Nebuleon / ds2comp

DS2Compress, a gzip and zip file handler for the Supercard DSTWO

DS2Compress version 0.62, 2013-06-16

A fast gzip compressor and decompressor for the Supercard DSTWO.

Based on:

• zlib, by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler
• NDSSFC's GUI, by the Supercard team, improved by GBAtemp users BassAceGold, ShadauxCat (in CATSFC) and Nebuleon (in CATSFC)

Compiling

(If you downloaded the plugin ready-made, you can safely skip this section. In this case, go to # Installing.)

Compiling DS2Compress is best done on Linux. Make sure you have access to a Linux system to perform these steps.

The DS2 SDK

To compile DS2Compress, you need to have the Supercard team's DS2 SDK. The Makefile expects it at /opt/ds2sdk, but you can move it anywhere, provided that you update the Makefile's DS2SDKPATH variable to point to it.

For best results, download version 0.13 of the DS2 SDK, which will have the MIPS compiler (gcc), extract it to /opt/ds2sdk, follow the instructions, then download version 1.2 of the DS2 SDK and extract its files into opt/ds2sdk, overwriting version 0.13.

Additionally, you will need to add the updated zlib, DMA (Direct Memory Access) and filesystem access routines provided by BassAceGold and recompile libds2a.a. To do this:

sudo rm -r /opt/ds2sdk/libsrc/{console,core,fs,key,zlib,Makefile} /opt/ds2sdk/include sudo cp -r sdk-modifications/{libsrc,include} /opt/ds2sdk sudo chmod -R 600 /opt/ds2sdk/{libsrc,include} sudo chmod -R a+rX /opt/ds2sdk/{libsrc,include} cd /opt/ds2sdk/libsrc sudo rm libds2a.a ../lib/libds2a.a sudo make

The MIPS compiler (gcc)

You also need the MIPS compiler from the DS2 SDK. The Makefile expects it at /opt/mipsel-4.1.2-nopic, but you can move it anywhere, provided that you update the Makefile's CROSS variable to point to it.

Making the plugin

To make the plugin, ds2comp.plg, use the cd command to change to the directory containing your copy of the DS2Compress source, then type make clean; make. ds2comp.plg should appear in the same directory.

Installing

To install the plugin to your storage card after compiling it, copy ds2comp.plg, ds2comp.ini and ds2comp.bmp to the card's _dstwoplug directory. Then, copy the source directory's DS2COMP subdirectory to the root of the card.

Compression levels

By default, the compression level is 1. However, you can adjust it in the Options menu.

The lowest compression level appears to be 0, but there is no difference between 0 and 1. These two levels are the fastest, compressing data at 1 MiB/s (more with long stretches of empty data), and they should reduce the size of most files by a third (1/3, 33%).

The highest compression level is 9. This level is very slow, compressing data at 64 KiB/s (more with long stretches of empty data), and it should reduce the size of most files by two fifths (2/5, 40%).

The font

The font used by DS2Compress is now similar to the Pictochat font. To modify it, see source/font/README.txt.

Translations

Translations for DS2Compress may be submitted to the author(s) under many forms, one of which is the Github pull request. To complete a translation, you will need to do the following:

• Open DS2COMP/system/language.msg.
• Copy what's between STARTENGLISH and ENDENGLISH and paste it at the end of the file.
• Change the tags. For example, if you want to translate to German, the tags will become STARTGERMAN and ENDGERMAN.
• Translate each of the messages, using the lines starting with #MSG_ as a guide to the context in which the messages will be used.
• Edit source/nds/message.h. Find enum LANGUAGE and add the name of your language there. For the example of German, you would add this at the end of the list:

    ,
    GERMAN
  

• Still in source/nds/message.h, just below enum LANGUAGE, you will find extern char* lang[ some number ]. Add 1 to that number.
• Edit source/nds/gui.c. Find char *lang[ some number ] =. Add the name of your language, in the language itself. For the example of German, you would add this at the end of the list:

    ,
    "Deutsch"
  

• Still in source/nds/gui.c, find char* language_options[], which is below the language names. Add an entry similar to the others, with the last number plus 1. For example, if the last entry is , (char *) &lang[2], yours would be , (char *) &lang[3].
• Still in source/nds/gui.c, find case CHINESE_SIMPLIFIED. Copy the lines starting at the case and ending with break, inclusively. Paste them before the }. Change the language name and tags. For the example of German, you would use:

    case GERMAN:
    	strcpy(start, "STARTGERMAN");
    	strcpy(end, "ENDGERMAN");
    	break;
  

Compile again, copy the plugin and your new language.msg to your card under DS2COMP/system, and you can now select your new language in DS2Compress!