Wednesday, August 22, 2012

AnimEDS at Neoflash Compo

For the second time, I'm entering the "Neo Coding compo", with latest versions of AnimEDS and SEDS, with in-app help for almost all the operations. I had first some hope, as there weren't that much "good" (imho) applications submitted until Smealum (arsenal) nuked me with his FPSMaker ...

Un badge, des messages d'aide, un personnage moustachu en salopette dans un .spr (à la place de Badman), et voilà AnimEDS (et SEDS) prêts pour la compétition de "rétro-coding" de Neoflash. Cette année, c'est "toutes machines confondues", avec un sérieux regain d'intérêt pour les participants, même si je n'ai pas vu côté DS de production à la hauteur des jeux qui avaient brisé les espoirs de Apple Assault en 2010. Si je devais donner un pronostic, je parierais sur la victoire du FPSMaker dans la catégorie "Applications" (également sur DS).

Anyway, although I made the effort of having the compo badge shown in my entry this year, winning some prize is not my main motivation: I want to take the opportunity of many people blowing dust away from their handheld console and downloading homebrews to get more feedback about the user interface and how to make things more "user friendly". 10/15 blog readers have voted for that in the app/game poll that ends by friday ... but for that I'll need to know what people think and expect from my apps.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The App division, total 11 entries No.1 [NDS App] FPS Maker By smealum
No.2 [NDS App] AnimEDS: Animation Editor for DS By PypeBros
No.3 [N64 App] ControllerTest By sanni

PypeBros said...

-> 10$ to support Wikipedia
-> 10$ to support Trudbol a capella artist
-> 60€ for a backup DS Lite thingy.

10$man said...

really like this idea!
It makes me wish I had a flash cart for my DS ~sm-63.gif~.gif
(Why are so many awesome homebrew for DS??? Darn you smealum...)

I've got one question. You said it can export to PNG or Animation instruction for web. Where does it export to? Can DS export onto the memory stick of the flash cart or something?
(Sorry for this question :P , I haven't ever used homebrew on a DS)

PypeBros said...

It saves in its native .SPR format on the media card (typically SD) that you insert in your linker. Then, it's up to you to get it out of your DS, either
# un-mounting the linker, sticking the (micro-)SD card into your computer and copying the file
# using your favourite DS file transfer tool (lilou's combox or DSFTP)
# using my own 'runme' tool (although it's a bit crude) and the companion download/upload scripts.

But then all you've got is a binary file holding dumps of the DS video RAM that my game engine uses natively. "export" is the process of converting that into some other format, like PNG. That happens on your PC computer, or using a web service. It's all described in the ".spr format" section of this user guide.

Of course, anybody that wants to code a user-friendly converter running on any platform is welcome to do so. Converter tools are open-source as well (although PERLish and ulgy ^^")