Frequently Asked Questions
Colors!
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Q: What is Colors? |
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A: Colors! is a simplistic painting application for Nintendo DS based on
modern techniques developed for drawing tablets in programs like
Photoshop. By taking advantage of the pressure sensitivity of the DS
touch-screen it becomes a perfect portable digital sketch-book. |
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Basics
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Q: What do I need to run Colors!? |
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A: To run Colors! you need a Nintendo DS with a special flash-carts that allows you to run homebrew games and applications. A recommended setup is a Nintendo DS Lite, a R4 Revolution flash-cart and 1GB MicroSD Flash Memory Card which in total costs about US $200. |
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Q: What is a Nintendo DS? |
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A: First of all,
you need a Nintendo DS. Nintendo DS is a handheld gaming console created by
Nintendo and is mainly used to play games. You can find it at any store selling
video-games for about US $130. There currently are two versions of the Nintendo
DS, the normal one (often called Fat) and the newer Nintendo DS Lite. Since the
Nintendo DS Lite has a better screen, that preferred for use with Colors!.
Nintendo DS link at Wikipedia |
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Q: I have a Nintendo DS, but what does "homebrew enabled" mean? |
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A: Out of the box, a Nintendo DS can only run games and programs licensed by Nintendo. All games
and programs go through a certification process to make sure they live up to the standard expected of a Nintendo DS game. While this is a good thing, it also means that you normally can?t run programs not endorsed by Nintendo. Making your Nintendo DS homebrew allows you to run programs not licensed or endorsed by Nintendo.
Nintendo DS homebrew at
Wikipedia |
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Q: How do I make my Nintendo DS ?homebrew enabled?? |
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A:
There are a few different ways to make your Nintendo DS homebrew enabled but the easiest is to
buy a thing called a DS Slot-1 flash-carts. This looks and works just like a normal Nintendo DS game but with the difference that you can connect it to a computer to manage what it contains. |
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Q: What flash-cart should I buy? |
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A: Colors! works with all available Nintendo DS flash-carts except N5, but some are easier than others.
The most popular is R4 Revolution, but M3 Simply and Cyclo DS Evolution contain the same feature-set and ease of use. Some devices have built-in memory for storage, but the three devices mentioned uses a Micro SD Flash Memory Card. A USB-reader for the Micro SD is included with the flash-cart, but you need to buy the Micro SD Flash Memory Card separately.
WARNING! It is highly recommended not to buy N5 device for the use with Colors. This device is highly unstable and causes constant data corruption on your flashcard. Not only for Colors but also other homebrew. |
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Q: Ok. I got everything. How do I install Colors!? |
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A: Just download Colors! from the homepage, unpack it and place Colors.nds on your flash-cart and you should be good to go. IN case that you still need more information there is excellent Colors! - Setup Tutorial by
Jannis Borgers. |
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Q: How much space does Colors! need? |
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A: 20MB of space available on your flash-cart should be plenty of room for Colors! and all you're your paintings. |
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Trouble shooting
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Q: It says FAT is not initialized. What does that mean? |
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A: Look below. |
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Q: Saving does not work on my card. How do I fix that? |
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A: If you don't have a card that has automatic DLDI patching, you may need to patch Colors!. There are some prepatched versions on download page of
this site, so you may want to try them first. Follow this link to get the details on DLDI patching. |
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Q: Why did Colors! just draw a big line all over my painting? |
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A: Stylus jumping (where the DS reports an incorrect stylus touch) in
Colors! can cause long lines to be drawn over your painting. This normally
only appears about once every 5 minutes, but can differ from DS to DS. Also,
having pressure on different parts of plastics close to screen (resting your
hand for example) can make this more common. Stylus jumping is also present
in official titles, which indicate it is not a completely solvable problem
and the current state of libnds seems to work as well as Nintendo's official
libraries. As for Colors!, it is possible that this will be slightly better
in future versions since it may be possible to make some special predictions
of what should be allowed. This could reduce this problem, but it will
probably never completely go away. Remember that static electricity may induce more stylus jumping, so if it happens for you a lot try to discharge before painting. |
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Q: Where can I find all the paintings I've saved? |
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A: You can find them as .png-files in the colors/ folder relative to the colors.nds you put on your flash-card. Please note, that except .png that contains finished picture there is also .drw file that contains painting history - you would need that if you want to share your pictures in the gallery. .tmb file contains little thumbnail that is displayed on your NDS. This one is recommended to be also put into gallery, so people who download your image to their NDS will see it in the load screen. |
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Future releases
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Q: What do you mean by Wifi-support? |
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A: The first step for Wifi support is to integrate it into the online
gallery and be able to upload and download painting directly to your DS.
