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0870 Super_Robot_Taisen_W_JPN_PROPER_NDS-2CH

Catchup from 17th February:

Bleach_2nd_Kokui_Hirameku_Requiem_READ_NFO_JPN_PROPER_NDS-WRG

My girlfriend has kidnapped my NintendoDS because of this release, all thanks to MrSid who ported the old Giana Sisters C64 game to the DS.

It plays nicely and is definately worth a download.

http://quake.drunkencoders.com/

This port was started in mid-October 2006. It is not yet finished, however it is nearing completion.

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)

Finally the MK5 received a firmware update, though it has already been available for the many spin-offs available. Here's the news though, taken from the official website.

MK5 8G/16G GIGA cart upgrade core V1.23A  [17-02-2007]

history:
* support the DLDI,and open the DLDI source code
* support CRC write checksum,read/write is more safety
* fix few roms running bug
* moonshell play movie more smooth now,and upgrade to V1.5
* support MK5 joypad and MK5 mouse,and open the source code
* dpgtools upgrade to v1.21 ,support more video format

how to upgrade:
[1] link your MK5 to pc
[2] unzip this rar pack,and copy all file to MK5 removeable disk,overwrite all old files
[3] disconnect PC,turn on nds and enter the menu,click and run "mk5_update_fat_new_V1.23A.nds"
[4] turn off nds,now upgrade finish,enjoy it!

The following was taken from the official DS Linker website...

Usage: Customers only need to do is : Copy it into the DSLinker, and run it like a game from DSLinker 3D Menu. For more detail, please check readme.txt file in the package

Changelog is taken from the official DS-Linker website.

• Support Moonshell 1.6 Movie with fluency (Please download Moonshell for DSLinker from soft page).
• Optimized FAT file system.
• Open FAT I/O Source, easy for programmer make homwbrew.
• Open USB Plugin Source, easy for programmer make USB application.
• Support PDA software DSOrganize(Please download DSOrgainze for DSLinker from soft page).

Brakken from theskeen.com just informed me about a new Sega Genesis emulator released for the Nintendo Wii and here's the news taken from the theskeen website.

Gary Coleman has released the latest build of SoftDev's Geneis Plus emulator for the Nintendo Wii / GameCube which is based on eke-eke's recent additions . It has been compiled with the latest LibOGC so you should be able to use it with most SD cards even the 2GB ones. Oh, it's compiled already so it's ready to run! Digg this to spread the good word!

What's New:

- fm timers fixed (fix music in castle of illusion, quackshot, undead line, wonderboy in monster lair, cal 50, turbo outrun, thunderforce 4 and maybe more)

- added serial eeprom emulation (save support now works fine in wonderboy5, megaman, nba jam...) (credits to Notaz, adapted from Picodrive code)

- added dma timing emulation (fix bottom screen in Legend of Galahad, disabled by default because it makes a lot of other games hanging, enable this in option menu ) (credits to Notaz, adapted from Picodrive code)

- hack: clear Vint pending after Hint (INT level 4) acknowledge (fix fatal rewind)

- hack: modify read_bus16 to return a different value at each read (fake fetch) (fix time killers)

- modified cpu execution timings, with more correct hblank and interrupts timing (fix iss deluxe, double dragon 2 and certainly more) (Based on Gens source code)

- modified busreq mechanism: better synchro between z80 & 68k (no need to dejitter anymore) (Based on Gens code)

- added sprite collision detection (fix Strider 2)

- modified byte writing in VDP DMA Fill operation to take the endianness in account (fix Contra Hardcorps graphics)

- added CPU type detection (50hz or 60Hz) according to game region (can be forced in option menu) and also added PAL timings support. Please note that it's still buggy, as there is a strange repeating noise in sound playback when playing a PAL game, I must have miss something.

Click here to download: http://www.tehskeen.com/modules.php?name=News&file=showarticle&threadid=3871

A very promising new emulator for the DS has been released, called DSMasterPlus. Download is available below.