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Making a Game Boy game in 2017
- EvanAnderson 9y agoIf you're into knowing more about the Game Boy I can't recommend "The Ultimate Game Boy Talk" from 33c3 enough. Michael Steil is a wonderful presenter: https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8029-the_ultimate_game_boy_talk https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8029-the_ultimate_game_boy_talk
- Operyl 9y agoThis game really reminds me of Doodle Jump, very cool that he finished one of his life goals.
- aaavl2821 9y agoMy parents never let me have video games growing up because they thought it would be a waste of time. They let me get a gameboy for some reason though, I guess cause they couldn't imagine someone wanting to stare at a 2x2 black and white screen for any length of time. Even when my friends got n64s, we spent most time playing Pokémon or Zelda on game boy, because the games were just so good I recently downloaded roller coaster tycoon for my gf, as we both used to play it when we were younger. She doesn't really play games, but during our 4th date at an amusement park we found out we both played it as children. That game was written in assembly by one person Not really a point here, other than that nostalgia and craftsmanship can be far more powerful than the latest hardware or software
- pls2halp 9y agoAn iOS version was released earlier this year. https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/rollercoaster-tycoon-classic/id1113736426?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/rollercoaster-tycoon-classic...
- havermeyer 9y agoAndroid too :) It holds up really well considering its age. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atari.mobile.rctc https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.atari.mobi...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Improvotter 9y agoOpenRCT2 (https://openrct2.org/ https://openrct2.org/) allows you to play RCT2 together on a multiplayer server. It's awesome.
- kevin2r 9y agois it hard to port this kind of games to the web, now that we have wasm?
- Hydraulix989 9y agoIt's actually not so difficult using emscripten, especially if the game already uses SDL/OpenGL.
- pjmlp 9y agoI had a friend, back in the early 80's, whose parents gave him a ZX Spectrum, but did not allow him to buy games. Instead he got BASIC and Z80 game programming books, like these http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi/archive.pl?type=Books&platform=ZX%20Spectrum http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi/archive.pl?type=Books...
- wallace_f 9y ago>craftsmanship can be far more powerful than the latest hardware or software I was just listening to the original Warcraft soundtrack for nostalgia's sake and the Youtube video had scrolled through some of the old artwork. It brought back memories of playing at my friend's house when we were kids. The game also had such nice craftsmanship--the artwork, character and themes. It reminded me of what those old games on small budgets were able to do. Something about that seems missing in today's big gaming titles.
- digi_owl 9y agoWhile reading the articles over at Filfre, i ran into a quote from an early Lucasarts adventure games guy lamenting that the computer games industry had a bad habit of rebooting itself each time some new hardware was released. Meaning that if you went from say grayscale only graphics to color graphics, for years afterwards the industry would produce glossy but shallow games. This because the game devs were more focused on showing off how far they could push their new toys than making engaging games. And with Nvidia pushing out a new GPU seemingly every quarter, i wonder if this has lead us into a kind of "eternal september" type scenario regarding games development. That said, there are a number of good indie games bouncing around Steam these days. Many of them taking design cues from the NES era of gaming.
- norswap 9y agoMight be early Xmas for you: http://www.pcgamer.com/this-is-how-blizzard-plans-to-finally-bring-back-vanilla-wow-servers/ http://www.pcgamer.com/this-is-how-blizzard-plans-to-finally...
- kleiba 9y agoI believe s/he was talking about the original Warcraft, not World of Warcraft.
- Ntrails 9y ago> Not really a point here, other than that nostalgia and craftsmanship can be far more powerful than the latest hardware or software A friend just bought me an xbox controller (to use with my PC) as an early christmas present. I've been replaying Final Fantasy 7 which I briefly tried with mouse/kb but was miserable. I'm literally blown away by how much there is in this game. I've been playing for 30 hours, am nominally on disc 2. The storyline is cool, the characters are a bit one dimensional in places but I still care about them. The cleverness in what they achieved with what they had (interspersed FMV and game, clever environments, all backed by pretty drawings and really good music) is just kinda magical. I'm loving it as much this time as I vaguely remember loving it the first time - UI warts and all.
