Hacking DSision2...

[charlieram]

Is there any way to extract the rom images when you first use dsision and then every time after that just compare the saved image names with the rom names and if any new or old roms exist then just add or remove those images from the saved file, would that not speed it up without writing to the card constantly? Or what about using the boxart instead?

 

[spinal_cord]

Funny you should ask that, It's one of the ideas we were kicking around just before the last update, I'm giving it a try, even if the results are not fantastic, I'll leave it in the next build. It should help a bit though.

 

[Advi]

WTF? No backlight support?

 

[spinal_cord]

WTF? No backlight support?

I think you're kidding yourself on that point... open dsision.ini and change phat=1 to phat=0.

Proper phat detection is already implemented in the next build.

 

[DarkLG]

I could never get this to load roms so I gave up on it.Hope it works for other people though.

 

[runawayprisoner]

Just dropping by to point out that the white screen may not be the end of it. You should wait for at least 2 minutes.

That is... I found out that with my R4, using DSTT firmwares 1.16 and 1.17 for YSMenu would slow down loading significantly. 1.14 and 1.15 do not exhibit this behavior, and loading on those firmwares seems to be quite fast. Nintendo games would load almost instantly. On 1.17, some games seemingly hang for 30 seconds before the loading continues.

Also, the latest build of YSMenu now also loads the loading bar from DSTT firmware, so you might/might not see a loading bar when you select a .nds file. It shows a loading bar for me, both with commercial games and homebrews.

 

[HowardC]

Is there any way to extract the rom images when you first use dsision and then every time after that just compare the saved image names with the rom names and if any new or old roms exist then just add or remove those images from the saved file, would that not speed it up without writing to the card constantly? Or what about using the boxart instead?

I ONLY use boxart because quite frankly the icon for a game (especially commercial ones) isn't always that obvious. I made a little utility that automatically downloads the boxart for any given nds file and "installs" it and the game with a "covers" image as well as an "icon" image. I'm reluctant to release it though because it downloads the art (and ONLY the art) from a rather shady romz site. Even if I did release it, I'd want to add a registry option first so you could simply right-click on a .nds file and install it and it's artwork.

 

[nutella]

Is there any way to extract the rom images when you first use dsision and then every time after that just compare the saved image names with the rom names and if any new or old roms exist then just add or remove those images from the saved file, would that not speed it up without writing to the card constantly? Or what about using the boxart instead?

I ONLY use boxart because quite frankly the icon for a game (especially commercial ones) isn't always that obvious. I made a little utility that automatically downloads the boxart for any given nds file and "installs" it and the game with a "covers" image as well as an "icon" image. I'm reluctant to release it though because it downloads the art (and ONLY the art) from a rather shady romz site. Even if I did release it, I'd want to add a registry option first so you could simply right-click on a .nds file and install it and it's artwork.

Wow, that sounds really useful...

 

[david432111]

Is there any way to extract the rom images when you first use dsision and then every time after that just compare the saved image names with the rom names and if any new or old roms exist then just add or remove those images from the saved file, would that not speed it up without writing to the card constantly? Or what about using the boxart instead?

I ONLY use boxart because quite frankly the icon for a game (especially commercial ones) isn't always that obvious. I made a little utility that automatically downloads the boxart for any given nds file and "installs" it and the game with a "covers" image as well as an "icon" image. I'm reluctant to release it though because it downloads the art (and ONLY the art) from a rather shady romz site. Even if I did release it, I'd want to add a registry option first so you could simply right-click on a .nds file and install it and it's artwork.

Release it, you could always make it download the boxart from another site.

 

[Skanob]

Thanks for this great app Spinal.

I managed to make it work on my fake R4 without any problems. Loading ROMs directly from DSision2 (via YSMenu). Automatically boots on start-up (by renaming it to default.nds).

