Dual BASIC

[wraggster]

Interesting project news from Izhido

Hiya, people!

I usually don't like to do pre-announcements about projects I'm working on, because they usually end up either cancelled, or at the bottom of the list (remember my attempt to build an OpenGL lib on DS? upCLeaR? My to-do list at the infamous DSLinux Welcome Thread? The COLLADA converter I've been promising to do? And a loooong list of other things...)

However, in light of recent news, seeing that things are (finally) going to get rough from now on, and ultimately for reasons only my little, twisted, sick brain understands, I feel like it's almost my duty to do this pre-announcement.

I have already started development on what I have called Dual BASIC. The whole idea behind it is to offer all Nintendo DS owners an alternative to build, run, and (if desired) share programs for (and with) their own DS, coded in the BASIC programming language.

I intend Dual BASIC to be as powerful & versatile as possible. It will be a compilation of my best experiences with most known varieties of BASIC around, old & new. It should let you have full access to all features of the Nintendo DS, either directly, or through mechanisms that let you explore unknown ways into it. It should let you write your programs in any way you like it, either through the "command line" interface mechanism of old, through built-in code editors into your DS, or even outside of your DS using a PC or any other device you want. Also, I intend to get advantage of Dual BASIC being an "interpreter" to let you code in ways one does not usually look at BASIC being capable of (multitasking, code auto-generation, among others).

If things continue go the way they're going now, this will be my top-of-the-list project. I'll be releasing things as often as they're finished; it will probably take a while before all Dual BASIC planned features will be complete. But this time, I am not holding back. This is probably the last chance I have to do something good for people with regards to the, in my humble opinion, best gaming console ever built.

I'll post an announcement here when the first executable is finally done. In the meantime, I'll happily accept your comments at [email protected]. There's an IRC channel set up at #dualbasic on Blitzed, too, if you want to discuss things a little more personally (and in the rare cases when I'm not away from my PC ) .

Oh, and one more thing . If this project ever gets off the ground, and you people start liking it, I'm actually interested in placing Dual BASIC inside the firmware of a slot-1 card as the "main" software for it. Anyone interested in helping me with such a crazy idea, please contact me at the address above.

- Izhido
([email protected])

http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=15881

[AntBUK]

I hope this gets going, It would increase the number of homebrew apps and games available imo. A compiler on a PC to make NDS files from it would be even better ^^

[DanTheManMS]

Sounds like the idea behind DragonBASIC for the GBA. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.