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Nintendo DS Port -- Possible?

Posted: Tue Jun 26, 2007 11:11 pm
by shodanjr_gr
Is there a possibility to port Exult to the Nintendo DS?

I understand there might be some limitations hardware wise (CPU Speed, available memory without a ram expansion pack) but the system has an ARM9 CPU (supplemented by an ARM7) so porting the code itself should not be that hard.

Has anyone fiddled around with it?

Re: Nintendo DS Port -- Possible?

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:07 am
by SB-X

Re: Nintendo DS Port -- Possible?

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 12:08 am
by Chrighton
Not nearly enough RAM in the DS, given what exult typically uses/needs.

Re: Nintendo DS Port -- Possible?

Posted: Wed Jun 27, 2007 2:08 am
by Lanica
Could you get Ultima7 on the DS somehow? -- yes, with a lot of hard work and programming. Could you port Exult to the DS -- well...probably, but it would be a heck of a lot easier to start from scratch from the most part. Console systems are a complete different world... You'd have to re-organize the data completely, and limit the amount of data that is loaded into "real memory". The real problem as mentioned in the other post is the legality of it. There's two problems in that regard: 1. Is a flash card device legal? and 2. Getting the game data onto the flash card -- you would have to do it yourself, otherwise I'm fairly certain it would be illegal for anyone else to do it, without proof of purchase or something. There's a lot more issues than that. I dreamt the dream already of having it on the DS, but its just not worth it to me. I already have a PocketPC :) And there's many more issues/reasons to NOT use the DS, but I think I've covered the main ones I know of.

I don't know if you'll be interested in it or not, but the SNES version of Ultima 7 was ported to the PSP by EA last year sometime. Check this link out for some info (and click on other links for even more info):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_VII#PSP_version

Re: Nintendo DS Port -- Possible?

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 2:19 am
by Jerzat
Also, emulation of SNES is available on the DS via homebrew software, so the SNES version of Ultima VII should be playable already.

As for the two problems posed earlier:
1. Yes, owning a flash card for the ds is legal and they are freely sold just about anywhere.
2. You would have to own your copy of Ultima VII and get it on your flash card for Exult to use, just like you get it from your floppies of CD to use Exult on your PC.

For a (maybe not so much) similar successful project have a look at ScummVM for the DS: http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/

Re: Nintendo DS Port -- Possible?

Posted: Fri Jun 29, 2007 6:26 am
by Dominus
Yes, Jerzat is right, such Flash Cards are quite easily to get these days and not illegal, I own one myself for the GBA. It's quite easy to back your games up and put them on the flash card and play them.