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Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

benbridle.com

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Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#21

Post by mouse_ »

gyomu wrote: post #20
leakycap wrote: post #11

I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5? When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason. Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built. At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations? If you want to make money on t…

Young users without payment methods do not sideload binaries on a Nintendo DS. If you’re hacking with a Nintendo DS in 2025 you were most likely a teenager in the 2000s/early 2010s, and you most certainly have a payment method. Agree that OP is underselling their work at $5 - the next big psychological barrier after $0.99 is at $9.99, might as well go there

$5 is value price for me. No way I'd spend 10. 5? Sure. I feel like I won't miss 5, but 10 is food money.

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#22

Post by squigz »

gyomu wrote: post #20
leakycap wrote: post #11

I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5? When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason. Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built. At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations? If you want to make money on t…

Young users without payment methods do not sideload binaries on a Nintendo DS. If you’re hacking with a Nintendo DS in 2025 you were most likely a teenager in the 2000s/early 2010s, and you most certainly have a payment method. Agree that OP is underselling their work at $5 - the next big psychological barrier after $0.99 is at $9.99, might as well go there

An old DS you find in your parents' stuff from years ago is exactly the sort of thing a young hacker might be messing about with.

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#24

Post by wigglefruit »

HelloUsername wrote: post #3

Reminds me of Flipnote ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipnote_Studio ), where people created very funny things as well ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMS8-N3HCGI )

Flipnote has an active community on Sudomemo (https://www.sudomemo.net)

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#26

Post by wkjagt »

leakycap wrote: post #11

I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5? When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason. Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built. At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations? If you want to make money on t…

Actually, when I saw the $5 price, my first thought was: thank you for not making this a subscription.

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#28

Post by benbridle »

dannyfritz07 wrote: post #23

Hi BenBridle. What changed between Bedrock Spec v1 and Spec v2? Is there a way for me to see what's new? I'm assuming there were changes to support more than 1 screen for NDS, but not sure.

The second revision of the Bedrock specification changed very little of consequence, but I should probably add a change note to the spec. The structure of the document was reworked, becoming a single long document instead of multiple smaller ones; some sections were reworded for clarity; the behaviour in some underspecified edge cases was made explicit; the assembler specification was cleaned up; reading from the action port on the file device returns error state instead of success state. I don't expect that any existing programs other than Cobalt will have been affected. The bedrock-nds emulator uses the second screen to run a second Bedrock program (the on-screen keyboard), it isn't exposed to the main program.

My intention for Bedrock is that it will never change going forwards, other than for minor clarifications, so that existing programs will continue to work on any emulator indefinitely. Have you played around with Bedrock before, or written a program for it?

Re: Show HN: Cobalt – a pixel-art painting studio for the Nintendo DS

#30

Post by benbridle »

leakycap wrote: post #11

I wonder if this would be well-known if it was free instead of a nominal cost of $5? When I put this much work in, charging a tiny/nominal fee feels like a barrier without a clear reason. Younger users without payment methods and those on a budget will not engage with what you built. At $5, the income stream has to be miniscule, so why choose a $5 license instead of free with donations? If you want to make money on t…

There are free demos available on the store page for Windows, Linux, and Nintendo DS, so Cobalt can still be used by people who can't afford $5. Charging a higher price would make the program a lot less accessible, and charging nothing would be unsustainable, I can't live off attention alone.
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