameskip

Sets how many fames are skipped to speed up a game if it is running slow. Set it to zero for smooth gameplay or if you find your games running slow select automatic.

Video

Vsync - Synchronizes the output from VBA to your monitor's refresh rate.

Render Method - lets you pick which system VBA uses to draw the game screen. Heres a description...

GDI	Uses windows to draw the screen (slowest)
Direct Draw	Uses DirectX to draw the screen which uses any accelerated features on your video card.
Direct 3D	Uses the 3D part of you video card to draw the screen which can be faster.
OpenGL	Same as above but uses OpenGL instead of D3D.
DDraw Emulation Only	Emulates the features of direct draw but doesn't give the blurriness of image found normally.
DDraw Use Video Memory	Uses your graphics cards memory to draw the game screen which is often faster than normal memory.
DDraw Triple Buffering	Helps to smooth out the game screen when scrolling.
GL Nearest	Sets the graphics filtering used when OpenGL is selected.
GL Bilinear	Same as above but different method.
GL Triangle	Sets how OpenGL draws the screen.
GL Quads	Same as above but different method.
Select Skin	To access this option you need to be in DDraw mode. Wah it does is let you select a picture skin for VBoy much like Winamp. Heres an example.. Normal Screen Skinned version Cool Eh? You can get skins from the Visualboy site. Once you have one just extract it straight into the Visualboy folder. Now when you select this option you can pick your skin from the list. The only difference is that you need to right-click you mouse to access the menus.
Skin	Turns the skin you select on or off.

1x..4x - Sets the amount of zoom used to display the game in a window.

Fullscreen - Lets you pick a preset resolution for a screen. Use Other Full Screen to set your own screen resolution.

Fullscreen Max Scale - Sets how much of the screen is used by VBA.

Disable SFX - Disables rendering effects which can speed things up.

Stretch to fit - Stretches the game to fill a full screen.

Layers - Lets you switch off graphics layers. Useful for graphics ripping.

Emulator

Associate	Associates all the Gameboy roms formats to Visual GBA
Directories	Lets you choose the directories for roms, save games etc. If you have downloaded VBA from easyEmu then the zipfile will create the necessary directories. All you have to do is match them up.
Disable status message	Disables the message that appears at the bottom of the screen when you do something.
Synchronize	Makes sure that the emulator runs in sync with the current game.
Pause When Inactive	Automatically pauses VBA if the window is deselected.
Speed Up Toggle	Runs the game as fast as VBA can
Remove Intro's (GBA)	Remove the mini intros sometimes added by rom dumpers
Automatic IPS Patching	Applies a small file called an IPS patch which is sometimes used to overcome some games protection.
AGB Print	For developers
Realtime Clock	Emulates the Gameboy Advance clock used by some games (e.g. Pokemon Ruby)
Autohide Menu	Automatically hides the menu bar when playing games
Rewind Interval	Sets an amount of time that can be rewound in VBA. Use CTRL+B to rewind the current game.
Game Overides	This option lets you customize what is actually emulated when running a game.
Show Speed	Determines how VBoy displays the game speed.
Save Type	Lets you override the save type used in games
Use Bios File	To play some commercial games you will need a GBA bios image. See above on how to find one.
Select Bios File	Lets you select the bios file you have downloaded.
PNG / BMP Format	Lets you select the format screen shots are saved in.

Sound

From this menu you can enable / disable the sound. You can also enable / disable individual sound channels as well as deciding the quality of the sound to be produced.

Gameboy

Lets you choose which Gameboy hardware is emulated by VBA including the Gameboy type and even the gameboy printer.

The border option is used if you are trying to simulate the Super Gameboy enhanced borders seen on the SNES cartridge.

You can also change whether the game is displayed in the original colours or what you would see on a Gameboy screen and even colours you select.

Priority

Sets the CPU usage for Visual GBA. Remember the higher the setting, the worse you Windows performance will be when running Visual GBA.

Filter

Uses screen effects to smooth out the jagged edges on graphics.

Joypad

VBA Joypad

To change any of the keys simply highlight the key you want to change and then press the appropriate keyboard or joystick button.

There is an option to set up motion detection that is used in some games. What it does is replace the motion with a key press.

You can also set a button for autofire which is useful in shooting games.

Language

Lets you change the language of the GUI using downloaded translation packs.

Cheats
Search For Cheats	I've ripped this straight from the readme as it explains things well... The cheat search can only be used to search and modify values in the RAM areas, i.e., you can change your number of lives, money and life bar and you can freeze the value to get "infinite" result. To use, enter the cheat search dialog and start a new search (or reset any previous search). If you have 5 lives, select equal on the comparison type, make sure Specific value is selected, click on entered value, type 5 on the value to search and then click search. This will find all locations where the number 5 is present. Return to the game and lose a life. Once you lost a life, go back to the search dialog, click on less than compare type, select old value and click on search. This will search the previous found locations for values less then the previous value. You should now be able to identify the location that contains the number of lives. You can write it down and change its value by selecting it and clicking on add cheat button. If there are still too many options, continue loosing a life and refining the search.
Cheat List	Displays all the cheats available for the loaded games. You can add cheats by pressing the relevant buttons in the add section. You will be asked for the code and a description of the cheat.
Automatic Save/Load Cheats	Automatically Loads/Saves the cheats when you load/save a games state.
Disable Cheats	Disables any loaded cheats.
Load Cheat List	Load cheats for selected game.
Save Cheat List	Save cheats for the selected game.

Tools Menu
Disassemble...	Open a disassembler for developers to check their games.
Logging...	Opens a window that shows what gameboy chips and memory a game is accessing.
IO Viewer	Shows all the things that are being inputted and outputted from VBA.
Map Viewer	Attempts to view the map of the current game.
Memory Viewer	Give a Hexidecimal view of the gameboys memory again for developers
OAM Viewer	Shows game sprites and characters.
Palette Viewer	Views the loaded games different colour palettes.
Tile Viewer	Views the tiles that make up game backgrounds.
Next Frame	Move onto the next frame when paused.
GDB	Lets you access a program called GDB which is used for Gameboy Advance development.
Record	Lets you record you game as a video, sound or movie file. The movie file isn't a media file it's contents are the keypresses you make whilst playing a game.
Play	Plays back saved movie files.
Rewind	Lets you rewind the current game by the amount of seconds set on the Emulator menu.
Customize	Lets you set up keyboard shortcuts for the menu options.