So these emulators are very special to me... the DS is a unique handheld that is perfectly suited for the systems with various controller options. The consoles and computers I had as a kid (young teen) are pretty much the Intellivision followed by ColecoVision and then an 800XL (the only other pre-PC system I had was an Atari ST), so I can tell you that I truly appreciate all the hard work which has gone in to these emulators. It's the attention to detail and usability which is the best feature here...
- Thread starter wavemotion
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I finally got some time to go back to my Nintellivision emulator to see how easily cheats could be added.
Turns out it's not too bad... took an hour just to get my head wrapped back around the 8-bit and 16-bit memory spaces here.
As a proof-of-concept, I was able to take the 'Starting Weapon' cheat for Treasure of Tarmin and poke in value 33h and you can see the (proper) result of a Platinum Crossbow at the very start of a game.
I plan on building out a full cheat-menu for a number of games which you can enable/disable various cheats using touch-screen check-boxes or similar easy toggle method. By default, all cheats are disabled but the ones you enable can be saved into your configuration on a per-game basis so they come back up as you desire.
I'm a little worried about the time-sink on this... it's cool and all, but I wonder if anyone would actually use such a feature!
(ignore the lower-touch-screen debugger graphic... that's just for me to play with... the normal overlay would show here of course)
Turns out it's not too bad... took an hour just to get my head wrapped back around the 8-bit and 16-bit memory spaces here.
As a proof-of-concept, I was able to take the 'Starting Weapon' cheat for Treasure of Tarmin and poke in value 33h and you can see the (proper) result of a Platinum Crossbow at the very start of a game.
I plan on building out a full cheat-menu for a number of games which you can enable/disable various cheats using touch-screen check-boxes or similar easy toggle method. By default, all cheats are disabled but the ones you enable can be saved into your configuration on a per-game basis so they come back up as you desire.
I'm a little worried about the time-sink on this... it's cool and all, but I wonder if anyone would actually use such a feature!
(ignore the lower-touch-screen debugger graphic... that's just for me to play with... the normal overlay would show here of course)
Nice to see some Nintellivision news. Speeking for myself, I will not use such a feature, I do not like cheats. I prefer the way the games are meant to be played.
Yeah, I'm the same way! However, 'cheat' is a strong word which I probably should have avoided... many of these are more like hacks which are slightly different. For example, there is an easy way to disable the background color changing in Astrosmash so it's always black. Some of the color choices are really hard on the eyes with regards to the color of falling rocks - and the black background always looks nice with solid contrast. So is that a "cheat" - not really... more of a quality of life improvement for some.
Still... I'm running out of things to improve so this was next on the list
Ok... made some good progress on this. Cheats are now read from an nintv-ds.cht cheat file and you can have up to 16 different cheats for each game. Added a menu item so you can enable them (all are disabled by default, of course).
New release: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/NINTV-DS
V3.6 : 24-May-2022 by wavemotion-dave
All cheats are disabled by default - and I decided you can't enable/save cheats on a per-game basis. So you'll have to re-enable them when you want to play around... this way we avoid anyone accidentally leaving a cheat/hack enabled.
V3.6 : 24-May-2022 by wavemotion-dave
- Added cheat support. Place NINTV-DS.cht into /data directory. See 'extras' folder.
All cheats are disabled by default - and I decided you can't enable/save cheats on a per-game basis. So you'll have to re-enable them when you want to play around... this way we avoid anyone accidentally leaving a cheat/hack enabled.
New release: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/NINTV-DS
V3.7 : 23-Dec-2022 by wavemotion-dave
V3.7 : 23-Dec-2022 by wavemotion-dave
- First pass at ECS style page flipping (aka bankswap). It only handles 3 pages deep so it's enough to play Major League World Series Baseball but not the more complex ECS-style homebrews (yet).
- Improved error handling with better messages on-screen to help diagnose problems with missing roms, roms that are too big/complex, etc.
- Cleanup across the board - reorganized memory to free up more resources for the future.
Good afternoon. I have the latest version of the emulator but it does not start on my console, only a white screen appears. From GitHub I got a fork (I don't know what it is) and it works, although I find that the sound in the games is not perfect. I am using a DSTWO SuperCard with a DSi XL. Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks for all your great emulators.
