Awesome DS Development

An opinionated, curated list of awesome NDS/DSi development resources and tools. Inspired by the awesome list.

Contents

• Documentation
  • Datasheets
• Software Development
  • Toolchains
  • Libraries
    • Graphics
    • Audio
    • Other
• Open-source Homebrew
  • Games
  • Applications
  • Demos
  • Other
• Emulators
• Historical

Community

• GBAdev Discord - while GBA-centric, it contains a small sub-section for NDS development.
• devkitPro Forums - the best place for getting support pertaining to the devkitARM toolchain.

Documentation

• GBAtek (multi-megabyte HTML, paged version) - the terse go-to reference for everything DS/DSi. It covers about 97% of everything there is to know about the devices. Supplementary information is provided in the following documents:
  • GBAtek addendum/errata - a thread which compiles many niche and edge-case aspects not covered in GBAtek
  • Additional notes on W_POWERFORCE/W_US_COUNT/W_RXFILTER (Arisotura, September 4th, 2022

Datasheets

• Seiko S-35180A - NDS real-time clock
• Seiko S-35199A01 - DSi real-time clock

Software Development

Toolchains

• devkitARM - the community standard toolchain, maintained by the devkitPro organization.
  • devkitPro and devkitARM are trademarks of Dave Murphy. This document is not endorsed by or connected to devkitPro.
• BlocksDS - a newer toolchain, maintained by AntonioND.

Libraries

Graphics

• NightFox's Lib (MIT) - high-level wrapper for tilemaps, sprites and collision maps, using the 2D engine.
• Nitro Engine (MIT) - high-level wrapper for the 3D engine; models, textures, text, GUI, physics.

Audio

• maxmod (BSD) - highly capable and efficient ARM7 .MOD/.S3M/.XM/.IT-compatible playback engine, written in ASM.
• libxm7 (MIT) - .MOD/.XM playback engine.

Other Libraries

• dsi_sdmmc (MIT) - custom DSi TMIO/SDMMC driver.
• dsmi (LGPLv2.1) - MIDI interfacing library (via DSerial Edge or dswifi).
• posprintf - tiny, limited sprintf()-like library written in ARMv4 ASM.

Open-source Homebrew

As this list is written with developers in mind, this section only lists such programs whose codebases have clear licensing terms.

Games

• MegaZeux (GPLv2+) - text-mode-inspired PC game engine
• ScummVM (GPLv3+) - point-and-click adventure game engine
• Spelunky DS (GPLv3 + proprietary assets)
• WordleDS (GPLv3+)

Applications

• NitrousTracker (GPLv3) - DSi-compatible, enhanced fork of NitroTracker
• uxnds (MIT) - varvara virtual machine implementation

Demos

• tuna-viDS (GPLv2) - XviD video player

Other Homebrew

Emulators

• melonDS
• DeSmuME
• NO$GBA

Historical

These are links to files and sources which are noteworthy from a historical perspective, but have been superseded.

• Introduction to Nintendo DS Programming (2008) - a crucial tutorial in the early days of Nintendo DS homebrew.
• The History of DS Homebrew (2008) by James "Lynx" Zawacki - an oral record of the first years of the homebrew scene.
• A guide to homebrew development for the Nintendo DS (2008) by Olivier Boudeville - a thorough overview of oldschool DS homebrew development.