flips is the newer version of Lunar IPS. I think the patches are often smaller than the ones Lunar outputs and maybe that affects the compatibility somewhat.
Sorry if I'm derailing the thread here, but can anyone explain to me the benefit of any patching programs besides Lunar IPS - or patch formats besides IPS? The size of the files is so minuscule that that's clearly not a problem, so what's better about the others? The only thing I know is that BPS files will throw an error if the checksum doesn't match, which is nice, but not that big of a deal.
Given the IPS format is so damn simple - go to this part, put this many bytes in, here are the bytes, lather rinse repeat - I don't see why there's a need to change it. Sure, when you get to something above 16-bit, it might need to be more sophisticated (it supports 24-bit addresses, so I guess any file above 16MB is a problem), but for most of the hacking that goes on here, it seems perfectly satisfactory.
Again, sorry for derailing your thread, I just didn't see the need to clutter the forum up with a new thread on this point.

[mods: feel free to move this to a new thread, or let me know if that would be a better thing to do...]