Colors: Turn your DS into a Cintiq! (homebrew app)

sinistergfx · Jul 2007

Kinda...

http://www.collectingsmiles.com/colors/ (the app)

http://colors.brombra.net/?page=1 (the gallery)

It rocks my face off. It's actually pressure sensitive!

Hito · Jul 2007

can you play regular games after enabling your DS to run homebrew apps?

Peris · Jul 2007

WHOA

I just checked it out, since when does the ds have pressure sensitivity? This app rules

Snowfly · Jul 2007

I tried this out on lotekk's DS.

The screen res is actually more workable than I thought, and the interface is a pleasure to use. Feel wise, it's a lot like Open Canvas. Had a lot of fun in the 15 mins that I used it.

Xenobond · Jul 2007

[ QUOTE ]
can you play regular games after enabling your DS to run homebrew apps?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, you can. You don't even have to do anything to the DS in most cases if you buy a slot-1(ds cart sized) cart.

Peris · Jul 2007

Damn I can't get it to save my drawings

. Apparently if you have a supercard lite it only outputs corrupted png files. Still awesome app tho!

sinistergfx · Jul 2007

Yeah, I have a SCLite also. The png ends up corrupted, but the playback file still works, so you can just overwrite the corrupted png with a blank one and load the playback file.

I'm going to get a new flash card, cause I'm tired of the SCLite file system problems.

ElysiumGX · Jul 2007

Awesome! Yes, pressure sensitivity is used for the Jam Sessions game.

I was recommended to buy this for DS homebrew? http://www.r4ds.com/r4ds.htm

Can anyone confirm that this works well with this app?

Snowfly · Jul 2007

EGX - that's the one my officemates use, so by word of mouth and eye witness accounts...it works pretty damn well.

dom · Jul 2007

can you install zbrush or mudbox on it?

adam · Jul 2007

So to jump on the DS homebrew wagon I would have to pick up one of those R4DS cartridges + SD card? That it?

ElysiumGX · Jul 2007

yep, a friend currently has a small game i designed running on his DS using these. pretty damn cool.

Gmanx · Jul 2007

Yes, my son uses the r4ds system and has all kinds of shizzle on his DS. The r4ds came with a cool usb dock for the micro sd card.

John Warner · Jul 2007

that's cool! is there any small portable system for digital art, that's designed with that in mind?

Lee3dee · Jul 2007

i just downloaded it, its so cool! now I can draw on the toilet!

<-- Simple DS Here

SubPablo · Jul 2007

yup, same here with the supercard lite problem. I've got various appendages crossed hoping he fixes the issue eventually. -regardless, I'm liking this app a lot more than Phidias so far. No stylus lag + pressure sensitivity FTW.

hawken · Jul 2007

dig it if you find it helpful

http://www.dadako.com/nds-homebrew-with-passcard3-m3perfect

Steve Schulze · Jul 2007

Has anyone got a reputable document on how this pressure sensitivity business works? I'm having a running argument with several coders on whether its actually possible for this program to exist (despite the evidence) because it contradicts the DS Programing Manual or some such. We don't have any homebrew facilities available, so I need a document so I can win this silly dispute.

Snowfly · Jul 2007

Have you tried e-mailing the programmer?

Steve Schulze · Jul 2007

Never mind, they decided it was more fun discrediting each other than team up against a dumb artist. The answer they ended up with was kind of technical, but in lay terms, its something like the hardware supports pressure sensitivity but the DS OS doesn't. This means you have to do some hackery which means that Nintendo won't sanction any game using the feature. I'm not sure how the guitar game got around this if it does indeed use pressure sensitivity.

pior · Jul 2007

I was thinking about that pressure thing - maybe the app simply records wether you actually clicked or not during a certain amount of buffer time and then uses an average to estimate the 'pressure'. Like if one just lightly touches the screen less 'click time' is prone to be recorded (say, 3 milliseconds second of clicktime for 10 milliseconds of buffer) than if one presses more firmly. That way you get some fake pressure sensitivity instead of an i/o behaviour. Ha!

sinistergfx · Jul 2007

My understanding is that the DS averages a number of points together to figure out where you are touching, because there is never a 'perfect' touch where only one point is activated.

