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DS development > Creating a online rpg for DS

#140010 - Relfos - Wed Sep 12, 2007 6:47 pm

Hi there. I've recently adquired a DS and i'm going to start doing some stuff for it. I'm thinking about the possibility of developing an online 3d RPG for it.
Do you think its something able to be done?

The facts:
-I'm currently working in a team that is developing a freeware online RPG for Windows/Linux (The main idea was to create a port of this game to the DS)
-I've about 8 years of programming/game dev experience, including working with limited resources (less RAM and cpu, like the DS)
-I've experience with OpenGL, and from what i've searched, it seems the DS uses something very similar

The questions:
- The current homebrew wifi libs allow connecting a DS to an server running in a PC?
- Is there some kind of limit in transfer or something, that would make a game like this not playable, because of the lag?
- I've read about the 2048 triangle limit per frame, but with some work we should be able squeeze the 3d models down. Any other factors that we should learn about, or that may simply render this project impossible?

Last edited by Relfos on Wed Sep 12, 2007 10:39 pm; edited 1 time in total

#140013 - tepples - Wed Sep 12, 2007 7:38 pm

Relfos wrote:
-I'm currently working in a team that is developing a freeware online RPG for Windows/Linux (The main idea was to create a port of this game to the DS)

A lot of "I wanna make an RPG" projects don't get off the ground because they don't have a prototype. The fact that you do have a prototype greatly improves your chance of succeeding.

Quote:
- The current homebrew wifi libs allow connecting a DS to an server running in a PC?

Yes. At least beup, NDSMail, and DSOrganize connect to public Internet servers.

Quote:
- Is there some kind of limit in transfer or something, that would make a game like this not playable, because of the lag?

In theory, the DS can transfer 2000 kilobits per second. So if your game is playable on a PC with 768 kbps DSL, there shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Quote:
- I've read about the 2048 triangle limit per frame, but with some work we should be able squeeze the 3d models down. Any other factors that we should learn about, or that may simply render this project impossible?

There is only 512 KiB of space for textures. One typical texture format is 15- or 16-color, where each texture is made up of an array of color indices, plus a palette translating color indices to RGB values. This means that if you use 64x64 pixel (N64 detail) textures, you can fit about 256 different textures in RAM.

And if some of your triangles can be combined into quads, you might be able to push it further. A planar, convex quad counts not as 2 triangles but as only 1.333 triangles.
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#140051 - nce - Thu Sep 13, 2007 1:16 am

Relfos wrote:
- I've read about the 2048 triangle limit per frame


2048 in theory. It's the maximum size of the buffer, but because of the clipping ( I read that here somewhere ) you are often under this limit. In a complet scene with 20 or so different textures, I can't display more than 1800 triangles ( It could be because of my stripper that don't work at his optimum but I'm around 5000 verts in this scene ( the maximum vert you can have is around 6000 ) )
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#140156 - Link_of_Hyrule - Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:32 pm

this sounds like a very interesting project is there a website or screen shot for your pc version?

#140163 - meshounah - Fri Sep 14, 2007 12:39 am

yeah i agree this sound very interesting keep us up to date
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#140236 - Relfos - Fri Sep 14, 2007 5:13 pm

Thanks for the aswers.
Yes, there's a website for the pc version, can be found here.
I had the idea of putting this on DS, since for pc there's lots of similar projects, altough not all show so much progress as this one.
It would be very cool to have a rpg that you can play online everywhere you go ;)

If you check the project website you can see we're going for a minimalist graphical aproach, but even this way, the graphics would have to suffer a major downgrade to make it run smoother on the DS.

Now, the next step is starting getting familiar with the sdk, doing some test demos with 3d and stuff, to see if this is a viable project.

I'm glad this project was taken seriously, and I'll try to keep you informed of the development progress :)

#140238 - jetboy - Fri Sep 14, 2007 6:07 pm

Relfos wrote:
the graphics would have to suffer a major downgrade to make it run smoother on the DS.


Sorry, but with the graphics you have now (screenshots), you can go to DS and there is still room for major upgrade.
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