Gaming Official Nintendo Games and updates...

[questccg]

Okay so I thought I'd post this message in this forum instead of the "Homebrew" forum because it is more about *legal/official* Nintendo Slot-1 Cartridges.

I have purchased several (a dozen of so) Nintendo DS/DSi games... And I have never seen Nintendo requiring to *update* or *patch* the game with a newer version. Okay you can update the DS/DSi System version while connecting to the Internet... But I'm interested in Nintendo GAMES.

Why the curiosity? Well what I am trying to know is how *Officially* Nintendo would handle a game that REQUIRES updates... Suppose my *super new game ZYX* is released using official Nintendo means as a *cheap* Slot-1 Cartridge (maybe like $15.00 for a new one). The game will contain all of the game logic required to play ... AT THAT MOMENT.

But suppose my game *expands* and includes NEW game assets... How would Nintendo handle *patching* or *updating* the game such that the logic for new game assets is present...

Firstly let me say, I'm not a WOW developer... So I don't think I want my game to include a Scripting Engine like "Mono". That would just complicate the already challenging effort of developing a DSi game. A scripting engine could probably allow for dynamic code to be downloaded along with new game assets...

I think this concept is COOL - but too complicated.

So my alternative would be to have updates for the game. So version 1.0 could support X and version 2.0 could support X and Y... Incremental updates to the *core* of the game such that newer game assets can be handled by the DSi client.

I have seen DSiWare, and it just looks like games you can download for *credits* (Points). I don't see anything about *versions*. Secondly I think people would really get p!ssed off if the updates were not FREE to download... How can any of this be handled by the conventional (or Official) Nintendo policies (Slot-1 Catridges).

Many thanks for your help and input!

Note: I would love it if somebody could tell me if something like LUA (http://www.lua.org) could be embedded into a DSi client. So far I have not seen anything about Shared Libraries (like DLLs), everything seems to need to be Static Libraries.

 

[BORTZ]

I dont honestly know of any DS games that require updates, considering the DS phat and lite have no internal memory to store updates.

 

[questccg]

Well I don't know about the DS Fat/Light because I am working with a DSi. And when I downloaded the Opera Web Browser it said it used X amount of slot out of 1,000. I think it was like 25. So my guess is that there is room on the DSi for downloading games and applications!

But generally speaking, I agree with what you have said: DS games don't get updated, out-of-the-box is what you get (Slot-1 Cartridge).

However I was thinking about software you can *download*... Because with the DSi, as I said, there is room for apps and games that can be downloaded. But from the shop, there is nothing about VERSIONS... They don't talk about updates, they just say it takes 200 points to download this software or 500 points for these, etc. I am guessing you need to register bought material (hardware or games) to earn credit or actually use a credit card and purchase the games.

I wasn't very impressed by their *shopping* software. Like I said, nothing about versions. Also I don't think ANYONE would accept to PAY for an update. So I guess if the software was free, obviously contingent that Nintendo agrees to allow people to be able to download it free, there still would be no way of determining which version of the game is in the shop for download.

You might probably need to rely on a 3rd party website to say: "Hey guys, please update to the newest version x.y.z"

It's still very apparent that games have *bugs* and you can't download *corrected* versions because it's not part of the Nintendo model.

Take Galactrix (Puzzle Quest 2) - it jams every now and then. I'm betting an update to the software might correct the problem... But those Slot-1 Cartridges are fixed software with some space for saved games...

Anyhow it's a non-issue right now, since I guess Nintendo wants ROMs on Slot-1 Cartridge as the way to Sell/Distribute their game. Their vision is not with having apps that can be downloaded from the Internet allow for updates and such... Not from what I have seen. Even the 3DS, it uses the same shop to download games/apps. You'd think Nintendo could add some apps like a Calculator, Organizer and such to their list of free apps...

 

[Rezatron]

Well I don't know about the DS Fat/Light because I am working with a DSi. And when I downloaded the Opera Web Browser it said it used X amount of slot out of 1,000. I think it was like 25. So my guess is that there is room on the DSi for downloading games and applications!

The DSi has 256MB of internal memory + whatever SD card you have in it. Obviously updates for games downloaded from the eShop they could just prompt the user the update/redownload the game but for physical slot-1 game carts updates would require some interaction between the cart and DSi firmware which i'm not sure Nintendo has in place.

You can find a similar situation regarding a save bug for Skyward Sword for the Wii (which was a physical disc of course). Showing how behind Nintendo's online network truly is, they released a patch-work "Update Channel" specifically for that bug.

PS: there have been updates for retail DS game carts but the games have just been reprinted. If you search some DS game databases for "v1.1" and "v1.2" you will find some dumps of these games. Good luck finding what was actually updated/fixed/changed though

 

[questccg]

The DSi has 256MB of internal memory + whatever SD card you have in it. Obviously updates for games downloaded from the eShop they could just prompt the user the update/redownload the game but for physical slot-1 game carts updates would require some interaction between the cart and DSi firmware which i'm not sure Nintendo has in place...

PS: there have been updates for retail DS game carts but the games have just been reprinted. If you search some DS game databases for "v1.1" and "v1.2" you will find some dumps of these games. Good luck finding what was actually updated/fixed/changed though

My understanding is that I would need the official TWL SDK to be able to interact with SD card... I'm not sure how the 256mb of internal memory is accessed...

My guess is Nintendo will only allow games that are licensed through them to get downloaded into internal memory... Meaning only official games in the eShop will be able to be saved. This is too bad because using that memory for applications (like a Calculator and organizer) seems pretty much the standard. My cellular phone has more apps than my DSi...

The odds my app/game makes it to the eShop are probably slim to zero. Second of all, do I want it there? I mean if you cannot download updates it means the Slot-1 Cartridge will need to have everything players will EVER need... Now if it's a ROM that players can access and download for FREE, that maybe sounds more reasonable. Having it on some website, free for download sounds like the best option.

When there will be updates to the software (like version x.y.z), the players simply need to download the new ROM and put it in their Micro SD + Cart. This hacked way of doing things sounds more reasonable. New version = new features (with new assets). Each asset can be validated with the version of the ROM. So if you buy and download an asset "A" and your version of the ROM doesn't support "A", it will prompt you to "Your version is out of date. Please download a more recent version. Thank you." And then you know when you REALLY need to update the ROM (to a newer version).

Something along those lines...

 

[questccg]

Hmm... Thinking about apps and I think I have a NEW DS/DSi application that could be very cool:

DSCalendar: Basically it would be a Calendar where you could add notes and have a *Photograph of the Month* that appear...

The cool thing about this app, is that it could be the *basis* of my main app/game... I would need WiFi connectivity to get the month information from a server and get the data info from there also. Next I would need to download *Pictures* from the server and store them on the SD Card. So when you open the app for the first time, it downloads the current and previous pictures - but not those in the future. For those you have to wait for the month to arrive...

I think this little app can make a huge impact in the projects that I am trying to work on!

Note: The pictures could be sent by DS owners to our server. We then search through the entries to figure out which one is best! Sort of like a contest - but there would only be the name of the person who took the picture!!!

Note 2: It could be easy to check a picture and give it a rating out of 999. So like a 800 picture would be really nice and a 100 picture would really suck. This is cool, because it would be easy to sweep the database of the low scoring pictures (say below 500).