We (retrohead, Vaskituh and muggsy) spent some time talking with Mollusk a few days ago. He is the creator of the PAlib, the user friendly environment which is used by many homebrew applications and games. It provides a friendly and easy library to help develop a wide variety of software for the DS and is used widely by many developers. The interview provided a great insight into the PAlib community and the projects currently in development using the library.

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DS-Scene.net:
What's your name, age and where are you from?

Mollusk:
Greg, 23, from Paris, France  

DS-Scene.net:
What first attracted you to the Nintendo brand of products?

Mollusk:
Dev-wise or in general ?

DS-Scene.net:
In general.

Mollusk:
Pretty much the originality. I got into video games pretty late, in fact played every so often at my cousins place and each Nintendo-made game was like a unique experience, not just an n'th version of the same game over and over again. I started with the nice little Gameboy with games like Mystic Quest, Tetris and Zelda then kind of skipped a few generations and got a Gamecube and a GBA

DS-Scene.net:
What's your favourite system and game ever made?

Mollusk:
I'd probably go for the DS right now, though we'll have to wait for the Wii to get a final answer on that one. As for games... Mario DS really got me going and Under The Knife, really cool concept.

DS-Scene.net:
When did you begin to develop for the Nintendo DS?

Mollusk:
As soon as the first image sof DS dev came out, at that time I was very much into GBA development so DS was more like a continuation than a brand new start.

DS-Scene.net:
So where did you start, was it on GBA or had you worked on anything prior to that?

Mollusk:
I started 'for real' on gba. Had done a few very very simple games (minesweeper, etc...) on TI 89 but I'm not sure that should count... I didn't actually create that much for GBA.

DS-Scene.net:
Why did you choose to code for DS over the other consoles available at the time?

Mollusk:
The thing is that I had all the material and knowledge to code easily on DS. The GC seemed like a bit harsh to work on, and the PSP never attracted me too much. The thing that really motivated me on the DS was the touch screen. Used wisely, it can give a whole new dimension to gaming.... and apps! I'm not too much of a 3D-guy, so I wasn't attracted to other consoles or the PSP dev.

DS-Scene.net:
What are the projects you are working on, or have worked on for the Nintendo DS?





Mollusk:
My main project, still running, is PAlib. It was the first thing I started, my first love. I've had tons of projects since that, but like 90% never came out. Lately the Datel compo got me motivated so I tried to code a few games (and finish them) like HexaVirus and Circular Defense. I also went with some apps (TranslatorDS and MapViewer). An old project that stopped was nDoS (ed - pictured above). Most people haven't heard of it because it aborted a while back.  

DS-Scene.net:
So these games and applications all work on the Datel MMP?

Mollusk:
These games should work on max media player, haven't sent them the apps though. They use a custom filesystem made for gba carts so that's quite limiting compatibility-wise.

DS-Scene.net:
It's great to know that someone is actually entering that competition though, we hadn't heard much news at all. What does PALib consist of, how did you start working on it?





Mollusk:
PAlib is a high-level DS library, as opposed to libnds being as low-level as possible. So it doesn't actually give you full control over the DS, but is aimed at helping you as much as possible having premade routines for sprites, backgrounds with infinite tiles and scrolling, etc...

Also added some quick shape recognitions and other stuff that eventually got requested. I started working on it when I saw some friends of mine having trouble with the DS dev at that time, there was only ndslib available, which is great but kind of hard to start off with if you don't know anything. I had done a quick little GBA lib, (mollib, great name  ) and started by porting it to DS

DS-Scene.net:
Interesting we never knew it started on the GBA.

Mollusk:
At first it was supposed to be a small community project but it grew pretty much over time and requests. My basic idea of PAlib was to have some default sprite/background/sounds routines and then people got used to it and asked for more and more stuff... and I found it quite interesting to do it, made me learns tons of stuff about the DS hardware.

DS-Scene.net:
What room for improvements do you see left for PAlib as it is today?

Mollusk:
Improvements would concern bugfixes (that'll never end  ), and customisations. I guess I need to open the lib's possibilies as much as possible. Like easier integration of custom fonts, etc...[/color]

DS-Scene.net:
There are lots of developers using PAlib. Are you happy with it's success or where you expecting more from it?

Mollusk:
Well, I wouldn't have thought it would go that far. At some point last year I took a break off development, and when I came back a few months later I thought that the whole project would have probably died, but was surprised to see that the community had grown on it's own. I guess that's why open source is great.  

DS-Scene.net:
Your goal with PA Lib was to get a user friendly development platform started to get new developers instantly ready to code for the DS. Do you think you succeeded and/or surpassed that goal?





Mollusk:
I think I pretty much succeded but to some limits. When I see people asking for 'stupid' functions/additions to the lib it makes me realize that too much assistance isn't always a good thing. People tend to get lazy. Some just get lazy and would like to have a lib that just creates a game, like PA_CreateGame(shmup)

DS-Scene.net:
*Laughs* Did you have other goals set when you started out? Added new ones in time?

