[DS Scene] NINTV-DS v3.9 released
Published a new update for NINTV-DS (basically Nintellivision ), the Intellivision console emulator developed by the developer wavemotion-dave for the Nintendo DS/DSi portable console .
This new update improves ECS keyboard handling to handle “transposed” scanning of columns/rows, as well as support for 1024KB (512K Words) binary ROMs.
Also improved Banking/page-flipping for faster and more robust page turns. There should no longer be small audio “gaps” when browsing music.
Installation
To work, place the file NINTV-DS.NDS
on the flashcard or SD card. However, you must provide the BIOS files in the same directory containing the ROMs (they can be changed in Global Options):
grom.bin
exec.bin
ivoice.bin
(optional, for Intellivoice games only).ecs.bin
(optional, for ECS games only).
Characteristics
- All known games run at full speed on a DSi or higher.
- Many games run very close to full speed on older DS-LITE and DS-PHAT hardware, but you can play with the configuration settings to get the most out of these games.
- Support for custom overlays. See folder
extra
for details. - Support manual/instruction. See the folder
extra
for an example. - Support for state saves (3 save slots per game).
- High scores for up to 10 pre match scores with various sorting options.
- Support for Cheat/Hack using
NINTV-DS.cht
(see the ‘extras’ folder and place it in the directory/data
). - Tons of button/controller mapping options. Dual-Controller support (run and shoot simultaneously).
- JLP support for accelerated features, additional RAM and flash memory. When loading a game, use the button
to load and force activate JLP support if it is not automatically detected.
- ECS support for ECS games, including sound-enhanced games like Space Patrol . If it is not autodetected, when loading a game use the button
to load options.
Technical specifications
- Up to 1024KB (512K words) of emulated ROM memory.
- Emulated 16-bit JLP RAM (8K words).
- JLP Flash support of 168 lines (21 sectors) for a total of 32K bytes (effective 32256 bytes). Each game gets its own 32K of supported flash files.
- Up to 2K of 8-bit RAM emulated for the ECS module or for games like Chess or Land Battle .
- Up to 32K of emulated 16-bit RAM beyond JLP/ECS RAM.
- Paging all memory segments as long as the complete binary is 1024 KB (bytes) or smaller.
Types of controllers
- From the emulator you can select either Player 1 controller or Player 2 controller.
- Most importantly you can select ‘Dual Action A’ or ‘Dual Action B’.
- Dual Action A uses the disc/buttons from Controller 1 and the keypad for Controller 2 (perfect for AD&D Cloudy Mountain or Tron Deadly Discs )
- Dual Action B uses the puck from controller 1 and the buttons/keypad for controller 2 (perfect for Astrosmash , Buzz Bombers and any game that flicks and shoots).
Known/missing issues
- ECS support is partial. No UART/cassette.
- The older DS-LITE/PHAT can only support a minimal ECS page scrolling scheme which allows you to play all commercial ECS games included.
- On the DSi or higher running with additional memory, a full page-flipping scheme is used and should play whatever you throw at it (the World Series will have voice over). Each ECS game will allow you to use the Intellivision keypad to enter just enough keyboard information to launch the game, or you can choose the ECS mini-keyboard overlay.
- Check for updates on the website: https://github.com/wavemotion-dave/NINTV-DS
Changelog
- Improved ECS keyboard handling so you can handle “transposed” scanning of columns/rows (allows running demos like Adventure ).
- Improved banking/page-flipping for faster and more robust page turns. There should no longer be small audio “gaps” when browsing music.
- For the DSi we now support 1024KB (512K words) of binary ROM which is almost unfathomably large in the world of Intellivision games (130% larger than anything I know of).
Download: extras
Download: NINTV-DS v3.9
Download: Source code NINTV-DS v3.9
Source: github.com