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DS homebrew announcements > Rockbot 0.1 beta 4

#173341 - protomank - Fri Apr 02, 2010 11:54 am

This is a multi-platform game I am developing:

http://rockbot.upperland.net/

I've placed an experimental NDS build at:
http://rockbot.upperland.net/files/nds.rar

You need to place it at /Apps/Rockbot to run, hope it works for you guys.
Current DS port bugs include:
- no sound, once SDL_mixer do not work
- when holding left and pressing the jump button, it do not responde if you do not press a second or third time
- some small moving speed/adjustments
- can't run from anywhere

Any help is welcome, this is a open-source project. Thank you.
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

Last edited by protomank on Sun Apr 04, 2010 7:47 pm; edited 1 time in total

#173343 - Cid2Mizard - Fri Apr 02, 2010 12:07 pm

I don't find nds binary !
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#173345 - protomank - Fri Apr 02, 2010 12:36 pm

Well, try now, that I've finished the upload. There should be a game.nds and a data folder inside the rar file. (use winrar to decompress it).
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#173350 - Cid2Mizard - Fri Apr 02, 2010 3:38 pm

Crash my DS when i launch it on supercard DSOne
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#173351 - protomank - Fri Apr 02, 2010 3:41 pm

WoW O.O

It runs fine on my R4, maybe there is a problem with libFat in your cart :-(
It does show something before crashing?
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#173352 - Cid2Mizard - Fri Apr 02, 2010 4:03 pm

No nothing i launch and my DS shutdown, i go test it on ak2i

Edit : Crash on ak2i

What is the real root ?
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Last edited by Cid2Mizard on Fri Apr 02, 2010 4:08 pm; edited 1 time in total

#173353 - Sektor - Fri Apr 02, 2010 4:04 pm

It worked on my DS-X but at first I put the data folder in \data and it just powered off when I ran it with no error message. I then moved the data folder to \apps\rockbot\data\ and the game started. DS-X doesn't clear the VRAM before launching so there was garbage on the bottom screen but the top screen displayed fine. It currently doesn't fit entirely on the DS resolution but you know that.

The RAR has the folder structure \nds\data\ and includes sounds and mp3s that aren't currently used, so it makes it much larger than it needs to be. It would be better to have the required folder in there like \apps\rockbot\data and add argv support if it's not already there.
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#173354 - protomank - Fri Apr 02, 2010 5:04 pm

Greats tips, I'll try to clear the lower-screen somehow, and yes, in the hurry I did not removed the mp3. I actually hoped to use them later, but currently I have problemns with sound in Nintendo DS.

I'll also pack in zip (more common format) and place all the directories already inside it).

Thank you very much for testing, I am glad it worked for someone else in a different system than mine :D

Any complains/suggestions are welcome.
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#173355 - Sektor - Fri Apr 02, 2010 5:13 pm

Don't use zip. RAR is fine and compresses much better. I use 7-Zip for all my releases but that's not as popular as RAR yet.
_________________
GTAMP.com/DS

#173356 - vuurrobin - Fri Apr 02, 2010 5:14 pm

Quote:
\apps\rockbot\data\


the prefered location for data is /DATA/yourgame/, so /DATA/rockbot in your case. or you can use libfilesystem to include the data in the .nds file.

this keeps all the data of all homebrew games in 1 folder.
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#173357 - protomank - Fri Apr 02, 2010 5:23 pm

Thanks, I did not knew there was a standard directory.
I can't pack the data in the NDS file, because the game is meant to be editable by users, including it's graphic files :)
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#173392 - protomank - Sun Apr 04, 2010 3:26 pm

We just released the beta4 version, the DS version is currently a bit slow (thanks to debugging inside the code), but is playable.

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

Get it at:
http://rockbot.upperland.net/
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#173397 - Cid2Mizard - Sun Apr 04, 2010 5:30 pm

protomank wrote:
We just released the beta4 version, the DS version is currently a bit slow (thanks to debugging inside the code), but is playable.

