PassMes, M3s, and GBAMPs, oh my!

Odds are, if you've been interested in running homebrew code on the Nintendo DS, you were probably more than a little lost/confused initially (if you ever got it figured out). There *is* an active community out there, but most of the information is spread out across different bulletin boards, in different threads, often containing more than a little incorrect and/or outdated information, and using terminology/abbreviations you're probably not yet familiar with. Maybe I'm just the kind of person that really likes to have a good grasp of what I'm doing and what all my options are rather than running with "just do X" as posted by some_random_guy023.

Far and away the best write up I've come across is the Running Homebrew wiki entry at DSLinux. It does a nice job of presenting the various requirements and what your options are, the between them such as in which circumstances you can use them and what the pros/cons are, as well as providing links (via Pocketheaven) to specific products/manufacturers.

Check it out and save yourself a lot of headache/irritation.

My bad, DevKitPro devs! orz

It looks like I jumped the gun a bit in yesterday's post when I complained about the ease of learning to use DevKitPro (DKP).

Got some sleep and woke up a lot less grumpy today so I thought I'd give it another shot. This time with a clear head.

I came across the PataterSoft tutorial and in the process of messing around with it I ended up going back through the "examples" directory of DKP. And, I must say.... they're really well commented, fully explained, easily understood examples. Maybe that's why all the tutorials have fallen into states of disrepair; they're unneeded. You just pick the directory you want and learn about what's in there- it's kind of like "Choose Your Own Adventure".

Really didn't take much to get a few easy examples going. I retract all the nasty things I said earlier and instead tip my hat in their general direction.

DirectX Programming with Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition

At some point I feel like I should embrace the winner in graphics APIs for computer games and learn DirectX (seriously, this time). In some obvious attempt to entice me, Microsoft began offering the Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition for free.

I looked at how to get it setup for DirectX development and these are my notes. You obviously need it and the DirectX SDK to start with.

1. Setup the Platform SDK as described here here.


2. Start Visual C++


3. File->New->Project


4. For "Project type" select "Visual C++" or "Win32" and create a "Win32 Console Application".


5. When the Win32 Application Wizard comes up, make sure you select "Windows applicaiton" for the "Application type", and "Empty project" from "Additional options".


6. Project->Add New Item. Select "C++ File".


7. Project->Properties. Configuration Properties->Linker->Input. Add necessary DirectX libraries (ddraw.lib, dxguid.lib, etc.) to "Additional Dependencies".

Out with OpenGL, in with DirectX

I'll admit, I was originally in the OpenGL camp. OpenGL + GLUT was just vastly easier than DirectX for those of us with no Windows programming experience (even with the "easy to use" application framework they introduced in DirectX 8 or 9). Plus, I was fortunate to use it in a graphics programming class I had as an undergrad.

However, as part of my renewed interest in game programming, the coming release of Vista and DirectX 10, and the apparent demise of OpenGL, I decided to give DirectX another shot. But that requires tools.

The DirectX SDK is easy enough. That's been freely available for some time. A compiler and other development tools... that's a different story. I'd known about Visual C++ Toolkit 2003 (now deprecated, free command-line tools) for sometime, but I didn't know that they'd gone another step further and introduced Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition. Basically the same thing, but now with an IDE to boot. Very sweet.

This actually got me to dust off my DirectX and WinAPI books and do a little Windows programming for the first time in quite a while.