Nintendo DS Homebrew Thread

I have a Datel Games, N Music card. And the DLDI for it.

Are we allowed to talk about emulation here? I'm talking old consoles like NES and Sega Mega Drive. I heard it was legal if you owned the original games and console, but don't quote me on that.

Actually even just making a copy of the ROM image is illegal, regardless of whether you own the game or not. (In the USA, at least. I don't know about elsewhere, but the laws are probably similar.)

Copyright as the name has the word copy is all about making a copy of something for distribution.

When copyright is applied to something, you cannot copy something without consent of the author if your job is to distribute it in any form. This tells us that you cannot copy a ROM image even when you own the game to pass it to someone else. Theoretically, you are allowed to create a backup of something but you cannot use that backup frequently if your original product is still operational. Because if you do, its no longer considered to be a backup.

But in any case, if there's a disclaimer packed with the original (and thats always the case) then that disclaimer tells you all the rights. It beats the copyright and authors right, but usually is written in the disclaimer.

You will lose the rights to the product if you get a copy of a product that has no disclaimer when you get it, while the original product once contained a disclaimer. So you'll never win a trial if you state that there was no disclaimer when you got your copy.

/\ Yeah, in Australia, unless its specifacally mentioned that you can't, you are allowed to make as many copies as you want, but only for personal use. That is to say it's perfectly legal to have say... Pokemon Platnium in it's original format, on a flash cart, on an emulator on the computer and on a backup CD, as long as you are the only one that has access to it. As soon as you allow someone else to use more than 10% of it, THEN it's illegal. that's why they can't prosecute you for using .Torrents

So many homebrew music tools! I just placed an order for the CycloDS Evolution so I can run them! This is going to be awesome! I'll play KSDS on it too once it's out.

So many homebrew music tools! I just placed an order for the CycloDS Evolution so I can run them! This is going to be awesome! I'll play KSDS on it too once it's out.

welcome to the DS homebrew scene.
i thought you would have been one of the first to jump on the HB boat

so....

are we allowed to talk about emulation here?

Considering it's not really legal I'd say no.

Emulation should be legal as far as I know, and if it does not by some mysterious reasons, running homebrew on emulators definitely falls under "fair use" anyway. Just keep it related to homebrew please.

Then, related to running commercial titles as roms in emulators, I've seen some confusion over this on the internet; remember that it's rarely illegal to talk about illegal things. To talk about how things are and work is an important right that we should defend, the only thing that you can get in trouble for is linking to roms or spreading them on your own behalf. Having said that, this is not the right forum for those types of discussions though and we should keep it about homebrew and creative stuff here.

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What's up with all those homebrew apps? Why is almost every music program unable to locate the sub-folders despite that I kept the entire directory structure from the .zip? Are homebrew apps designed so that the NDS file must be put in the root folder or something? Have the homebrew community EVER heard about relative paths?

Sorry, I'm a bit upset because almost no software likes to run in my carefully arranged directory structure. I guess I'll just have to shove the NDS files on the root and put the software's sub-directory structures there, turning everything into a stupid mess.

...or perhaps I'm doing something horribly wrong.

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Woo that's the solution. The program folders should not be renamed and needs to be put in the root. Yay, now I'm going to install all my PC software into folders on C:\ too to show my appreciation. Thanks for dictating how I should arrange my directory structure! Who needed software categories anyway?

[mod]Even though you ARE a "Game designer"... Geez, triple post?[/mod]

Woo that's the solution. The program folders should not be renamed and needs to be put in the root. Yay, now I'm going to install all my PC software into folders on C:\ too to show my appreciation. Thanks for dictating how I should arrange my directory structure! Who needed software categories anyway?

Well, the one thing which makes me hate DS homebrew. In 99% of the cases relative paths do not exist. 

Woo that's the solution. The program folders should not be renamed and needs to be put in the root. Yay, now I'm going to install all my PC software into folders on C:\ too to show my appreciation. Thanks for dictating how I should arrange my directory structure! Who needed software categories anyway?

Once upon a time, on the gba/nds development world, there was a suggestion (don't remember who made it) about putting all the homebrew data files in a "/data/" folder located @ root.

Almost no one followed it   (Actually, some people did: check http://forum.gbadev.org/viewtopic.php?t=15423)

Oh, wait, I did it  . Oh wait, that also means I force the existence of a "/data/" folder on the root  .

(...can I say in my defense that homebrew ROMS were supposed to be located in a "homebrew" folder?...)

I don't understand why to not just go relative, or let the user configure the paths in an .ini file or something... I've installed like ~8 homebrew apps now, and the root bloat is already annoying.

I don't understand why to not just go relative, or let the user configure the paths in an .ini file or something... I've installed like ~8 homebrew apps now, and the root bloat is already annoying.

You should note that very often the .nds file can be placed anywhere on the card while the files required for it to run almost always have to be placed in the root, unless stated otherwise in the README or something.
And, as you have the CycloDS Evolution, note that as of firmware version 1.55 (the newest atm) you can specify a start folder for when you're browsing the content on the DS.
Also, you can hide any folder you don't want to see on the DS. Just enable the "hidden" setting for the folder/file when that card is in your computer.

I use this to allow an easy overview of my files when browsing on the DS.

My card is structured something like this:
Root
  +--- CycloDS
  +--- Applications (start folder)
  |      +--- GBA
  |      +--- Homebrew
  |      |      +--- Games
  |      |      +--- Applications
  |      +--- Backups
  +--- Media
  +--- Moonshl
  +--- data
  +--- maps
  +--- DRONS
  +--- legion
  +--- tyrian
  +--- groovesteps
  +--- soundboardds
  +--- sar
Where data, maps, drons, legion, tyrian, groovesteps, soundboardds, sar and many not mentioned are folders and files which homebrew games and applications use.

In the end most of it is hidden, so I won't see it unless I use the computer. It's a mess, but setting a start folder and organizing the .nds files helps out a lot.

I guess it's a solution, but it still only makes it look clean when it's in fact bloated. Ideally, I want to make my own directory structure for everything, the way things are on the PC (which is why 95% of the software I run was obtained from portableaps or portablefreeware).