Mollusk:
I don't have any goals. Studies don't give as much free time as I would have wanted, so I just tend to do as things come and add stuff when I think of doing it. I didn't plan too much but maybe should have because bugs are getting all over the place if you aren't careful enough.

DS-Scene.net:
How much time did you take to make a version that was easy to use, with some basic stuff, and little to nothing complex? A version that your friends could use..  

Mollusk:
Well, as I said, most of the code was actually a port of my GBA lib. It had very simple stuff, like sprites and backgrounds. The porting itself took a few hours, and a few days of tweaking (the DS does offer much more than the GBA...)

Nintendo hardware devs were nice enough to keep the whole sprite/background system identical, with a few more KB or registers, so that was easy. As for having lots of user-friendly functions, like sprite animations, very large map and infinite tiles, etc... that actually took a while simply because those were the stuff I didn't want to include in the lib at first and once I had actually coded them for personnal projects and saw too many requests, once I got tired of not doing, I copy/pasted my project's code into PAlib  

DS-Scene.net:
Did anyone help you on a large scalewith PALib or was it created entirely by yourself?

Mollusk:
I did get lots of help, I won't be able to remember everyone's name (sadly).

Smealum was there to help me out on testing when I didn't have any hardware yet.
Delfare took care of the 3D part of PAlib, as I just don't like 3D....
El Hobito for the wifi part and the FATlib
We're still using Deku's nice modplayer
There was also Kleevah, who's not too much around lately but helped for lots of stuff
etc...

I know I'm forgetting lots of people

DS-Scene.net:
I'm sure they will understand  

Mollusk:
I'd need to talk about wintermute, dovoto, etc... all the guys who made DS dev accessible us mortals.

DS-Scene.net:
It's great to have a solid community helping and supporting you. Aside from your own developments, which other homebrew applications or games do you use yourself and which is your favourite (including PAlibs of course)?

Mollusk:
As for homebrews I use... sadly nearly none! I don't get much time to test most of them. I've seen moonshell, DSO, etc... but never actually used them a single time on DS. As for games I havn't played that much either though Omalone is a great one, and Caisse DS (Sokoban remix) is pretty awesome too. As for the DS scene in general, I'll have to say that I find it... weird/akward. There's been lots of fuss about whether people should use PAlib or not, how simple DS dev should be, etc...

Be it on forums or IRC, I didn't find most of the DS scene to be very noob-friendly; that might not be a real world *laughs*

DS-Scene.net:
How much interaction do you have with developers, outside of your own community?

Mollusk:
Interaction with non-PAlib dev? Varies from day to day. For non-PAlib stuff it's mainly with french developers. It can be to help out get some stuff working on libnds (PAlib can help as it's source is free to view/use). The french community, PAlib or not, seems much more gathered up than the rest of the DS scene.

DS-Scene.net:
Yeah we've noticed the French have taken a real liking to DS development. Have there been any development problems that have been hard to overcome and how did you do this?

Mollusk:
Boy, that's a hard one.

I guess the infinite tile system was kind of a pain, because it's something I never needed, I prefer to optimize my tilesets, so I kind of did it without too much motivation so it's like the most non-optimized part in PAlib. The shape recognition wasn't too simple either. I didn't actually find any ready-to-use solution on the web to do it so I had to code it from scratch. Plus, I had to do it in the optic that developers would need to add their own shapes to it so I couldn't have a too complex/fixed system. In the end I might be the only one to use it. As for dev problems, we still have some compatibility problems with certain linkers, not sure why

DS-Scene.net:
What do you think is your best coding achievement for the DS and why?

Mollusk:
PAlib is a big one but there's another one in the works though sorry, I won't be able to talk about it yet. (ed - we are waiting with great anticipation for this) and TranslatorDS was pretty cool too... Wanted to have a system fast enough to search in a database of 4MB seamlessly wasn't easy with only 66Mhz  

DS-Scene.net:
Oh, can't you talk about your next project? How suprised are we going to be when you reveal it and when do you plan on releasing it?

Mollusk:
I have a few projects left to release but the main one... I can't tell, my graphist doesn't want us to reveal it yet. No idea when it'll be out

DS-Scene.net:
Is it a game or app?

Mollusk:
It's a (really good) game!

DS-Scene.net:
Is this your collaboration with Nhut?

Mollusk:
Nope with DayDream, the guy who made the graphics for Circular Defense and HexaVirus. I have another unreleased project though, which is a port of "It's Mr Pants" to DS.

DS-Scene.net:
Do you plan on using WiFi for "It's Mr Pants"?

Mollusk:
Im not sure yet but there won't be multiplayer WiFi.

