DSQuake Port: Updates and a new Video

DSQuake has been working on porting Quake to the Nintendo DS since January of this year. Progress was slow at first because a lot of the code had to be reworked. Although he managed to make it playable, he had to take a break from developing it to accommodate other things on his plate.

Now for the skeptics, here’s a new video of him playing Quake on a DS.

Playable in a decent frame rates of 20-30fps with controls like that of Metroid Prime Hunters. Missing are sound, code and texture, but did manage to color the triangles appropriately.

Some people are thinking that he was only able to get the 20-30fps because there wasn’t any textures and sound to that he says, “So let me set this issue straightÂ… I got quake to run by not taking the necessarily most optimized way for everything, in fact quite the contrary. It’s quite the hack job at the moment. I did whatever it took to get it running, you know a proof of concept. Like I said some people take the fact that it runs at 20-30fps to be a bad thingÂ… No in fact itÂ’s a great thing…“

He continues to answer gamers’ concerns about the speed of the game with a sort of FAQ for the DSQuake. Here are some of the points he raised:

Will the textures slow things down?

• Certainly not. The DS has dedicated texture memory which I have yet to touch. 384k of usable texture memory I believe is all I have to work with.

Will sound slow things down?

• No, only the arm7 processor has access to the sound. Which is currently running no code, just sitting there idling.

How will I get the dynamic lighting working?

• I donÂ’t know and at this point I donÂ’t care how to do it that much either, there is too much to be done right now to worry about the little details.

So what am I concerned with now?

• The development environment of the DS or at least my setup isnÂ’t the most ideal by far. The way I did it was code, compile, run package utilities, put onto sd card, put card into my supercard, put that into my DS, run program and any debugging info is displayed on the lower screen and if anything crapped out I would need to repeat the whole process after putting printfs everywhere until I could trap the bug. That process could literally take dozens of times to find one small thing.

He also points out that the real speed gains will come from the optimization the media to be DS friendly and ushering data between ram and rom. If you’re interested in helping DSQuake develop this phenomenal port drop him a line in his website.

Via dsquake

DSQuake has been working on porting Quake to the Nintendo DS since January of this year. Progress was slow at first because a lot of the code had to be reworked. Although he managed to make it playable, he had to take a break from developing it to accommodate other things on his plate.

Now for the skeptics, here’s a new video of him playing Quake on a DS.

Playable in a decent frame rates of 20-30fps with controls like that of Metroid Prime Hunters. Missing are sound, code and texture, but did manage to color the triangles appropriately.

Some people are thinking that he was only able to get the 20-30fps because there wasn’t any textures and sound to that he says, “So let me set this issue straightÂ… I got quake to run by not taking the necessarily most optimized way for everything, in fact quite the contrary. It’s quite the hack job at the moment. I did whatever it took to get it running, you know a proof of concept. Like I said some people take the fact that it runs at 20-30fps to be a bad thingÂ… No in fact itÂ’s a great thing…“

He continues to answer gamers’ concerns about the speed of the game with a sort of FAQ for the DSQuake. Here are some of the points he raised:

Will the textures slow things down?

• Certainly not. The DS has dedicated texture memory which I have yet to touch. 384k of usable texture memory I believe is all I have to work with.

Will sound slow things down?

• No, only the arm7 processor has access to the sound. Which is currently running no code, just sitting there idling.

How will I get the dynamic lighting working?

• I donÂ’t know and at this point I donÂ’t care how to do it that much either, there is too much to be done right now to worry about the little details.

So what am I concerned with now?

• The development environment of the DS or at least my setup isnÂ’t the most ideal by far. The way I did it was code, compile, run package utilities, put onto sd card, put card into my supercard, put that into my DS, run program and any debugging info is displayed on the lower screen and if anything crapped out I would need to repeat the whole process after putting printfs everywhere until I could trap the bug. That process could literally take dozens of times to find one small thing.

He also points out that the real speed gains will come from the optimization the media to be DS friendly and ushering data between ram and rom. If you’re interested in helping DSQuake develop this phenomenal port drop him a line in his website.

Via dsquake