A bit of fun - TTLG Forums

Al_B on 18/11/2008 at 23:34

As a bit of background, I got a DS recently. Good fun, bought a load of games for it but it got me thinking about Arm programming. Only one thing for it :):

Inline Image:

http://i473.photobucket.com/albums/rr99/Al_Bro/uw2.jpg

So far - it's pretty slow. No objects, no interaction (other than movement) and nothing even remotely in the way of plot or conversations. All the rendering is in pure C++ with a fair bit of floating point which causes quite a bit of slowdown.

Very much a work in progress - if anyone has a DS and the means to play around with homebrew then feel free to drop me a PM. I'm not going to promise that this will develop to much quickly but it's fun to browse the UW2 levels from a hand-held device.

twisty on 18/11/2008 at 23:49

Awesome. I love the idea; though I don't have a DS.

What would you do about the interface though? Could it work on a DS?

Al_B on 19/11/2008 at 00:00

Well, so far the arrow keys on the left allow you to look and move around. The X and B buttons allow you to move up and down and Y/A allow you to jump left and right by one square. The two rear trigger buttons do nothing... yet.

It's all just development stuff at the moment as I'm extremely green as far as this platform goes and I'm still undecided between manual rastering vs the inbuilt 3d stuff.

As far as the user interface is concerned, it could be done. The bottom screen has a touch screen interface and the bottom and top screens can be swapped as desired. You could keep the inventory / options on the bottom screen normally but allow this to be swapped with the 3d view on a key press when you wanted to pick up an item (or for talking / combat). Not sure if that would be confusing - but I might mock something up to try it anyway.

Shadowcat on 19/11/2008 at 22:44

Very cool :)

Al_B on 21/11/2008 at 22:04

Right - I've done a couple of updates / speed improvements but it's still pretty slow at the moment. I suspect there aren't many here which run homebrew DS software but there are then get the software from (http://bearcity.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/uw2ds.nds) uw2ds.nds

That is only the executable - I'm not including any original UW2 data since that's still under copyright. For it to work the executable needs to be able to find the texture file and level file.

On real hardware with a flash card, create the directory "\uw2\data" and drop the two files "lev.ark" and "t64.tr" into it from an installed uw2's data directory. I've only tried it with a R4 SD adapter but there were no problems.

If you want to have a play with an emulator then you will need to jump through a few hoops first - it's a bit of a pain to do and I'll leave instructions if people are interested.

Basic controls:

Arrows: Movement and rotation
X / B: Raise / Lower height
Y / A: Look up and down
Left shoulder button: Swap top and bottom screens (not useful yet - but will be useful when using the stylus in future)
Right shoulder button: Change level. It will go though a sequence of ten levels or so before starting back at the first. Most times you'll start a level staring a brick (or blackrock) wall - just turn around

Any problems - I'm very interested to hear about. All responsibility for smoke coming out of your DS or the wifi link microwaving your cat is at your own risk.

Skizomeuh on 24/11/2008 at 17:19

This... This... This is really awesome someone finally tries a port ! :thumb:

You probably know these sites but I suggest you to head over (http://forum.gbadev.org/viewforum.php?f=23) GBAdev.org or (http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=27) DCemu if you're searching for help of the homebrew community.

I'm going to try it now. I'll give you feedbacks...

You're making my day better man ! Keep up the good work !

Renzatic on 4/12/2008 at 23:44

If you can even come within a stones throw of a half complete build, I will be your best friend forever and name my first born Albert Bee in your honor.

Keep up the great work. :thumb:

Al_B on 6/12/2008 at 21:59

Thanks for the encouragement, but I'm not going to call it a remake just yet since that's pretty much the kiss of death for any project around here.

I'm actually going to concentrate on some of the more 'mundane' stuff first such as object management, user interface and conversations / interactions before worrying about graphics or sound.

eddy on 7/12/2008 at 09:28

Are you using the original game data files or are you redoing the media?
If you reuse the original data it would be nice if you could share any knowledge from reverse engineering the game, as I'm working on something similar:
(http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=122228&page=2)

Al_B on 7/12/2008 at 10:06

Definitely using the original game files, and of course I'll share anything new I find. In fact, as part of this I plan to update my editor to .net (from an old and cronky version of Borland C++ Builder) as it is useful when inspecting / decyphering levels.