“I was inspired by the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, where he’s sick, he makes this call where he plays back puking sounds from his keyboard,” says Tobias Weyand. “Bueller inserts this diskette into his keyboard and pretends to be really sick, I’ve always wanted a thing like that.” Weyand’s a Nintendo DS homebrew game developer.
He finally got to fulfill his dream — without the cybervomiting. The PhD computer science student at Aachen University in Germany always wanted a portable music tracker, so he programmed one. Nitro Tracker is one of the most popular homebrew applications for the Nintendo DS and allows users to create basic melodies that resemble the beeps and boops of old video games. Weyand is also part of an active community of homebrew developers and coders called Dorkbot. Weyand started playing the popular PC game Crayon Physics. He wanted to take it everywhere in his pocket, so he developed Pocket Physics. Drawings on the DS touch screen react to real world forces, like gravity. Crayon Physics has spawned an online community, where users can upload and share their creations. When Weyand runs into problems developing DS homebrew, he brings his applications to his local Dorkbot group, a worldwide group of makers and hackers who get together and share ideas and concepts.
Homemade applications need help to work. Small cartridges, called flashcards, hack the DS and allows it to run unlicensed code, including pirated commercial game files. This gives the homebrew community a bad reputation, and Nintendo has shut down many flashcard retailers. Over the years flashcards have evolved, from clunky pieces of plastic, to sleek devices that look like regular DS games. Micro SD cards fit inside them and allow data transfer from computer to flashcard.
Lucas Arts lead designer Jens Anderson developed the game Colors!, which allows users to create detailed art. Anderson worked around the DS hardware limitations to make his advanced image creation program. An online community sprang up, similar to Pocket Physics’ following, which allows users to upload their artwork.
“The most surprising thing was clearly how well it was received within the professional digital concept art community,” said Anderson.
Jeremy Smith of Vancouver, British Columbia, developed a DS version of Guitar Hero. Users tap onscreen notes and follow the tune of popular video game music. Smith collaborated with an artist to create the visual interface for his game.
“I’d always been interested in doing a music/rhythm game,” said Smith, who also programs user-generated iPhone applications.
These are only a few examples of the vibrant Nintendo DS hombrew community.
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This story was part of a multi-writer piece featured on Rabble.ca
Check out Tobias Weyand’s website at http://return1.net/site/ppm
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dsgamemaker.com is a program called DS Game Maker (if it wasn’t obvious enogh) that makes programming for the DS easy. You can create DS Games without knowledge of programming, and you still have full control over what you make. You’re even allowed to sell your creations.
I am KingdomH on that site.
That’s an interesting concept, I didn’t know about it. Thanks for bringing the site to my attention