Lemma Soft Forums

Can we do it? :P

This has been discussed before. It's not possible in DS (Lite and DSi, since both has more or less same specs) because lack of memory.

Perhaps it's possible in WiiWare but I think it need some serious change and PyTom is the one who could do it... so it depend on him.

Mizu~u~u ... PyTom, if we can get these things on the iPhone app store, what's stop us from indie Visual Novel developers from taking over the world?

LOL.

LVUER wrote:Lite and DSi, since both has more or less same specs

Actually, the DSi has approximately four times the RAM and twice the clock speed of the original DS. I believe the DS Lite has very similar specs to the original DS, but not to the DSi.

Obviously both consoles run the same games from the same cartridges, and from that point of view only need the same specs; however, the DSi was beefed up significantly to allow them to sell more demanding applications on the DSiWare online store.





And as it goes, I've seen a homebrew VN engine Fice wrote running on the DS a while ago, and there was another guy who did a DS VN engine (which I didn't see 'cause he was the kind of arrogant arsehole to refuse access to his site just because of the ISP I use), even the original DS was more than capable of the task RAM and CPU-wise. Hell, there are a number of commercial DS titles which are essentially just VNs - Phoenix Wright, etc.

The main reason it's not worth spending time developing something like Ren'Py for the DS is that there's simply no easy way for normal users to get arbitrary code running on their console, you have to get a cart published and signed by Nintendo. Same for the pretty much any home or portable console - you have to hack your hardware to run arbitrary code.

How open is the DSi marketplace? I don't expect it's as open as say the iPhone's but maybe Xbox Live Indie Games?

In short:

Not very open. Hell, that one guy (Bob's RPG?) had a hell of time.

But 2DBoy and World of Goo railroaded them... in a good way.