Hello, people!
I've been wanting to join this wiki for some time now, and this seemed like the right moment.
Anyway, I'm a huge fan of VNDS, since I'm a sucker for the idea of running VNs on my portable devices. I used to muddle through porting to the PSP, until I came across this wonderful program, picked up a DS, and away we go~!
I've wanted to give back to this community for some time now, so I took the time to learn how to port using the provided guide. As a result, I come bearing gifts. Please enjoy this completed port of the visual novel Kira -SnowDrop-!
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=UG392IIW
I had a bit of trouble with color banding, but otherwise everything seems to be working okay. I'm rather enjoying porting, so I'm thinking on working on some other projects in the near future. (Particularly Ballad of an Evening Butterfly, if nobody else has already started working on that one.)
Anyway, nice to meet you all!
Woah Thanks!
Well actually...I finished Ballad of an Evening Butterfly some time ago...it's around here somewhere. It's great of you to join in with the rest of us (it's a real small community and we tend to move a bit slow, but meh xD).
For the color banding, you could try using the vndstools to convert the images (will probably lower the quality a fair amount though).
xD I'm going to try out your port later.
You're welcome, Holyshin. I'm always enjoying everybody else's work on this site, so I wanted to try to give back a bit.
Oh, Ballad's done? No worries then, I just didn't realize it was complete (or even being worked on, for that matter). I was just going off of whatever's on the "completed ports" page. Would love to get a copy if you have it floating around somewhere, CXBlackCatXD.
Also, thanks for putting together the porting guide! I have experience with some image manpulation techniques, but without the excellent explanations on that guide, I don't know that I could have learned this, heh.
As far as the banding goes, it seems that was my main stumbling block. That, and I had to reduce the quality of some of the background music, as there were points where the program was crashing randomly after a few seconds of playing specific tracks. Took me awhile to realize it was the music that was doing it, and not the images :)
I've been using a combination of GIMP and Photoshop to manipulate the images. VNDS was being a bit testy with me, on that...certain images at a given file size it would display, but other images around the same size it would crash on. I couldn't figure out the pattern, so when playing the port you'll probably notice that some images are clearer than others. I actually didn't even realize vndstools was ready to go yet, my mistake ^_^;;
The only thought I was left with was that I noticed that even in the PC version of Kira, the images show a slight bit of banding. Maybe they were low enough quality to begin with that I could only expect so much. Thanks for taking a look at the port, whenever you have a chance. Maybe you'll pick up on something I missed.
Thanks for the welcome, as well. I plan to do some more porting in the future, so I hope I fit in around here, heh. If Ballad's already done...maybe I'll go check and see how that Ten Nights of Dream port for Kagetsu Tohya is coming along...
Oh, I suggest not leaving your save files in next time.
Well the Ballad of the Evening Butterfly thread got bumped back up, so you can get the VN port there (just re-upped it).
I'm actually surprised someone used the guide xD. I made it sort of on a whim because I wanted a better reference for the script commands (the formatting went to hell though since I fail at wiki formatting). For the most part, the explanations I had weren't really that much better than the one provided in the vnds download though, I kind of just rephrased some bits and added some words IIRC.
Yep, I used the guide. I personally felt you explained it quite well. You must have, since I've never done this before, and it ended up working :)
Thanks, I didn't realize there was a thread for Ballad. I'll nab it.
If you end up trying this port and approve of it, is there a chance it might get added to the completed ports page of the wiki?
Well I updated the completed projects page.
tilting my hat Thank you sir :)
A porting guide? Where? On the wiki?
>>13 Yeah...apparently there is a "porting guide" in the wiki, under the link that says "How to port a visual novel to VNDS"...suffice to say it isn't actually a porting guide, but I felt like it would be nice to have that link actually go to something, thus I made a reference sheet for myself in the unlikely event that I feel like porting something over to VNDS.
That's -not- a porting guide? I think you're selling yourself short. Before I got a look at that, all I knew how to do was use NSAout, and do some image manipulation. That page was pretty much responsible for getting me to the point where I feel confident in my abilities to port to VNDS, now. I call it a guide, at least.
Hey folks, here's a new link to Kira, without the save files I accidentally left on there last time:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=0BCBFUCR
Sorry, and enjoy!
Here's a hi-res image pack, to optimize Kira Snowdrop when playing it on the android VNDS interpreter. Just extract the contents to the game folder and let them overwrite everything. Now when you're running VNDS on your android device, all of the images will look nice and crisp :)
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=JY9KOGOK
(Note: There's a script folder in this archive because for some reason when I did the resizing, the Y coordinates for the foreground sprites were not adding up the way they do in the DS version. So I fixed the coordinates in the scripts.)
Enjoy!!