- gciruelos 9y agoi have been writing a gameboy emulator for the last year (with short bursts of work where i implement some module), and it's been very challanging and fun, i recommend everyone to try it. it has a very simple 8-bit (risc) architecture, but obviously tailored for games (for example, it has a dedicated sprite memory sector). i recommend people to try it out because it is has fun quirks compared with "regular" architectures, like arm and x86, for example in the way it handles cartridges, or in that some cartridges actually had non-trivial logic inside them and weren't just a rom. it always amazes me how active gameboy research and development is still today, for example there's a very recent gameboy emulator / research project done in rust https://github.com/Gekkio/mooneye-gb https://github.com/Gekkio/mooneye-gb there are even test roms with which you can test your emulator to see if it implements all opcodes, interrupts and whatnot correctly (where correctly not only means "with respect to the effects" but also with respect to how many cycles everything should take). example of these test roms: http://gbdev.gg8.se/files/roms/blargg-gb-tests/ http://gbdev.gg8.se/files/roms/blargg-gb-tests/ also for example this disasm of pokemon red: https://github.com/pret/pokered https://github.com/pret/pokered if you want to write an emulator or a game and you have basic computer organization knowledge, i'd start with the famous pandocs.
- khedoros1 9y agoI did something similar with NES; built an emulator, and come back to it every couple of years. It's had 2 CPU cores (2nd added recognition of idle loops, and runs instructions in chunks instead of 1 at a time), 3 PPU implementations (each iteration emulated at a higher level, adding caching and hardware compositing), and 2 implementations of the ROM subsystem (adding caching and multiple memory mappers the second time around). There are similar testing ROMs for NES emulators, too. My emulator tends to pass the CPU tests and fail some of the PPU ones; guess I need to write a 4th implementation of that chip!
- digi_owl 9y agoCartiridges being more than just ROM has been a staple of Nintendo designs all the way back to the NES. A common trick was to have a logic chip sit between the ROM and the console, doing bank switching. This allowed a game to consist of much more data than could be fitting directly on the data lines provided. Some games, particularly those sold in Japan, had improved sound chips for example. And by the time we reach the SNES, Nintendo used this to even introduce rudimentary 3D acceleration in the form of the SuperFX chip.
- TD-Linux 9y agoI really like Game Boy development - one nice thing is that its graphics hardware is more regular in comparison to e.g. the NES, and its sound hw is legendary. Also fun is the DS, which although being far newer still retains the tile-and-sprite graphics hardware. Flash cartridges are also plentiful. It seems to be the season of homebrew - Tobu Tobu Girl is another Game Boy game on a physical cartridge to come out this month, with full source code (also using GBDK) http://tangramgames.dk/tobutobugirl/ http://tangramgames.dk/tobutobugirl/
- stevenwoo 9y agoThere were programmable cartridges in the 90's but IIRC Nintendo sued them all out of business, even the ones from Hong Kong. Did Nintendo lose interest in them after they stopped releasing new cartridges on those platforms? I didn't keep up after we cancelled the cartridge project I was working on at the time.
- minikomi 9y agoThe chiptune scene keeps them alive. Do a search for "GameBoy Flash Cart" and especially "Drag'n'Derp" if you want to see the most modern version.
- jsheard 9y agoNintendo still takes action against DS and 3DS flashcart resellers where they can, so you usually have to import them directly from China. They don't seem to care about NES/SNES/N64/GB/GBA flashcarts anymore however, those are readily available from NA and EU based stores.
- swiley 9y agoNo one ever sells them in physical stores though.
- jasonkostempski 9y agoDo they actually have a case against flashcarts or are they just bullying them into submission?
- jsheard 9y agoThe courts are on Nintendo's side here in the UK at least: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/01/british_r4_card_importer_shipping_off_to_prison http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/01/british_r4_card_imp... http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/07/high_court_outlaws_flash_carts_in_uk http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2010/07/high_court_outlaws_... I assume the DMCA anti-circumvention rules let them make a similar argument in the US.
