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YOYOZO: How I made a Playdate game in 39 KiB
- simlevesque 3y agoAs a Yoyo enthusiast, you got my curiosity and it looks quite fun !
- msephton 3y agoThanks, great to hear!
- zuluonezero 3y agoI'm loving everything I see about the Playdate. This is how gaming should "feel". Keep up the good work.
- msephton 3y agoMany thanks! It's an absolute joy to develop for Playdate (mostly because of the fixed, limited spec) and as much of a joy to play games on (mostly because of the screen and form factor).
- yaky 3y agoYou might also enjoy PICO-8, a virtual console in glorious 128x128 16-color graphics, with bleepy sounds, and chiptune music. The community is lovely and pretty active.
- gainda 3y agogosh seeing the gameplay unlocked an ancient memory ( read: 2007 ) of playing an indie game called xWUNG that had the same yoyo-ing effect. https://www.tigsource.com/2007/09/24/xwung/ https://www.tigsource.com/2007/09/24/xwung/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/30068/xwung/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/30068/xwung/
- msephton 3y agoOh, nice! I'd not heard of that one, but judging by the first TIGSource link xWUNG takes inspiration from the same game I did: Japanese cult classic Pendulumania (2000, CANO-Lab) https://www.mobygames.com/game/17800/pendulumania/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/17800/pendulumania/ with both of those being mouse controlled. One of the challenges I had to "solve" was how to move from analog to digital control.
- gainda 3y agoawesome to get a little bit of insight :) thank you!
- Toutouxc 3y ago> If you don’t own a Playdate, well, what are you waiting for? Waiting for them to start shipping to my country, actually :( They're shipping to three neighboring countries though.
- jxcl 3y agoIt's also not clear if they're actually in stock. "Shipping Late 2023" it says.
- msephton 3y agoIIRC they ship in batches, and the current batch are receiving their shipping notifications right now.
- lovich 3y agoI was in group five and got mine in mid august
- compiler-guy 3y agoI ordered mine in February and got it in September. A painful wait, but very fun once it came.
- hbn 3y agoConsider yourself lucky, I ordered mine November 2021 and didn't get it until August 2023.
- msephton 3y agoJust a friendly note to the editors to mention that the game title is YOYOZO, all caps. The reason is aesthetics: it visually echoes the audible repetition you get when saying the word. A single capital Y and lowercase rest of the word ...just doesn't hit the same way. Fun fact: YOYOZO is a word I invented, a portmanteau of the words yo-yo (as in the toy) and yozora (a Japanese word meaning "night sky"). So new I got the hash tag all to myself on social media. Almost a Googlewhack!? Cheers!
- minimaxir 3y agoHacker News submissions automatically title case all-caps and sometimes all-lowercase in submissions by default, particularly if it's the first word in the title (e.g. when you submit a post about the graphics library ggplot2, HN corrects it to "Ggplot2" which is definitely wrong: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ggplot2 https://hn.algolia.com/?q=ggplot2) A workaround is to edit the title after submitting it, which will not be automatically be corrected.
- msephton 3y agoInteresting, because it was OK (as I typed it for submission) for a while and then ...changed... not just the capitalisation but also removing words and changing the units from 39KB to 39k. The original correct title is preserved in automated posts on social media at the moment it hit the top. Anyway, I think it's far too late for me to edit it now. :)
- Dudester230602 3y agoI went with one of these: https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCGaming
- msephton 3y agoCool devices, I have one, but sadly they're not capable of playing Playdate games.
- yoyozzzzzz 3y ago[flagged]
- yoyozzzzzz 3y ago> If you don’t own a Playdate, well, what are you waiting for? Waiting for Panic to actually support something longer than a millisecond. Panic is small time Google - you can’t trust anything they create to be supported. I would put a lot of money on them dropping PlayDate support before they fulfill any of their promises.
- lovich 3y agoThey already completed their first season and the play date itself is well made. For 229 including the cover I was quite pleased with it
- msephton 3y agoUnfair, I think. Playdate has been out for over 18 months now, released April 2022, and is still available, selling and shipping. There are over 400 games available, 100 of which are on the official Catalog store. The device and infrastructure has been in development for over a decade at this point.
- wiredfool 3y agoIt looks distantly related to the old CrystalQuest on the compact Mac, especially in the indirection between movement of the mouse (or whatever play date has) and the differential movement of the playing piece. In CrystalQuest, the mouse affected velocity, here it looks like a spring function.
