devkitPro

I know PAlib is a no go, but what about Night Fox's Lib? The last update was this year which seems promising.

I'd like some reassurance that it's OK before jumping straight in and then having to go and unlearn everything when it gets deprecated like I did with PAlib.

It is nice to have some abstraction from direct VRAM banks and OAM, but is it really worth it?

Also, what are the alternatives to it?

Derrik wrote: I'd like some reassurance that it's OK before jumping straight in and then having to go and unlearn everything when it gets deprecated like I did with PAlib.

You'll never get that reassurance with anything not distributed by devkitPro. With any third party library you're dependent on it being updated along with our tools and libraries which can't be guaranteed.

Your best bet is to stick with libnds and write your own abstractions as necessary. If there are things missing in libnds you'd like to see then feel free to ask. I can't guarantee your suggestions will be implemented but if nobody asks then we don't know what people want and we're left with a bunch of fragmented libraries that make it harder for everyone.

It is nice to have some abstraction from direct VRAM banks and OAM, but is it really worth it?

In the long run, probably not - especially if you're using someone else's abstractions.

The trouble is, once you run into the limits of whatever abstraction you've chosen you're left with having to learn how the hardware works anyway.

Looking at Nflib it appears to be designed around a particularly awkward workflow. It's definitely an improvement over PALib but it's still not something I'd ever recommend using.