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game development

Postby adekto » Tue Feb 25, 2014 10:02 pm

hi i just seen the video u made, i never imagend anyone els was actualy dedicated on doing this retro gameboy inspired game console, im full on and want to build one of my games on it, so i cant wait to buy one

altough the screen resolution is diferent and i used rgb leds in my device i think it be cool to make it on this new console
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9fO95UJclQ

so wen can i get my hands on it?
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Re: game development

Postby rodot » Wed Feb 26, 2014 3:45 pm

Nice video Adekto, and welcome one the Forum !
About the Gamebuino's release... mmh... it's difficult to say. Here is what's going to happen now :
- I have to make a last iteration to change a few things on the hardware
- As the hardware is almost final, I'm now working on the library and tutorials
- When I have a few examples and tutorials, I can make videos of them (to showcase all the features)
- I move on Kickstarter for a fundraising campaign
- I start mass production
- I send Gamebuinos all over the world
- You get your hands on it
So it's going to be several months... but you can subscribe on the website to stay tuned about my progress
Thank you for your interest ! :)
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Re: game development

Postby adekto » Wed Feb 26, 2014 6:08 pm

ow wow thats still some way to go

wondering if u can add one specific part, that bieng rgb backlight so the screen can get a mood, also works great in identefying what menu ur in if u have a very heavy menu game
no problem if its out of budged or if ur out of output pins

also any chance for eurly copy? for say release titles?
i also was thinking of doing posible tutorials and stuff

and another thing, is it posible to use the ghosting of the lcd as a way to get grey scale technicaly up to 3 or 4 iterations so we can have some more variant sprites heres a example i made to show the point
Image
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Re: game development

Postby rodot » Thu Feb 27, 2014 7:26 am

Yeah, that's still some way to go ! But now I have more free time, so it should progress pretty quickly :)

About the RGB back-light : it's an excellent idea, but it's not possible for several reasons :(
- the RGB led would be too big to fit
- I'm out of outputs
- the PCB is already pretty dense, not sure I could fit anything more (it's 2 layers)
But again, it's really a good idea. I was thinking about having different back-light colors available, but it won't be able to change :(
...a possible way to implement that would be to make RGB LED modules to plug in the I2C ports, and light the screen with them. Moreover the Gamebuino's PCB is white, so it would change the whole console color. It might be fun, I'll look into that... later.

About an early release : I tried to give early models of Gamebuino, and a few weeks later I changed all the pin mapping... Conclusion : no early release before the final hardware version.
But once on kickstarter, I will probably set the minimum quantity to 100 Gamebuinos. 10 of them will be "for early developers", and will be shipped before the "mass-production", as soon as the kickstarter campaign reaches the minimum quantity. Sounds good to you ?

About the 4 layers of grey, I know about this, but it's barely possible... Currently the screen is refreshed 20 times per seconds, it takes 20% of CPU. To have 4 levels of gray it would take to much CPU time.
Moreover, the micro-controller have a complete buffer of the screen stored in the ram. If you need 4 different values/pixel instead of 1, it won't fit the RAM (for now it uses about 1/4 of the 2KB of RAM).
A possible solution could be to use a larger, faster micro-controller. But it would increase the price and complexity, and the thing about Gamebuino is not to have insane performances :P Gamebuino is based on a atmega328 (like an Arduino UNO), the same micro-controller than arduino, this way it's easy to re-use code and find libraries.

Thanks for the suggestions !
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Re: game development

Postby adekto » Thu Feb 27, 2014 12:44 pm

ok i see most of the ideas are bit imposible at the moment
wel heres hoping for a 2nd iteration with a biger cheap chip in the future

back on the early release: sure once hardware is near final, (wich it seems to be almoust done)
personaly i cant wait, im hopping to show of my game('s) in ur kickstarter

back on the grey: to bad, and i fully understand the limitations of the hardware ( i had even les space to run on my lcd) stil its not imposible, but maybe i can drive it inside the game data

let me know wen hardware is done :D
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Re: game development

Postby rodot » Thu Feb 27, 2014 9:18 pm

Yep, I may do a second, bigger and more powerful version if this one works well.
I can't wait to see your games too !

And you might be able to implement the grey levels in your game by increasing the frame rate and quickly alternating between different sprites. And you know what, there is already an "animated sprite" function. It might even be not that difficult.

About the hardware, I just have to change one or two minor things, in fact almost nothing.

Oh, by the way I just uploaded all the code on github, you'll find it in Wiki/Software/Library http://gamebuino.com/wiki/index.php?title=Library
You can get a look at the "beginner" examples to see how easy it is ;)

I'm as eager as you are, thank you for sharing your interest for the project :D
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Re: game development

Postby adekto » Thu Feb 27, 2014 11:04 pm

some other idea's

its probebly a bit pointles but say u dont have the sd card in would it show somthing like this:
Image

i got some more designs on here
http://opengameart.org/content/gamebuino-lcd-icons

also this website is a good place to put most of the graphics for everyone to use
just adding gamebuino in the tags wil probebly make it easy for people to get some nice graphics and even sounds
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Re: game development

Postby rodot » Fri Feb 28, 2014 8:45 am

Nice pixel art, I'm eager to see the games you would make on Gamebuino !
About the SD card reader, I didn't really worked on it yet. You can use the Arduino SD library to read files on it, but I didn't included it in Gamebuino's library. My goal is to eventually have a bootloader which allow you to load games from SD card. That would be awesome.
Thanks for the website, that's a cool idea :)
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