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Coding > Rapid Prototyping

#163110 - sgeos - Mon Sep 22, 2008 7:19 pm

What is the best rapid prototying development environment for the DS at this point? I'm looking to create a throwaway prototype on the DS. I do not care what the language is, although I'm ideally looking for something higher level than C or C++.

#163269 - strat - Sun Sep 28, 2008 1:10 am

I guess if you want to make DS software quickly, libnds is the only way to go. I even tried bypassing the lib by making my own i/o interface, starting with the FIFO and touchscreen and moving on to 3D hardware (I already did my own for GBA, so the 2D graphics is only a small learning curve). Got a draw on touchscreen program working without libnds, but after doing the 3D hardware for a bit I was like screw this and just linked the semi-OpenGL stuff with the code I already did. It's easy to appreciate how thorough that lib is.

#163273 - crossraleigh - Sun Sep 28, 2008 8:38 am

Micro Lua

It may not fit your specific needs, I don't know, but I think it's great.

#163339 - strat - Tue Sep 30, 2008 12:24 am

Wow, I didn't even think about Lua. Is it easy to wrap Lua code in a C prog?

#163359 - sgeos - Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:14 pm

strat wrote:
Wow, I didn't even think about Lua. Is it easy to wrap Lua code in a C prog?

When targeting the PC, you can embed Lua in a C program with a couple lines of code, but if you want to interface between the two you need to write some glue code. Seeing as Lua is the canned embedded scripting language of choice, I suspect the same holds true for game consoles and ebedded systems as well.

crossraleigh wrote:
Micro Lua

It may not fit your specific needs, I don't know, but I think it's great.
Thanks. I am looking for something like this.
Tens of functions... How complete do you find the API?

I know there were some versions of BASIC for the GBA.
Is there anything like that for the DS, or is Micro Lua the best alternative?

#163379 - no2pencil - Wed Oct 01, 2008 2:35 am

sgeos wrote:

Tens of functions...

I believe that measurement was for the functions included in the update. My impression was this is not the now total number of functions available.
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-#2pencil