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 > Noob looking to start developing...where to start?

#82859 - SPiercey - Wed May 10, 2006 9:42 pm

First I must say hi, and thanks to all those who help me out here. Anyways I'm looking into developing some games for the DS, this is going to be a project for a computer tech course I am taking and I have no idea where to start. I read about all kinda of different programs and people saying there the best but I am completly lost.

I have devkitpro and PAlib downloaded now but I can't find any decent tutorials, I've tried useing the PAlib wiki but it's kinda confusing I can get text on the screen but thats about it, I can use the examples for spirtes and get that working but it dosn't really tell you how to do your own. Is there any tutorials that go step by step on how to do different things like what folders to put everything like sperits and stuff in and not just say this is how you do this(like the wiki does)?

Also is PAlib the best thing to use for developing, I'm thinking of makeing a side scroling plateform game and maybe a fighting game.

Someone please point me in the right direction.

#82864 - josath - Wed May 10, 2006 10:16 pm

try this:
http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?p=69560#69560

a lot of people don't recommend using PA_lib. try the doublec tutorials.

#83185 - TheCatPhysician - Sat May 13, 2006 11:37 pm

josath wrote:

a lot of people don't recommend using PA_lib. try the doublec tutorials.

Just wondering, what is wrong with PA_lib? I'm just starting developing DS stuff too, and I've been using PA_lib. Are PA_lib users limited somehow? I want to know before I get far into it.

#83189 - waruwaru - Sun May 14, 2006 12:53 am

TheCatPhysician wrote:
josath wrote:

a lot of people don't recommend using PA_lib. try the doublec tutorials.

Just wondering, what is wrong with PA_lib? I'm just starting developing DS stuff too, and I've been using PA_lib. Are PA_lib users limited somehow? I want to know before I get far into it.


I am using PA_lib, and I like it. You can start pretty quickly using it. The older version does produce some bloated codes, and you have less control over where and how your data are loaded in VRAM for example. There are some issues if you switch between C and CPP. It's also a little difficult to integrate something like wifi lib into your project since PA_Lib has its own way of doing makefile/arm7 codes (PALib folks are working on the wifilib integration now). But since you get the source, I think it's a good place to start and learn. When you outgrow it, you can always replace/modify it with your own code. Mollusk is also very responsive to people's request/comments.
_________________
DSLua - a scripting language for your DS!

#83211 - zzo38computer - Sun May 14, 2006 3:01 am

C++ makes the compiled files too big
_________________
Important: Please send messages about FWNITRO to the public forum, not privately to me.

#83216 - TwinD - Sun May 14, 2006 3:51 am

zzo38computer wrote:
C++ makes the compiled files too big


l o l

#83223 - tepples - Sun May 14, 2006 7:35 am

zzo38computer wrote:
C++ makes the compiled files too big

I can vouch for that. At first, I wondered why my simplistic AXE program was so big, and then I looked at the map generated by 'nm' and found a whole bunch of stuff relating to I/O and response to uncaught exceptions. I remembered that turning off support for type reflection (RTTI) and exceptions can save a lot of space, but I didn't want to (CENSORED) around with that at the moment. So I just switched the files from the C++ language to the C99 language.

Also, I've been finding lately that optimization level -O2 is a better time-space tradeoff than -O3. My port of Toast (used in GSM Player and Luminesweeper for GBA) compiled with -O2 on GCC 4.x is about as fast as the same code compiled with -O3 on GCC 3.x, and -O3 on GCC 4.x makes code a lot bigger.
_________________
-- Where is he?
-- Who?
-- You know, the human.
-- I think he moved to Tilwick.

#84598 - pollier - Tue May 23, 2006 4:40 pm

Have you tried -Os and seen any significant differences from -O2?

/just got a DS, is planning to get into DS dev Real Soon Now(TM)