Gamebuino sleep mode/save

[erico]

My ignorance on the field aside (yes it sounds as pipe dream even to myself), let me tale on.

I was thinking about control for the Lunar Run game ( viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1075) and eventually thought about the mighty PAUSE. Thing is, the game is on autopause when landed, and never pauses while flying, should bring more value to "moving around". Apart from that though, I thought maybe, if possible, you could be able to save your game (single slot).

Thinking about saving a game to resume later, I concluded that the Gamebuino has such a never ending battery that, leaving it aside while on and on pause so to come back some other time, least ~12-24h, to resume the game, is a thinkable idea.

So, if you have any kind of pause on your game, like press button to start next stage/wave/etc, you automatically have a single player save slot that holds for the said time as a code free benefit.

So far so good, pub chat. Now here is the naive idea:

Suppose we could implement, maybe by code as a command, the ability for the gamebuino to turn off screen/sound and maybe do any other thing it can to save battery while still remaining on (ye the on/off switch is set to on, turn off and you reset it).
The thing could then, come alive at the press of a button or combination.

If the compromise is not absurd, and the thing decides to last a few days, it would be amazing!
Heck, I still believe even a function that would loop unstressed and with no black pixels and sound could improve on how long it stays on.

[Skyrunner65]

I used this A LOT on my Game Boy Advance, and it worked surprisingly well.
Perfect for saving games for later!
Or maybe we could do something akin to Save/Load State from emulators.

[erico]

I don´t know, but I think a real sleep mode or save/load state are too stressful to the resources available!
(...as if I have any idea of what I just said )

Also, it would be splendid if we could improve on what the handheld is capable by default.
My first thought was about a game that takes 2 hours to play to beat it, similar to the one we are doing.
You might not get 2 hours to play a game just by luck, but maybe through out the day with bits of time.
So it is more like a natural "save/resume single state".
And by leaving it connected it can save forever!!!! :O

I also thought about password style save/load, which was one solution for this kind of games back then.
But would not the code and the game structure for such be an overkill?

[Skyrunner65]

Nah, you could probably make it like this:

901886422157

90 for X position, 18 for Y position,86 for health,42 for potions,21 for map, 5 for weapon, and 7 for storyboard point.
Example: A RPG game with 99 max health, 99 max potions, 99 possible maps, 10 possible weapons, and 10 storyboard points.

[erico]

yep, you could probably do with an action game too between waves.
But it would require you to write things down!

[Myndale]

Already looked into it, the problem is the display. The Arduino itself can be put to sleep and the LEDs on the PCB directly behind the display can be turned off but the LCD itself is always powered. I've measured Gamebuino consuming around 12mA when idle, according to the 5110 data sheet about 10mA of that is the display. Would probably be worth looking into it further to make sure, but I suspect the battery life wouldn't be extended by any appreciable amount.