DS-Scene.net:
Can you tell us a bit more about it for the people that may not have heard of it





Mollusk:
It's called Cornered and it is a puzzle game with 3 different game modes. In the default puzzle mode, you have a picture (2 to 4 different colors) and need to add blocks to it. Once you have a perfect rectangle of 1 color it's removed and you finish the stage if you can remove all the blocks with a given number of pieces.

The other game modes are pretty much the same, but you either have a limited time to clear a random level, or have a tetris-like mode with the stage filling up with un-removable blocks

Mollusk:
The graphics are... horrible. I didn't have any idea what to do, so I just ripped out parts of the palib.com website

DS-Scene.net:
*Laughs* When do you plan on releasing it?

Mollusk:
As soon as I find someone for the graphics, the code is pretty much finished.  

DS-Scene.net:
Moving on to TranslatorDS. Can we translate any kind of language into another by just putting TranslatorDS on the FlashCart? How can I, for example, use Portugues to English?





Mollusk:
TranslatorDS uses a free translator dictionnary freelang and tons of languages are available. I put a few on the TranslatorDS page, not sure english-portugues is in the list. That's the only reason why I made it, I fell on that freelang system completely randomly and wanted to do something as open as possible, so jus a few languages wouldn't have been enough for me.

The current system only works on GBA flashcarts though, I'll need to use the fatlib and I'm still waiting for the next release before doing so.

DS-Scene.net:
So it is pretty much a dictionary that uses FreeLang languages or can we type a phrase and it will translate it?

Mollusk:
It's a dictionary. Phrase translations would be way too much for me. Analysing grammar and all...

DS-Scene.net:
Do you think its impossible to do it on the DS?

Mollusk:
It could be possible but if you've tried google translate you might have seen, even on PC, it's far from perfect. I'm not sure it's something I'd like to go into... I know I'll never do as good as the google guys (even in decades)

DS-Scene.net:
Google Translations aren't that bad so maybe if someone found a way to do it, maybe it could be possible on the DS.

Mollusk:
Now what could be possible and easy. Would be to have a PC-DS interface. Like type a sentence on your DS and it sends it to the PC by WiFi, looks up in google translate and answers...  (I'm very much into DS-PC stuff, though I havn't tried out anything with DS wifi yet)

DS-Scene.net:
It sounds good but that won't help me in the middle of Poland after my girlfriend has dumped me but DS-PC connectivity is very cool.... since you are into it. Any chance of a plain wifi mode?

Mollusk:
If I get the time, maybe,  but I probably won't have that time before a few months and if I end up getting the time, I might buy a Wii instead (the Wii could be an interesting console to dev on if it's easy)

DS-Scene.net:
You seem to be coming out with alot of projects recently. We know that people worry about developers only half finishing projects. Do you plan on updating any of your previous projects?

Mollusk:
TranslatorDS and MapViewer will be updated and in fact will be released at some point as a single app. Named something like TravelDS, with a devise converter included, or something like that.

DS-Scene.net:
WOAH, with a nice GUI that would be amazing.





Mollusk:
I tend to not release stuff before it's really finished. I already made 3 unfinished shmups now. TranslatorDS aswell... I took the maps from a french site and didn't rename them. I didn't release it yet (maybe I should) but actually MapViewer takes custom from the first version (got the idea of doing it when I saw that Christ's very nice Map viewer had to be recompiled for each map... kind of painful).

DS-Scene.net:
Would you dream to work for a company like Nintendo to create games and apps like your doing now, but as a full time job?

Mollusk:
It would be great be it for games or apps. The DS deserves to have some great apps but the gaming industry doesn't seem that motivated. I'll most likely never work for them, I didn't choose the right studies for that *Laughs*

DS-Scene.net:
What are your thoughts on companies like Sony or Microsoft that seem to be only in it for profit?

Mollusk:
I don't see Sony and Microsoft the same way. I think Microsofts main goal isn't profit but just extending on as many territories as possible. That can actually mean doing some good stuff... the X360 seems like a fairly decent game console. As for Sony, I kind of tend to hate them. They're typically working for profit and it's pretty sad (though the PSP is really a great system). Friends of mine buying 3 PS1's or PS2's because they keep falling apart. That's a pretty good way to sell more, and the way they ditched Lik Sang...  

DS-Scene.net:
That was particularly sad! Well, here at DS-Scene we would like to thank you for your work on the DS do you have any last thoughts to say to our readers?

Mollusk:
Probably a few yeah,

1. If you haven't tried developing... do so (because it's really great to make something 'come to life' on your DS, even when it's nothing much, and it's not as hard as it may seem).
2. (because that really tends to get me mad)if you don't know the answer... Try google, because I've noticed people getting lazy and asking anything on forums while the answer was right under their nose.
3. The DS is a great system, and DS-scene is great place.

  

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Once again, we here as ds-scene would like to thank Mollusk for taking the time out of his busy schedule to sit down and talk to us.

Check out the links below for more information on PAlib including an excellent wiki for a great place to start coding with PAlib:

PAlib Home Page
PAlib Wiki
Mollusk's Blog