Pleco for Nintendo DS?

[tiantian]

mikelove mentioned in an older post, that they might consider it. Now I think it would be really cool. I own an NDS and being able to use pleco with it sounds like a good idea.

Look at this Nintendo DS kanji dictionary, I'd love to have that for Chinese!

http://www.japanchronicles.com/article/12/nintendo-ds-kanji-dictionary


Is there any hope for this? Would it be much work?

regards,

tiantian

 

[mikelove]

Actually I just sent Nintendo an e-mail about this; I'm not sure if we'd be considered big / game-oriented enough to obtain a developer license, though. The other question is handwriting recognition - it's doubtful Hanwang would be willing to port their recognizer to NDS just for us, so we'd need to use the Decuma engine that Nintendo licensed for use in DS games and I'm not sure if that supports Chinese.

But if all of the legal stuff lined up correctly we'd certainly consider a DS version - from our perspective it's really the perfect platform, cheap, stable, ubiquitous, touchscreen-equipped, very little variation in hardware, and installing software on it consists of sticking a card in a slot and turning the thing on. We'd probably expand our market a lot more with a DS version than one for BlackBerry or Symbian or another new smartphone platform.

 

[ipsi]

I suspect you might also be able to bring back the phrase books stuff (While I'd never personally buy it, there are people who would). Assuming, of course, there isn't another company that already sells such a thing for the DS.

Out of curiosity, how hard would it be to port your code to the DS? I've no idea what language(s) it uses, but I'm assuming it would be more work than just a straight re-compile?

 

[mikelove]

I'm not sure, actually, Nintendo keeps their development documentation a closely-guarded secret and they don't let anyone but authorized developers get a look at it. But since it's a gaming platform and hence very performance-sensitive I assume it uses some combination of C/C++, so that given that about 2/3 of the code in Pleco 2.0 (or 90% if you include open-source libraries) is cross-platform C a lot of it probably would require little more than a recompile to get it working on a DS, particularly since Nintendo uses the same IDE (CodeWarrior) that Palm does.

 

[ipsi]

Interesting. Is this something they do to try and control the quality of the software that comes out for the DS?

Maybe is uses pure assembly? Wouldn't that hurt?

Does Nintendo really use the same IDE? Huh. How about that? The Palm OS IDE I've got sitting around on my laptop is a rebranded Eclipse. Any idea if it's better or worse than CodeWarrior?

 

[mikelove]

I think it's a combination of quality control and a desire to ensure there aren't too many versions of a given concept competing with each other - you don't want a situation like on Palm OS where you've got a dozen different versions of Tetris, Sudoku, etc.

It wouldn't be pure assembly anymore, even the original Game Boy had a basic compiler (though a lot of people did write some parts of their programs in assembly) and the DS is comparable to a modern PDA processor-wise.

The Eclipse-based Palm OS Developer Suite is OK for basic development, but CodeWarrior is still better for large multi-segment apps and for programs with embedded ARM code, so it's still used in more complicated Palm development projects. It's just a nicer tool chain in general, really, with PODS you sometimes have to do a fair amount of Makefile/header/library hacking in order to get something to compile correctly but with CodeWarrior you can more or less expect your program to do what you told it to do. Unfortunately it's now almost impossible to find a copy of CodeWarrior for Palm, in fact this has apparently dissuaded some people from Palm development since they don't want to have to hunt down a bunch of CodeWarrior licenses for their project team.

 

[ipsi]

Fair enough. There's only so many versions of Tetris a person can stomach before going insane.

Yay for compilers

Out of curiosity (having never owned a DS or looked at them at all), how would distribution for that work? Is it easy for 99% of Nintendo users to download and install software to a card? Or would you have to start selling Pleco via Stores or Mail Order?