- msephton 3y agoYou're the second person to mention that game! Somebody else mentioned it on social media. I'm a hardcore Macintosh software nut and simply have no idea why I've never played Crystal Quest. Maybe I thought it was Crystal Castles? No idea. Anyway, I watched some videos last night and I do see what you're saying. I can't wait to play Crystal Quest when I get back to my Macintosh Classic. :)
- xanderlewis 3y agoJust want to say that I love everything about this. The Playdate itself feels like a beacon of hope in the current world of pessimism. We could all do with more of these type of projects! ♡
- msephton 3y agoThanks! I agree 100%
- jay-anderson 3y agoMy playdate arrived a few weeks ago. Lots of good fun little games. A lot of the catalog games look nice, but most are just outside of the impulse purchase to me.
- msephton 3y agoUnderstandable, and I hope one day to be able to offer a demo so people like you and I can make more informed purchasing decisions. To give you the developer point of view: after all is said and done (cuts/taxes/fees/fx/etc) I see just under half of the list price. I'm trying to make a living doing this (it's my one and only job) and I have no idea what price is "best" so I make a decision and have to stick with it. If I may ask, what is the impulse purchase price limit for you?
- max_ 3y agoMine would be $5
- dankwizard 3y agoJust a friendly post about if you're after what the kids are calling an SBC device, you can get much better performing handhelds for a fraction of the price that support NES, SNES, PS1, etc. The Playdate is a niche.
- msephton 3y agoThey are cool consumption devices, and I have one myself. But the important thing, at least for me, is they don't run Playdate games. And they don't have any easy way for developers like myself to make a living making games for them. I wish they did because there are a heck of a lot of them out there! You're right that the Playdate is a niche, but it's a nice one that I can make a living working on.
- max_ 3y agoHow much money can one make from selling a playdate game?
- msephton 3y agoOf course, it depends. Here's one take: https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaydateConsole/comments/17p8pdp/comment/k86easw/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PlaydateConsole/comments/17p8pdp/co...
- jader201 3y agoCurious if you’re expecting to make a living solely off making Playdate games? It doesn’t seem like $30k is much, and unless you’re cranking out at least one or two of these every year (at minimum) — and that’s assuming the Playdate maintains its current momentum — it seems like you might need something else to augment the income you get from Playdate games. Of course, it could depend on your expectations and what you need to earn a living. Again, just curious, as I once considered/attempted to earn a living off of a side-gif, but there was no way it would’ve been enough, nor would it have sustained even if it reached enough in a single year.
- nshkr 3y ago[dead]
- meibo 3y ago> If you don’t own a Playdate, well, what are you waiting for? A backlight, for one! It's not a cheap device and I don't generally play games in bright spaces, so I might as well sit this version out until they change their mind.
- msephton 3y agoThe screen technology that is used (Sharp Memory LCD) cannot be backlit—it's technically impossible because it's an opaque screen unlike most other type of LCDs which will let light through. It could be front lit, but then it would be further from the surface, so there would be a big trade-off. Personally, I think they made the right decision because as it is the screen looks like some sort of magical material from outer space.
- nicolas_t 3y agoI have a playdate but unfortunately rarely play it because without a backlight, I'm rarely in a situation where it's comfortable to play my playdate...
- ramraj07 3y agoMaybe you should sell it then? Given its scarce and all..
- nicolas_t 3y agoThe last two times I've tried selling something on ebay, I was scammed. So I'm not really that motivated to bother with doing that.
- ramraj07 3y agoIf you’re a gadget head I’d implore you try and establish a good eBay routine. I find it cathartic to sell my old gadgets there. It’s not just that there’s money to be made but it’s guaranteed that someone gets a use out of your beloved gadget for a bit longer. I recently sold a 13 year old Asus netbook for 50 bucks. It still ran and browsed the internet. I’m sure it’s of some use to someone still.
- MrFoof 3y agoA similarly interesting story is regarding the NES homebrew game, Micro Mages. The goal with Micro Mages was to get a full-featured game into the same footprint of the original, "Black Box" NES releases for the North American launch, where a fair number of games fit in 40KB of ROM or less. Video, but it's a good summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM Morphcat has done other great NES games as well, such as Space Gulls and Bobl.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- OscarDC 3y agoSmall nitpick about the website: I'm one of those people that randomly select chunks of text as I'm reading it. It seems that your website make the selection background and text the same color (#fff in the CSS) making it unreadable when doing that. Therefore I must here control my weird urge to select text, which may be good in the end, but I don't think that's what you intended!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- msephton 3y agoI've made some changes to address this. Thanks for letting me know!
- nosrepa 3y agoGood read as always, Matt.