New nds-bootstrap update improves DSiWare game compatibility on original DS systems and adds save support

dsahjkdad.png

Nds-bootstrap is an essential homebrew for those wanting to play their Nintendo DS games natively on a 3DS, using just an SD card. And as of a new update, it's only gotten better; a few months ago, @RocketRobz managed to get DSiWare titles running on original "phat" DS and DS Lite units, though compatibility was limited, and saving wasn't supported. Now, over 100 DSiWare games work on older DS models, with the ability to save your game data.

What's new?​

  • DSiWare playability on DS Phat/Lite is finally out of it's proof-of-concept stage, as you can now save your data, along with 100 titles now supported (plus a few more, if you're using a DS Debug console)!
    • A custom .sav format is used for flashcard DSiWare save files (featuring a "save exist" flag and save size at the end of the file).
    • Shantae: Risky's Revenge can now get past the first two battles using an existing save file!
    • Scroll down to see which titles are now supported to play on DS Phat/Lite.

Some of the games that you can try out include Mr. Driller: Drill Till You Drop, Model Academy, Orion's Odyssey, and many more. WarioWare: Touched! DL version also works, though the audio does not work, because it takes up too much RAM. If you happen to have a debug DS unit, four extra games will work on it: Dragon Quest Wars, Make Up & Style, Metal Torrent, and Plants vs. Zombies.

:arrow: Source
:download: GBAtemp Project Thread
 

Deleted member 578956

Idiot machine
Member
Joined
Jan 12, 2022
Messages
1,537
Trophies
4
XP
3,265
Holy shit.. My only guess on making the games work better would be to redirect RAM reads/writes of the upper bits of ram (I.E. the extra mbs of ram the DSi usually has) to the gamecart/its SD card, or a GBA Expansion Pak if that works, in some way similar to the way EmuNAND works. (obvs it'd work different on the inside, I just don't know what else to compare it to)
a ram disk could also work.... as a thought
 
  • Like
Reactions: jeffyTheHomebrewer

RocketRobz

Stylish TWiLight Hero
Developer
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
17,126
Trophies
3
Age
25
XP
22,240
Country
United States
Yeah, that's kinda what I meant I think.. idk I just woke up like 20 mins ago man. Something something windows readyboost type bullshit
The RAM disk/page file idea simply isn't possible. Reading data from the SD works differently than reading data from something like RAM.
The Expansion Pak idea is possible, though it depends on the game, and how easy or hard it is to implement support for it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jeffyTheHomebrewer

JaNDeRPeiCH

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
294
Trophies
0
Location
Unknown
XP
1,739
Country
Mexico
Great news, to the op of this great homebrew i have a crazy noob question?

Do you know the emulation games cps1 and cps2 from the psp console? you load your game zipped and before the game starts they use a type of cache...the good question can be used this type of method (cache loading) to any system like ps1,sega cd or dsi ware emulation on the nintendo 3ds portable? im not a coder or programmer but only want to know if its posibble to use this weird method.
 

RocketRobz

Stylish TWiLight Hero
Developer
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
17,126
Trophies
3
Age
25
XP
22,240
Country
United States
Great news, to the op of this great homebrew i have a crazy noob question?

Do you know the emulation games cps1 and cps2 from the psp console? you load your game zipped and before the game starts they use a type of cache...the good question can be used this type of method (cache loading) to any system like ps1,sega cd or dsi ware emulation on the nintendo 3ds portable? im not a coder or programmer but only want to know if its posibble to use this weird method.
Some emulators pre-load ISOs to RAM in order to load faster. For nds-bootstrap (which btw, is not an emulator), when playing DS games (not DSiWare), data gets stored to a cache when reading data, so that reading the same data is faster until reboot. For DS games up to 8MB (DSi) or 24MB (3DS), the game is fully pre-loaded for faster reads.
 

JaNDeRPeiCH

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 19, 2019
Messages
294
Trophies
0
Location
Unknown
XP
1,739
Country
Mexico
Some emulators pre-load ISOs to RAM in order to load faster. For nds-bootstrap (which btw, is not an emulator), when playing DS games (not DSiWare), data gets stored to a cache when reading data, so that reading the same data is faster until reboot. For DS games up to 8MB (DSi) or 24MB (3DS), the game is fully pre-loaded for faster reads.
Last time i used retroarch it was a pain in the ass to use ps1 games even with psx rearmed emulator,because crashed a lot a not many games are compatible. I dont know the actual state of retroarch but your homebrew its top-notch quality.Its rare to see a glitch,error or crashing with the latest update of twilight menu++.Sure when you start to code it,it was not perfect but you dont give up...you go forward bring good homebrew. Thank you for the community 3ds we will aprecciate your efforts.
 

