Coding A Gameboy Game – In An Hour?!

UnSeen Gamescreen Just another Saturday night and I noticed the one hour game jam was on in a minute or two. So, time to roll up those coding sleeves and bosh out a game based on the theme “Stealth”

One hour really isn’t much time to make a game in so I had to use some fairly ugly hacks to get the game working, it’s a simple affair, guide the shadowy character to the “WIN!” text and you win. that’s it. Whilst security beams are switched on and off, with animation, audio cues and walking sound effects. The only collision routine used is that with the background layer. There’s so little time to get anything working that my collision routine is a little iffy, resulting in sliding along walls.

onehouroneNevertheless, I’m glad I managed to make something “slightly” more substantial than my previous one hour game jam attempt under the theme “Everything is dangerous” again, simple enough, avoid the spikes, walls, etc. Just under an hour.

Even though these games aren’t much, it’s nice to try an intense burst of game coding every now ‘n’ then!

Download Links for the ROMs below:

Formula Racing Gameboy Homebrew Developments.

Well, it’s been around a month since I’ve posted on here about the updates to Formula Racing and there’s a lot more going on with the game now! Read on to find out about what’s done and what’s still to go.

What’s done?

More tracks! 

There’s now 10 tracks designed for Formula racing, including my new personal favourite USSR – 1! I’m going to be re-visiting the track designs for previous levels shortly, in order to spruce them up a tad.

More Track Details!

I foolishly forgot that I had a spare 128 tiles to use for either sprites of background tiles.. So, I’ve been making use of the new tiles to add more definition to the track layouts. Mainly USSR-1!

Track obstacles.

Just racing the opponents wasn’t enough for me after a while. So I’ve added more obstacle tiles that will blow your car off track should you run onto them. You will run onto them!

Boost Tiles.

Because, every racing game needs boost tiles of course! So far, only on USSR-1 but that’s fine. Revisiting older tracks, yeah!

Track Intros, last lap warnings, Variable Lap counts Per Track , an actual finish AAAND that vital feature. Pausing.

So, yeah, that’s a fair amount of stuff added to the game which has had a couple of important effects.

The games plays better and is getting closer to being an actual game now.

I’m seriously running out of spare ROM space for my main game loop – 270 bytes at last count tonight. I have sfx to add and music!

Whoa…MUSIC?

Yes, that’s right, MUSIC! I’ve been chatting to the fantastic gameboy chiptune composer NordLoef about in-game tracks and he’s agreed to help make some music, which is really great news, I can’t music for toffee, cake, biscuits, even the promise of coffee and a peanut butter wrap.

So, yeah, he’s going to be in the game credits and, hopefully getting a physical cartridge at some point! I’m really looking forward to importing the tracks into the game, that’ll really make it a more complete gameboy game and hopefully some people out there will enjoy it also?

ION – A gameboy action puzzle game in GBDK in development

Despite not having many hour last weekend for Ludum Dare, I started to put together the pieces for another lil Gameboy Game called ION. Where you take the role of a charged particle that needs to attain certain levels of charge to proceed to further levels and boost the players score.

It’s a fairly simple game in essence and uses ice physics for motion control with state-based A.I. charges that vary between seeking and fleeing routines to keep the player on their toes.

Here’s a quick 20 second video with some of the game in action.

There’s still a way to go, but I’m planning on adding obstacles, slow and charge wells to help mix the gameplay up.