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Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

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Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#41

Post by philipwhiuk »

anilakar wrote: post #33
kittoes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't beat yourself up so much, it's challenging to the majority of developers. The article itself sums things up well "Most of the puzzles are in the realm of either string processing (somewhat applicable to programming), logic puzzles (not really applicable to most programming), or stupid gotchas in the input format (annoyingly, very applicable to most programming)."

The largest challenge is in having enough energy after work to sit down and start coding again.

Yeah I only ever get started after I've been on holiday for a bit.

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#42

Post by apetresc »

Starlevel004 wrote: post #11

Oh. 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.

Just 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.

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#43

Post by rob74 »

klodolph wrote: post #16
dankwizard wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't beat yourself up. This guy - "I do actually know Rust, but I never learned how to use it. I just started writing it because I was born with an innate knowledge of the language, similar to how I know Java or Kotlin despite never having learned them." My first words were "Dada!". This guys was "public static void main(String[] args)"

There’s a breed of programmers around who just like making things harder for themselves, and are somehow good at it. It’s like being a competitive power lifter or something like that. More weight, more weight, and at some point you get excited by more weight.

You could also compare programming to riding a bicycle - almost anyone can learn how to do that. So, if you want to stand out, you have to ride a unicycle (=Rust) on a tightrope (=the Nintendo DS)...

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#44

Post by lyu07282 »

thepuppet33r wrote: post #2

I'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 solut…

The 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

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#45

Post by bhaney »

lyu07282 wrote: post #44
thepuppet33r wrote: post #2

I'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 solut…

The 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

There are no AoC problems that are "intentionally confusingly described" and I think the creator would take offense to you saying that.

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#46

Post by enricozb »

Starlevel004 wrote: post #11

Oh. 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.

> 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?

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#47

Post by DCKing »

enricozb wrote: post #46
Starlevel004 wrote: post #11

Oh. 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.

> 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?

The Nintendo 3DS (and DSi too) contain a version of the ARM7TDMI CPU used in the Game Boy Advance [1]. On the 3DS, this chip was used for the Game Boy Advance Ambassador titles [2], which effectively run "natively" on the 3DS - when launching a game, the 3DS reboots into a different firmware and just runs the GBA game.

Later, homebrew was able to sideload GBA titles [3], which essentially has perfect software compatibility. However, emulating GBA titles still has advantages over rebooting the device so software emulators are available for the 3DS. The New 3DS is fast enough to provide pretty high quality GBA software emulation.

I don't think a similar path to directly use the DSi's ARM7 to boot GBA games was ever found by homebrewers (it may just be that the DSi is not able to reboot in a "different mode", which Nintendo did release for the 3DS?). The best available on the DSi seems to be a "compatibility layer" solution that tries to run the ARM7 code on the main ARM9 CPU [4], which seems to work surprisingly well.

[1]: https://www.3dbrew.org/wiki/ARM7_Registers

[2]: https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_3DS_Ambassador_Pro...

[3]: through "Virtual Console injection" tools, or through https://github.com/profi200/open_agb_firm

[4]: https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/GBARunner3

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#48

Post by Starlevel004 »

DCKing wrote: post #47
enricozb wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

The Nintendo 3DS (and DSi too) contain a version of the ARM7TDMI CPU used in the Game Boy Advance [1]. On the 3DS, this chip was used for the Game Boy Advance Ambassador titles [2], which effectively run "natively" on the 3DS - when launching a game, the 3DS reboots into a different firmware and just runs the GBA game. Later, homebrew was able to sideload GBA titles [3], which essentially has perfect software compati…

> it may just be that the DSi is not able to reboot in a "different mode", which Nintendo did release for the 3DS?

From GBATEK:

"The memory regions and IRQ bits do still exist internally, but the DSi does basically behave as if there is no GBA cartridge inserted. Reading GBA ROM areas does return FFFFh halfwords instead of the usual open bus values though."

Since the memory map isn't flexible and GBA games expect to load data from the cartridge at the hardcoded area, games won't function on the ARM7. I assume the 3DS has special hardware to handle this properly.

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#49

Post by robotnikman »

anilakar wrote: post #33
kittoes wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't beat yourself up so much, it's challenging to the majority of developers. The article itself sums things up well "Most of the puzzles are in the realm of either string processing (somewhat applicable to programming), logic puzzles (not really applicable to most programming), or stupid gotchas in the input format (annoyingly, very applicable to most programming)."

The largest challenge is in having enough energy after work to sit down and start coding again.

I really feel this one, it's hard for me to work on personal projects after a long day at work

Re: Advent of Code on the Nintendo DS

#50

Post by kubb »

msephton wrote: post #27
kubb wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think certain timings are more likely to get a post to the top and if the mods deem the content valuable, and the submissions aren’t all by a single user, they allow it.

It's far more complicated than that

Break it down for me.
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