N10A

Her stare burns...
Member
Joined
Mar 31, 2021
Messages
119
Trophies
0
XP
1,681
Country
United States
I'm just wondering if there's some kind of weird specific incompatibility with flipnote since that's the first dsiware title that comes to my mind.
I guess you could take this as a passive agressive way of asking for flipnote compat pls
 

RocketRobz

Stylish TWiLight Hero
Developer
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
17,126
Trophies
3
Age
25
XP
22,240
Country
United States
I'm just wondering if there's some kind of weird specific incompatibility with flipnote since that's the first dsiware title that comes to my mind.
I guess you could take this as a passive agressive way of asking for flipnote compat pls
Flipnote wouldn't work, because it seems to use the DSi WRAM, as well as possibly going above the 4MB RAM limit.
There's also the possibility of the save file containing more than one file.
 

smf

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Feb 23, 2009
Messages
6,803
Trophies
2
XP
6,243
Country
United Kingdom
The RAM disk/page file idea simply isn't possible. Reading data from the SD works differently than reading data from something like RAM.
A page file would work if you have an MMU that allows you to use an area of normal ram to be mapped to the relevant addresses and generate exceptions if you access an area of ram that isn't currently mapped. When you get an exception then you evict a page to sd and load a new page in. Whether that is possible on the DS is one thing, whether someone will bother to code it is another then finally it could be so slow to be unusable.
 

seseiSeki

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Sep 26, 2016
Messages
229
Trophies
1
Age
28
XP
2,582
Country
Germany
I haven't been following nds-bootstrap development for a while. Nice to see its still getting improvements.
Does someone know if Metroid Prime Hunters got fixed while I wasn't looking? :D
Last time I checked, the loading times were really long and would break multiplayer.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Aerocool

Gekkodox

Member
Newcomer
Joined
May 5, 2018
Messages
19
Trophies
0
Location
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Website
www.patreon.com
XP
1,924
Country
Thailand
I haven't been following nds-bootstrap development for a while. Nice to see its still getting improvements.
Does someone know if Metroid Prime Hunters got fixed while I wasn't looking? :D
Last time I checked, the loading times were really long and would break multiplayer.
I played it last month and it worked well. Dunno about the multiplayer.
 
  • Like
Reactions: seseiSeki

MikaDubbz

Well-Known Member
Member
Joined
Dec 12, 2017
Messages
3,932
Trophies
2
Age
37
XP
7,786
Country
United States
I don't suppose there is any way to apply this to the official DS emulator used for DS VC games on the Wii U? Would be cool to see DSi content running on the Wii U if possible.
 
  • Like
Reactions: RocketRobz

RocketRobz

Stylish TWiLight Hero
Developer
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
17,126
Trophies
3
Age
25
XP
22,240
Country
United States
I don't suppose there is any way to apply this to the official DS emulator used for DS VC games on the Wii U? Would be cool to see DSi content running on the Wii U if possible.
I agree!
I guess it depends on if Wii U VC is able to run DSi-Enhanced games (in DS mode, ofc). If it does, then I'd be able to post the patches I've made for testing on NO$GBA (but no save support though), provided they do work on Wii U VC, but I don't have a hacked Wii U console to test.
 

Site & Scene News

Popular threads in this forum

General chit-chat
Help Users
  • _Ruri_ @ _Ruri_:
    But if you've got no relations to them then yeah I guess it's gotta be pretty boring just picking up and delivering stuff lol
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    I was talking about how I liked pikmin yesterday somewhere else because you could just beat weird creatures to death with smaller weird creatures
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    if that explains some of the games I like lmao
  • _Ruri_ @ _Ruri_:
    Haven't played pikmin but beating up big stuff with smol creatures sounds pretty fun lol
    +1
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I love beating big stuff
  • _Ruri_ @ _Ruri_:
    Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh 😏
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    I like killing dragons too
  • _Ruri_ @ _Ruri_:
    Dragons are cute and pretty cool :( I don't understand why everyone wants to kill them, they're so cute :( justice 4 dragonz
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    they can be evil sometimes
  • _Ruri_ @ _Ruri_:
    Yeah but they're cutely and coolly evil
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    I liked those gleeok fights in tears of the kingdom
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    when I figured out how to not have to fiddle through menus
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I think I killed every single big enemy on land and sky in tears of the kingdom
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    the only one left were the ones in the depths, but it so fucking boring
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    I killed most things in that game
  • _Ruri_ @ _Ruri_:
    Still playing through Breath of the Wild lol, went on hiatus on that game from 2017 until like 2023 cuz I was 12 and I lost the cartridge lol. Picked it up again almost 2 years ago and I'm mostly through it, great game
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I did 75% of breath of the wild then switch to master mode, went to around 80% but didn't do the rest
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I managed to convert my wii u save to switch
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    I was either 18 or 19 when that came out

    :wacko:
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    19
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    jfc
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I was 16
  • NinStar @ NinStar:
    I'm 24 now
  • _Ruri_ @ _Ruri_:
    I was 12 when BotW came out and I'm 20 now
    +1
  • Faust03 @ Faust03:
    I am old :(
    Faust03 @ Faust03: I am old :(