4 ms·
Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS
- harulf 2y agoFun read! I just missed doing professional gamedev on the DS/DSi (made a few for 3DS), but we still had a Nitro devkit or two in the office. But my experience is of course very different since we both used C++ and had all the official docs and kits. So it's fun to see people reverse engineering it. There was definitely something fun with making games for these very specialized and unique consoles. While it's natural and a whole lot easier to dev now that all consoles (and PCs) have converged to being almost identical, I can't help but feel a bit nostalgic for it.
- grougnax 2y agowhy not in Typescript?
- anti-soyboy 2y agoAdvent of code is a boring waste of time
- aqme28 2y agoWhether it's boring and whether it's a waste of time are both pretty subjective. I found it to be an engaging way to shake off some rust, though admittedly I'm not going to make it through the whole month.
- gxd 2y agoCool! I've coded for the Gameboy Advance in the past, it's very fun to write software for well-documented and feature-rich hardware that also have rock solid debugging tools. By picking the DS, the author might also have ensured his application will work hundreds of years from now...
- thepuppet33r 2y agoI'm such a baby programmer that Advent of Code is still challenging for me, so it's fascinating to see people taking it and exploring all these new languages and platforms. I found (and subsequently lost) someone who had started creating little 8-bit style visualizations from the data outputs. I do feel like programmers are a bit of a masochistic lot when it comes to AoC, though. > The logical way to output the solution for the AoC problem is to create sprites for every digit, upload them to video memory, and arrange the sprites on screen. I'm not going to do that and instead I will use Display Mode 2...
- karel-3d 2y agoI want to say - the difference between baby programmer and guy (?) like OP is experience. I don't directly have experience with hacking on DS, but I had some experience with embedded programming. It first seems daunting and hard, and then you do some stuff and read example code and other code on github and you become "wait that's it?" What seems hard becomes easy by actually doing it. (that means you need to have time, too, which is another thing)
- lyu07282 2y agoThe last few days (which more difficult) are still challenging for me, a lot of the difficulty is also just intentionally confusingly described problems I find
- bhaney 2y agoThere are no AoC problems that are "intentionally confusingly described" and I think the creator would take offense to you saying that.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lyu07282 2y agoI didn't know there were AoC sicophants too (I thought only rust had those), let me rephrase it for you "intentionally misleading or vague problem descriptions to add to the challenge" better? Or are still offended by my opinion?
- bhaney 2y ago> "intentionally misleading or vague problem descriptions to add to the challenge" better? No, it's not better. The creator puts a lot of effort and user testing into making the problems as clear and specific as possible, and has given talks on that exact subject. There's absolutely nothing "intentional" about any difficulties you have understanding the problem text. Unfortunately there's only so much that can be done for people who simply can't read. > Or are [you(?)] still offended by my opinion? I never said that I was offended, I said that the creator would take offense to your accusation. I'm noticing a pattern here.
- bhaney 2y agoAsk HN (comment edition): I know we have plenty of people here doing AoC with their own personal challenges/restrictions on top. What are yours? Solving in an eso-lang? Self-imposed resource constraints (runtime/memory)? Only using Excel? Let's hear 'em.
- camel-cdr 2y agoI'm trying to fully vectorize the first few days with RVV. The first day started of quite challanging with number parsing, sorting and set intersection. I may have gotten sidetracked trying to beat the standard library sort for a week. It's already half way into week three and I'm still at day 2 part 2.
- keyle 2y agoTrying to juggle two kids, a mortgage, xmas and only having 30' at night to myself to even hear my own thoughts. I'd take your artificial constraints any day.
- caslon 2y agoLuckily, similar to how they made a choice for these constraints, you also chose yours. Both are artificial constraints; nobody is forced to solve problems in an esolang, and very few people are forced into having kids. You could have chosen their constraints instead. You chose a constraint set difficult for you; they chose a constraint set difficult for them, and the wonderful thing is that you both can work on the problems at your own pace, under the constraints you've chosen for yourselves.
- per1Peteia 2y agono front, but do you even read what you write? incredibly insensitive
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jimbob45 2y ago
- mouse_ 2y agoThanks article for teaching me about BlocksDS! Looks somewhat more healthy and competent than devkitpro.
- Starlevel004 2y agoOh. I wrote this post. I didn't expect it to make a second round here. I'll elaborate on anything in here if anyone wants to know things.
- msephton 2y agoThird time in 24 hours. I still don't understand how HN works for repeat submissions. Regardless, happy to see it get traction.
- apetresc 2y agoJust wanted to let you know I really thoroughly enjoyed this writeup, and I very much hope you get around to part 2 with input et al.
- enricozb 2y ago> Every Nintendo handheld up to the 3DS contains a GameBoy inside it! I think this was quoted from elsewhere within the post but, is this true? If by "up to" we're not including the 3DS, the DSi and DSi XL still don't contain a GBA slot. I don't _think_ they contain the hardware either b/c with homebrew I believe the GBA games are emulated on those newer devices. Am I mistaken here?