CCU Nintendo DS Workshop

This workshop is part of the Permacomputing program at Creative Coding Utrecht. Nintendo DS programs are written in C or C++, but this workshop doesn't use a lot of advanced programming concepts.

Installation

Requirements:

• A computer with Linux, Mac or Windows
• An IDE, this repository has been set up to work best with Visual Studio Code but any text editor will do
• devkitPro with nds-dev package installed. Installer for:
  • Mac and Linux
  • Windows
• Aseprite to edit sprites and backgrounds
• DeSmuME or another NDS emulator
  • For Linux look here
• NightFox’s Lib to make working with graphics easier.

Follow the instructions for your operating system:

• Installation on Mac and Linux
• Installation on Windows

If you want intellisense on your own projects that you copied from the template, copy the .vscode folder into your project.

• Bonus: Install C/Cpp language features

Clone the repository somewhere in your computer

git clone https://github.com/goudreinette/ccu-nds-workshop

Open it in your editor of choice.

Compiling a program

Go to the folder of the program you want to build.

cd demos/buttons

Convert images to the format used by the DS. Do this before compiling the program.

sh ./convert-assets.sh

Compile the program.

make

To run the program in the emulator, open it from the Finder / Explorer or run it from the command line (Mac example).

open buttons.nds

Making your own programs

Clone the template folder and rename it. Hack away!

cp -r template my-program

Graphics

The demos use the PICO-8 palette. When creating sprites and backgrounds, make sure that the color mode in Aseprite is set to Indexed Color.