Quake II made it finally to the Nintendo DS!

Current Status, as of 9/2/08:

The Game
every single level within the game can be loaded and played in single-player mode
there is currently no wifi multiplayer

the game can be run with either the demo or full retail pak files
there is full control configuration
there is an on-screen keyboard for use in-game and with the console
there are eight “touch-buttons” which allow you quick access to in-game functions
both manual and automatic game saving works
mods and total conversions do not work, and are unlikely ever to – however new levels can be used

Graphics
nearly-all of the graphical effects have been have been moved to the DS’ 3D hardware
most world textures are rendered correctly
particles are supported, however sprites are not
animated model skins are properly supported
although the game does not use lightmapping, dynamic lighting is fully-functional

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!

The Catch!
Unlike Quake 1, there is simply no way of fitting Quake II into the memory configuration of a stock DS. To play the game you must have a supported slot-2 flash card that contains a minimum of 16 megabytes of RAM.

Supported cards:
‘Proper’ SuperCards, eg the Lite, SD, MiniSD, and CF. The SuperCard Rumble and SuperCard One are not compatible.
‘Perfect’ M3s, eg the Lite Perfect, the Mini SD Perfect, and the SD Perfect. The Mini SD Pro, SD Pro, and Lite Pro are not compatible.
EZ-Flash cards which have a slot-2 component and can play GBA games over 32MBit, eg EZ 3-in-1, EZ 4, EZ 5
G6 Flash

Note: the game will not run without a slot-2 RAM. There will never be a version of Quake2DS that does not require extra RAM.

Overclocking Slot-2 RAM: Slot-2 RAM is very slow and the performance of the game greatly depends on the speed of your RAM. Luckily some cards can be overclocked to improve the game’s performance.

However, not all cards are made equal and cannot handle tighter timings. To more robustly find out if you RAM is capable of an overclock, please try memtestARM from http://www.pineight.com/ds/

If you can overclock your card, make sure you choose one of the faster memory options when the game first starts up.

Thanks to http://www.drunkencoders.com for the news.

http://quake.drunkencoders.com/index_q2.html

Micket has continued the development on OldPlay. OldPlay is a portable multiformat music player for the GP2X and other platforms.

Changes:

VERSION 1.32
* Fixed bug song length that I accidently introduced in 1.31 (for game music)
* The improved volume control wasn’t enough, so I increased it even more. Now there is 50 steps (only 10 is shown in the display) with very high precision at lower volumes.

Download “oldplay.zip” from Mickets page.

http://www.micket.com/

Exophase has updated his PC Engine, Turbo Graphics 16 emulator Temper. It fixes minor issues, from last weeks initial release.

Release notes:

Temper (Turbografx EMulator PEr Request) is a PC-Engine/TurboGrafx-16 emulator for GP2X.

Until it’s on the archive you can download it here: http://exophase.devzero.co.uk/temper_v0.55.zip

This is a release to address some of the initial problems in the release last weekend, add some minor optimizations, and add bz2 support. I was going to add zip support, but this was just easier.

I’m going to hopefully focus on adding support for the CD-ROM components next. Wish me luck.

Let me know if I broke anything this time please.

http://www.gp32x.com/board/index.php?act=ST&f=42&t=40590

Niilon Tarina GBA is a fundemo by a group called iso. It does not cover any fancy effects, it’s just a kind of slideshow.

http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=49391

Morgan is proud to announce the release of Geografika v1.0.

Features:
-300 questions over: locations of cities, countries, monuments, and physical features; capitals; landlocked countries; borders; areas; and maps.
-Adventure mode: travel to 15 cities around the world where each quiz gets more difficult.
-Quiz mode: 3 difficulties of 20 question random quizzes.
-Library: view photos and information on places and countries around the world. Also includes a fully scrollable simplified world map.
-Save system to save your progress.

Controls:
-Touchscreen- navigate menus, select answer
-A- select menu option
-B- go back to previous menu
-L/R- change text color

Other info:
In adventure mode, the goal is to progress from city to city. In order to get to the next city, score at least a B on the quiz. If you score an A, you will unlock more places and countries in the library. Progress is automatically saved after each quiz.

http://palib.info/forum/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=4229&forum=9

Jerome Wax has decided to make his game Meteora open source.

http://meteora.lo2k.net/

chris28 brings us a new homebrew Nintendo DS game called Electro. It’s a puzzle / block game.

http://www.dev-fr.org/projets/(ndsjeu)-electro-v0-1/msg21809/?topicseen#new

Exult is an Ultima 7 interpretor port for the GP2x.

http://archive.gp2x.de/cgi-bin/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,20,1044

Very simple plugin to change the version number in 3.90 M33 System Information, enable the plugin and create a vchanger.txt in the root, which you fill with the version you want. It doesn’t need to be a numeric version, you can use anything you want, even complete words But the maximum it can go is 10 bytes, not any longer.

http://forums.qj.net/f-psp-development-forum-11/t-release-flashless-version-changer-v2-slim-support-134576.html

Dow! – Develope on the go! is an application for developing right on your PSP. At the moment you can write LUA-scripts in the selfmade editor and with the help of codesnippets.

http://forums.qj.net/showthread.php?t=134581