This repo provides a simple extension that repackages a Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console (VC) .cia file using the built .gbc(s) and .patch(s) generated from the pret Pokémon Gen I / II repos. This will ease the building of a VC .cia for your ROM Hack down to something as simple as typing make.

• The hack's source repository. It must be based on a recent enough version of the original disassembly, so that it supports building Virtual Console patches:

  Disassembly	This commit or later
  pokered	fe8d3c5
  pokeyellow	fbaa5c9
  pokegold	3d58fb9
  pokecrystal	31c3c94

• An original (encrypted or decrypted) .cia file for each version that you want to produce—see further below.

• ctrtool ctrtool v1.0.3 or later.

• makerom makerom v0.18 or later.

• seeddb.bin. It can be obtained from this link.

Obtaining the original .cia file dump is outside of the scope of this document. It can be legally obtained by extracting it from your console through tools such as GodMode9 and/or FunkyCIA.

First, clone this repository, and cd into it.

Next, you will need to create your config.mk file by using config.mk.template as a base.

$ cp config.mk.template config.mk

Modify this new config.mk file using a text editor of your choice.

• Define rom_names to match the name of the ROM you want to build the .cia from, sans file extension. For example, for Pokémon Crystal, you can uncomment one of the example lines:

  rom_names := pokecrystal11

  (There should not be more than one uncommented line at a given time.) You can also build more than one .cia at a time! Simply write a space-separated list of names instead:

  rom_names := magenta turquoise

• Still in that same file, you must also set the repo_path variable to point to the repository containing the ROMs: (The default repo_path setting assumes you are cloning into the pret repo)

  repo_path  := ../

  (Relative paths must be relative to the poke-cia directory. ../ means the directory above the poke-cia directory.)

Copy and rename your original dumped .cia files to <build_name>.orig.cia, where <build_name> is one of the names you put in rom_names. For example, for Pokémon Crystal, it should be pokecrystal11.orig.cia.

Finally, place your obtained seeddb.bin file inside your poke-cia directory.

Now, you can run make and be on your merry way! The new .cia files will be generated in the same directory. Both makerom and ctrtool must either be in your PATH, or you can pass the paths as arguments; for example:

$ make MAKEROM=../ctrtool-v1.0.1/makerom/makerom CTRTOOL=../ctrtool-v1.0.1/ctrtool/bin/ctrtool

It is also possible to specify these variables in config.mk instead, which saves the trouble of re-typing them every time.

The following is a list of notable poke-cia commands:

make extract: Will simply extract the .orig.cia files, but will not automatically rebuild them into a .cia. This is useful if you want to manually update files before rebuilding. Simply run make when you are done to finish building.

make tidy: Removes any built .cia, .cxi, or cfa files in the poke-cia repo.

make prettidy: Performs the same function as make tidy above, but also asks the pret repo to run it's version of make tidy.

make clean: Performs the same function as make tidy, but also deletes the extracted rom directories in the poke-cia repo.

make pretclean: Performs the same function as make clean above, but also asks the pret repo to run it's own version of make clean.

I would like to give special credits to the following:

• @mid-kid originally came up with the idea of this tool and this extension is developed based on his orig repo.
• @ISSOtm spent a lot of time helping to restructure the extension, and getting it ready for release.
• @jakcron went out of their way to troubleshoot our repos to help resolve a bug in thre prequisite tool ctrtool.