DraStic Advanced RTC settings

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There are a few different ways of configuring the RTC (Real Time Clock) of the ‘DraStic Advanced (external)’ core (also referred to as ‘drastic-trngaje’). This RTC is used by certain games—for example: ‘Pokémon HeartGold’ uses it to control the in-game day/night cycle.

The configuration of DraStic’s RTC is controlled by three settings in the drastic.cfg configuration file—or in a per-game .cfg file, if one exists. This configuration file is located at /opt/muos/share/emulator/drastic-trngaje/config/. This location is part of muOS’ internal partition, so accessing it will require the use of SSH, the on-device file manager, or other similar methods.

The relevant settings are: use_rtc_custom_time, rtc_custom_time, and rtc_system_time. The RTC may be set to one of three modes using these settings:

  1. The default setting: In this mode, when loading a ROM the RTC will be initialized to the time which has been set on your device’s system clock, but may begin to diverge from your system clock—using fast-forward will affect the RTC, for example.
    • Set use_rtc_custom_time = 0.
    • Set rtc_system_time = 0.
  2. The system time setting: In this mode, the RTC will be synchronized to the time which has been set on your device’s system clock.
    • Set use_rtc_custom_time = 0.
    • Set rtc_system_time = 1.
  3. The custom time setting: In this mode, the RTC will be set to a time of your choosing. Note that there may sometimes be odd behavior when using save states in combination with this mode.
    • Set use_rtc_custom_time = 1.
    • Set rtc_custom_time to a value in seconds past the Unix Epoch as provided by the Linux date command—for example:
      • date -d "2010-07-13 23:00:00" is Tue Jul 13 23:00:00 EDT 2010.
      • date -d "2010-07-13 23:00:00" +%s provides the value in seconds: 1279076400.
      • Thus, set rtc_custom_time = 1279076400.
    • Set rtc_system_time = 0.

Many thanks to trngaje for figuring out how to actually use the rtc_custom_time setting! This information probably also applies to the ‘DraStic Legacy (external)’ core (/opt/muos/share/emulator/drastic-legacy/config/), but I haven’t tested that.

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