"General DS Programming" subforum?

[relminator]

Would it be possible to add that here? I mean this would be useful for questions like:

1. Would pure-virtual functions slow down my game significantly?
2. How do you use fixed-point math?
3. Hi newbie here, how do I start coding for the DS?
4. How much RAM does the DS have?
etc...

[fcg]

Being a newbie I second this, otoh maybe the influx of newbies will be overwhelming

/fcg

[WinterMute]

These are things that are probably better answered in some kind of tutorial format rather than being put in a forum format. The questions aren't reallly newbie typical either they're more like the sort of thing that experienced programmers think newbies should be asking.

What I'd like to do is populate the wiki with guides for each console we support and try to arrange them for easy reference but the main thing that's been holding that back is a few more features that the toolchains should have. I think Programmer's Notepad should be replaced with CodeLite since the latter is actually cross platform and should help further flatten the programming environment across all the host systems we support. After that there's a bit of a need for some more tools for graphics conversion including things like sprite/map/world editors, sound effect generators/editors and some kind of music system based around maxmod. Right now there's still far too much messing around with formats that really aren't well suited to the DS.

[fcg]

Hi,

Does this:

What I'd like to do is populate the wiki with guides for each console we support and try to arrange them for easy reference but the main thing that's been holding that back is a few more features that the toolchains should have. I think Programmer's Notepad should be replaced with CodeLite since the latter is actually cross platform and should help further flatten the programming environment across all the host systems we support. After that there's a bit of a need for some more tools for graphics conversion including things like sprite/map/world editors, sound effect generators/editors and some kind of music system based around maxmod. Right now there's still far too much messing around with formats that really aren't well suited to the DS.

mean that you want to wait with populating the wiki in general or that you (as an individual) wont work with it until you've met your prerequisites?

I'm in the process of creating a first (extremely non-exciting) project in the purpose of getting started with ds-programming and to document all steps I go through to hopefully lower the threshold for others. I think it would be a good addition the wiki, but ofc if you prefer waiting with populating the wiki I'll wait too.

/fcg

[Jordan_Gray]

Being a newbie I second this.

At first, I agreed with fcg. But then, I realized that WinterMute was correct (as usual) by saying, basically, "No." However, he practically says that you can find instructions for coding "in some kind of tutorial", which I would love to find. If it will ever exist. If it does, and someone can point people to it (Or maybe a banner on the homepage?), that's great. Until then, us newer folk are stuck with posting basic questions on the forums, and would wholeheartedly agree with relminator's idea.

[Rexhunter99]

After that there's a bit of a need for some more tools for graphics conversion including things like sprite/map/world editors, sound effect generators/editors and some kind of music system based around maxmod. Right now there's still far too much messing around with formats that really aren't well suited to the DS.

I don't want to excite anyone but I have a Maxscript for exporting models from 3dsMax to a generic multi-purpose model file format for the DS, and a small tool in the works that can convert a few common model formats to this same file format for the DS, as well as deal with textures of the 16-color, 256-color and 16-bit color variety. Also working on making sure that the tool points out any issues that may occur with the DS 3D if you use your model in it, like if the model will exceed the unit limit, or if the textures wont repeat properly and so on.

[WinterMute]

3DSMax is rather expensive though and not something most homebrewers have legal access to. Ideally I'd like to find a modelling package which is free or cheap and runs on linux, osx and windows - currently it seems that a lot of people use Blender.

Having said that I'm starting to come to the conclusion that these days it's no longer possible for a single person to produce a commercial quality game without help from designers, artists, musicians and other programmers. Unfortunately homebrewers like to try to do everything themselves but maybe it would help if there was some kind of standardised format for various data files useful to game developers. That way we could improve the workflow and avoid having preconverted data in examples, assuming tools exist for conversion.

[digithree]

There doesn't seem to be a subforum dedicated to the discussion of projects people are working on. Could one be created? I have a project I just put up on sourceforge I'd like to discuss here. What do ye think?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/sonicorbit/