Has anyone bought the NO$NDS devkit? I have concluded that for professional development, the top-of-the-line version that allows tracing & breakpoint in C as well as assembly language is the way to go for a small team starting out. I have played with the free one and it looks very good, but has anyone actually used the professional ones for professional developement? Compared with the IS kit, which I am sure is very good, the NO$NDS is a bargin! It's just that I have not seen any reviews. Can anyone comment on the system? What C compilers, what assemblers and so on it supports. How good is it as a developement tool? Is it worth the $1500? Is the guy still selling them? I have a $2000 grant to get back into the industry and I think the DS is the way in. I have some pretty unusual ideas for how the hardware can be used to produce really interesting (and fun/challanging) product for the DS... Thanks in advance, Sean
Martin Korth (the author) has disappeared, I think. Maybe he's back, but that'd be news to me... I believe people have been sending him payments (for the "Shareware Home-use" version) and never got anything... :-( So if you're going to send him money (which you shouldn't until it's clear he's back), don't forget to make a dispute with PayPal before the limit (90 days?) is over, or it may be lost. (Sorry, I haven't seen any reviews of the development version either.) Edit: Hm, I think you can't pay via PayPal for the full version anyway.
If he HAS disappeared, then does anyone have the professional version and can give me a review. It looks by far the best way to develop professional games short of becoming an official DS developer and paying a silly price for the hardware deck... Review of deck would also be appreciated. I used the CGB one and it was excellent, but then Tomb Raider was 100% assembly language...
I have a non-commercial version of the No$GBA/NDS debugger. It look's a lot like the CGB one, I can't really say more, as I don't use it to develop software, but for e-Reader purposes. I got it in exchange for a defective GBA SP.
ZueriHB - Does your version debug C as well as assembler code? I mean, the no$nds kit looks ideal, but if the author is MIA, then 'we have a problem, mission control'... Comments from all, please! Sean
Does anybody know of ANYONE using the no$gba professional HLL kit being used anywhere? I'm suspicious that he realized just how much work was involved and copped out. I WANT to be wrong, but nobody I know has used the thing. Those screen-shots on the site would be easy enough to fake, for example... Someone mentioned that they lived only 2 hours away. Well, visit by all means, but can't you get a telephone number or E-mail address to check up on the guy?
I'm not sure how it is worth using that "to start out". An official devkit is roughly same price as No$gba HLL version and No$gba is nowhere as compatible as a real DS. Granted it has some nice auditing features, but I don't think it is worth the investment if you are a small studio (maybe a bigger studio can get a few licenses). If Martin made it cheaper, maybe $300 maybe he could sell a lot more to people who want it as a side tool.
Also note that homebrew libs will be incompatible will anything Nintendo requires, so you eventually have to get the official one. As for getting back into the industry, the DS is a really tough market now, I am not sure I would recommend it to anyone. Downloadable software for DSi maybe but it is too early. Anything with electronic distribution is better.
