Can homebrew apps work with NitroFS?

[_47iscool]

I am looking to make a NitroFS ROM with NeoDS while including the ROMs (for personal use only) in the file system since it seems not to work any other way.

Is it possible to do this? I also would like to make one for dspack arcade emulation.

 

[godreborn]

I think so. correct me if I'm wrong, but @Cervi 's undertale nds uses NitroFS.

 

[_47iscool]

What tool may I ask can do this?

Also, Stealth's Sonic CD demo/port uses it and works fine on DSi.

 

[godreborn]

https://github.com/C3RV1/UndertaleNDS

here it is if you'd like to read it. I don't remember on that one, which is why I tagged cervi. he made a release thread on temp a while back.

 

[_47iscool]

Thanks for the link. Hopefully the creator of that port can point us in the right direction. If this can be done, it should help homebrew a lot. Though I would guess any built ROM would need to be 256MB or smaller.

(Also, it's odd: For some reason I have not been getting notifications when you replied to this thread.)

 

[godreborn]

Thanks for the link. Hopefully the creator of that port can point us in the right direction. If this can be done, it should help homebrew a lot. Though I would guess any built ROM would need to be 256MB or smaller.

(Also, it's odd: For some reason I have not been getting notifications when you replied to this thread.)

dunno. I'd check alerts in your profile preferences. I got an alert you replied. I think they originally had that set to do that by default, but then undid it so you had to enable it yourself. my account is from like 2009, so it's old.

I may not have learned much about nitrofs. I just have a photographic memory, so when I say I don't remember or know, I probably never knew. that's what got me through school.

 

[_47iscool]

I will give the settings a check.

Edit; That was it. It was somehow disabled. I honestly don't remember doing that, though I could have.

It wouldn't be the first time my profile has been messed with. Someone (probably a mod) a while ago removed my entire signature, but I won't get into that.

 

[godreborn]

fyi, I know cervi has been busy, possibly with school or something, which is why the nds version of undertale has been slow going, so he may not respond for a little while.

 

[_47iscool]

Okay. I did download the DS Gamer Maker and the required files like devkitpro but I am not sure if this tool can build a homebrew DS ROM with embedded files. It says it is for Windows 10 but it loads just fine on 7.

 

[godreborn]

Okay. I did download the DS Gamer Maker and the required files like devkitpro but I am not sure if this tool can build a homebrew DS ROM with embedded files. It says it is for Windows 10 but it loads just fine on 7.

there's a rom creator, which may be in tools, that it uses to create the nds rom itself. you may need to do pacman -Syu nds-dev. install everything that shows up. if Syu causes msys to close, run it again, because it needs to close after certain installs, and it may not be finished once it encounters one of those. iirc, the tool is nds scene rom tool.

 

[_47iscool]

I will see what the DS Scene Tool can do. I may already have it or something similar from a long time back.

 

[godreborn]

that's the one. every nds homebrew I've compiled has used this tool to create the rom itself.

 

[_47iscool]

The tool that I used has a GUI, and unfortunately no way to create a bootable ROM with embedded files.

I did install the whole devkitpro setup yesterday of what your snippet shows. I am still wondering how to point it to a path of the boot file and the directory of roms.

Edit: I tested this: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/793/ with NeoDS.

It will extract and then rebuild the ROM. I tested it on Desmume and melonDS and they both give the same error so it's probably safe to say it won't work on hardware either.

Edit 2: I tested DSPack. It works on emulators, but not on Twilight Menu. It does boot on TM but crashes almost instantly.

 

[Cervi]

Hi! I've taken a while to respond but anyhow, thanks for tagging me, wouldn't have seen it otherwise.

As godreborn has mentioned, as far as I know all Nintendo DS homebrew uses ndstool to build ROMs, and it supports nitrofs. When I was first setting up the UndertaleDS project I used the devkitpro examples (https://github.com/devkitPro/nds-examples) as a base for my Makefile. You can find an example in the filesystem/nitro_fs folder. The way you do it is just by having a "nitrofs" folder where you put the files. Then, you add it to the ROM by using the -d parameter of ndstool, and you can access them as you would access any other filesystem using C, with fopen, fread, fclose... (preceding the path with "nitro:/<path>", for example "nitro:/backgrounds/image.png").

Be aware that the default implementation for the "filesystem.h" library on devkitpro has an issue where it only works when the nitrofs is smaller than 32MB (that's due to it using GBAROM instead of accessing the cartridge for some reason). I fixed that by changing a couple lines in UndertaleNDS, and I still haven't hit a limit in size (you can find here my modified nitrofs.c at and the corresponding "filesystem.h" here).

I haven't taken a look at neither DS Game Maker nor any of the other utilities you've mentioned, so I don't know whether it'd be possible to do the same on them.

Hope this maybe helps?

 

[_47iscool]

Could you link a modified compiled build that can work with ROMs up to 256MB? I have a few aof and mslug ROMs.
I tried an older version called dslazy that has a gui as mentioned above from RHDN.

I get this below with melonDS and desmume:

The built ROM is 220MB. And when it extracts the original nds homebrew file, the y7.bin and y9.bin files are zero bytes. Is this the issue? DSPack works on emulators and lists the roms but on DSi hardware it blank-screens.

 

[godreborn]

I don't think you have to put all data in the rom image. You could have a small rom image and data like assets outside the rom itself. I think you'll need a flash cart with on the fly patching though. TwilightMenu on the 3ds should also be able to do it.

 

[_47iscool]

I do have an R4i Gold but prefer not to use it. I also don't have a spare microSD at the moment as the DSi is using it for homebrew and and backups and such.