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DS Homebrewers, how do I get started?

E

Ecrofirt

Member
I had a nice discussion last night with sp0rsk and Wario64 about getting my DS to play homebrew stuff off of a GBA flash cart. I know I'll need a flash cart, and a PassMe.

I'd like to get involved with DS programming though, or at least tinker with it. Anyone know what I need to get started with that? Are there development kits out, or what?

Anyone with any info is a godsend.

AND LET'S PLEASE NOT TURN THIS DISCUSSION INTO A PIRACY CHAT. I JUST GOT BACK FROM BEING BANNED, AND I DON'T WANT TO GO BACK.

PLEASE, NO MORE MENTION OF FLASHCARTS, PASSME, OR FLASHME. I KNOW THIS ALREADY.
 
You may want to wait foor that 4 gig video player thing coming out soon. It's expensive, but since it's made for the DS it might be a breakthrough on playing homebrew software.
 
pictochat's only limit is your IMAGINATION

who needs homebrew when you can draw crude pictures of link sans tights
 
So you can play DS software by means of the GBA slot? You'd think Nintendo would have locked that "feature" after the rampant GBA piracy...
 
Note: I don't have a DS yet. My getting further along with this is going to depend on whether or not DS Lite can easily be modified to play homebrew stuff.

And Thaedolus, you need a PassMe/PassMe2 or WifiMe to get the DS to play homebrew through the GBA slot. It won't just play the software on its own.
 
Passme about $15
Prcies of flash carts vary enormously but I can recommend EZ Flash II Advance kits which I think cost a bit more than $100
 
It's fairly simple, i tried it out a bunch last summer, haven't done anything on the DS since though.

I suggest you head over to the gbadev.org forums and look at the DS section.

www.drunkencoders.com was a great site, don't know if its still around.
 
I have the EZ Flash III and love it. All I'm missing to access DS homebrew is a $15 passme?? I thought I needed a new, different, special cart...
 
if you want to do this get either a Supercard (probably the best compatibility), or GBA Movie Player (not as much will work but most does and by far cheapest). no reason to get a regular flash cart anymore.
 
I don't need to know about what hardware to get. I've already got a GBA flashcart that will work fine for DS homebrew stuff.

I'm just lookig for the best dev tools and whatnot. koam seems to have given a good source. Other stuff is always appreciated.
 
Ecrofirt said:
I don't need to know about what hardware to get. I've already got a GBA flashcart that will work fine for DS homebrew stuff.

I'm just lookig for the best dev tools and whatnot. koam seems to have given a good source. Other stuff is always appreciated.
Click to expand...

Well you'll need the devkit and the libnds.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro

You should find them there.
 
OK, so what do I need? DevkitARM and libnds? I've also heard about PA_Lib.

And the drunkencoders page says I can use Visual Studio. Any idea how I go about setting it up to work with VS?
 
Drinky Crow said:
step #1: buy a psp
Click to expand...
catdance.gif
 
Can anyone recommend a good flash cart for the GBA and DS? I've heard good things about EZ Flash III, Flash2Advance and G6Flash carts. I know the G6Flash carts can play both GBA and DS games, what about the others?
 
can we please, please, please, PLEASE, not talk so much ablot flash carts in this thread? If you're reslly concerned about them, please make a thread about them for yourself. I don't want this topic derailed by people asking about flash carts, and I don't want it getting locked because it gets too close to piracy discussion.
 
First of all you need to be able to program C++ because all of these homebrew games etc are made with that.

then check out gbadev.org - there is a forum with tricks and tips for beginners.

and of course you need a passme and a flashcard, yes. m3 would be usable for what you wanna do!
 
Doing the actual C++ Programming isn't going to be a problem for me. I can do that without problems.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to set up Visual Studio to be my IDE for DS development. The drunkencoders page says you can do it, but I can't find anythnig about how to actually set it up.
 
Mejilan said:
I have the EZ Flash III and love it. All I'm missing to access DS homebrew is a $15 passme?? I thought I needed a new, different, special cart...
Click to expand...
well, you only really need the passme once... you just use it to flash the flashme bios mod to your ds, then you're set... and you can even disable that warning splash screen at bootup
 
Ecrofirt said:
I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to set up Visual Studio to be my IDE for DS development. The drunkencoders page says you can do it, but I can't find anythnig about how to actually set it up.
Click to expand...


check out http://www.nocturnal-central.com

it's not directly for DS programming but it's a fantastic development environment for GBA programming. I guess to start it doesnt much matter if you start with GBA or DS games.
 
Drinky Crow said:
step #1: buy a psp
Click to expand...
step #2: realize the psp has the worst dpad in the history of videogames, which makes most of its games better to look at than to play. Step #3: keep the psp as a media player and buy a DS. Then you're back to your homebrew question.
 
I went and checked out my demo, i didn't realize I was that far into the dev.

I made a game called touchis, which is a touch version of tetris. It's nothing like the version Nintendo is working on though. You basically use the bottom screen to create your pieces which will then appear on the top screen. There's obviously more to it than that but I never finished it. I probably don't have much coding left but I stopped because I didn't have a way to test it on a real DS and the emus weren't advanced enough back then.
 
supercard is your best friend + flash your DS firmware

it costs only 50 bucks, and you slot in your compact flash card or SD card (depending on the supercard version) .

dont be fooled with those EZflash kits etc.. they are only 256mbit (yes BIT so divide by 8! )
 
I've been looking over all this stuff, and right now it seems like it's too complicated for me to want to put the time into development. Ugh.
 
Even if you're not considering coding for it, at least you can play the port of Delphine's Flashback! Oh yeah...
 
Well the thing is, I'd really like to code for it. I've got some stuff in mind that would probably work well on the system.

I'm just reading through all the setup info and whatnot, and it's all just a little too out there for me. The drunkencoders site mentioned that you could use the Visual Studio as the compiler, but I've found not mention of how to set it up so it works. Here's what I'm talking about:
drunkencoders.com DS Tools page said:
Tools: Compilers
-------------------------------------------
GCC -- Devitkit ARM

This is the compiler of choice. You need this to begin development on the GBA or the DS.
Offsite links; http://sourceforge.net/projects/devkitpro

http://www.devkit.tk

-------------------------------------------

Visual Studio

This is in my opinion the best IDE out there, and free if you dont mind beta copies. It is very easy to build DS and GBA demos from this IDE.
Offsite links; http://lab.msdn.microsoft.com/express/
Click to expand...

then I'm looknig at the stuff for compiling NDS stuff and it's all makefiles and stuff.
 
I haven't really coded on VS for the past 2 years or so. But isn't makefile supposed to create a VS project with all the settings ready to just do the damn build?

Edit: I remember from Symbian programming I had to use makmake too, look into it...
 
You don't need VS for anything. And as far as I know, it's not the best option for building.

The way the Devkitpro folks set up tool chain, you basically code in whatever ide you want, mainly for syntax highlighting.

Then you have some gnu command line make tools for compiling. In the GBA days, you had to have makefiles etc, but with the DS, they've macro'd everything so it'll seek out your .c's and .h's etc.

Basically, go through the tutorials to set up the devkitpro tool chain, and grab a basic helloworld demo you can use as a starting point.
 
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