Gameboy Development Forum

Discussion about software development for the old-school Gameboys, ranging from the "Gray brick" to Gameboy Color
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#1 2015-02-06 06:09:20

Imanolea
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From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Aupa,

I would like to share with you this project I'm doing for the Game Boy with a partner that is in charge of the graphics. It is an action/platformer title with reminiscences of classics like Mega Man or Gargoyle's Quest.

The progress in the developing of the game is detailed in my blog: http://imanoleasgames.blogspot.com.es/s … cket%20Man
Here are some videos of gameplay, one of them recorded on the actual hardware:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43l-ZfUsVnc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ti-ziTMU3c

My experience in developing games for Game Boy is poor and as development progressed I wondered what options would I have for music and sound effects. I ask this question to you, What tools there are aimed at the creation of sound effects and/or music for the Game Boy? Where can I find resources and information about?

I'm also interested in finding someone encouraged to perform some compositions and sound effects for the game. 

Thanks in advance and I hope that this project will interest you.

Regards to all,

Last edited by Imanolea (2015-02-06 06:19:06)

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#2 2016-06-28 11:12:09

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Hi all,

I want to share with you some news of the project.
https://youtu.be/jAUgdxCghyM
Rocket Man Demo is available for download: http://imanoleasgames.blogspot.com/2016 … -demo.html

I hope you enjoy it.

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#3 2016-06-29 11:44:04

holtkamp
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From: Orlando, FL
Registered: 2016-06-23
Posts: 14
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Just watched the trailer, it looks great! I can tell that you put a lot of effort into the game. You have inspired me!

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#4 2016-06-29 16:04:30

Jonas
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From: Frankfurt, Germany
Registered: 2016-06-06
Posts: 112
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

I just downloaded the ROM and played your demo and it looks, feels and sounds just great. Thumbs up!

Is this written in C or in assembly?

btw: You've played a lot of Mega Man, haven't you?

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#5 2016-06-30 16:00:13

Imanolea
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From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

I'm very glad I have inspired you holtkamp, thanks for the compliments.

It is 100% written in assembly. I started a protoype in C (Game Boy Development Kit) and and found it was worth making the leap. I specifically use the assembler Rednex Gameboy Development System.

Yeah, I like classic Mega Man games a lot. But I also take as a reference other action/platformer titles.

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#6 2016-07-09 17:05:53

LuckyLights
Member
Registered: 2014-07-06
Posts: 20

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Wow this project looks amazing, can't wait to play it. Are you going open source at any point? What tiped you over to asm form c?

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#7 2016-07-09 18:29:30

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Thanks for the compliments LuckyLights. Open sourcing does not fit into my plans. If I do, I would do it for divulgative purposes. But I prefer to show people Game Boy development through a tutorial or a dedicated project.

On the usage of assembly, there were many reasons. These include greater control over the hardware, make more efficient program, and stay away from the tools available for development in C, as GBDK. Who does not enjoy too stable functionality and gives far fewer options for the developer.

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#8 2016-07-10 04:29:53

LuckyLights
Member
Registered: 2014-07-06
Posts: 20

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Sure I get that it's more powerful in general, but I was more wondering if there was anything specific during prototypeing that you discovered. like c was to slow, or that you could not do a specific thing?

I'm just curious, I'm trying to figure out I should switch.

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#9 2016-07-10 05:02:51

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

My particular reasons included the interest that I had in learning about assembly and Game Boy hardware, because at that time much of my frustration came not so much from the tool (also) as from the lack of hardware knowledge. And C did not invite as much to study the system as did assembly.

Anyway, this would be a list of more objective reasons:
- GBDK has a lot of bugs. Now I'm developing a new game based on this tool and I have a file in the project with simple operations performed in asssembly, just to avoid homonyms C operations fail (because in fact they do fail regularly without apparent reason).
- Speed: There are things that are difficult to perform with GBDK. For example, in this game that I recently presented to the bitbitjam3 (http://gamejolt.com/games/akaru-hime-th … ess/162393), the graphical sprite update routine had to be done in assembler. Making the update using the library functions of GBDK was too slow.
- Debugging: While in assembler you can comfortably use an emulator as BGB to create breakpoints or trace code, with GBDK you have your hand tied.

I hope that these reasons will help you see why I took the leap. Although in my case it was not about ask me why, but rather why not.

Last edited by Imanolea (2016-07-10 05:07:16)

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#10 2016-07-11 07:25:19

rychan
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From: Paignton, Devon, UK
Registered: 2015-12-16
Posts: 103
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Hey, looks really cool, I really enjoyed your bitbitjam entry too, there were a fair few gameboy ones there this time smile

I was surprsied I could scamble together I Shall Be Queen myself http://gamejolt.com/games/i-shall-be-queen/162400  Were you swapping tiles out between frames with your game also then? I may have to properly learn z80 asm sometime if I want to really squeeze more oomph out of the gameboy.

