gbadev.org forum archive

This is a read-only mirror of the content originally found on forum.gbadev.org (now offline), salvaged from Wayback machine copies. A new forum can be found here.

DS development > size of DS games

#37046 - assassda - Sat Mar 05, 2005 5:22 pm

i was wondering whether or not i should buy a gba flash card (most likey x-rom 512 mb) because i thought some or maybe even most ds games wont fit on it once a commercialized passthrough is made

so what size are the games that are out so far?

#37047 - tepples - Sat Mar 05, 2005 5:33 pm

As for homebrew DS games:
The Tetris clone is well under 8 Mbits. You can expect a lot of games to be smaller than 32 Mbits, given that 32 Mbits is the size of the Nintendo DS's RAM.

As for commercial games:
If you buy a GBA flash cart now, buy it for GBA games. There's no guarantee that commercial Nintendo DS games will ever be able to run on the passthrough.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#37058 - assassda - Sun Mar 06, 2005 12:48 am

tepples wrote:
There's no guarantee that commercial Nintendo DS games will ever be able to run on the passthrough.

at this point id say its extremely likely

someone told me metroid was 64 MB, too bad DF left hed know metroid and mario

#37062 - MumblyJoe - Sun Mar 06, 2005 2:38 am

Yeah, I wouldn't expect any commercial games (or anything that size, I don't want to assume you are going to break the law) to be playable using a passthrough. As for smaller items such as homebrew games, emulators, PDA tools or whatever else people design it should be enough.

Although there are some larger GBA flash cards around, some use tricks to be that large and I can't imagine them bieng of any use either.
_________________
www.hungrydeveloper.com
Version 2.0 now up - guaranteed at least 100% more pleasing!

#37063 - PhoenixSoft - Sun Mar 06, 2005 2:55 am

assassda wrote:
tepples wrote:
There's no guarantee that commercial Nintendo DS games will ever be able to run on the passthrough.

at this point id say its extremely likely

someone told me metroid was 64 MB, too bad DF left hed know metroid and mario


Metroid is 16MB / 128Mb.

#37076 - ampz - Sun Mar 06, 2005 12:36 pm

MumblyJoe wrote:
Yeah, I wouldn't expect any commercial games (or anything that size, I don't want to assume you are going to break the law) to be playable using a passthrough. As for smaller items such as homebrew games, emulators, PDA tools or whatever else people design it should be enough.

Although there are some larger GBA flash cards around, some use tricks to be that large and I can't imagine them bieng of any use either.

256Mbit is directly adressable.
Anything above that requires bank switching. It should not be a problem as long as the bank switching registers are known.

#37092 - Darkain - Sun Mar 06, 2005 9:30 pm

for playing commercial games, it WONT work. it has nothing to do with filesize, but it has to deal with memory addressing. the DS games are specifically trying to read data from the DS cart slot, and without the proper data/code there, the game will fail.
_________________
-=- Darkain Dragoon -=-
http://www.darkain.com
DarkStar for Nintendo DS

#37093 - ector - Sun Mar 06, 2005 9:39 pm

It wouldn't be too hard to come up with patches though, just look at how you can stream games via the BBA on the gamecube by patching the disc access API:s to read over the network.

#37094 - MaTiAz - Sun Mar 06, 2005 9:50 pm

ector wrote:
It wouldn't be too hard to come up with patches though, just look at how you can stream games via the BBA on the gamecube by patching the disc access API:s to read over the network.


Just like passthroughs patch the header to load code from GBA slot in the ds ;)