CATSFC version 1.11, 2012-12-30

A Super Nintendo emulator for the Supercard DSTWO.

Based on:

• Snes9x 1.43, by the Snes9x team (with research by the ZSNES folks, anomie, zsKnight, etc.)
• NDSSFC 1.06, by the Supercard team (porting to the MIPS processor)
• BAGSFC, by BassAceGold (improving over NDSSFC)
• CATSFC, by ShadauxCat (improving over BAGSFC)

Compiling

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

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

The DS2 SDK

To compile CATSFC, 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.

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

Installing

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

Cheats

The format accepted by the "Load a cheat file" function is equivalent to the old format used in Mightymo's BSNES Cheat Code Pack.

1. Download the BSNES Cheat Code Pack at http://www.mightymo.net/downloads.html. It will be a zip archive.
2. Open the zip file, with WinZip, WinRAR or the built-in zip extension in the operating system on your computer.
3. In the zip file, open the folder called BSNES Cheat Code Pack, then the one called BSNES v0.51-0.74 Cheat Code Pack.
4. Open your microSD card's CATSFC folder, then descend into gamecht.
5. Drag the cheat code files from the zip archive to the card's gamecht folder.
6. In the card's gamecht directory, create two folders. Name the first one a-m and the second one n-z. Drag the cheat files from the games whose name starts with A to M into a-m and the rest into n-z.

This is because the directory display does not handle more than 512 files.

To add cheats to the menu in a game, first load the game, then use the Cheats menu's "Load a cheat file" option. The option can be touched using the Touch Screen, but does not activate the menu. So press A.

The font

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

Translations

Translations for CATSFC 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 CATSFC/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, and update the cmplen to be the length of the START tag. For the example of German, you would use cmplen= 11;, because that's the length of STARTGERMAN:

    case GERMAN:
    	strcpy(start, "STARTGERMAN");
    	strcpy(end, "ENDGERMAN");
    	cmplen = 11;
    	break;
  

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