Nintendo DS homebrew software is unofficial software written for the Nintendo DS by hobbyist programmers, as opposed to software written by a game production company or corporation (using the official development tools from Nintendo). The DS homebrew software is typically used on the DS via third-party rewritable game cartridges, or SD cards. It is made using libnds and often using the libfat[1] FAT library.
The Nintendo DSi also has homebrew allowed on it. However such homebrew is rare, as Nintendo has put significant effort into blocking 3rd party devices and content from the DSi.[2]
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Since the Nintendo DS is not sold with a storage medium, a third-party storage solution is required to store homebrew.
The earliest solutions for homebrew employed a storage device in the GBA cartridge slot (referred to as "SLOT-2") and a booting tool in the DS cartridge slot (referred to as "SLOT-1"). This two-tool combination is commonly referred to as "SLOT-2" or "1st Generation". Later on, cards that only utilized the DS slot (SLOT-1) to store and run homebrew software were developed. These devices are referred to as "2nd Generation" cards.
There are a few main differences between the two technologies used:
SLOT-2 devices include basic GBA flash cartridges, the GBA Movie Player and the related M3 Perfect, the Max Media Dock, and the SuperCard.
SLOT-1 devices include the DSTT, DS iPlayer, R4DS (Gold), M3 DS Simply, and their clones, R4i, N-Card, MK5, iTouch DS, SuperCard DS One, SuperCard DS One i, SuperCard DS Two, CycloDS Evolution, EDGE DS, iEDGE, the AceKard, Acekard 2, Acekard 2i, the DS Link, the DS-Xtreme, the NinjaPass X9, EZ-Flash V, the Datel Games n' Music, M3 Real, M3i Zero, G6 Real, and DSTTi.
The available solutions for Game Boy Advance or Nintendo DS homebrew differ in size, compatibility with commercial ROM images, bundled special features (such as included media players), availability, and cost. To store homebrew, all flash cards use either built-in flash memory or external flash memory cards, like microSD or CompactFlash. Nintendo states the internal memory capacity of their game cartridges in bits, while external cards state capacity in 8-bit bytes.
Running DS homebrew using a SLOT-2 storage device requires a booting tool. A booting tool is a device that sends the DS' instruction pointer to an address in the GBA slot, allowing programs to be run from storage there. A booting tool is not required for SLOT-1 devices, nor is a booting tool required to use GBA homebrew on the DS.
One of the most popular booting tools is the program FlashMe. This is a modified firmware for the DS. Once it is installed over the existing firmware on the DS, homebrew applications can be booted directly from SLOT-2. In addition to being a booting tool, it also protects the DS from the 1 known DS Bricker program and removes the RSA check on DS Download Play, allowing the user to use WifiME (Wireless Multi Boot) to download homebrew applications. Optionally, it can disable the health and safety warning shown when the device is powered on. Many users of SLOT-1 devices still install FlashMe because of these extra features.
Since the FlashMe installation program is itself a homebrew program, another homebrew booting tool is required for its installation. The other homebrew booting tool is only needed once, at install time, and therefore can either be borrowed for this occasion or sold after use. Upgrades to FlashMe can be booted from the existing FlashMe installation.
The other method commonly seen is a device called a NoPass. This is a physical card, sold under brand names such as SuperKey and MAX Media Launcher, that resembles a DS Game Card. The program inside contains instructions that immediately send the program counter to the GBA slot. Some SLOT-1 cards, such as the M3 DS Simply and the DSTT, have this built into their firmware so they can act as a slot 2 booting device; other SLOT-1 cards can run a program stored on the card to jump to SLOT-2 in the same way.
