5 ms·

Wooden Game Boy

233 points by _Microft 3y ago

tunnuz 3y ago
What a cool thing!
jstanley 3y ago
Very nice work, and impeccable documentation, fantastic.
ungamedplayer 3y ago
I once tried to make a wooden Gameboy advance, but it wooden work. Ducks
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ashu1461 3y ago
CNC set up looks a little bit more complicated than a 3d setup, is it usually the case ?
- georgesimon 3y ago
  If you meant 3d print, then yes for beginner setups. CNC requires a closed loop system and should include dust extraction if hardwoods are being used.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
belalebrar 3y ago
Really cool. I wonder about it's conductivity though.
aduermael 3y ago
This is gorgeous. Would love Nintendo to release exactly this, even if a bit expensive. I would like my kids (6 and 7yo) to experience cartridges (aka "one game at a time") if possible.
OliveMate 3y ago
The Gameboy is impressive but I can't stop chuckling at the site's URL pattern, that's what really ties it together for me.
detritus 3y ago
Lovely! That is, except for the shoddy white in-filled graphic details. Should've lightly laser-etched those, imho.
stuckkeys 3y ago
I watched the process on YT. Fantastic job.
userbinator 3y ago
This drills 1mm holes into the poles for the screws to tap in. As mentioned in step B03, the 1mm holes also did not work perfectly. In my opinion they are better than the 1.5mm holes I used on the bottom half, but the longer poles near the display were split by the screws in this case. If you come up with a better solution, I would like to know. This is probably the best example of how different materials, despite appearing like you can machine them to look the same, will behave very differently. Wood is, in particular, very different from plastic and metal, because it is far more anisotropic due to its grain structure. Those long and narrow bosses are acceptable in a metal or plastic part, but won't hold up at all in wood. For a better solution, I recommend not trying to follow the exact shape as the plastic part for the internals, but have as much material as possible; if you need to, use longer screws. Many electronics were housed in wooden cabinets for over a century (e.g. radios, televisions, turntables, etc.), so it would be wise to look at those for examples of how they used wood in their design.
- convolvatron 3y ago
  i dont work in wood very much, but cocobolo and ebony machine alot more like a soft metal. you can certainly catch the grain wrong and chip off a piece, but they take a thread pretty well.
- avar 3y ago
  > I recommend not trying to follow the exact shape > as the plastic part for the internals[...] Good advice in general, but in this case I don't see how they'd have that option, as the long poles need to mount the display and a circuit board. See [1] and subsequently [2], and [3] which shows the rear of the GameBoy (where those screws go). I think a better solution in this case is to either just forgo wood for those particular areas, e.g. you could use plastic or metal parts that the screws would go into, and glue or otherwise securely mount those to the wood. Or similarly, use wood for the poles, but don't drill holes in them, and use some alternate mechanism to hold the body together. They're already using magnets for the battery cover, and could presumably use a large amount of magnets to hold the two pieces of the body itself together. Finally, I don't think looking at antique wooden electronics is going to be useful. When electronic consumer products were made out of wood the electrical components were much bigger, so they didn't need to deal with these sorts of problems. Most of those only used wood as the "box", see e.g. [4]. 1. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm4.jpg https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm4.jpg 2. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm5.jpg https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm5.jpg 3. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/batteries.jpg https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/batteries.j... 4. https://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/001_jena5020radio/ https://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/001_jena5020radio/
kazinator 3y ago
Looks like acacia? That would be worth mentioning.
- mrbombastic 3y ago
  It is walnut
- nmstoker 3y ago
  The wood used is specifucally mentioned in the fourth sentence.
valyagolev 3y ago
If you want controls and scrolling for the youtube short link, just use the short id as the video id in the normal youtube url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvpYVNEvzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvpYVNEvzk
mon_ 3y ago
It would look a lot better and probably be stronger if the grain was going vertically IMO
renewiltord 3y ago
Wow, the result is stunning!
Damogran6 3y ago
Stellar upvotes and kudos for the domain and URL naming scheme!
throwaway892238 3y ago
This actually wouldn't be that hard to make with hand tools. You basically make it in sections and then combine. Layout can be made exact by using an imprint.
- jstanley 3y ago
  Why don't you show us how it's done?
  - ungamedplayer 3y ago
    I'd also like to see it done with hand tools so that I can give it a go.
hinkley 3y ago
I wonder which wood has the highest thermal conductivity. I’ve seen strength and modulus and a few other things but not conductivity.
- cyclotron3k 3y ago
  Ironwood
jader201 3y ago
This is a bit of a tangent, and not sure I’ll have any other opportunity to mention this here, but… I used to play the heck out of Tetris on to OG Game Boy. I probably played it, by far, more than any other Game Boy game, and probably any game around that 5-10 year period. But boy has it not aged well, at all. I played it recently on the Switch, and couldn’t handle it for more than a few minutes. The lack of multiple next tetrominos, no hold, no instant drop, no ghost, the completely random draw of pieces [1], and it just felt sluggish. I didn’t realize how much it had evolved, and how spoiled I was to the QoL updates over the years (and I think these were all fairly evolutionary additions, making it hard to realize the drastic difference). I’m usually more nostalgic for classic games (I still enjoy playing some classic NES/SNES games), but when it comes to Tetris, give me the modern one any day (Tetris 99 and Tetris Effect are two of my recent favorites). [1] https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers Edit: corrected next and quick drop.
- ginko 3y ago
  There's ROM hacks that add most of the modern features of tetris to the GB version. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDYciJzzTvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDYciJzzTvw
- krs_ 3y ago
  I can still play older Tetris games without the modern features and enjoy them for what they are. In fact, I kinda like that there wasn't an established "standard" of how Tetris games should play back then, and the different games feel quite different to play as a result. But the randomizer in the Game Boy game sucks a lot of enjoyment out of it for me. Combined with the shorter playfield (18 rows instead of the standard 20) and the blocks instantly locking upon touching the bottom, it often feels like a single mistake is impossible to recover from at higher levels. Recently I found this romhack for it that essentially adds all those modern features to it, and it does play a lot better. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/
- cubefox 3y ago
  Regarding the randomizer article: Tetris requires some randomness, but also some prevention of "floods" and "droughts". This sounds remarkably like the use of blue noise in dithering. Unlike purely random white noise, blue noise optimizes for "even" sequences without too many repetitions or large gaps in occurrences. I assume a similar thing is possible in a randomizer, which would make more even sequences of draws more likely than ones which are less even. Of course perfectly "even" distributions would no longer be random at all (each of the seven pieces would reoccur after exactly seven steps), but one could make anything else just less likely, depending on how far it deviates from the most likely seven step reoccurrence.

