DS-Xtreme 4 Gbit in hand!

[kalimero]

I hope this cart has no slowdowns or longer loading times at all.
Games boot up instantly and there is absolutely no slowdown even in the Castlevania intro movie!
We have just tested it and it worked great. So did Ultimate Spiderman, Pokémon Dash...

You can only be sure, if you compare loading times to a real game with 2 DS'. And that's what i'm going to do with Mario & Luigi and a few other games.

But thanks for the info.

 

[Orc]

XTREMELY XCITED
for the review.

and crap I just bought a US Onyx DS lite, a G5 mouse and preordered NWN2 and Burning Crusade.

No monies.

EDIT: I lied. I'm not really that excited.

 

[Hanafuda]

can it do soft-reset back to the main menu, or is it necessary to reboot the console every time you want to change to a different game? I've been trying to get an answer to that on their official forum for two weeks.


edit: another one a lot of people would probably like to know (like me for instance, I'd like to know

) is whether its possible to import saves from other carts, particularly SC, M3, and G6.

 

[Costello]

Software reset isn't supported as it would require patching and thus breaking compatibility.

What about talkie-games in ScummVM DS, do they work?
I don't really know where to get it and where to download compatible games for it. Feel free to PM me if you want me to try!

QUOTECostello it's really nice that you're providing these "on the fly" information updates.
That said if it is detracting from your reviewing speed, STFU and get the pen to tha MF paper!!!

eheh thank you but shaun is writing the review. I'm trying things (homebrew, games, features...)

 

[PiNa]

What about battery life ? Is it any better?

Really looking forward to see the review online. You guys rock

 

[Costello]

We have just received it this morning, we couldnt test the battery life just yet

We will make sure to do proper tests soon although we can't afford to wait like 10 hours before posting the review. we'll amend the review later if there's anything important to say about battery life.

 

[pte]

What about trimming the roms? Any way to do that since it's important to be able to do it when dealing with 512MBs.

 

[Psyfira]

What was the point of this being a news article? You say the review's going up "this evening" anyway. Admittedly I know there's been a lot of pressure to get something up from certain forum goers (*cough*plants*cough*) in other threads this morning that can't be easy on you guys though. *Tsk* kids these days, got no concept of waiting have they?

*shakes her 22 year old grandma stick and goes back to her tea

*

 

[kalimero]

What about trimming the roms? Any way to do that since it's important to be able to do it when dealing with 512MBs.

Just use any Hex Editor you want or GBA Tool Advance.

Download: http://gbatemp.net/index.php?act=ST&f=13&t=4562
Tutorial: http://scdev.org/index.php?cat=info&tutorial=reduce_rom_size

 

[Freezard]

Looking forward to the review, looks like I will buy one of those or another new gen card.

 

[Monkey01]

Kewl, can't wait for the review.

Can you please add the following things I still like to know about the DS-X in the review?
- If you have a Slot 2 cartridge with horrible rom compatibility, but with SD card support. Can you do DS-X in Slot 1, Slot2 cartridge in Slot 2 and boot games from DS-X with good support? Or can you like move files between those 2 devices or something?
- Does it play movies? (And if so, .gbm or also normal formats?)
- And I'm quite interested in the skinning stuff, can you (if the DS-X team allows you to) share the files of the default skin or something, so we can work on skins already?

- Ow yeah, and what does the music player look like?

 

[Costello]

- Trimmed games work
- Monkey01 I'm not sure I understand your question 1... but I guess what you want is too complex
- it doesnt play movies. use moonshell for movies! moonshell is compatible with the ds-xtreme
- no I am not allowed to share skin files.. I can only tell you that the skinning system is highly sophisticated (XML support, ability to make mini games and apps..)
- the music player is really good, supports ID3 tags, playlists, etc.

 

[Hanafuda]

What format are the ds-x save files in? I know I asked about importing earlier, but its a "time is of the essence" situation for me. I'm selling my old SCmini and if I can import my SC saves to this thing then I'm sold. Otherwise I need a SCLite. The decision has to be made rather hastily since delaying my wife's AC:WW progress may result in a Lorena Bobbitt-type response.

Supercard nds saves are in .sav format, so I'm hopeful its a simple matter of renaming.

 

[kmihalj]

Does The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning works ??? .... good test since it is new ROM and doesn't work properly on M3/G6 .....

Rumble pack, ... RAM expansion .... does this work (with proper RAM which shoul support it) ?

Just answer for teasing .... waiting Mail-man with my DS-X (sould be this week) so I'll find out myself

 

[Costello]

Savegames? this is a good question.
Actually one of the "hidden" bonus features of the DS-Xtreme is that it trims save files. Instead of using something like 256 Kbytes of space (2 Mbits) the saves are trimmed - same way as ROMs, by removing the trailing 0x00 or 0xFF useless bytes - and take only around 2 kbytes depending on the game.

- Saves are .sav files aswell so it should still be compatible with supercard...
- I'll try Spyro asap
- we don't have any extension pack or anything so sorry but we can't try the DSBrowser or rumble games... The DS-X team claims everything should work normally though.


edit: I was wrong again, the savegames are actually compressed (I got word from the DSx team).
And they are working on adding compatibility with savegames from other flashcarts!

 

[monaug5]

Any updates??

does Avatar Last Airbender work on the DS-Xtreme?

 

[Costello]

- The latest Spyro game works fine.
- That "Avatar" game works fine aswell.
- ScummVM works fine (thanks SpaceJump!)

 

[kalimero]

Actually one of the "hidden" bonus features of the DS-Xtreme is that it trims save files. Instead of using something like 256 Kbytes of space (2 Mbits) the saves are trimmed - same way as ROMs, by removing the trailing 0x00 or 0xFF useless bytes - and take only around 2 kbytes depending on the game.

I wonder how this will work. Lets say a game has 3 internal save banks, then a save that uses the first bank should be smaller than a save which uses all three banks. So if you begin a new game on the second or third bank, the file size must be enlarged to be working. Can you test this?

 

[inter4ever]

Costello does it act as a passcard to boot any GBA flashcart in NDS mode?

thanks in advance for the review...

 

[Costello]

Actually one of the "hidden" bonus features of the DS-Xtreme is that it trims save files. Instead of using something like 256 Kbytes of space (2 Mbits) the saves are trimmed - same way as ROMs, by removing the trailing 0x00 or 0xFF useless bytes - and take only around 2 kbytes depending on the game.

I wonder how this will work. Lets say a game has 3 internal save banks, then a save that uses the first bank should be smaller than a save which uses all three banks. So if you begin a new game on the second or third bank, the file size must be enlarged to be working. Can you test this?



Sorry about what I said earlier I was wrong, I edited my post.
You question then becomes useless because it's actually compression.
Anyway, the save is stored on a memory chip in the DSxtreme then the OS saves it to the card when it reboots (it's instant, you can barely see the save screen). There's no problem with save banks.


QUOTE

Costello does it act as a passcard to boot any GBA flashcart in NDS mode?

thanks in advance for the review...

Yes this is one of the features.
However we've tried it with M3, Supercard and EWIN and only the EWIN booted correctly.
Others showed white screens. The DSx team said they are working on it but they didn't have any SC or M3 kit when they made it.