Developping on Nintendo DS

Matth' · Apr 2008

Hi all.

I started with friends one week ago to work on a little homemade game on Nintendo DS.
We are trying to make an RPG in ISO view, with 3D characters and environments. Game engine will be developped on C++. 3d modeling and texturing are my domain.

Developping on Nintendo DS is actually new for me, and Thanks to this forum, I could find many ressources and informations for this device.

But there still are unanswered questions.
Most important of them concern 3D export :

1 - wich 3D format should I use to export my models on DS (OBJ ?) ? Are there specialized tools to do this ?
2 - for the textures : I've read that .TGA format is ok. How do I import them, if it's necesseray (packages, tools...) ?

Thanks for any help.

PS : please excuse my English.

CrazyButcher · Apr 2008

the 3d format will very likely be a custom format made by your coders, as .obj is an ASCII format and wasting way too much time, slow to load etc... probably your coders will either make exporters or a converter from known formats to engine's format.

same goes for .TGA I am sure DS has better compressed texture formats, paletted and whatever... space and load times are too crucial for these devices to just throw uncompressed data at them. however I have no hard experience with DS, just looked into the unoffcial homebrew toolkits once.

MoP · Apr 2008

Even if you did want to use OBJ, it wouldn't make any sense because OBJ is a static format, you can't animate it. Much better to have a custom format, like CrazyButcher says, you can just have one which only exports the data you need (vertices, vertex colors, UVs, skin and bones) into a compressed format.

Steve Schulze · Apr 2008

Butcher and Mop are right with regards to the models.

Texture-wise, you'd only use Targas if you need to imbed an alpha channel for transparency. Otherwise, you should use a bmp with a pallette of 256 colours, or ideally 16 if you can get away with it. Texture memory is extremely limited on the DS, so you always need to be as efficient as possible.

Matth' · Apr 2008

Thanks for answers.

For models, do you know a standard format that allow me to store model and bones ? I was working on Stalker and Unreal before, I'm not very aware of it.

For textures, indeed, BMP in 256 colours allows me to grab some ko (5ko instead of 8ko). 16 colours is a bit too low. Can I use 64 for exemple ?

CrazyButcher · Apr 2008

the model format thing is really up to the coders, and not your job. unfortunately many standard formats would be wasting too much memory for your needs.

ms3d (milkshape 3d) and "blitz3d" both are binary and should contain all you need, specs are open, as well... but well you might as well write own format...

Matth' · Apr 2008

Thank you for your help. I'll talk about this with the coders.
Blitz3D seems very interesting.

Developping on Nintendo DS

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