It may not be compatible with whatever you're using to launch the emulator.
Try using either nds-hb-menu or TWiLight Menu++ to launch it. With TWiLight Menu++ though, just launch the Intellivision ROM, and then the emulator will start alongside the ROM.
Sorry to hear! Is this 3.7c daily build? It seems to load fine on my R4i on my DS Lite. Anyone else have any data points? I did move memory around so maybe something has gone wonky. Any feedback (working or non working) is helpful debugging.
My tests, Dave :
V3.7c is broken on :
-DSlite + DSTWO
-DS fat + R4 clone
Works on both of them if launch via TWL++ for flashcard
DSi + TWL++ works too
V3.7c is broken on :
-DSlite + DSTWO
-DS fat + R4 clone
Works on both of them if launch via TWL++ for flashcard
DSi + TWL++ works too
Ok... good info!
Hate for things to be broken on Christmas
For some reason it's working on my DS-Lite with my R4-SDHC card with the stock menu... but I've got a clue that it might be the extra memory I tried to shift from the ARM7 to the ARM9... I've reverted that change and along with some other improvements have checked in 3.7d just now. Would appreciate a re-test by anyone that has time.
And hope you've all had a jolly good day!
Hate for things to be broken on Christmas
For some reason it's working on my DS-Lite with my R4-SDHC card with the stock menu... but I've got a clue that it might be the extra memory I tried to shift from the ARM7 to the ARM9... I've reverted that change and along with some other improvements have checked in 3.7d just now. Would appreciate a re-test by anyone that has time.
And hope you've all had a jolly good day!
Ok... good info!
Hate for things to be broken on Christmas
For some reason it's working on my DS-Lite with my R4-SDHC card with the stock menu... but I've got a clue that it might be the extra memory I tried to shift from the ARM7 to the ARM9... I've reverted that change and along with some other improvements have checked in 3.7d just now. Would appreciate a re-test by anyone that has time.
And hope you've all had a jolly good day!
V3.7d works again
Thanks Dave. Happy Xmas !
Yeah... it's only semi-working I've run out of memory on the DS-Lite/Phat. If you load like 5 or 6 games it will eventually crash out of memory. I can fix it more properly but it will take a day or so to sort out. Crash - I may send you a test version
I've run out of memory on the DS-Lite/Phat. If you load like 5 or 6 games it will eventually crash out of memory. I can fix it more properly but it will take a day or so to sort out. Crash - I may send you a test version
v3.7e works. Thank you.
Perhaps a tiny undetected issue. When there isn't any game loaded, the 'game/emulator info' option in the main menu does nothing, just hangs.
Perhaps a tiny undetected issue. When there isn't any game loaded, the 'game/emulator info' option in the main menu does nothing, just hangs.
Good catch! Yeah it’s trying to output some game info for a “NULL” game. I’ll fix that.
New release: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/NINTV-DS
V3.8 : 26-Dec-2022 by wavemotion-dave
- Improved memory handling so we don't run out of memory on the DS-Lite/Phat and no more crashes!
- ECS and extra cart RAM now in faster VRAM to improve performance.
- Fixed sound channels so that PSG + ECS + Intelivoice can all play nice together (mostly for World Series of Baseball)
- Improved .ROM parsing support - now checking the CRC integrity and properly parsing the compatibility tags so more games run with the right settings (Intellivoice or JLP or ECS, etc).
- New Game/Emulator Information screen to let you know if you are running in DS compatibility mode (less RAM, slower CPU) or DSi compatibility mode (more RAM and faster CPU).
- For the DSi or above we now support a much wider range of binary files (up to 512K) with page flipping.
- New menu to allow you to launch a game with specific hardware configurations. Use X to load the game instead of A (launch instructions are on-screen).
- Lots of small improvements and cleanup as time permitted.
Sorry for the mess that was 3.7... having not worked on this for most of the year, I had to knock some rust off! Version 3.8 should bring back a nice dose of stability and new features.
Last edited by wavemotion,
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