Here's some good news if you thoroughly enjoyed Simon Hall's release of the DS port of id Software's Quake FPS. The dev has recently announced that he's finished work on the pre-release build of a DS port for Quake II. Details regarding Hall's recent achievement are in the full article.

Download: Quake II DS Prerelease 1

Nintendo DS coder Simon Hall wowed a lot of people almost a full year ago when he released software capable of running the DOS version of classic FPS Quake on the popular handheld. Today, Hall's QuakeDS release 3 has officially been launched and it has the full game features with Wi-Fi play being the most notable.

Hall says it took an insane amount of time and a lot of help from friends to create this third release, but it's ready now and the fruits of their hard labor is ready for everyone to enjoy.

These are the changes in the third release of Simon Hall's Quake DS as taken from the readme:

• The game now supports the RAM available from certain slot-2 flash cards in order to obtain near-perfect compatibility with Quake mods and total conversions. Everything I've tried works correctly, however some mods overload the DS' GPU and stuff starts to disappear...
  
•  Rendering performance has improved by ~30%
  
• In game performance has improved by ~20%
  
• All graphical effects are now drawn, included animated sprites (for explosions), and particles (eg for blood)
  
• 99% of texture maps are rendered correctly
• The sky box is now rendered correctly
  
• GUI corruption has been fixed
  
• Animated skins are now supported
  
• The on-screen keyboard has been improved
  
• Eight user-configurable quick-access touch buttons have been added
  
• Pen sensitivity has been fixed and view snap disabling a la GLQuake has been added
  
• QuakeC compatibility has been enhanced
  
• Command line (through qdsopts.txt) is now easier
• Sound corruption has been fixed
  
• Console corruption has been fixed
  
• Cut scenes and 'intervals' have been cleaned up
  
• 'freeing precaches' bugs have been fixed
  
• Improved support for the second Quake Mission Pack: Dissolution Of Eternity
• More fixes to little bugs
  

If this is your first time to encounter QuakeDS, you may also want to follow the Source link to the Quake DS page.f There's a lot of useful information there on how to get started and get the most out of your Quake experience on the Nintendo DS. The download link below contains three zipped files -  release 3, the source, and the binary. Enjoy!

Download: Quake DS release 3

Among the more lucrative homebrew gaming projects we've been picking up on for the DS scene, one that's been exceptionally exciting to watch is Simon Hall's upcoming QuakeDS game. Aside from the recent pre-release we hosted earlier, the author announced a new pre-release version for Quake DS's WiFi build, which now carries support for an on-screen keyboard keyboard. Here's a gist of what this new feature does:

QuakeDS pre2a has a built-in on-screen keyboard, to allow you to press more buttons than there are physical buttons on the DS. It can be overlaid on the subscreen by binding a button to the 'osk' command. To bind the button, either go to the key configurations menu and set up 'on screen keyb' (about half way down) or just add a line like bind "PAD A" "osk" to your config.cfg file. Once you've bound the button, just press it to see and use the keyboard.

That's just the rough on this latest game update, which was helped along by AgentQ's ScummVM Ds project. Given that much work (and complicated coding) went into building this new feature in - not to mention in the absence of a README - we strongly advise curious users to visit Simon Hall's site (via source link) for the long list of details. Enjoy the download!

Download: QuakeDS WiFi build with onscreen keyboard

A few months ago, DS homebrew coder Simon Hall surprised us with his first pre-release of a Quake port for the Nintendo DS. And even if this release was admittedly rough, we imagine other developers and DS owners out there loved the idea, and had the best hopes for this project.

