FSPDS - Flipnote Studio Player for Nintendo DS

Note from January 2021 : "Unburied" dekvkitPro from a 3yo hard disk backup, so I decided to give it a go :)

This simple ROM allows you to play flipnotes on Nintendo DS (Lite) using your flashcard.

How to use

1. Create a new folder named /flipnotes at the root of your SD card
2. Copy your favorite flipnotes to /flipnotes directory
3. Copy FSPDS.nds anywhere to your SD card
4. Insert your flashcard into the DS, then turn on the console
5. Launch FSPDS.nds
6. Select a file from the menu using the D-pad
7. Press A to play it
8. Use L/R buttons to navigate through bottom-screen tabs

Features

• Supposing you are a TwilightMenu++ user (or any other DSi CFW), or you use the same SD card for both the DSi and a DS flashcard, FSPDS automatically detects default flipnote export paths for you so that you are not required to copy those files to a /flipnotes directory.
• A screen saver turns off the bottom screen on 5 seconds of inactivity during flipnote playback. Also, this option can be manually triggered by pressing the screen saver icon on the Player Tab. *

* Check the Hardware vs Emulator compatibility section below.

Screenshots

Thumbnail of one of the sample flipnotes (Cat on a skateboard) displayed by FSPDS

Capture of "eBay Song" flipnote by RANDOM☆GUY played by FSPDS

Bugs/Limitations

• FSPDS doesn't detect/play flipnotes larger than 1MB (this is intentional behavior)
• The flipnote's BGM track should be smaller than 512KB in order to be played correctly. However, the DSi Flipnote Studio only allows for 1 minute of raw audio (8192Hz) to be encoded into a flipnote, which means at most 240KB of sound data. Therefore, FSPDS should not have problems playing original flipnotes. Spin-off flipnotes which contain huge audio data may not play correctly with this application.

Tested on DeSmuMe emulator and R4(i) flashcards

Hardware vs emulator compatibility

• On the hardware, loading files from FAT system is substantialy faster;
• For some reason, the screen saver does not work on DeSmuME emulating in R4 mode. This doesn't affect the actual user experience.

Credits

• Guys from DSiBrew and Flipnote Collective for their awesome documentation on .PPM file format.
• devkitPro for their compiler, ndslib and examples
• The authors behind GodMode9i for the idea of overwriting character fonts
• Drenn1/GameYob repo for helping me figure out how to work with makefiles.
• RinLovesYou for her ADPCM to PCM Decode() method from PPMLib
• tomrow for their suggestion on Alternate flipnote browse locations
• Moonshell2 source code for hints on making the screen saver during playback