So here are a couple of requests for the app if you don't mind:
1. Opening folders/ROMs by double-tapping the icon.
2. Assign the pop-up menu on a button or maybe on the corner of the Touch Screen with a button
3. Fix up the Touch Screen scroll, it sometimes doesn't come back at the center of the screen, we have to manually place it back to the center
4. Add a "fling" effect as the same as in iPhone on Touch Screen scrolling? (this would be great)
5. Make ROM names as official as possible ("ZELDAH" to "The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass")
6. Add file deletion maybe?
7. Renaming files?
8. Tiles, lists view with icons?
9. Have a setting to set the BoxArts to be change on the left side, center, or right side, and maybe full screen on the Top Screen
10. Have a Theme setting to change things a bit, like for to place the text and such
11. Cheat support? I tried on many ways to make it work but it wouldn't. Personally, I think we really not need this (as I am not a cheater). the only reason that we would be needing this is the time to bypass the "Anti-Piracy" of certain games. For those, like me, who doesn't want to patch their ROMs
12. And lastly, have a setting to change the sorting of the files alphabetically, based on chronological order, save order

This way, this will really be, TRULY be, an alternative firmware for both old and new carts.

I would really like to help you guys on this one unfortunately I am a newbie on the NDS scene. If you guys would have some spare times teaching me on the things on how-to's, applications needed, this would really be great and I am willingly to comply.

Thanks for this great app. My friends with NDS couldn't believe what have become of my NDS Lite. You are the MAN!!!

EDIT: I am using the latest YSMenu with the DSTT Firmware of 1.17 with the "Anti-Fake" killer bypassed. All ROMs loads directly from DSision2 (via YSMENU) withouth any problem. Longest loading time on start-up is 2.5 seconds on a folder with 20+ ROMs. Loading time for ROMs basically depends on the ROM itself. Let's say average is around 2 seconds. All of my ROMs are trimmed. (I am using the LOAD option of 1. I don't have an idea on how the load option works or affects DSision2. Could you explain it?

I am using a fake R4 with SDHC support, which with it's latest firmware of 1.23 (according to it's website). using 2GB of MMC with the FAT system fie format. (USing FAT32 makes everything a bit, or is, slower).

 

[charlieram]

I ONLY use boxart because quite frankly the icon for a game (especially commercial ones) isn't always that obvious. I made a little utility that automatically downloads the boxart for any given nds file and "installs" it and the game with a "covers" image as well as an "icon" image. I'm reluctant to release it though because it downloads the art (and ONLY the art) from a rather shady romz site. Even if I did release it, I'd want to add a registry option first so you could simply right-click on a .nds file and install it and it's artwork.

When you say you only use boxart, how exactly do you do that, do you use a different frontend? or am i missing the point because with DSision2 the only options are the boxart and slideshow.

 

[HowardC]

There is an icons folder in dsision. If you name a bitmap in that folder after a .nds file it will show up instead of the internal icon and cart border. My app simply takes a boxart image, resizes it to under 64x64 and then adds a magenta border at the top and bottom to make it an even 64x64 pixels. (The magenta border is transparent, so this preserves the aspect ratio.)

 

[HowardC]

Is there any way to extract the rom images when you first use dsision and then every time after that just compare the saved image names with the rom names and if any new or old roms exist then just add or remove those images from the saved file, would that not speed it up without writing to the card constantly? Or what about using the boxart instead?

I ONLY use boxart because quite frankly the icon for a game (especially commercial ones) isn't always that obvious. I made a little utility that automatically downloads the boxart for any given nds file and "installs" it and the game with a "covers" image as well as an "icon" image. I'm reluctant to release it though because it downloads the art (and ONLY the art) from a rather shady romz site. Even if I did release it, I'd want to add a registry option first so you could simply right-click on a .nds file and install it and it's artwork.

Release it, you could always make it download the boxart from another site.

