tsukihime on ds

Homebrew is indeed a wonderful thing. There’s nothing better than utilising your handheld’s otherwise unlocked potential; it adds a new level of versatility courtesy of those creative, intelligent and charitable individuals who can design something to specifically suit a console’s hardware in an arbitrary fashion to appeal to the niche portion of gamers. The handheld life wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it weren’t for our beloved non-commercial developers, fueled by the desire to test the extent of their coding knowledge and improve as necessary, and providing us with excellent unconventional software for these specific platforms. An example is Moonshell, which is awesome and well-deserving of merit.

The PSP is an attractive medium for homebrew developers. If we’re going to make direct comparisons between the hardware specifications of a PSP - boasting unrivaled computing power in relativity to the DS (the system which harbors its share of flaws in the form of inferior hardware, making up with an innovative control structure) - it becomes apparent as to which is more favourable for the likes of those who are aiming for something to pour their coding experience into. However, visual novels by default aren’t state-of-the-art pieces of software representing the pinnacle of modern coding techniques… that is, they don’t require a powerhouse to run; static images, text and sound are not all that processor-intensive.

I’ve already read all of the original visual novel, but news of a port is still more than just intriguing to say the least. The ONScripter engine has long been ported to the PSP, but if you can make a few compromises here and there for a console that’s lacking in power - especially if what you’re working with is fairly insensitive to change - what difference does it make? What we have here is a relatively new release (early March 08) of a homebrew engine for the Nintendo DS (website here) designed to read visual novels which adhere to the application’s prerequisites. It’s about time too; kudos to the guy who made it.

Yea, I’m borrowing a camera for this and it’s pretty terribad; I don’t have much of a reason to own one personally nor do I have the cash to shell out, and the DS doesn’t have a native port for direct video feed (and I’m too lazy to download an emulator).

A couple of weeks ago while my computer was making its merry way to hardware heaven, a DS port of the Fate/stay night demo (translated by insani) was released. The developer (website here) has since released an improved version for Fate/Hollow Ataraxia’s demo (translated by Blue Gunner from TBL), though the actual ROM contains all required information - the text, media, engine and so on - which is restricted by the DS’s meager 4mb of RAM. As such, they are rightfully fit to be called concept demos; interesting nonetheless. Perhaps if the engine could be exported into another DS ROM which reads an external script along with other media files (as the application used to run Tsukihime above), we could have something seriously awesome going on here, like PORTABLE H-SCENE GOODNESS actually being able to read something interesting on-the-go.

Something to do while you aren’t busting your arm on Osu! Tatakae! Carpal Tunnel Syndrome!’s spinning wheel gimmick and if you’ve already played every other game worth playing.

~ by Espydon on 16 March, 2008.