Nintendo DS development makes Amiga useful

[larsef]

It's not like I'm not using my Amiga otherwise, but I was quite surprised when I realized how much I have to use my Amiga for a little Nintendo DS homebrew project I want to do.

The game I have in mind is a simple Lunar Lander game. I have installed all the dev tools including DS emulator on my Mac, but I don't have a tool to draw the graphics on the Mac. The best tool I know of is DPaintIV, which basically means I'm going to use my Amiga 1200 to create all the graphics such as sprites and background. I only need to develop some code on the Amiga to convert the iff-files to C-source code.

The game will also need music. There's a good library called PAlib for homebrew Nintendo DS development and this library comes with a module player routine! This means I will also use my Amiga to create the music for the game.

The only thing left is coding the game and trying it out in an emulator. This will be done on the Mac, but all the artistic work will be done on the Amiga, not because it can be done. It's because it's the best way to get it done.

[motorollin]

Cool! Please let us know when your game is finished. I'd love to try it on my DS with M3 Simply. It would be a real kick to know that the artwork and music were done on an Amiga :-)

--
moto

[mendark]

hooray!

Keep us posted, i'll try it with my girlfriends DS (and EZ-DS5).

[Crom00]

Personal Paint running under Amiga Forever is great too.
You can actually use Photoshop to start out the art with a wacom tablet, then save out the file as "save for web" with a palette of 256 colors or less.

Amiga still rocks for pixel pushing. The way Dpaint and Personal Paint handle animation is great.

Brillaince was another great app.

[_ThEcRoW]

Nintendo developing on Amiga, cool!. Keep us informed!

[syphus]

Only Amiga makes it possible:) I used Protracker (what else?) on my A1200 to make the soundtrack to superpanic's recent free homebrew DS game Wordup. And yeah, DPIV/V are still the best options for proper pixelart. Nothing makes me happier than to see Amigas still being used productively;) Do keep us informed of your progress...

Nintendo handheld platforms still offer the last vestiges of facilitation for our time-honoured Amiga skills... Make the most it while it lasts!

[yoodoo]

 I only need to develop some code on the Amiga to convert the iff-files to C-source code.

Lots of tools (and sourcecode) on Aminet to do this, if you want a head start.

[larsef]

@syphus: I tried the game and it's really great. The music too! :-)

[crystall]

larsef wrote:
The game I have in mind is a simple Lunar Lander game. I have installed all the dev tools including DS emulator on my Mac, but I don't have a tool to draw the graphics on the Mac.

You can try Pixen on the Mac ( http://opensword.org/pixen/ ). However if you're used to DeluxePaint you're probably more productive with it even though it may lack some of the more 'modern' features available in Pixen

[DonnyEMU]

Many people use Promotion from cosmigo, it's a pc based dpaint clone but it's very very good.

Cosmigo Promotion



Also in the same vein if you need to save an image to C there is a plug-in for paint.net that does it as well..

Paint.Net with image to C plug-in

[amiga_3k]

Great to see Cosmigo still around. Has been a while since I tried and used it. Made me feel right at home, even the keyboard shortcuts are (more or less) the same as on DPaint / PPaint. Must admit that I kinda lost interest a bit as soon as I learned about The Gimp AND starting to understand how to use that. Still, a good PPaint can be handier in lots of occasions.

[XDelusion]

I LOVE my DS and my M3 and my GBAMP v2 and my EZ Flash 3 in 1!

 I'm eager to see what you are working on. I'm also eager to see if the Amiga (OS 4, AROS, MorphOS) get drivers and support for this:

http://www.balance-game.com/motioncontrol.php

 Not the game, but the drivers for a DS with a Motion chip in it:

http://www.dspassme.com/oscommerce/catalog/index.php?cPath=33

 Would be innovative like Amiga used to be.

[uncharted]

I believe that PPaint (available on Aminet) does in fact have the ability to save images to c source (IIRC this was used in an Amiga Format C tutorial)

[corto]

larsef wrote:

The only thing left is coding the game and trying it out in an emulator. This will be done on the Mac, but all the artistic work will be done on the Amiga, not because it can be done. It's because it's the best way to get it done.

Just for information about Nintendo development, do you know that the compiler vbcc can generate ARM code (thanks to its tool vasm) ? Once I tried it to compile a simple example for GBA and it works !

I wish you the best for your project !