DS homebrew – DS Game Maker v3.0

August 18, 2009

Homebrew coder James Garner tipped us off about the latest release of his excellent homebrew tool for all aspiring Nintendo DS game developers, the DS Game Maker. The latest update is a feature pack release that includes a global copy and paste of sprites, pack and go tool, Guitar Hero controller support and some more bug fixes.

Download: DS Game Maker v3.0

Version 3.0 changelog:

Global Copy and Paste of Sprites, Backgrounds, Fonts, Sounds and even Rooms – with Actions, Sprites and Backgrounds intact (an exact copy).
PAlib is now included with DS Game Maker and the PAPATH Envirionment Variable is not required. The only System Requirement now is the devkitPro toolchain.
‘Pack and Go’ feature added. This gathers all the project’s resources and the XDS into a ZIP file. It can be extracted anywhere and the XDS will open with the graphics etc. loading fine. This is great if you need help; Pack ‘n’ Go your project and upload it to the forum.
Added a Right Click menu to the Actions list. Useful, you don’t have to constantly move up to the tiny controls at the top right of the window. Items on the menu for an action/selection of actions: Duplicate, Delete, Copy to Room, Move to Room, Shift Up/Down, Move to Top/Bottom.
The following features have come available in the Free Edition of DS Game Maker: Show scrollbars, Turn on/off transparency. Scroll bar area is now correctly sized so that sprites do not wrap (thanks PAlib wiki).
Guitar Hero controller support in the Registered Edition.
Saving support in the Registered Edition with Save Variable and Load Variable actions.
Ability to download the latest copy of the Registered Actions without having to Re-enter a Registration Key.
Alot of verification when renaming resources, for your protection. For instance characters like commas and brackets are now banned to prevent compile errors and the program does basic checks for programming terms in names too, for example “main” or “int”.
Fixed a minor bug where the includes folder was not cleared on compile when it should have been like efsroot. Fixed, and thanks, Eldude!
Fixed a problem where users could get away with changing the 3 Description Texts by editing them outside DS Game Maker. This is now impossible.