4K intro (sd-speck) for Nintendo DS

April 24, 2009
nds demo

During eastern 2009 I followed the breakpoint demo party via live stream and was especially attired in the 4k intro competition, which motivated me to try if it is possible to create an application that draws a simple quad in 4096 bytes on the Nintendo DS, using the devkitPro tool-chain.

But even compiling a simple c source file containing only the application entry point, without any external libraries, creates an output file that is 54848 bytes large:

int main(void)
{
  return 0;
}

After fiddling around for some time, I had a Nintendo DS application that not only shows a simple quad, but hundreds of lit textured cubes, creating a tunnel where a camera flys through, as well as a fullscreen distortion effect in less than 4096 bytes.

After it was released on pouet.net, I figured from the comments I could had shrink the filesize further 480 bytes by just compressing it. I feel so incompetent!

It obviously can not compete with the breakpoint 4k PC entries, but it was fun and interesting to create. Did I mention it’s the world’s first 4k intro for the Nintendo DS?!

You can download the binary at http://pouet.net/prod.php?which=53081

Stack trace for Nintendo DS

April 24, 2009
nds