5 ms·

Boxxle in Swift – Game Boy Port

41 points by KennyCason 12y ago

lyinsteve 12y ago
Great job! A few suggestions: 1) You may have better results with your pixel art if you change the filteringMode of your SKTextures to SKTextureFilteringMode.NearestNeighbor instead of .Linear. 2) You might want to store SKTextures in your imageDict instead of full SKSpriteNodes. It seems you aren't reusing those nodes, just the textures. 3) Maybe use a plist file to store the level data instead of hard-coded array constants? It's a little more flexible once you abstract the data outside of your source code.
- KennyCason 12y ago
  Thanks a lot, It was certainly a battle of figuring out Swift while making continual forward progress. Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't even know about the filtering mode! I also agree on only storing the SKTextures. In regards to the level data. I hated storing hard coded arrays but couldn't figure anything else out in time :) I would 1000x prefer to use a plist file to store the data. That way I could also more easily parse the common level formats. For example: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/ai/yoshio/sokoban/handmade/soko001.txt http://www.ne.jp/asahi/ai/yoshio/sokoban/handmade/soko001.tx... Thanks for taking time to read through the code!
MattPearce 12y ago
Just to be pedantic - this isn't a port as the original source wasn't used, this is a remake.
- KennyCason 12y ago
  Haha Thanks! Every time I typed "port" I couldn't help but think "I don't think this is a port" but didn't know quite what to call it. :)
- ginko 12y ago
  Another nitpick: It wasn't Nintendo who created Boxxle. The game was developed by Thinking Rabbit and published by FCI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxxle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxxle
SeoxyS 12y ago
By the way, this is originally a japanese game called Sokoban. Boxxle was a clone of Sokoban. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban I wrote a space-themed iOS derivative of Sokoban many years ago, which I sadly never put up on the app store. I wanted to build more levels, free-to-play mechanics, and got sidetracked and never finished the project. This is what an early build looked like, before I built in a better input mechanism: https://vimeo.com/3918704 https://vimeo.com/3918704 I ended up finding it cumbersome for each move to require a tap, so I built a mechanism whereby you could draw your movements on screen and queue them up. http://cl.ly/image/0c222O3I020Q http://cl.ly/image/0c222O3I020Q (a whole bunch of stuff is broken in this dev screenshot).
- unwind 12y ago
  Nice! I wrote a rather simplistic clone (no sound!) just to learn some Z80 assembly and GameBoy hardware low-level programming, back in 1997 (http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d94-ebr/rel_sw/gb/sokoban/docs/ http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d94-ebr/rel_sw/gb/sokoban/do...). It's the first (and only!) program I've written for the GameBoy, so don't expect too much.
  - KennyCason 12y ago
    Awesome! Is there a link to the source? I couldn't seem to find it, but I'm actually a huge fan of Z80 ASM as it was one of the first assembly languages that I tinkered with. I'd love to revisit sometime as a fun side project.
- KennyCason 12y ago
  Nice! I know how you feel about getting side tracked and not finishing a hobby project. Looks like you got very far, I'd recommend going a head an pushing through it. "so I built a mechanism whereby you could draw your movements on screen and queue them up." - I actually feel the same way when I play other Sokoban games, that's an interesting idea. :)

41 points by KennyCason 12y ago

Great job! A few suggestions: 1) You may have better results with your pixel art if you change the filteringMode of your SKTextures to SKTextureFilteringMode.NearestNeighbor instead of .Linear. 2) You might want to store SKTextures in your imageDict instead of full SKSpriteNodes. It seems you aren't reusing those nodes, just the textures. 3) Maybe use a plist file to store the level data instead of hard-coded array constants? It's a little more flexible once you abstract the data outside of your source code.

KennyCason 12y ago
Thanks a lot, It was certainly a battle of figuring out Swift while making continual forward progress. Thanks for the suggestions. I didn't even know about the filtering mode! I also agree on only storing the SKTextures. In regards to the level data. I hated storing hard coded arrays but couldn't figure anything else out in time :) I would 1000x prefer to use a plist file to store the data. That way I could also more easily parse the common level formats. For example: http://www.ne.jp/asahi/ai/yoshio/sokoban/handmade/soko001.txt http://www.ne.jp/asahi/ai/yoshio/sokoban/handmade/soko001.tx... Thanks for taking time to read through the code!

MattPearce 12y ago

Just to be pedantic - this isn't a port as the original source wasn't used, this is a remake.

KennyCason 12y ago
Haha Thanks! Every time I typed "port" I couldn't help but think "I don't think this is a port" but didn't know quite what to call it. :)
ginko 12y ago
Another nitpick: It wasn't Nintendo who created Boxxle. The game was developed by Thinking Rabbit and published by FCI. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxxle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boxxle

SeoxyS 12y ago

By the way, this is originally a japanese game called Sokoban. Boxxle was a clone of Sokoban. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokoban I wrote a space-themed iOS derivative of Sokoban many years ago, which I sadly never put up on the app store. I wanted to build more levels, free-to-play mechanics, and got sidetracked and never finished the project. This is what an early build looked like, before I built in a better input mechanism: https://vimeo.com/3918704 https://vimeo.com/3918704 I ended up finding it cumbersome for each move to require a tap, so I built a mechanism whereby you could draw your movements on screen and queue them up. http://cl.ly/image/0c222O3I020Q http://cl.ly/image/0c222O3I020Q (a whole bunch of stuff is broken in this dev screenshot).

unwind 12y ago
Nice! I wrote a rather simplistic clone (no sound!) just to learn some Z80 assembly and GameBoy hardware low-level programming, back in 1997 (http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d94-ebr/rel_sw/gb/sokoban/docs/ http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~d94-ebr/rel_sw/gb/sokoban/do...). It's the first (and only!) program I've written for the GameBoy, so don't expect too much.
- KennyCason 12y ago
  Awesome! Is there a link to the source? I couldn't seem to find it, but I'm actually a huge fan of Z80 ASM as it was one of the first assembly languages that I tinkered with. I'd love to revisit sometime as a fun side project.
KennyCason 12y ago
Nice! I know how you feel about getting side tracked and not finishing a hobby project. Looks like you got very far, I'd recommend going a head an pushing through it. "so I built a mechanism whereby you could draw your movements on screen and queue them up." - I actually feel the same way when I play other Sokoban games, that's an interesting idea. :)