With that in mind, we bring an update to Simon's ongoing work with Quake DS, which includes a second pre-release package, and this extensive changelog:

• faster rendering
• vertex lighting and light animations (proper lightmapping may be in the next build)
• Alias model texturing
• proper timebase, so no variable speed
• a crosshair and a HUD
• the Quake font (or whatever font is available in the mod you're playing)
• a nearly-proper sky
• sky, water, lava, sludge animations
• full control configuration
• game save saving/loading
• every level works - I have played from beginning to end with no crashes or thrashing
• wifi network play, via an access point (build coming in a few days after more testing)
• adequate support for mods/TCs in this build - full compatibility in the EXRAM build (coming in a few weeks)
• much improved sound system on the ARM7 (no music yet...)
• transparent water support via r_novis or VIS'ed maps
• hardware fogging for a light depth cue, or thick fog for underwater
• LOADS more little things (eg the end-of-episode finale messages)

Normally, we'd advise users to just pore over the README files for extra details. Given the level of complication this game has, however, we also strongly advise users to check out Simon's site over at drunkencoders for full game details, and to see what sort of lessons they can learn from the programmer. Also make sure to check out the developer's source codes for extra pointers. Enjoy the download! 

Download: Quake DS pre-release 2
Download: Quake DS pre-release 2 source codes

How badly would you like for the FPS-hitmaker Quake to head on over to your DS, eh? Bad enough for you to want it right now? Well if that's the case, then your lucky stars must be out tonight and growing ever more brightly. That's because your wish has been granted. Look what we found over at drunkencoders.com. It's an honest to goodness brewed Quake DS Prerelease 1!

Cool, eh? Now, the port began development in mid-October of last year, and now, it is ready to quake your world. Well, almost. Nonetheless, Simon J Hall has already got it running on his handheld, so we know for sure it's only gonna take just a little more time before it's all down to pat.

Oh, and you better stay tuned for Quake2DS. We're pretty sure he's already got something up his sleeves for it. To check out what else is up, click on the Read link below.

Here are some of the important stuff you have to know about Quake DS:

The game

• the program, working state and game data have been squeezed into the four megabytes of main memory

• it requires either shareware or commercial pak files, Amiga and PC paks have been successfully used

• total conversions and mods should work, assuming they respect the tiny memory size

• networking currently has been removed, but will return at a later date

Check out the rest of them info at Full Article!

Download: [quakeds_180207_pre1]
Download: [quakeds_source_180207_pre1]

Here's one homebrew application for the hardcore DS developer - DS Debugger v0.11. As the name says, the app allows developers to interactively debug their applications running on a real Nintendo DS. Created by Simon Hall, the app initialises the network, connects to the PC-side stub and installs the breakpoint-catching code. A function needs to be added to a timer or into a main update loop which polls for commands from the PC-side stub. This picks up commands to add breakpoints or read memory from the PC. Without this function, breakpoints can't be set.

On the PC-side stub, a Java application translates the complex commands from the GNU debugger (GDB) into simple operations which the DS stub can execute. The Java stub relays messages from the DS to GDB when things like breakpoints or illegal memory accesses occur.

If you're new to this sort of thing, you really have to go over the readme file. It's a long read but you'd feel better after knowing how the app works. If you already know how it works and you're just rarin' to test the app, here's a list of what it can do:

• suspend the program at user-defined breakpoints
• step individual instructions, assuming the program has paused at a breakpoint
• step whole lines of source code
• inspect memory locations - and assuming a symbol table is present in the original ELF - variables and other structures can be read and their values can be changed
• inspect the state of all registers in the user ARM execution mode - including the program counter, link register, stack pointer and status register
• evaluate all types of ARM branch and condition instructions, allowing you to follow the execution of code properly in most circumstances
• It has a blacklist function, which defines which functions shouldn't be stepped into (when a b/bl/bx instruction is encountered). This is useful to prevent the debugger from stepping inside itself, or functions used by the debugger. If you do step into the debugger, it will probably get into an endless loop and hang.
• It can break on invalid memory access, signalling a SIGBUS message to the host debugger.
• It can break when an invalid instruction is executed - this signals a SIGILL message to the host debugger.
• Both these exceptions destroy the original instruction in memory, so if you read the original opcode back from DS memory you'll get the breakpoint stub opcode instead. To get the real opcode, disassemble the ELF instead. If there's demand for having the real opcode left in memory I'll make the changes required to fix this.
• with minimal work, it ought to be able to co-exist with applications which use sgstair's wireless library

Of course, as this is a work in progress app, there are things it can't do (the readme file has the complete list), but I'm pretty sure Simon is keen on releasing updates in the future.

Download: [Wireless Debugger v0.11 for DS]