u/Rockenrooster

It's been several weeks since my last update on this project. I've made huge progress since my last update on 8/16

• Title and Menu navigation.
• All fighters and stages added
• 1P campaign is playable start to finish.
• 4 fighter matches are playable (No actual DS multiplayer yet)
• All Items added

Not yet added/finished:

• stable 30FPS performance (its mostly there, but 4P matches can dip to 20FPS, 1-3 should be fine)
• Training mode (honestly not high priority)
• Bonus stage buttons not working.
• End Credits/End Scene
• Intro scene (not high priority)
• Proper character unlocks

BUGS/Compromises:

• still have random freezes in some areas.
• Saffron city's garage door thing is always open lol.
• Transition/loading screens are much longer (a couple secs instead of instant lol) than on n64 (loading screen is currently just a blank black screen in between scenes because of DS's limited RAM and storage bandwidth)
• Occasional Audio Stuttering during heavy matches/loading states.
• of course running at a target of 30FPS instead of 60FPS like the original. The DS CPU is anemic compared to the n64 and has no coprocessors or FPU to offload tasks to like the n64 does. Tons of optimization has been done to even get it to run at 30FPS lol.

Current gameplay video is from MelonDS since it's so much easier to capture. Don't worry though, it works just fine on a real DS too.

Overall i'd say the project is about 75% complete. multiplayer and final optimization are the next big project. And I do want to add Remix characters.....

Also I haven't tried building the ROM from a clean folder so if it doesn't build for you, I'm sorry I'll get around to it when it's ready for a "1.0" release.

Now almost 95% of the match renders at 30fps (94.something, close enough). Starting to feel like a real game now. Just need to chase down an intermittent grab throw animation bug.

Very little is being interpreted at this point.

Lots of DS Native code.

Compromises have been made such as not all visual effects are being played, most are only playing frame 0 of a multi frame animation (Mario's up b coin attack).

Still have some float calculations going on in places.

So much more optimization has to take place before I can add 4 fighters on screen with items and be playable, but this 2p "demo" is basically done!

https://github.com/rockenrooster/Smash64DS_Port  runtime2 branch contains latest work

Made some optimization progress!

It now runs most frames in the 30 FPS window with spikes in the 20-15 FPS range. Much more playable than before. Some things are still being interpreted/non-DSNative, like 2d effects (mario fireballs/fox laser).
Results screen renders at 5 fps (lol) and Sudden Death crashes.
So still lots of work ahead and more optimization to be done just for this single demo, not to mention the reset of the game...

Github: https://github.com/rockenrooster/Smash64DS_Port

Original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nds/comments/1v18nik/smash64ds_wip_port/

Been working on porting (AI assisted) ssb64 to the Nintendo DS for the past month. I knew nothing about coding for the DS before this, but i do have some C# and Powershell/python knowledge.

Here is what I have to far:
Mario and Fox on the Dreamland stage running about half speed (half speed is a stretch since the original game ran at 60fps and we're getting like 15 fps here in gameplay, i had to change the game logic (2 updates per frame) so it didn't run at 1/4 speed lol).

Still have a long way to go, but i'm pausing progress for now since GPT5.6 sol is struggling (ended my $200 sub).

If you want to check it out on github: https://github.com/rockenrooster/Smash64DS_Port