Nintendo DS using PAlib

Question

I've been looking in to Nintendo DS development on behalf of my agency and begun using the devkitPro/libnds and PAlib, it seems ideal for our needs until we decide if it's a viable route for us and hopefully invest/apply for a development kit and licence.

My main concern is that, while developing and learning PAlib style is it possible to eventually take a project built in this fashion and have it licensed and published? I don't really want to invest a lot of time learning this to have to learn a completely different setup. Essentially I suppose is PAlib just for Homebrew? What do I need to learn for Retail development of DS games?

Many thanks, Anton

Answer 1

No, PAlib based projects cannot be licensed and published. See also http://wiki.devkitpro.org/index.php/PAlib

Don't waste your time learning or using PAlib.

Unfortunately even just using properly supported homebrew libraries you'll still have a fair bit of work to do moving to commercial development.

Answer 2

To do retail development (i.e. to get paid for your product), you'll need to get a real dev kit from Nintendo. The homebrew dev kits do not necessarily work in the same way as the real one, and (most importantly) they don't have access to the real dev kit's libraries.

Thus, if you develop against the homebrew dev kit, you're going to have to learn an entirely new library (which probably works very differently) when you move to the real thing.

Now, that's not to say that the homebrew dev kits can't be useful - they are a way to get code running on a real DS. As long as everyone realizes that it's a throwaway prototype, perhaps that could be enough to convince someone to spring for a real dev kit. If you go this route, you'll at least have something of a spec (it should work like the prototype!).

I also would advise not mentioning to Nintendo that you did this. I'm not in the industry, but they are obviously antagonistic toward the homebrew scene - I'm unclear how they'll feel about developers who started out on homebrew.