R9 Status Update

It's been a couple of days since my last post, so I wanted to give a quick update on what's left on my R9 TODO list.

- I've been working over the weekend at fixing a number of outstanding graphical glitches, putting in place a system to automatically translate n64 blend modes to the psp. This should hopefully nearly eradicate nearly all of the purple and black textures that have shown up all over the place in previous releases. This is quite an interesting feature from a technical point of view, so I'll talk about this in a bit more depth once R9 is out.

- I have a few glitches in the new UI to fix (e.g. audio can't be disabled once the rom has started, controller can't be remapped once the rom has started).

- I need to hook up a few things to the new UI (e.g. 'reset to main menu', 'take screenshot' etc)

As you can see, it's quite a short list now, so I'm still on track for releasing R9 by next weekend

The game

the program, working state and game data have been squeezed into the four megabytes of main memory it requires either shareware or commercial pak files, Amiga and PC paks have been successfully used total conversions and mods should work, assuming they respect the tiny memory size networking currently has been removed, but will return at a later date

Graphics

the majority of the software renderering has been moved over to using the 3D hardware
world textures are display nearly-correctly, there are however still plenty of texture-coordinate bugs!
fake-lightmapping is currently broken, and needs some time spent on it. As a result, the game is flat-shaded
there's no dynamic lighting yet

there are no textures on the Alias models yet
sprites and particles got hacked in yesterday (17/02/07) and are only partially hardware-accelerated, and have no textures
no water, teleporter or sky animations yet

Sound

sound effects support is about 80% finished, so expect to hear pops, clicks, the occasional screech etc
CD music is currently being investigated

the existing solution requires the CD soundtrack to be ripped to your flash card
uses an MP3 decoder, running on the second processor
...but the file streaming slows down the primary processor a bit too much

Tech info

uses the libfat DLDI interface, so should hopefully work on all supported flash cards
built using the latest toolchain, devkitARM r20
in-game performance is still not hot, but is being actively worked on - expect to see it run twice as fast in the finished build
performance is timed using a custom function-instrumenting profiler (a bit like gprof)

How to play
This mini-guide assumes that you are familar with the process of running homebrew on your Nintendo DS. If you don't know how to run NDS homebrew, look online for the answer...

You need Quake's data files. If you own a copy, that's cool - you'll have full access to the game. If not, then you can download the shareware version of Quake (for DOS) from id's site. This will only allow you to play the levels from the first episode. If you want to play the full game, buy a copy - don't ask me (or others) where you can get these files.

In the root of your flash card, make a directory named id1
If you're using the shareware version, copy pak0.pak from that archive into the id1 directory that you just created
If you're using a commerical version, copy pak0.pak AND pak1.pak into that directory
You need a config file to tell the game how buttons are set up, etc. I know that my config file works, so download that from the link above and save it into the id1 directory.
Visit Chishm's DLDI page (above) and download the DLDI driver file which corresponds to your NDS booting method.
Download the QuakeDS binary package above, and extract the NDS file into the root of your flash card
You now need to patch that program so that it will be able to access the files on your card
For example, on my GBA Movie Player (CF) I download the file named 'mpcf.dldi' from Chishm's page.
I then run 'dlditool mpcf.dldi k:\QuakeDS.nds' - note K: is the volume where my Compact Flash card is mounted, yours will likely differ

Now do what you've gotta do to make an NDS start on your card
For example, on my GBA Movie Player, I need to rename K:\QuakeDS.nds to K:\_boot_mp.nds
Put the card in your booting hardware and turn on your DS!

Controls

The game is not currently finished, so there's no control customisation, bar what you can hack up in in_null.c and config.cfg. You will be able to properly change the controls in the finished version.
Current controls:

touching the screen changes the camera view
using the D-pad emulates the WSAD control method, so use up and down to move forward and backward, left and right to strafe left and right
B is bound to escape, so this will bring up/hide the menu
A is bound to enter, so can be used to select entries in the menu...and also jump
X/Y are weapon cycle up/down
L is fire
R is bound to god mode