- userbinator 9y agoThe hardware may seem very limiting but in fact you can often exploit the limitations to achieve even better effects --- for example, the LCD's relatively slow refresh rate means you can do temporal dithering to go beyond 2 bits of grayscale, and I believe modifying the GPU registers multiple times per frame, while it's drawing, is another relatively common trick. You can look at some of the GameBoy demos from the demoscene to get an idea of what others have been able to get from the hardware: http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Gameboy&page=1 http://www.pouet.net/prodlist.php?platform%5B%5D=Gameboy&pag...
- hansjorg 9y agoThis one was pretty great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyvBNhzshKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyvBNhzshKQ
- simias 9y agoOne very common effect is to change the x offset of the background mid-frame to create parallax effects. The introduction to Link's Awakening does that for instance: https://youtu.be/qoj8F0ymwpI?t=23s https://youtu.be/qoj8F0ymwpI?t=23s It looks like you have multiple layers in the background moving at different speeds but of course on the GB you only have one background layer so it's just the game modifying the offset when it reaches certain lines. To help with that the console lets you configure an interruption when the GPU reaches a certain line so you don't have to poll the line register or use an external timer.
- digi_owl 9y agoShowing that the design of the GB dates back to the time of the NES and C64. The tight coupling between the CPU and the CRT beam meant that you had similar interrupts there. And as those systems supported color displays (in a limited fashion), it was used for things like swapping palettes mid draw. While it takes whole different level of effort to do so, it is quite impressive what can be done on limited hardware when one do not have multiple layers of abstractions on top.
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- wheresmyusern 9y agoim currently doing something similar but with the ps2. it really amazes me that there are so few people interested in picking apart the ps2 and its games, and so few people interested in writing demos and games for the ps2. this lack of interest means that finding good documentation has been a little hard, but recently i hit a goldmine with official sony documentation on many of the important processors and coprocessors of the ps2 and it has been fascinating to read them. messing around with old game consoles is definitely a lot of fun.
- wingerlang 9y agoWhy would people be interested in it when you can build for modern systems? I get the nostalgia factor, but other than that? Maybe you should document it, then make it easily accessible so that people have minimal friction getting started.
- Hendrikto 9y agoThat‘s a bad argument, as Game Boys are even older and more limited, yet there is still very active development going on.
- simias 9y agoI think there's a sweet spot for these things. Very old consoles are very limited but also pretty simple. You could get an overview of all the basic capabilities of a GameBoy in half an hour. As such they're easier to get started, playing a sound on a GB from scratch would take you a dozen CPU instructions at most, pushing a sprite into the GPU only slightly more. Doing that on a PlayStation 1 would be already significantly more complicated. Even if you don't bother with 3D you need to figure out how to upload the texture to the (significantly more complex) GPU, configure a bunch of stuff and then you might be lucky enough to draw something on the screen. Take for instance this code for a "virtual terminal" on the PS1 GPU, this is what the GPU init code looks like: https://github.com/simias/psx-hardware-tests/blob/a72e0ba0c8d577792cf65ae449bc39e461ebc815/libpsx/term.c#L138-L174 https://github.com/simias/psx-hardware-tests/blob/a72e0ba0c8... And keep in mind that it's a super simplistic case, for anything more serious you'll want to configure double buffering, DMA, the GTE coprocessor for the 3D transforms and probably a few other things. Even just reading data from the CD-ROM is significantly more complex than accessing the memory mapped ROM of the GB. I expect the PS2 to be even more complicated, although I don't have a significant experience coding on it. So you end up coding on a machine that's very limited by modern standards but at the same time might be more complicated to develop for than if you used Unity or the Unreal Engine.
- stevewillows 9y agowell, this is amazing. I was especially impressed with reusing tiles for the main screen image. I'm a graphic designer and definitely not a coder for anything fun like this --- but I love seeing how people design low res sprites more than almost any other type of image. I think it speaks to my desire for minimalism, in a sense. Fantastic work. That game looks pretty fun too.
