README.NetHackDS

                     NetHackDS -- General Information

NetHackDS is what it sounds like:  a port of the famous game NetHack for the
Nintendo DS.


Building
========

Setting up the environment
--------------------------

In order to build NetHackDS, a number of pre-requisites must be in place:

1. A working devkitpro and devkitARM environment.

2. The following libraries must be installed in $DEVKITPRO/libnds:

  - libnds
  - libfat
  - wifilib

    These are all standard devkitpro libraries for the NDS.

  - libpcre

    This is available as a separate download from the NetHackDS github project.

  - Masscat's gdb stub.

    I'm now hosting this code as a separate github project, and have updated it
    to build with the latest devkitarm.  You can find it here:

    https://github.com/fancypantalons/NDS-Debug-Stub

3. A working build environment for the host machine capable of producing
   and running 32-bit executable binaries.

  - Nethack ships with a build tool that assembles the data library that
    accompanies the game.  Obviously we can't run that executable on the NDS,
    so we run it on the host OS.  Unfortunately, the library built with a
    64-bit version of the tool is not readable on a 32-bit version of the
    game, and vice versa.  And because the NDS is a 32-bit environment, we
    must therefore create a 32-bit version of the tool and run it.

  - The above notably means we can't build on the Windows Subsystem for Linux,
    as that environment does not support 32-bit executables.

  - NHDS is set up assuming a Unix host build environment.  Getting the build
    working on an alternative host environment is left as an exercise to the
    reader.


Compiling
---------

With the pre-requisites in place, a build can be triggered by running:

(cd sys/nds; sh setup.sh)
make -f sys/nds/Makefile

The game and data files are then available in the binary directory.


Installing
==========

To install, copy the NetHack data folder to the *root* of your flash device,
and then place the NetHack.nds (or NetHack.ds.gba, if you're using a slot-2
device) in the appropriate location.  Note, you may have to DLDI-patch the
binary if your device doesn't support auto-patching.