Engine Implementations:
Developers Screen
Menu
Chapters with chapters splash
Page engine which can load backgrounds, sounds, sprites, etc.
Mini Game with stages

Info: I made this engine so other people can make their own visual novel and add their own mini games. At first I intended it to be a hentai game, but then soon decide to turn it into an engine which other people could use. You can do what ever you want with it. Change it, Fix it, Reorganise it, whatever. Credit is appreciated but there is no need since the PAlib community are the ones who helped me build it. I have reset all the background blank with text(to tell you what they are for) for you to implement yourself. I have censored the mini game for you to make yourself, its just an example mini game.

7 Raven Studios is an official Nintendo DS licensed developer and is looking for c/c++ programmers and 3D Modelers.

Applicants must be willing/able to work locally in Thailand.

For more information please write to:

[email protected]

ManychessDS is a game supporting multiple variants of chess (for the moment not much), 2 playable on the DS or even against an AI.

History:
V 0.9:
IA fastest
Adding to Xiangqi

How to play:
Directional buttons + A, B: use menus
Pen: moving parts, edit the chessboard.

Now that we have THREE major consoles out at one time we seem to have a battle royale for who gets the most sales and can call themselves the winner of this epic battle. Well let me tell you, as someone who owns all three (Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii) I have to say that I think no one is winning this battle yet and I will tell you why.


The Wii while fun for parties sees absolutely no play from me any other time. It has some nice games, but with such a small selection of games that are for people older the 3, my choices are extremely limited. Adding friends to the Wii is a huge annoying chore and don't even think about then trying to play a game with those friends, you will be there all day reading numbers to each other and trying to figure out why it still isn't working. They have stepped up to fix one big problem which was the lack of voice chat. Nothing is more annoying then trying to play Smash Brothers with someone and having to stop play to call them on their cell phone to see if they have time for one more round.

The 360 is admittedly the most used console in my house but this is mostly because of the fact that friends are easy to add, games are easy to join, and most of my friends already have a 360 because its cheaper then the PS3. The major issue I have with the 360 is also game selection. Its major titles are shooters and I'm no big fan. I play them because my friends play and its something we can play together so we play. As an RPG fan I feel like I am kind of lost among these games but I play anyway. I admit I am kind of a picky gamer but the selection is rather small. You have shooter, action RPG/shooter, and some other stuff that might be ok. My day as an RPG player might be here soon though if all these E3 announcements seem to deliver the goods they are selling.

And oh dear my PS3, what did you do!? You held so much promise and now are really nothing more then a glorified PS2 which I use to play all my Atlus games. Home keeps getting pushed back and we just seem to keep hearing “just you wait we will rock”. Well PS3, I have had you for a year now and my socks are still firmly on my feet. Lets get a move on!

So as you can see, I don't think anyone gets to call themselves the winner of this war yet. I think they all need to step out of the batting cage and swing the bat already! Where are the innovations? Where is the pushing of the boundaries? Why are my socks still on my feet!?

Yesterday we had some server issues, and I took the server offline for a while. During this, I decided it was time to release a preview version of menuloader. Since I couldn’t write a post about it here, I just let it loose on the forums. Unfortunately, the resulting game of Telephone (somewhat predictably) managed to get a few things wrong as the announcement bounced from forum to forum, so I think it’s time to write up a real announcement, now that the server is back up.

Update: version 0.5 is up, which fixes some region free issues and includes a patch to disable updates. See below.

Menuloader has existed in some form at least since the release of IOS37. It was developed as a way of checking that a System Menu running under an IOS with no fakesign bug would not cause a brick on consoles with modified software installed. It also gained debug abilities, which was nice to investigate what goes on behind the scenes with the System Menu. When The Homebrew Channel came out (the real one, not the “demo”), we added extra patches to increase debugging verbosity, and used it to debug our homebrew apploader. It remained like that for a while. I had ideas about adding more useful patches and releasing it, but they were put on the back burner.

Recently, there has been some activity regarding modding the system menu. A few people were asking me about menuloader. In an attempt to both get people to learn for themselves and avoid having to redirect my attention to menuloader (I had more important things to do at the time), I dropped some useful code and explained the general idea of menuloader. As far as I know, the very first application based on these ideas is sadmenu, which includes a simple patch that makes testing banners out quite a bit safer. Crediar did the same, but then reworked the resulting patches into a tool that installs them permanently into the Wii. After watching his video, I figured it was about time to finally clean menuloader up and release it.

menuloader 0.4 is a tool that dynamically launches the System Menu with a set of patches. The patching occurs entirely as the menu is loaded, and the changes aren’t permanent. None of the patches will persist once you reboot the Wii or reload the System Menu. This release is meant to be a “test” version, as it lacks some features and the patches have not undergone much testing. It includes the following (selectable) patches:

USBGecko debugging, with optional extended debugging information
Regionfree Wii disc booting (I hear this doesn’t work perfectly yet)
Regionfree channel booting (useful if you’ve region-swapped your Wii and want to use your old store-bought VC and WiiWare titles)
v0.5: Disable updates
Skip Warning screen
Disable background music
Additionally, you can pick which IOS to use when booting. On a 3.3 Wii, for example, pick IOS35 to get back the ability to use fakesigned discs. On a 3.2 or older Wii, you can pick IOS37 to “experience” what happens when 3.3 users try to use fakesigned discs, like we did in March (assuming you actually have IOS37 installed).

The main difference between this tool and crediar’s is that menuloader boots the new system menu with the patches applied during the launch process - nothing ever gets modified in your Wii’s NAND filesystem. This means that the hack only persists until the system menu exits (when you boot a game or reboot the Wii), but it also means that it is much safer for trying out new patches.

The ideas for some of the patches were inspired by crediar’s demonstration video, but the actual patches were developed independently and, in fact, before crediar’s installer was released. The patching methodology is entirely different in both applications - Starfall app uses static patches which only work on 3.2E, while menuloader uses dynamic search and replace, which is compatible with a wide range of System Menu versions. We can afford to do this because menuloader does not install anything to NAND. If anything goes wrong, you can just reboot the Wii and everything will be back to normal.

FAIR WARNING: While menuloader does not modify your NAND filesystem, the System Menu does have the ability to do so, and incorrect patches could result in the System Menu itself causing trouble. In particular, the same warnings that apply to region-free modchips apply to menuloader: if you run an update from a disc from another region, it could result in duplicated channels, a semibrick, or in rare cases a full brick. v0.5: This version includes a patch to disable disc updates. It is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you leave this on.

Once I get a chance to clean things up a bit, I’ll release a new version with source code so you can experiment with your own patches.

It is important to note that this isn’t merely a testing