How much slower is GBDK than ASM?, just curious as I've been using GBDK for almost a year now.

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#11 2016-07-11 11:11:56

LuckyLights
Member
Registered: 2014-07-06
Posts: 20

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Okay thank you Imanoela, that very interesting. I guess I have hade the same felling and thought about GBDK for a long time. Yet seen I don't ever encounter asm in my profession life I never hade the motivation to switch. What resources would you recommend sense you just did the switch from GBDK to asm? I would find a blog post about this matter with your thoughts very interesting.

I have been using GBDK for 3 years now I guess... =P lol

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#12 2016-07-12 03:25:27

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

rychan: I'm glad to see the increase in the number of Game Boy entries this year for the BitBitJam.

I Shall Be Queen was a good one. I was surprised at the amount of features that the game had for such a limited time limit, congratulations! In my case the number of sprites of each character was variable (the position and the number), so I had a repetitive structure that ran throught a list of tile indexes with a relative coordinate assigned for the update. This was very costly to do with the library functions of GBDK and no more  than two characters could be updated without slowdowns. On the contrary with the optimized assembly routines that I did I could easily have (virtually speaking) more than ten characters in screen without any deceleration. My source is there is you want see how was made. I have yet to have a look at the code of the rest of the entries. I'm sure it will be very instructive.

Answering your question about how fast is assembly compared to C, there is no clear measure. It depends a lot of the context. In that particular case, five times faster more or less.

LuckyLights: I would like to do some source of course, through the development of a game, teaching the things I learned about assembly and Game Boy.
Right now, I still do not know too much and I have some projects in the making. So maybe in the future I will address that.

I'll list you the most useful resources about Game Boy assembly programming that I found since I started, I hope that help you clear up doubts:

- http://www.devrs.com/gb/files/gbspec.txt
- http://wiki.ladecadence.net/doku.php?id … nsamblador
- http://www.chrisantonellis.com/files/ga … manual.pdf

Last edited by Imanolea (2016-09-29 04:38:41)

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#13 2016-12-27 18:24:34

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

The Rocket Man demo updates and adds Super Game Boy Support!
https://imanoleasgames.blogspot.com.es/ … -demo.html

I hope you like it.

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#14 2017-01-06 03:27:38

a cat
Member
Registered: 2014-07-27
Posts: 98

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Looks good! Do you have a link to the source code?


a cat in need of knowledge!!

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#15 2017-01-06 06:10:18

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

I'm glad you liked the game a cat. Like I said in this same topic to LuckyLights: "Open sourcing does not fit into my plans. If I do, I would do it for divulgative purposes. But I prefer to show people Game Boy development through a tutorial or a dedicated project.". So I've started writing on my blog some posts about Game Boy development under the name of Games aside (http://gbdev.gg8.se/forums/viewtopic.php?id=364, http://gbdev.gg8.se/forums/viewtopic.php?id=379).

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#16 2017-01-11 21:46:11

npzman
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Registered: 2014-11-19
Posts: 197

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Will the source code get released ?


Twitter : @Sfeedman please follow
Join : sfeed.club my website please join

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#17 2017-01-12 03:55:40

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Hi npzman, thanks for the interest in the game. Like I said in this same topic to LuckyLights and later to a cat: "Open sourcing does not fit into my plans. If I do, I would do it for divulgative purposes. But I prefer to show people Game Boy development through a tutorial or a dedicated project.". It's not that I discard that possibility, but it's not something I'm going to do during the development.

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#18 2017-01-12 05:16:47

npzman
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Registered: 2014-11-19
Posts: 197

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

Are you going to sell it ?


Twitter : @Sfeedman please follow
Join : sfeed.club my website please join

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#19 2017-01-12 05:31:56

Imanolea
Member
From: Bilbao, Spain
Registered: 2014-05-17
Posts: 54
Website

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

npzman: There is a full release planned at some point in the future (when completed). The ROM will be available for free.
And I would be thrilled to release Rocket Man in physical format. I will be working hard to achieve this. This edition of the game will not be free, but I do not plan to make money by selling it. The sale will probably work as a means of financing it at logistic level.

Last edited by Imanolea (2017-01-12 05:35:43)

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#20 2017-02-23 10:17:00

Heigw
Member
From: Michigan-United States
Registered: 2017-02-22
Posts: 14

Re: Rocket Man, new game project for Game Boy

I haven't checked it out yet, but if the background music isn't Elton John I will be disappointed XD


I've just started coding in C for the gameboy.  Any help or tutorials would be greatly appreciated.

I am making a game that is an "Interactive Story."  If think you could help in any way or want to check on the progress here is the ROM and source-code.
Story Time... With Uncle Heigw: http://www.filedropper.com/story_2

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