New DS project

SirPoonga

Shared on Fri, 12/15/2006 - 17:34
While waiting for graphics on my main project I am fooling around with another idea so I can learn more about DS programming. I am going to get a motion detection unit for the DS at ndsmotion.com. I think a labyrinth game would be awesome. You know those wooden labyrinths, right? Well, here's what one night of playing with PAlib created.

The first pic is playing with a path finding algorithm. The second is figuring out why the alorgorithm didn't work in some situations. I figured out why and submitted a fix to the library I am using.

My plans are to have the maze editable or allow users to dump maps to the flashcard. Also I plan on controlling the game with stylus or pad though it is intended for the motion controller.

The hard part for me is the physics. I want the ball to be completely driven by physics, though I will take shortcuts if the DS can't handle some stuff. The hard part about that will be the accurate collision detection needed. Accurate detection can take up quite abit of processing. Actually, for the most part it won't be that hard. Finding a collision between a circle and a line is easy. It's the corners and how the ball bounces off that is tough.

Also the DS doesn't have a floating point processor. Yeah, I have no clue how 3D works on it without floating point. Anyway, angles are weird, at least with the library I am using. They go from 0-511 (9bit). I am use to thinking in radians and degrees (Applied Math degree). This is going to take some different thinking.

Once I get this working I wonder if I can translate it into something that will work with XNA and on the 360. It would be cool to get it working on the Wii, I've heard it is pretty easy to get homebrew on it.

Edit:  Is the blog software screwing up the formatting?  I set the width of the images to 150 and it doesn't seem to be doing that.

Comments

ImaginaryEngr76's picture
Submitted by ImaginaryEngr76 on Fri, 12/15/2006 - 22:54
Looks like a cool project. I saw the DS motion sensor on another website and I was wondering if there was any good homebrew software out there that could utilize it. The most fascinating thing you mention was that the DS does 3D graphics without a floating point processor - I wonder how that works also.
SirPoonga's picture
Submitted by SirPoonga on Wed, 12/20/2006 - 15:16
I figured out how to do floating point math on the DS. You have to use fixed point math. It isn't the simplest thing to explain. It isn't as accurate as true floating point but it doesn't have to be.
SirPoonga's picture
Submitted by SirPoonga on Sun, 12/17/2006 - 22:15
The motion sensor is coming out. He just sent some out to homebrew to get some games going. www.ndsmotion.com

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