 

[tiantian]

You'd have to buy it in a store. The DS has wireless online functionality, you can even buy the opera internet browser for it, but everything downloaded is always saved on the memory of the gamecard itself. there is no way to connect the ds to the PC for synching and stuff...at least no normal way. There seem to be hacks available that enable the usage of "homebrew" software. But you need to buy a special, unoffical gamecard that contains in sdcard-slot so that you can use those homebrew apps.

Actually, the homebrew scene seems to be quite big. There is even already a homebrew program out called DSZhongwen Seems to be some kind of vocab-trainer. Pretty nice, though, considering that it is homebrew.

Here some caps:

Developers homepage:
http://rrc2soft.googlepages.com/home2


I think a DS-Version of Plecodict should be a bit different from the normal versions. it should me a "light" version of it, that contains the dictionary and a flashcard tool with perhaps not so many functions and a less crowded "cuter" interface. perhaps with some little drawing-hanzi-with-the-stylus based little challenges that you can have some fun with while learning. that's just my opinion. but I think the typical nintendo ds owner with interest in the chinese language (if there is a market for this, I am not sure, but if you look at nintendo's "touch generations" campaign there actually might be) would expect stuff like that.

tiantian

 

[mikelove]

Actually I think we'd stick pretty close to our current formula, we really wouldn't be doing this to reach out to the DS-owning market as much as we'd be using it to offer a cheaper / more widely available / more stable / easier-to-install-software-on platform for the types of people who are already buying our software. Though certainly adding some extra games and a prettier interface would make sense, particularly given the impossibility of adding features in later updates

But yes, there's no reliable/legal way for an end user to install downloadable software on their DS, so it would have to be sold on a card.

 

[ipsi]

Is there any word on whether this is going to happen, Mike? Seems like a good idea, and it'd be nice to be able to say to people I know, "Hey, you can just buy a DS and this software, instead of spending vast sums of money on a PDA".

 

[mikelove]

It turns out the handwriting recognizer on the DS doesn't support Chinese, which means we'd pretty much have to develop / port one over ourselves. On top of which the distribution system for Nintendo DS software isn't exactly ideal for our purposes; we'd need to convince one of the big DS game publishers to distribute our title and they'd be getting themselves a very large chunk of our sales in the process. So a DS version is unlikely to happen anytime soon, however convenient it would be.

 

[ipsi]

Fair enough.

 

[danplusdan]

From what I understand, the DS' in China and Taiwan are different because they had to add things to display Chinese characters. Probably for recognition too. Does this mean there is an already existing way for character recognition?

I would love to see a DS version of Pleco.

 

[mikelove]

Might be, but the need to partner with a game publisher / minimum volume / etc make it unlikely we could make the numbers work out. Though if the recent trend towards letting small companies develop / distribute console games online takes off (Microsoft's making a big push towards it on the X360, and even Nintendo's testing the waters a bit with WiiWare) we could see that model appear on the DS in a few years (particularly if the surprisingly-open-by-comparison iPhone/iPod continues to develop as a gaming platform), and that might make it easier to consider a Pleco DS port.

 

[curwenx]

The upcoming Nintendo DSi with its DSi shop might make things easier, since Pleco DSi could be downloadable and not need to be distributed to shops.

The handwriting engine used on DS is Decuma btw. and it should support Chinese Hanzi just fine.

 

[mikelove]

It's not clear yet what would be needed to put our software on the DSi shop, but we could certainly look into it. They do use Decuma, but on most DSes it's preloaded with support only for kanji and not for the full set of Chinese characters (fewer characters = better accuracy and smaller data files, so not an unreasonable decision) - however we could bring handwriting recognition over to it ourselves if needed.

 

[ckatt]

Well its been six years so I'm guessing that the DS Pleco is not forth coming.
Just curious though, ubisoft released a game called My Chinese coach a number of years back. Are you familiar with it at all? it had some cool games based on its handwriting recognition. i was wonder what system they might have been using. Decuma?

 

[mikelove]

No idea - IIRC it wasn't that sophisticated when I tried it out, though.