Wooden Game Boy

233 points by _Microft 3y ago

tunnuz 3y ago

What a cool thing!

jstanley 3y ago

Very nice work, and impeccable documentation, fantastic.

ungamedplayer 3y ago

I once tried to make a wooden Gameboy advance, but it wooden work. Ducks

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

ashu1461 3y ago

CNC set up looks a little bit more complicated than a 3d setup, is it usually the case ?

georgesimon 3y ago
If you meant 3d print, then yes for beginner setups. CNC requires a closed loop system and should include dust extraction if hardwoods are being used.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

belalebrar 3y ago

Really cool. I wonder about it's conductivity though.

aduermael 3y ago

This is gorgeous. Would love Nintendo to release exactly this, even if a bit expensive. I would like my kids (6 and 7yo) to experience cartridges (aka "one game at a time") if possible.

OliveMate 3y ago

The Gameboy is impressive but I can't stop chuckling at the site's URL pattern, that's what really ties it together for me.

detritus 3y ago

Lovely! That is, except for the shoddy white in-filled graphic details. Should've lightly laser-etched those, imho.

stuckkeys 3y ago

I watched the process on YT. Fantastic job.

userbinator 3y ago

This drills 1mm holes into the poles for the screws to tap in. As mentioned in step B03, the 1mm holes also did not work perfectly. In my opinion they are better than the 1.5mm holes I used on the bottom half, but the longer poles near the display were split by the screws in this case. If you come up with a better solution, I would like to know. This is probably the best example of how different materials, despite appearing like you can machine them to look the same, will behave very differently. Wood is, in particular, very different from plastic and metal, because it is far more anisotropic due to its grain structure. Those long and narrow bosses are acceptable in a metal or plastic part, but won't hold up at all in wood. For a better solution, I recommend not trying to follow the exact shape as the plastic part for the internals, but have as much material as possible; if you need to, use longer screws. Many electronics were housed in wooden cabinets for over a century (e.g. radios, televisions, turntables, etc.), so it would be wise to look at those for examples of how they used wood in their design.

