Since I’m not going to do any further development on this (for various reasons), I have decided to release libellen - a sprite handling library for the Nintendo DS, based on libnds.

The library is released under the terms of the WTFPL.

The source and "example" are super documented, and evena  Doxyfile is attached if you want to create documentations.
The library was tested and compiled using devkitARM r21 with god-knows-what libnds version. If you find incompatibilities, I’ll be happy if YOU would fix them.

Have fun and happy coding!

For those who are intrigued by the name - lib-ell-en (L - N, my name’s initials) could also be read as libellen - dutch for "Dragonfly" which is what the logo is based on. For those who wonder, the logo is also released under the terms of the WTFPL.

Some history:
libellen was first made as the low-level library for ToD2, but was quickly got good enough to be expended. My second goal was also to get people to stop using PAlib, an old, slow and deprecated library which people insisted on using. The library was not complete, but the sprite handling was. after more then 6 months of inactivity, I have decided to release the library to just handle sprites.

Source could be downloaded from HERE.

The project is hosted on the Japanese Source forge and bottom of the page says "Copyright © 2006, 2007 Nintendo Co,. Ltd.", although the license are fully free to change/distribute…

“We propose an extensible component operating system architecture in which an operating system kernel uses reflection to process C++ pure virtual function based system calls and upcalls to provide a unified programming environment for application, server, and kernel development. We found that we could even develop file subsystems and a TCP/IP protocol stack on an existing operating system based on this architecture.”

ES seem to use Squeak and SmallTalk as environment. The page and documentations (PDF) are in Japanese, which I cannot read.

I hope this will be more then just "Research" operating system and Nintendo might give opportunity to homebrew developers like Sony is
(kinda) doing with the "Install OS" on the PS3.

The ES Operating system (Google Translated version)

Edit: The page is now hosted on GoogleCode, and there isn’t any mention of Nintendo…
For those who are interested, the new page is http://code.google.com/p/es-operating-system/

As you all might have noticed, Tales of Dagur: Coluseum was not released on the neoflash summer coding competition.
There are several reasons that prevented us from release:

1. The Jim Interpreter used as a scripting engine was full of memory leaks and wasn’t stable for use as a main scripting engine. After weeks of debugging, I simply gave up and switched to Arena, which is working great. I had to re-write most of the scripts to the new language which took me a lot of time.
2. I was a single coder. Even though I had two of my friends helping me on this project code-wise (DarkEz and strager), they were both missing most of the time for personal reasons.
3. There was too much to code and test, and I did not have enough testers and helpers on this project, even though I have been asking many times for people who wants to contribute.

All I can offer now are screenshots from the ‘final’ piece which will not be released for you until further notice. I Thank you, DS scene, for your "help" and "support" for this project, that brought it to be what it is now - nothing. I would also like to thank my current team - for their great effort and willingness to push this project to it’s edge when the deadline was approaching even though we knew we had no chance of making it.

Enjoy the screenshots, I hope you now understand what potential this game could have if I got a little more help.

Lesson 5 was the last in the series regarding backgrounds, and next lessons will now be about sprites.

You can read Lesson 5 HERE.

Of course we are far from complete, and we still need help if we want to be able to make the game as good as we plan on doing.
If you want to help, in any way you think you can, please consider contacting me in one way or another. If you want to meet the current development team, or stay updated in the latest of our ideas and suggestions, you are more then welcomed to join #ToD2 over EFnet - where the team is always active, and releases daily output from nearly every aspect.
What we really need currently, is mostly co-coders and story writers.

Just to tease you with what we have currently, I will throw some concept art over your direction:

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Click to enlarge

Images are copyrighted to drZool and the ToD team.

What are we missing then?

• Co-coders - If you want to take a part in extending the existing ToD engine into the new ToD Engine v2
• Scripters - Convert the story into reality with the TCL scripting language
• Pixel artists
• Tool coders - Coding a custom cross platform mapping software and database organizers using wxWidegts
• Story writers and designers - even though we have a basic story idea and handful of ideas, we still want more!

If you think you can help, hop over #tod2 @ EFnet and/or email me to get more details (see contact page).

I hope lesson 4 would help people to see the hardware is not as frightening as they might think it is.

Lesson 4 is located HERE.

Download page is HERE.