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The thing that I think some folks miss about the Playdate is that it’s not just a device meant to play a catalog of high budget polished games. It’s not necessa

The thing that I think some folks miss about the Playdate is that it’s not just a device meant to play a catalog of high budget polished games. It’s not necessarily for the masses. It’s also a platform and developer ecosystem explicitly made to get new/interested devs involved in game development with documented support for side loading. I preordered early on, and haven’t gotten mine yet, but I bought in to the idea because I love to tinker and have always wanted to dabble with game dev. I like the possibility that there will be many others like me, trying similar things on the same exact hardware, opening up opportunities for community and collaboration. I have yet to see if my excitement is warranted, but I thought it was worth mentioning that some people are not as focused on the end product as they are on the community, ecosystem and tinkering opportunities it enables.

causality0 5y ago
trying similar things on the same exact hardware, opening up opportunities for community and collaboration. The Gameboy homebrew community would provide that for you, with the added benefit of a much larger potential userbase.
- haswell 5y ago
  I think that's great, but how accessible is that community? How high is the barrier to entry? Genuinely interested because I'll probably spend some time dabbling there. I don't think this needs to be an either/or conversation though.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  As someone who's been really wanting to make a Gameboy port of one of my games and also played with PlayDate dev, PlayDate has been much easier to get up and running with it. Gameboy has been difficult enough (although it has gotten a lot easier with the gb dev kit, it's still not easy) I haven't gotten very far with it yet.
- MBCook 5y ago
  Playdate games can be played online through the browser, I think. The Playdate has WAY more CPU power, WAY more RAM, WiFi, storage, and drastically better sound. Plus a crank! No need mor mapper chips or other complications. I like that they kept limitations like having a black and white screen (not greyscale ala GB), and a smaller resolution. so there are still creative constraints. But a lot of the software constraints no longer exist so it’s more approachable.
cableshaft 5y ago
I've been playing around with the Playdate SDK, and it's pretty darn simple for the most part (the documentation could be better, but it mostly gets the job done). I have a working version of my Pico-8 game that I ported in a couple of days (the core gameplay loop at least), including crank functionality. The code is basically just Lua with some extra Playdate specific bits. This tutorial helped me get up and running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ufxinp7No https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ufxinp7No The hardest bit for me so far has been how to make graphics look halfway decent in 1-bit, especially when I'm not much of an artist. Still haven't figured that bit out. I'm just drawing polygons and text on the screen right now programatically. Works okay for the core gameplay, but I'm struggling more with menus.
- grapeskin 5y ago
  > The code is basically just Lua with some extra Playdate specific bits. Now I'm interested in this device. I absolutely love working with Lua and I'd do anything to help that language spread.

causality0 5y ago

trying similar things on the same exact hardware, opening up opportunities for community and collaboration. The Gameboy homebrew community would provide that for you, with the added benefit of a much larger potential userbase.

haswell 5y ago
I think that's great, but how accessible is that community? How high is the barrier to entry? Genuinely interested because I'll probably spend some time dabbling there. I don't think this needs to be an either/or conversation though.
cableshaft 5y ago
As someone who's been really wanting to make a Gameboy port of one of my games and also played with PlayDate dev, PlayDate has been much easier to get up and running with it. Gameboy has been difficult enough (although it has gotten a lot easier with the gb dev kit, it's still not easy) I haven't gotten very far with it yet.
MBCook 5y ago
Playdate games can be played online through the browser, I think. The Playdate has WAY more CPU power, WAY more RAM, WiFi, storage, and drastically better sound. Plus a crank! No need mor mapper chips or other complications. I like that they kept limitations like having a black and white screen (not greyscale ala GB), and a smaller resolution. so there are still creative constraints. But a lot of the software constraints no longer exist so it’s more approachable.

cableshaft 5y ago

I've been playing around with the Playdate SDK, and it's pretty darn simple for the most part (the documentation could be better, but it mostly gets the job done). I have a working version of my Pico-8 game that I ported in a couple of days (the core gameplay loop at least), including crank functionality. The code is basically just Lua with some extra Playdate specific bits. This tutorial helped me get up and running: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ufxinp7No https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0ufxinp7No The hardest bit for me so far has been how to make graphics look halfway decent in 1-bit, especially when I'm not much of an artist. Still haven't figured that bit out. I'm just drawing polygons and text on the screen right now programatically. Works okay for the core gameplay, but I'm struggling more with menus.

grapeskin 5y ago
> The code is basically just Lua with some extra Playdate specific bits. Now I'm interested in this device. I absolutely love working with Lua and I'd do anything to help that language spread.