Rush Hour DS

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Originally Posted by Groquick

As for the save issue... actually the save feature is automatic on the nintendo DS. For example, if you reach level 12 and then close your ds, next time you play the game, you should be able to play from the level 12 again. That is how I could test the 160 levels.

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Hi Groquick!

My son and I love the original Rush Hour board game, and we enjoy your DS port. The game play and graphics are terrific. However, the automatic save feature does not work as you stated.

Perhaps it's our cards (I'm using the R4/M3DS Simply in a DS Lite)? It doesn't seem like it, because the .SAV does get written successfully (timestamp on it is updated with each play)... but it seems like it doesn't actually save the game state. Every time I launch the game, it's back to level 1, with inactive buttons so you can't advance the puzzle number.

We'd sure love to figure out why.

-TS

This was out long before DLDI, so I assume he saves to GBA SRAM. This would mean that saving would require a slot-2 device with GBA support.

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Originally Posted by DanTheManMS

This was out long before DLDI, so I assume he saves to GBA SRAM. This would mean that saving would require a slot-2 device with GBA support.

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Good point, Dan.
I was thinking along the same lines. What confuses me is that a .SAV file is successfully created during play. It apparently just doesn't contain the proper information to actually save the game state.

Groquick, if you're serious about releasing the source, I, for one, would sure love to get it converted to use DLDI or something more compatible with slot 1 cards.

This is a great little game. The board game is great, but can be tedious to set up. That is where this game excels.

Like everyone else, the save game function not working on the DS Lite is its only downfall.

It does work on my son's old original DS and am now up to No. 26 over a number of sessions of play. Placing the Cyclo DS in a DS Lite, it still goes back to No. 1, but after changing back to the original DS, you start where you left off last time. There is no visible .sav file on the card. Must have something to do the DS Lite's operating system.

Hi guys,

First, sorry for not posting this faster. I have not checked any DS dev forum for ages. My bad.

If I understand well, the save does not work on some new cartridges types, which is fortunately not very surprising :(

Anyway, here is the code. I found two folders on my computer, and since i did not know which one was the right one, I just put them both in the attached archive. Maybe one folder is a Visual Studio project while the other is ... something else. I runned a quick compare and the code seems identical in both folders.

Anyway, I guess the easiest change one could do is to disable the level locking feature. I checked very quickly. There is a class named Persistance. This class contains a method called GetMaxReachedLevel. I guess returning 160 (or maybe 159?) there would make the trick.

Good luck to anyone that tries it. The main challenge will be to compile it again!

Ah also, sorry for the "Rush hour movie" disappointment hehe.

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Originally Posted by Groquick

Hi guys,

First, sorry for not posting this faster. I have not checked any DS dev forum for ages. My bad.

If I understand well, the save does not work on some new cartridges types, which is fortunately not very surprising :(

Anyway, here is the code. I found two folders on my computer, and since i did not know which one was the right one, I just put them both in the attached archive. Maybe one folder is a Visual Studio project while the other is ... something else. I runned a quick compare and the code seems identical in both folders.

Anyway, I guess the easiest change one could do is to disable the level locking feature. I checked very quickly. There is a class named Persistance. This class contains a method called GetMaxReachedLevel. I guess returning 160 (or maybe 159?) there would make the trick.

Good luck to anyone that tries it. The main challenge will be to compile it again!

Ah also, sorry for the "Rush hour movie" disappointment hehe.

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what am i meant to do with the files?

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Originally Posted by phoneynametodownload

what am i meant to do with the files?

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You really expect anyone to help you with a username like "phoneynametodownload"?? :D lol j/k'ing

It sounds like Groquick developed the game in VisualStudio... which I've never used for developing to the DS. But I'm pretty sure you can use devkitARM with VS just like you can with Programmer's Notepad. The question is how much conversion there needs to be between whatever toolchain Groquick used (if there even was one when the game was developed) and devkitARM.

If and when you get the VS project to load into something that can compile, then you'd need to either proceed as Groquick suggested as the short fix - editing GetMaxReachedLevel to return 160 so the game sav is essentially bypassed - or shoehorning in DLDI so it can be patched to save to different cards as the proper fix.

I'm not sure how soon I'll get to this... as I've got a lot on my plate right now. But hopefully I'll be able to load it up sometime soon and just see where we are.

Nice little game.

Some problems with the touchscreen not always recognising the exact point on the car where I'm trying to drag it - it seems slightly 'off'. Using an M3 Simply and a DSLite.

Hope a DLDI fix can be found! Thanks!

As TomServo said, I used VisualStudio, but it actually just calls "make" behind, so I believe there should be little or no conversion needed.

I forgot to mention I programmed the game with PaLib, but since it is almost 3 years ago, the version used is pretty old (0.73 maybe?). I doubt PaLib is supporting backward compatibility (I might be wrong though), so using the latest PaLib will probably not work.

I do not know about the stylus problem. I hope it is not too annoying during gameplay. I got an old non-lite DS and I sometimes (not often though) get some weird stylus problem even on commercial games. :)

Alright folks, things finally slowed down a bit and I was able to sit down and get Groquick's code all linked up.

It took many many hours to work out all the dev environment quirks and toolchain nuiances... but I'm happy to announce that I got it to spit out a "stop-gap" version I'm calling "RushHourDS: Express Commuter Edition" that has all the levels unlocked, thus working around any requirement for game saves (and thus, making it much less frustrating for DS Lite/Slot-1 device users).

From the main menu, you can go directly to any level/challenge you like, regardless of whether you've previously unlocked it.

I'm at work on a true "fixed" version that is capable of saving to slot-1 devices, but I thought I'd get this out so folks could start using it if they wanted to.

If anyone finds any problems, shoot me an email.

The attached archive contains only the .nds version of the build because that's really the only version that was having problems. If you have a slot-2 device, you can play Groquick's original. But if you'd like the ECE version of the .gba build anyway let me know.


P.S. - I've only tested this release in emulators, and on a NDS Lite with an M3DS-Simply slot-1 device because, well, that's all I have. You mileage may vary. But if you have another setup and are experiencing issues, let me know.


P.P.S. - Bombdog, I tested and tested on my DS Lite and couldn't replicate any weirdness with the stylus. I played with a few things to see if maybe it could help your situation, but it could be you just need to recalibrate your DS's touchscreen.