convolvatron 3y ago
i dont work in wood very much, but cocobolo and ebony machine alot more like a soft metal. you can certainly catch the grain wrong and chip off a piece, but they take a thread pretty well.
avar 3y ago
> I recommend not trying to follow the exact shape > as the plastic part for the internals[...] Good advice in general, but in this case I don't see how they'd have that option, as the long poles need to mount the display and a circuit board. See [1] and subsequently [2], and [3] which shows the rear of the GameBoy (where those screws go). I think a better solution in this case is to either just forgo wood for those particular areas, e.g. you could use plastic or metal parts that the screws would go into, and glue or otherwise securely mount those to the wood. Or similarly, use wood for the poles, but don't drill holes in them, and use some alternate mechanism to hold the body together. They're already using magnets for the battery cover, and could presumably use a large amount of magnets to hold the two pieces of the body itself together. Finally, I don't think looking at antique wooden electronics is going to be useful. When electronic consumer products were made out of wood the electrical components were much bigger, so they didn't need to deal with these sorts of problems. Most of those only used wood as the "box", see e.g. [4]. 1. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm4.jpg https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm4.jpg 2. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm5.jpg https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm5.jpg 3. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/batteries.jpg https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/batteries.j... 4. https://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/001_jena5020radio/ https://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/001_jena5020radio/

kazinator 3y ago

Looks like acacia? That would be worth mentioning.

mrbombastic 3y ago
It is walnut
nmstoker 3y ago
The wood used is specifucally mentioned in the fourth sentence.

valyagolev 3y ago

If you want controls and scrolling for the youtube short link, just use the short id as the video id in the normal youtube url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvpYVNEvzk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvpYVNEvzk

mon_ 3y ago

It would look a lot better and probably be stronger if the grain was going vertically IMO

renewiltord 3y ago

Wow, the result is stunning!

Damogran6 3y ago

Stellar upvotes and kudos for the domain and URL naming scheme!

throwaway892238 3y ago

This actually wouldn't be that hard to make with hand tools. You basically make it in sections and then combine. Layout can be made exact by using an imprint.

jstanley 3y ago
Why don't you show us how it's done?
- ungamedplayer 3y ago
  I'd also like to see it done with hand tools so that I can give it a go.

hinkley 3y ago

I wonder which wood has the highest thermal conductivity. I’ve seen strength and modulus and a few other things but not conductivity.

cyclotron3k 3y ago
Ironwood

jader201 3y ago

This is a bit of a tangent, and not sure I’ll have any other opportunity to mention this here, but… I used to play the heck out of Tetris on to OG Game Boy. I probably played it, by far, more than any other Game Boy game, and probably any game around that 5-10 year period. But boy has it not aged well, at all. I played it recently on the Switch, and couldn’t handle it for more than a few minutes. The lack of multiple next tetrominos, no hold, no instant drop, no ghost, the completely random draw of pieces [1], and it just felt sluggish. I didn’t realize how much it had evolved, and how spoiled I was to the QoL updates over the years (and I think these were all fairly evolutionary additions, making it hard to realize the drastic difference). I’m usually more nostalgic for classic games (I still enjoy playing some classic NES/SNES games), but when it comes to Tetris, give me the modern one any day (Tetris 99 and Tetris Effect are two of my recent favorites). [1] https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers Edit: corrected next and quick drop.

ginko 3y ago
There's ROM hacks that add most of the modern features of tetris to the GB version. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDYciJzzTvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDYciJzzTvw
krs_ 3y ago
I can still play older Tetris games without the modern features and enjoy them for what they are. In fact, I kinda like that there wasn't an established "standard" of how Tetris games should play back then, and the different games feel quite different to play as a result. But the randomizer in the Game Boy game sucks a lot of enjoyment out of it for me. Combined with the shorter playfield (18 rows instead of the standard 20) and the blocks instantly locking upon touching the bottom, it often feels like a single mistake is impossible to recover from at higher levels. Recently I found this romhack for it that essentially adds all those modern features to it, and it does play a lot better. https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/ https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/
cubefox 3y ago
Regarding the randomizer article: Tetris requires some randomness, but also some prevention of "floods" and "droughts". This sounds remarkably like the use of blue noise in dithering. Unlike purely random white noise, blue noise optimizes for "even" sequences without too many repetitions or large gaps in occurrences. I assume a similar thing is possible in a randomizer, which would make more even sequences of draws more likely than ones which are less even. Of course perfectly "even" distributions would no longer be random at all (each of the seven pieces would reoccur after exactly seven steps), but one could make anything else just less likely, depending on how far it deviates from the most likely seven step reoccurrence.