Introduction

NetHackDS is what it sounds like: a port of the famous game NetHack for the Nintendo DS.

The goal of this project is to create a port of NetHack for the DS utilizing the unique features of the DS to create an easy-to-use NetHacking experience that's as good or better than playing on a PC.

Installing

Each release of NetHackDS contains three major artifacts:

1. The 'NetHackDS.nds' ROM itself.
2. The 'NetHack' directory, which contains a number of necessary data and configuration files.
3. The game manual in PDF form.

To install, simply extract the ZIP file into the root of your flash cart preserving the directory structure.

If you want to install manually, do the following:

1. Copy 'NetHackDS.nds' to your flash cart in your preferred location (you can feel free to rename the ROM if you like).
2. Copy the contents of the NetHack folder to a corresponding folder on your flash cart. For version 3.6.7-1 or later, any of the following folder names may be used¹:
   1. /data/NetHack-X.Y.Z
   2. /data/NetHack
   3. /NetHack-X.Y.Z
   4. /NetHack

Finally, depending on the model of flash cart, you may need to apply an appropriate DLDI patch to the ROM.

Configuring

NetHackDS is configured via the defaults.nh file located in the NetHack data directory. For more information on specific configuration settings, see the generic NetHack documentation as well as the NetHackDS manual, which covers various port-specific configuration options.

Building

Setting up the environment

In order to build NetHackDS, a number of pre-requisites must be in place:

1. devkitpro and the associated nds-dev dependencies.

2. libpcre

   You can find my DS port on GitHub here. Build and install according to the included instructions.

3. Masscat's gdb stub

   I'm now hosting this code as a separate github project, and have updated it to build with the latest devkitarm.

4. A working build environment for the host machine capable of producing and running 32-bit executable binaries.²

NHDS is set up assuming a Unix host build environment. Getting the build working on an alternative host environment is left as an exercise to the reader.

Compiling

With the pre-requisites in place, a build can be triggered by running:

sys/nds/setup.sh
make -f sys/nds/Makefile

The game and data files are then available in the binary directory.

Running via Desmume

Desmume is able to run homebrew like NetHackDS with the right setup and flags.

First, you must manually apply a DLDI patch for the ROM. The R4DS DLDI patch is tested and known to work with Desmume.

Once patched, you can run the game after a build as follows (assuming a fairly recent version of Desmume):

desmume-cli --slot1 R4 --slot1-fat-dir binary/ binary/NetHackDS.nds

Keep in mind, at least in my limited testing, it doesn't appear Desmume supports writing back to the supplied directory, so saving and bonesfile dropping will not work.

Footnotes

1. For version 3.6.7 and earlier, only the '/NetHack' folder is supported. ↩

2. NetHack ships with a build tool that assembles the data library that accompanies the game. Obviously we can't run that executable on the NDS, so we run it on the host OS. Unfortunately, the library built with a 64-bit version of the tool is not readable on a 32-bit version of the game, and vice versa. And because the NDS is a 32-bit environment, we must therefore create a 32-bit version of the tool and run it.

   The above notably means we can't build on the Windows Subsystem for Linux, as that environment does not support 32-bit executables. ↩