▲ 270 r/RetroAchievements
RetroAchievements for DS using real hardware (3DS)
This adds RetroAchievements to DS games played natively on a 3DS. No emulator. The game runs on the real hardware, and achievements unlock as you play.
How it works, roughly: before the game boots, the launcher logs into RetroAchievements over WiFi, identifies your ROM, and fetches its real achievement set. That set then runs live inside the game via rcheevos, triggering on the correct frames. When one unlocks, a notification pops up over the game (without pausing it) naming the achievement.
What's working:
- Login, game identification, and fetching the real achievement set over WiFi
- Live achievement evaluation inside the running game on real 3DS hardware
- On-screen unlock notifications that name the achievement. Still buggy on some games.
- Softcore unlocks reported to the server, earned during play, queued to the SD card, and submitted on the next boot (with the correct earned-time, so the server dates it right)
- Already-earned achievements filtered out so they don't re-fire
- An achievement list showing what's unlocked and what's pending to sync under the Main Menu from nds-bootstrap. It hangs up with some games, specially 3D ones.
- 3DS family only (New 3DS included)
Not yet:
- Live unlocks during play. The WiFi link doesn't survive into the game(yet), so unlocks sync on the next boot rather than the instant they fire. Still researching this.
- Rich presence and login-status display
- Hardcore mode: not yet, and it's more than a switch. Getting a client certified for hardcore means meeting RetroAchievements' compliance requirements. For now everything runs in softcore.
Still early and experimental, but the core loop works end to end: play, earn, sync. Hoping to drop and alpha release soon in a week or less.
u/Bakkerrs — 5 days ago