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DS development > Maximum Program / Game File Size

#165092 - MaesterRowen - Tue Dec 09, 2008 8:04 pm

Good afternoon everyone,

I am fairly new to the Nintendo DS Homebrew scene. I have been programming for a few years off and on as my interests circle around.

Anyway, I've done a bit of searching around and I haven't had much luck finding an answer to a curiosity I have.

What is the maximum file size a homebrew game can be? To me, it seems 4mb would be the max due to the RAM available in the DS and the limit of code the DS can load in.

Am I wrong on this? Seems commercial games are 128 MB + how do they swing this?

Thanks guys!

#165099 - Chase-san - Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:25 pm

They load data/graphics/music from rom, they don't store it all in ram. Look into gbfs, efslib, nitrofs, and so on. IMHO efslib is the best of the lot.

#165102 - MaesterRowen - Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:37 pm

Appreciate it. I will definitely look into it.

#165103 - silent_code - Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:41 pm

You have a restricted program size (that means the executable binary part of the rom cannot exceed - I think it was - 2.5MB), but the whole game, with an embedded file system, can be pretty much "any" size (well, not really, but it is more than 128MB).
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