To get pressure sensitivity, you can base it on the number of points activated or the distance of the points from each other.

This averaging varies seeminly per DS and isn't totally consistent even on the same touch screen (why there is a calibration feature in colors that's still in progress); which is why it probably isn't an official 'feature'. The implementation on Colors is pretty much a hack; a damn nice and clever hack, though.

Xenobond · Jul 2007

Yes. I am enjoying it very much.

ElysiumGX · Jul 2007

From all that I have read since the DS released, I assumed the DS had a pressure sensitive pad placed under a touch screen. While the touch-sensors detect position, the pad detects force applied to the screen. I assumed the Jam Sessions game was the first to determine it was a useful feature.

"The lower display of the Nintendo DS is overlaid with a pressure-sensitive touch screen"

Around the time it was released, some people claimed it would cause many DSs to break easily. I don't understand how pressure-sensitivity could be "faked" for something as precise as a paint application.

Toomas · Jul 2007

sinistergfx just explained how it could be "faked", the harder you press the more "pixels" you press.

ElysiumGX · Jul 2007

oh wait, misread. i get it.

Michael Knubben · Jul 2007

I found this a few days back, and i'm loving the shit out of it. Polished, powerful, responsive. The playback certainly doesn't hurt either!

Michael Knubben · Jul 2007

Also, the R4 has worked fantastically for me, so far. Loads everything I've thrown at it, including homebrew. I got it for very, very cheap as well, 45 euros, with a 1GB micro-sd thrown in, as well as the ergular sd-adapter, and a usb-adapter. If you get a R4 without a micro-sd, make sure you don't get the Taiwan-made ones, but the japanese (i think). I've heard that the taiwan-made ones run slower, resulting in less-than-perfect performance for ds-games.

adam · Jul 2007

[ QUOTE ]
So to jump on the DS homebrew wagon I would have to pick up one of those R4DS cartridges + SD card? That it?

[/ QUOTE ]

Some co-workers also have a GBA cartridge for their homebrew'd DS'...

Do I need that as well as a SD cartridge? Or...?

$:\$

Xenobond · Jul 2007

Some Slot 1 & 2 carts have their own built in flash memory. Others use micro SD cards for the memory. Until about the last year there were only the gba sized flash carts available. Now you can get the ds sized ones and they work just as fine. If you get a slot 1 cart (ds size) you'll be missing out on any gba homebrew games/apps. With a slot 2 cart, you can do both ds and gba homebrew.

hawken · Jul 2007

Adam, yes you need an SD card too.

Gonna give this software a spin this weekend

Xenobond · Jul 2007

Started messing around with it this morning on the way in to work.

ElysiumGX · Jul 2007

That image is twice the size of the DS screen res. Is that the largest it will create atm? He mentions one more zoom level, that would put it at 1024x768 hopefully. I'm waiting until Tuesday to buy the R4DS. I'm excited to try this.

Illusions · Jul 2007

Can't try it at all, but with what you guys are churning out it looks like he may have helped create the first truly portable, cheap, digital sketchbook.

Slipstream · Jul 2007

This program makes me love my DS more than ever before. I'm so happy

Lee3dee · Aug 2007

doodles while waiting at Philly airport. Never again USAir!

LoTekK · Aug 2007

I wondered myself about the pressure sensitivity, but as it turns out, the actual DS hardware is capable of registering pressure (ie, there's no hackery based on number of pixels, etc).

For folks with the SuperCard Lite, the latest release (v1.05) appears to have fixed the saving and loading issue. PNG output works a charm, too. I even managed to salvage the doodle snowfly did up on my DS (the blank bit at the bottom is due to an issue with cursor positioning in the early builds):

ironbearxl · Aug 2007

Just bought a R4DS + 2gig minisd + iRiver Radio Transmitter for the car, should all get here by Friday. Thanks for the heads up, didn't know the DS could do all this cool stuff!

HonkyPunch · Aug 2007

AWesome
MUST GET

Moz · Aug 2007

DO WANT.

I'm going to pick up a R4 as soon as I can.

Michael Knubben · Aug 2007

I did a few:

http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=438
http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=437
http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=436
http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=435
http://colors.brombra.net/details.php?i=434

Colors: Turn your DS into a Cintiq! (homebrew app)

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