Quake DS is a port of Quake to the Nintendo DS.
Current Status, as of 27/10/07
The game
the program, working state and game data have been squeezed into the four megabytes of main memory
it requires either shareware or commercial pak files, Amiga and PC paks have been successfully used
many total conversions and mods should work with a stock DS, assuming they respect the tiny memory size
total conversion and mods which refuse to play on a stock DS will play on a DS with a compatible flash card when combined with the EXRAM build
infrastructure-based wifi network gaming is supported
ad-hoc DS/DS gaming is currently de-activated in this version
there is full control configuration
game saves work, although there may be some corruption using certain DLDI drivers – game saving is not guaranteed to work correctly in the EXRAM build (when used with a slot-2 DLDI)
there’s a crosshair
there’s view snapping and pen sensitivity settings
there is a proper timebase, so the speed won’t be inconsistent any more like it was in pre1
there’s an on-screen keyboard, for use in-game and with the console, and it is much more functional than before
there are eight user-bindable ‘touch buttons’
access to the command line is now easier
dodgy QuakeC compatibility has been improvedGraphics
all software renderering has been moved over to using the DS’ 3D hardware
world textures are display 99% correctly, there may the occasional non-power-of-two texture wrapping glitch; Alias models are fully textured
sprites (eg explosions) are now correctly rendered, and they now have their correct animated textures (ie they’re not pink any more!)
particles (eg blood effects) are also correctly rendered, and also come in a shade other than pink
animated model skins are now (barely) supported
the game uses faux vertex lighting, derived from the original lightmaps; light animations also work correctly
there’s no dynamic lighting and Alias models are not lit
there are sky, water, sludge, lava and teleporter animations (the sky is now rendered correctly)
the console now uses the Quake font from the chosen pak files
the game uses hardware fogging for a light depth cue above ground, thick fog for below water
there’s a HUD
GUI elements are transparent (with no more corruption)Sound
there’s a full-blown custom ARM7 sound effects system, and it totally r0x0rs
the sound system uses proper spatial positioning (it is stereo though…) – plug it into your speakers and subwoofer to hear all the effort I put into this!
CD music has been dropped from this version…it may returnTech info
uses the libfat DLDI interface, so should hopefully work on all supported flash cards
built using the devkitARM r20 toolchain
textures and sounds are loaded from disk on demand – you will notice slow loading if you have certain types of cards, or low quality flash cards
sound and texture memory is defragged in the background
in-game performance has been improved but is still not hot, and I think this is as good as it’s going to get
rendering performance is very good (pause the game and move the camera if you don’t believe me)
performance is timed using a custom function-instrumenting profiler (a bit like gprof) and another system is used for recording the exact pad and screen input for later replaying
the DS is put to sleep when the lid closes (disabled in this build)
there is no texturing on brush or Alias models or images loaded from individual files – you must use pak files