It's not quite that simple unfortuantely. The app already has an ini file in which you can set the url to the database, the problem is the database has to name the images properly and even here at gbatemp this isn't done right. See this site in question names it artwork after the rom release number, so it's a simple matter of replacing the release number in the url to retrive the proper file. Here at gbatemp and other sites the boxart isn't always named after the release number, probably because the release numbers got re-arranged some time ago. Also the app has an intelligent search feature (in case your roms aren't properly named) that reads data from the .nds header and searches the website for matches. This requires my app to manually parse the html results, which of course is site specific.

 

[BakuFunn]

Just for everyone's reference to the load options again-
0: Everything is loaded realtime when scrolling in (laggs on commercial roms)
1: Commercial roms are preloaded, everything else is loaded realtime (scrolling is reasonable smooth)
2: Icons will be loaded when the cursor isn't moving
3: All commercial roms get loaded when the cursor isn't moving, everything else is loaded realtime


I would prefer a mode where realtime loading is also loaded when the icon is off-screen, instead of ONLY loading the icons coming into view, or ONLY loading what is in view while the cursor isnt moving.

That method that someone said before, i think preloading everything as .bmp and writing it to card is a good idea. Just detect the file names, add and remove as needed.

Great work, i have this as the default menu on 2 of my cards.

 

[spinal_cord]

Guys, you can expect a new update in the next day or two...

leinad has fixed a bunch of icon related bugs, some of which caused by poor coding on my part. We are pleased to announce that commercial game icons will be cached on the card (all automatic) so icon loading time is now almost instant, so there is no need for the loading style option, also I fixed the phat detect, so you will no longer have any problems there (probably, I dont have a phat to test on

).

 

[leinad]

Just for everyone's reference to the load options again-
0: Everything is loaded realtime when scrolling in (laggs on commercial roms)
1: Commercial roms are preloaded, everything else is loaded realtime (scrolling is reasonable smooth)
2: Icons will be loaded when the cursor isn't moving
3: All commercial roms get loaded when the cursor isn't moving, everything else is loaded realtime


I would prefer a mode where realtime loading is also loaded when the icon is off-screen, instead of ONLY loading the icons coming into view, or ONLY loading what is in view while the cursor isnt moving.

That method that someone said before, i think preloading everything as .bmp and writing it to card is a good idea. Just detect the file names, add and remove as needed.

Great work, i have this as the default menu on 2 of my cards.

In the next release the load-types will be removed.
The next release will support caching for commercial roms. Just a 1kb file each commercial rom, so not to worry about too many writings to your card because it's less than a savefile for my whole game-folder. By this it loads everything during changing the directory. For me my game folder with ~20 games loads in about 1second

 

[spinal_cord]

Here you go guys...

DSision 08 Feb 2009

If you're new, please visit here For more info.


- Updates -
Real Phat/Lite detection now
almost zero icon load time
icons now fade instead of drop when switching folders (looks beter)

 

[HowardC]

Looks good... there are still some outstanding issues I found though.

1. When scrolling via the touchscreen icons sometimes get corrupted (wrong icon loads, pallette screws up, ect.)

2. Now there's no sound. Is there a new setting I missed?

3. The stupid right-click menu is still there, you can't click on a game to run it and because the menu is there it sometimes pops up when scrolling.

4. This one isn't a big deal, but when you change themes the animation gets screwed up until you restart your ds. Again this is theme specific, generally the ipod and rotation animations screw up.

5. The new theme is supposed to have the clock in the top left corner right? I get a garbled mess on mine. Only happens in the new skin though.

I'm not complaining btw, I'm just trying to debug for ya.

 

[Santee]

yo spinal or anybody else does this work on cyclods and load roms since i don't usually use the extra features oh and cheats?

 

[Feels Good Man]

I dont understand the caching thing.

Do you have to load all the games first for the caching to work properly?

EDIT - Oh wait, nvm, I dont think you do. For some reason though, my games folder (which has about 35-ish games) still takes a while to load.