How exactly do I get the emulator to work? Because that would be a lot easier than transferring files repeatedly for testing purposes. Whenever I try to load vnds I get some dldi patch error screen. I tried using ideas as it had a dldi patch function I could find. If NO$ has one I can't find it and considering there's only two tabs >.> So what do I need to do to get this working? If it even does, but I find it hard to believe an emulator would be included if it does nothing, goggles on the other hand...
You need to download the source code and have the devkitpro toolkit installed on your machine. Edit the Makefile in the source directory and enable the -DDEBUG and -DUSE_EFS flags. Go back to the root of the project and "make && make install".
-DDEBUG will show some nice messages like when variables get set in your script
-DUSE_EFS will embed the vnds subdirectory in your nds file and add the code needed for that
ndstool will now automatically pack your novel for you inside the vnds_efs.nds (or something like that, I'm writing this from memory). Check the contents of the nds file with ndstool -l vnds_efs.nds . You should get a listing of what is inside the vnds binary embedded filesystem.
If you don't see anything in the listing, you've probably placed your data files in the wrong directory. If you've got the VNDS source installed in c:\vnds\ (or /home/whatever/vnds/), your data files for the embedded filesystem go in c:\vnds\vnds\ (or /home/whatever/vnds/vnds/, you get the point) .
You can now run the efs patched vnds in no$gba and should be able to start your novel. On every incremental update you do to your novel, run make again. Wash, rince, repeat until you're done.
There's a bit of a pitfall though. As soon your nds file becomes to large, no$gba will stop playing nice and you're back to testing on your DS. For me the problem started when I included sound, so to avoid having to test things twice I just copy it all to a flash card in large incremental updates, write down small bugs and incrementally work my way up from there.
Well now, it actually seems like less of a hassle to swap the micro sd card a couple times. >.<;
Probably less hassle... but now that I'm trying to do it and failing, I really want it to work. I've installed the devkitpro toolkit, but I can't even get it to compile normally, without the changed Makefile. But either way, it throws out the same error:
linking vnds.arm9.elf
built ... vnds.arm9
make[1]: Leaving directory `/c/users/shinseitom/desktop/vnds/src/arm9'
Nintendo DS rom tool 1.46 - Nov 30 2009
by Rafael Vuijk, Dave Murphy, Alexei Karpenko
rm -rf dist
cp -r vnds/* dist/
cp vnds.nds dist/
rm: missing operand
Try `rm --help' for more information.
make: *** [vnds-EFS.nds] Error 123
ShinseiTom@THEBEAST /c/users/shinseitom/desktop/vnds
$
Anybody know what I'm doing wrong?