cquake, jfduke3d & dualHexen for DS Lite compatible with EZ3in1 via TWL++ & YSMenu ?

[Indy13]

Hi friends,

Okay, I know it's not cool to be the guy who asks for something, I'll take the risk of being that guy for a moment.

The first time I installed TWL++ was early last year, I did it on my R4, my Old3DS, my N3DS and on a friend's DSi. If I'm not talking nonsense, I believe that at the time support for memory expansion pak was not yet supported.

Today, TWL++ supports this device, and since then, a few emulators or ports (NitroSwan, C&C) have evolved to support this device.


I'm not going to beat around the bush, would it be possible to make jfduke3d, cquake and dualHexen evolve in the same way in order to benefit the DS Lite from these ports?


By passing the flashcard version of TWL++

-cquake already works well but maybe this will boost it a little more.

-dualHexen launches as well as its "Dark Citadels" mod but it crashes quite quickly with a "memory alloc" type message

-jfduke3d scans the game files at launch then it results in a black screen and nothing else.


So my question is for the following developers (and others of course), @elhobbs , @mrparrot2 , @FluBBa and @RocketRobz , do you think it would be possible to upgrade these ports and make them compatible with an EZ 3in1 in order to finally be able to benefit from them on DS lite/phat ?

Once again, sorry to be a drag by asking the question, but when I see dualHexen running, I tell myself that there's not much missing (at least in appearance)

Thank you in advance (even if just to say no, I have something else to do^^)

 

[elhobbs]

Hi friends,

Okay, I know it's not cool to be the guy who asks for something, I'll take the risk of being that guy for a moment.

The first time I installed TWL++ was early last year, I did it on my R4, my Old3DS, my N3DS and on a friend's DSi. If I'm not talking nonsense, I believe that at the time support for memory expansion pak was not yet supported.

Today, TWL++ supports this device, and since then, a few emulators or ports (NitroSwan, C&C) have evolved to support this device.


I'm not going to beat around the bush, would it be possible to make jfduke3d, cquake and dualHexen evolve in the same way in order to benefit the DS Lite from these ports?


By passing the flashcard version of TWL++

-cquake already works well but maybe this will boost it a little more.

-dualHexen launches as well as its "Dark Citadels" mod but it crashes quite quickly with a "memory alloc" type message

-jfduke3d scans the game files at launch then it results in a black screen and nothing else.


So my question is for the following developers (and others of course), @elhobbs , @mrparrot2 , @FluBBa and @RocketRobz , do you think it would be possible to upgrade these ports and make them compatible with an EZ 3in1 in order to finally be able to benefit from them on DS lite/phat ?

Once again, sorry to be a drag by asking the question, but when I see dualHexen running, I tell myself that there's not much missing (at least in appearance)

Thank you in advance (even if just to say no, I have something else to do^^)

Adding 3in1 support is possible, but it more complicated than just initializing and making the memory available. The memory does not support byte reads or writes - only 16 bit reads and writes. Not insurmountable but plenty of places where it can go wrong as the compiler can add byte reads/writes unexpectedly. I forget the details but I want to say you also need to disable the memory pack to read from the sd card.

 

[Indy13]

Thank you for your answer @elhobbs , I know that my question may seem stupid and no doubt you must have already thought about it but for example for cquake, is it not possible to simply add the part of the quakeds exram code which exploits the memory expansion pak?

cquake is really interesting from a compatibility point of view because combined with TWL++ it allows you to launch mods which usually do not work with quakeds exram, I am thinking in particular of Alien Quake

 

[elhobbs]

Thank you for your answer @elhobbs , I know that my question may seem stupid and no doubt you must have already thought about it but for example for cquake, is it not possible to simply add the part of the quakeds exram code which exploits the memory expansion pak?

cquake is really interesting from a compatibility point of view because combined with TWL++ it allows you to launch mods which usually do not work with quakeds exram, I am thinking in particular of Alien Quake

No. The memory in the expansion pack is not equivalent to more system memory. So no it is not that simple.

 

[Indy13]

Thank you for your reply @elhobbs

I had a whole mod testing session with cquake yesterday, I was able to notice (and this is normal) that on DS Lite, there was much less compatibility than on DSi, I suppose it must be linked to insufficient power (hardware).

However, cquake remains a great complement because besides it allows you to launch mods that do not work with quakeds exram and the fact of being able to select a mod without having to edit a .txt file is very pleasant.