Before the encryption on SLOT-1 was reverse-engineered, which allowed the creation of SLOT-1 storage and NoPass devices, booting tools had to exploit flaws in early versions of the Nintendo DS' firmware or in specific games. Booting tools under this category include PassMe, which exploited a flaw in the DS firmware's header check for Game Cards; WiFiMe, which exploited a flaw in the DS firmware's header check for DS Download Play; and PassMe2, which exploited a flaw in the DS BIOS. Some PassMe and PassMe2 devices came with a serial port for some homebrew apps to use. PassMe and WiFiMe worked only with early versions of the DS firmware, causing mild confusion until a method of checking a DS's firmware version involving crashing PictoChat was discovered. But because these methods require a DS with older firmware, must be programmed to work with a specific game, or leave chunky dongles hanging off the back of the DS, these booting tools have seen decreasing popularity as of 2006[update].
In the third quarter of 2005, after SLOT-2 cards first became popular, Nintendo changed the firmware of new DS units to lock out the "PassMe" booting tool, starting with the iQue DS. A different, more difficult exploit for the new firmware was discovered a bit later. In January 2006, the homebrew community found a way to determine the version of firmware installed on a DS, so that the user could determine which exploit to buy. It involved the behavior of PictoChat if a DS Game Card or Game Boy Advance cartridge is ejected or the lid is closed. In the first version, PictoChat would freeze; later versions would change both screens to a solid color, with a different color for each firmware version. It is commonly called "The Pink Screen of Death" (not to be confused with The Blue Screen of Death or The Black Screen of Death).[3]
The version results are as follows:
Note: the DSi does not crash when ejecting a Slot-1 Card in Pictochat. It uses a completely different firmware that can be updated at will. The version is shown in the Settings applet.
Many homebrew programmers have encountered difficult to navigate obstacles while developing their projects as a result of the DS's relatively weak CPU and little RAM compared to PCs of the time. The introduction of the Nintendo DS Memory Expansion Pak (included with Nintendo DS Browser) and the recent inclusion of extra RAM in some Slot-2 devices (SuperCard SD/CF/Lite, EZ3-in-1), as well as the 1GB of NAND memory in the Acekard RPG, and a GBA slot expansion pack with the M3 Real has allowed programmers to overcome some of these obstacles.
Homebrew DS applications are generally programmed using C/C++. A popular toolchain is devkitARM. A few libraries that make programming easier include libnds, libfat, dswifi , NFlib and PAlib. libfat helps developers write to a FAT file system on the homebrew storage device while dswifi allows developers to access the console's Wifi capabilities. Several tutorials have been written about the various aspects of the system. fpc4nds is a port of FreePascal for cross compile for DS. DS Game Maker is a software made by James Garner which allows users to easily design homebrew games and applications.
One of the biggest issues of programming homebrew on the DS is accessing a card's file system. This is due to each homebrew device using a different interface to access an inserted media card. This has been solved by the introduction of DLDI (Dynamically Linked Disc Interface) drivers, which superseded the use of drivers statically linked into the homebrew application during compilation. The current FAT library, libfat, is provided with the ability to use these drivers. Its predecessor, GBA NDS FAT, can be modified to use these drivers too.
A problem with early DS homebrew was that many programs were not compatible with certain flash cards. Each card requires its own routine to access the storage device (CF/SD/etc). A program compiled before the release of a certain card would not have the required routines to support that card. Additionally, including all of these routines would bloat the program. DLDI (Dynamically Linked Device Interface) solves this issue by removing the access routines from the programs. Instead, a module containing the routines for a given card is patched into the executable by the user using a simple graphical or command-line utility. This ensures forward-compatibility, as the driver for a card can be inserted into any DLDI-compatible program, and prevents bloat by removing support code for other cards from the program.
DLDI patches and patching tools can be found at DLDI Wiki.[4]
Modern Slot-1 flash cards (usually starting from 2007 or newer, like R4 DS or M3 DS Real) automatically patch compatible homebrew with the designated DLDI driver on startup to eliminate the need of manual patching on the PC.
Homebrew applications for the DS add many features to the console. There are internet related tools like web browsers, instant messengers, and email clients. Multimedia programs allow users to enjoy movies, music, ebooks and comics. Emulators let people play games designed for another system.
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