- bArray 9y agoDoes anyone know where one might find modern made buy-able Game Boy games? I have an old working Game Boy Color knocking around and would love to purchase some modern games for it!
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- mmjaa 9y agoWe get new games for old computers often, and in my particular case I'm a huge fan of the Oric-1/Atmos sytems from the 80's. These are similar in many ways to the Gameboy architecture, but were far more user-dependent in that there was never any good software for them. (Well, not enough, anyway.) But the machines live on and many elite developers are quite fond of them, so lately, every few months or so, we get new stuff for the Oric-1/Atmos systems. The latest game that blows everyones minds (because who knew you could do it on Oric), is Blakes7: http://www.defence-force.org/index.php?page=games&game=blakes7 http://www.defence-force.org/index.php?page=games&game=blake... Its quite an achievement as a point 'n click adventure and there is much to the 8-bit aesthetic in this game that would appeal to those who came here for the Gameboy look. Remember kids, old machines never die - their users do! (More great Oric games here:) http://www.defence-force.org/index.php?page=games http://www.defence-force.org/index.php?page=games (.. and here:) http://oric.org/software/ http://oric.org/software/
- tluyben2 9y agoWow, thanks for Blakes7. I love the series and old computers (I have an Oric somewhere) but did not know this game. Orac on Oric... Wish someone with a brain would redo the series though; even though the effects are dated, the series drips misery more than what goes for dystopian these days imho.
- mmjaa 9y agoI strongly urge you to dig out your old Oric and get Blakes7 running on it, you won't believe how great it is .. these machines still get a lot of love, so I hope I'll see you out there on oric.org and/or forums.defence-force.org if you get the druthers .. Cheers and happy hacking!
- memsom 9y agoI had an Oric Atmos at one point. I got it in the late 80's as I always loved the look of the Oric computers and (ahead of my time) collected retro computers at that point. I sold it sometime in the Noughties, but I keep thinking to get another one.
- pjmlp 9y agoThis is why my one of my hobby coding is using the NDK on Android, although we are carry a supercomputer in our pockets, I get some of that nostalgia feeling back. I guess a better experience would be to plug an ESP32 to a LCD screen. :)
- jmiller099 9y agoyou can even do console on android with aide. was doing recently. paused while I switched to porting some console stuff to jailbroken iPad. running those over ssh. great nostalgia running nurses Dr Mario in a terminal. pointless, but enjoyable.
- rootsudo 9y ago>$15 to create homebrew GB I wonder how much would it be to forge valuable gameboy games.
- kn0where 9y agoThere are tons of counterfeit Pokemon cartridges on eBay and elsewhere.
- mhd 9y agoIt's always interesting when retro game dev is delivered on actual hardware (disks, cassettes, modules). The recently featured RTS by the "8 bit guy" even comes in a box. On the other hand, while I appreciate this voluntary hardship (a bit like esoteric languages), I guess you get about 90% of the "engendering art with constraints" with a lot less pain by using something like PICO-8.
- santaclaus 9y agoIt is interesting to see which systems get thriving home-brew communities. Anecdotally I see a lot of posts about Game Boy hacking, but nothing about Sega Game Gear hacking.
- ashleyn 9y agoThe 16-bit generation is the inverse. The Sega Genesis has an AMAZING homebrew community thanks to a C-language dev kit that makes writing games remarkably easy. The SNES has almost nothing, save for a wiki and secondary board on Nesdev.
- misingnoglic 9y agoYou should look at SethBling, he does a lot of great stuff with the SNES.
- T-hawk 9y agoCould this be that the SNES hackers are modifying existing games instead? There's all sorts of fan hacks and remakes of Super Mario World, Super Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Mario Kart, Castlevania, and more. But the Genesis doesn't have quite so many memorable franchises beyond Sonic so that's where the homebrewers are making new stuff.
- mesozoic 9y agoQuite the hot new game for the Game Child!