Also, I would really like to allow for multiple people to paint on a
painting as once using through connecting between DS-to-DS directly, but
that is not possible using homebrew SDK yet. |
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Q: Will I be able to export the playback of my painting somehow? |
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A: Yes. At the moment you can export it by using Ben Jaques' genuine java applet ColorsDraw. The export is not 100% pixel perfect, but is close enough.
In the future you will be able to export it through gallery with 100% pixel accuracy. (no - it is not our priority) |
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Q: Will ...... be implemented? |
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A: Colors! is meant to be a simplistic application. That means that many
features won't be implemented because they would make the program
unnecessary complex. Below are some features that many people ask for. |
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Q: Will undo be implemented? |
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A: At the moment Undo feature is seriously thought of, however that is not an easy task as it would eat up a lot of Nintendo's limited memory, and it could make painting less responsive.
At the moment there is extend playback functionality so you can stop the playback and continue painting from there.
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Q: Will layers be implemented? |
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A: At this moment no layers feature is planned. |
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Q: Will blur/smear brush be implemented? |
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A: Possibly. |
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Q: Will color dodge be implemented? |
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A: Probably not. |
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Q: How can I help? |
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A: If you believe you have some skills that would help this project I would be happy to hear from you. Send me an email to this address. Other than
that, posting images in the gallery is the perfect motivation for me to
spend time on the project, so keep doing that! |
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Colors! Gallery
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Q: Will .... be implemented? |
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A: We have a lot of ideas we want to implement here, but that takes time, and we can devote only as much of our free time as we have it, and that's never enough. Next thing we are thinking of is tagging system. Probably most of other ideas will be implemented, but that will take time. Please be patient. |
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Q: How can I help? |
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A: At the moment, the best way to help is by using Colors! and posting some
images on the site. You can also help with FAQ if you think that there is
question that needs answering, and you can type the answer yourself. Please
do, and send it to me. Thank you! |
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Q: But I don't have NDS, is there a way I can help too? |
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A: Yes! You can help by registering and voting for pictures you like best. You can also help by spreading the word about Colors! and this gallery among your friends and over the internet. Big "thank you" to people who already do. |
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ColorsDraw
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Q: What is ColorsDraw? |
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A: ColorsDraw is java application by Ben Jaques that alows you to repaint your Colors! pictures on a computer with Java installed. You can repaint pictures in a higher resolutions than standard 512x384, or you can export painting prcess to avi file, so you can upload it to youtube if you want. |
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Q: Where can I get ColorsDraw? |
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A: Just go to Download part of this page and you will find latest ColorsDraw there. |
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Q: It seems there is no Java on my computer, where can I get one? |
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A: You can dwonload it from this page. |
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Q: Ok. I got all of that installed, how do I run ColorsDraw? |
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A: You double click the java applet and it should work. You should be able to repaint it up to 3x original size. If you want to be able to repaint images in even high resolution you need to run it from command line typing java -Xmx256M -jar ColorsDraw_1_0.jar. I would not recommend that though, as over 3.0 multiplier small resolution of DS screen starts to be visible. Also, this applet is not pixel perfect, so it does not repaint those pictures with 100% accuracy - that's why artifacts may occur at higher resolution. |
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Q: I typed new multiplier but nothing happened? |
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A: It does not update automaticaly. Change scaling 1.0 to whatever you desire and press enter. After a couple of seconds, depending on your system, try to rescale window, or move the slider, etc. It should update then just fine. |
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Q: How big can I go? |
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A: We have tested it up to 20x original size, but theoretically you can go even higher if your memory permits. Please note that it gets pretty slow at higher multipliers. Here is quick image size chart:
1.0 = 512x384
2.0 = 1024x768
3.0 = 1536x1152
4.0 = 2048x1536
5.0 = 2560x1920
6.0 = 3073x2304
10.0 = 5120x3840
20.0 = 10240x7680
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Q: Can I use ColorsDraw on my page? |
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A: I asked Ben about it and he does not mind if you use his applet.
However we think that if you use ColorsDraw you should give Ben Jaques atleast some credit. Simple link to his website (http://masscat.afraid.org) somewhere on your page should be enough. You could also send him thank you mail. |
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