[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]

Get it at:
http://rockbot.upperland.net/


It's unplayable, the player shoot but don't move !!!
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#173399 - protomank - Sun Apr 04, 2010 7:28 pm

Hum... I'll take a look, but for me, it works fine. Even my wife was able to finish it. Did you waited the "READY" message disappear? While it is showing, you can't move.
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#173401 - protomank - Sun Apr 04, 2010 7:48 pm

I just re-uploaded the file. Seems that I was using a old .nds file in the binary by mistake, I hope it works now :-(
Sorry.
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#174787 - protomank - Mon Jul 19, 2010 8:10 pm

I've updated the game. Now in version beta 6 it have sound (it is very low, but it's there) and music support. Please test and tell me if you have problems.

To install, just place the Apps folder in your root and then open the /Apps/Rockbot/Rockbot_NDS.nds.
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#174800 - Cid2Mizard - Tue Jul 20, 2010 3:16 pm

Don't works, crash my DS!!!!
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#174801 - protomank - Tue Jul 20, 2010 3:27 pm

What is your DS model and card?
I have a DS Lite with an old R4 card, maybe I can create a debug version, with on-screen information so we can solve this problem.

Most issues I've found, so far, are due to the Fat system not finding the data files.
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#174806 - Cid2Mizard - Tue Jul 20, 2010 9:49 pm

Supercard DS one
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#174809 - protomank - Wed Jul 21, 2010 12:36 am

Hum, it seems like doing two copies of the .nds file crashed it somehow!
Pprobally a bug in renaming it (on copy) in my scripts. Very strange, but I think I've fixed it, please re-download and test again:

http://rockbot.upperland.net/files/0.1/beta6/Rockbot_NDS_0.1b6.zip

If it works for you now, please tell me so I can announce it on my site, thanks.
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#174815 - Cid2Mizard - Wed Jul 21, 2010 8:00 am

protomank wrote:
Hum, it seems like doing two copies of the .nds file crashed it somehow!
Pprobally a bug in renaming it (on copy) in my scripts. Very strange, but I think I've fixed it, please re-download and test again:

http://rockbot.upperland.net/files/0.1/beta6/Rockbot_NDS_0.1b6.zip

If it works for you now, please tell me so I can announce it on my site, thanks.


Good works now, thx :)
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#175235 - protomank - Fri Oct 08, 2010 5:57 pm

Sadly, as the game progresses, supporting Nintedno DS fully is becoming very hard, so I have to start taking some decisions to keep the port alive:

- no sound effects for now. In other ports I load all wave files into memory to make fast to play them, instead of loading it each time, but the $MB RAM limit makes this very unlekely as we add more sounds.

- resolution will be set to 320x200. This mean that the screen will be scaled down to fit. It is ugly, but having to adjust every screen to fit in a lower resolution and cutting part of the screen is not good.

I plan to focus on supporting better Linux based devices such as GPX series (Wiz, Canoo, etc) and Dingoo, and try to port to XBox, so I'll have little time to the DS port. But maybe when Rockbot is more finished, I can space a month just to the DS port :)
_________________
Iuri Fiedoruk
http://rockbot.upperland.net

#175236 - DiscoStew - Fri Oct 08, 2010 6:53 pm

As others have said in different threads, if you plan to get anything running decently on the DS, then you'll need to base the engine on the DS. SDL is slow as everything is processed via software, and with the DS's 67Mhz (which drops to 33Mhz in comparison when not in cache, and then down to 8Mhz when dealing with worse-case scenarios of reading/writing non-sequential accesses in RAM), you won't get much out of it. Here's something that could help.

You could possible move the separate function calls of SDL into their own separate functions, so that if and when the time comes to move away from SDL, you won't have to go through all your code replacing every line of code associated with SDL. You'd just need to go to all functions calling single SDL functions, and replace them there, For instance...

Code:
void function_A( int a, int b, char c, ... );

void function_B( int a, int b, char c, ... ) { // This will replace function_A in your code
   function_A( a, b, c, ... );
}


function_A is called 100+ times throughout your code.
function_B is basically function_A. If function_A were to be removed so another function could take it's place, you'd have to replace each and every call to it. But, if you were to replace function_A with function_B early on, when the time comes to remove function_A, you'd only have to change the single call in function_B.
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