Nintendo has partnered with Metrowerks to distribute its Nintendo DS CodeWarrior deveopment tools to third-party developers.
"Metrowerks has earned a worldwide reputation for offering high quality software development tools," said Satoru Okada, research and engineering manager at Nintendo Co., Ltd. "The tools included in CodeWarrior Development Studio for Nintendo DS are no exception, and will allow game developers to create exciting titles that take advantage of the unique features found in the Nintendo DS."
The tool set includes:
- A multi-core, thread-aware debugger that works simultaneously on the ARM 9(TM) and ARM 7(TM) processors
- ARM linker overlays that reduce memory consumption by allowing developers to detect and remove unused code in linked applications
- A command line interface, an easy-to-use graphical user interface and cache viewing capabilities that simplify the development experience
- An ARM compiler fully optimized to work with the Nintendo DS hardware
Sega's Sonic Team president Yuji Naka said, "CodeWarrior Development Studio for Nintendo DS has helped us quickly create prototypes during the early stages of development, and thanks to the detailed grammar check/alarm display functionality, we were able to identify issues at an early stage, significantly reducing the debug time."
Nintendo said it has distributed the Metrowerks CodeWarrior kits to more than 100 companies worldwide. The Nintendo DS is scheduled for release in America and Japan at the end of 2004 and in Europe in the first quarter of 2005.