 

[Nikokaro]

I had a whole mod testing session with cquake yesterday, I was able to notice (and this is normal) that on DS Lite, there was much less compatibility than on DSi, I suppose it must be linked to insufficient power (hardware).

Hi @Indy13 , how are you doing? If I remember correctly, you had recently bought a used DSi, or am I wrong? Why don't you play the various mods there?
The more ram available (16MB) makes it more suitable for playing these FPSs with their respective custom expansions (maps, mods, episodes etc.).

I recently asked elhobbs if he would like to try to port JFShadowWarrior (whose source code is freely available) to DSi, but unfortunately for us (or fortunately for him) he is too busy with his work life. Hopefully for the near future, maybe by the time he retires.

 

[Indy13]

Hi @Nikokaro , I'm fine, hope your well too

I actually had a DSI in my hands a few months ago but it was that of a friend, that said, I also have a few 3DS (old & new) so it's true that I will be able to do with it these consoles.

But as I said in the TWL++ thread, what I'm mainly trying to do is test the limits of the ds lite and see how it is possible to install as many things as possible on this version of nds .

I know it may seem ridiculous but the ds lite is really my favorite console, with a dstwo(+), I can run more than 65 systems and with the recent developments offered to us by the developers on the forum these two In recent years, I have managed to get close to this result with a simple R4 and an EZ Flash 3in1 and that is a bit the goal of my tests: how to make as many things work as possible with a minimal and fairly old configuration .

I know this must seem like a waste of time but to me I think it is important that checking compatibility on older consoles like the ds lite can help keep that console in the running.

Or (this just crossed my mind) I'm a crazy obsessive guy, I'll have to talk to my therapist about it

 

[Jayro]

Instead of making them 3-in-1 compatible, I'd settle for just RAM Pak compatible. And why isn't Doom/Heretic/Hexen a thing on DS from Slot 1? Seems like a day-1 homebrew tbh. Throw in RAM Pak expansion support, and you're good to go. An extra 4MB to 8BM goes a long way on the DS.

 

[Nikokaro]

I know it may seem ridiculous but the ds lite is really my favorite console

Actually, I am also particularly fond of my pink DS Lite. Unfortunately, as time goes by, I struggle more and more to read certain dialogues in those microscopic fonts, especially about certain DS rpg games. In other words, I'm getting older.

 

[mrparrot2]

Adding DS expansion pak suport is unfortunatelly *not* that straightfoward due to the following reasons:

1- Writes must be 16-bit length.
2- There is no malloc/free implementation (at least that I know) that supports it.

I wonder if we could do something so that adding support for the expansion pak comes with a low effort cost for the developer, with the downside of a performance decrease. Here is my idea:

1- Patch GCC so that it transforms write8 instructions into a read8/write16 instructions in compile time. In this case a simple code recompilation would make it safe to write into the expansion pak. This certainly would impact performance negatively.
2- Provide an extra implementation of newlib's malloc/free using the address of the expansion pak as a Heap.

Now I don't know how the ARM9 cache would behave in this case, and of course there is the problem of having only either ARM9 or ARM7 reading from the expansion pak, but not both. Sound support would most likely still require some bike-shedding for the software to work correctly, but hey, it is something!

 

[Jayro]

I wish DS DOOM and Hexen could be recompiled to not need the 3-in-1, still support RAM expansion packs like the official web browser one, and just run from a slot-1 card. I'd do it myself if I knew how to code, but I can't.

 

[Nikokaro]

I wish DS DOOM and Hexen could be recompiled to not need the 3-in-1, still support RAM expansion packs like the official web browser one, and just run from a slot-1 card. I'd do it myself if I knew how to code, but I can't.

Why don't you buy yourself a used DSi? Can you find them easily in your country? In mine you can easily find them for 30 or 40€. I recommend it: you could comfortably play all the old dos FPS games and various user levels/wads/expansions.

 

[Jayro]

Why don't you buy yourself a used DSi? Can you find them easily in your country? In mine you can easily find them for 30 or 40€. I recommend it: you could comfortably play all the old dos FPS games and various user levels/wads/expansions.

I have two DSi XLs.

 

[Nikokaro]

I have two DSi XLs.

Then why don't you play Hexen, Heretic, Doom, Quake from SD slot of your DSis? Personally, the XL versions have too coarse and pixelated graphics for my taste, so I prefer a regular DSi.