Post Semester

Wow the semester has gone by fast. I have been able to get the game to a very enjoyable prototype stage. I also had to write up a ACM format paper which you can read about here: Add Link Later.

Also somethings I will be adding later:

• I'm working on building an installer to people can install the game and it will include the emulator and a when you click on the shortcut to the game it launch the game in the emulator.
• A website that will have all the info of the game more accuratly presented.
• And lastly I will eventually be creating a tutorial for how I created the game.
• Plus all of the new features that are included in my paper

These might come a little bit later. But they are promises for you all, so look forward to their arrival. In the mean time here are some screen caps of the finished prototype:

Level 1


Level 2

Rough Prototype

I made a rough prototype of the game. Below you can see pictures of it. What I did was found a piece of cardboard, and some blank sheets of white paper. I measured out and cut the cardboard so that I could have the dual screen look. I then cut the paper to match my in game art. Lastly I took some index cards and drew out the first level of food on them.

With this prototype I'm able to test a few things, such as if the game has any fun value at all. If my concept is overly easy or difficult. And how the different age groups feel about the game. But due to the nature of having to flip you're own cards and the really rough art, I was not able to test the entire game just on the prototype. The timing is off which effects some of the responses of difficulty.

I also found that for the layers if you put all of them on the board at once the player will subconcously cheat and only pick stacks with multiple layers still there. I was able to get around this by placing only one layer down and then as the player made a pair I would remove those cards and place two more random cards face down in the empty spots.






I had a lot of fun with making this prototype. Felt like I was back in elementry school working on a craft or something. I like the final product though, and I think people enjoy playing with it.

First Level almost complete

So I've been battling with getting a few things to work. But most of them I have resolved, here's how:

1.
A. Alpha(transparancies) were acting all crazy. No matter what the color black was becoming transparent. You can see this in last image in my previous post.
B. So I kinda cheated for this and made everything I wanted transparent the color black. and as you will see it works out great.

2.
A. Getting sprites in the Main screen (set to top screen). This problem was really annoying me because for all reasons it should have worked. I was doing everything I needed to do, and had done for the Sub screen to get it to work there.
B. Eventually I resolved this by getting an epiphany and realizing that for some reason the Background was taking up bank A and B of the Main screen. So after realizing this, I set the main sprites to bank E and it works just fine.

3. Not really a battle but I was able to get the timming system in to the game. And I was able to disply the timing through a clever use of a sprite. As you can see in the screen shots the red bar has a curve at the end. Basically how I did this is I made a sprite that contains a rectangle the width I wanted to remove every second or two and a half circle that fits the curve I wanted at the end of the bar. So the bar is made up of that same sprite overlayed next to each other and so you can't see the curve except on the very end.

Ok now time for some screen caps =):




Stay tuned for more info on the progress of my game

Some Screen Shots

Finally some in game screen shots. After some tough battles with sprites I finally was able to get them in and so here are some screen caps of the basic game. At the moment it's only able to do menu navigation. So the mechanics of the game are not yet implemented. But all things in good time =). (Side note I'm not sure why but the emulator changed my colors when I did the screen print through it. I believe it's because I'm working in 256 color mode and think it might have saved in a different mode. I fixed it by opening it in paint and then resaving it(not like my colors are any better though haha))



These two screens are the Start up screen and then when you click you get the next screen that allows you to do some things such as start game or exit.

This was the first time I was able to get the sprite to show up on screen. And I arranged them into the places I want them to show up. As you can see I still had a problem with how they were displaying.

Turns out you need to compile them slightly different then you do the background images. Instead of:
gfx2gba -c256 -t8 -m -pspritePal.bin LevelImages_1.bmp
I did:
gfx2gba -c256 -t8 -T32 -pspritePal.bin LevelImages_1.bmp
And after figuring that out I was able to get it to look like this.


Now for graphics I just need to figure out why my tranparencies is defaulting to black instead of white. Once I figure that out I'll be posting the reason why. That's it for now. I need to switch over from this project to one of my other two projects. Hope you enjoyed the pics.

Background Graphics and Stylus

hey everyone, been a long time since last post. I was busy at GDC and club stuff. But since I've been able to figure out the graphics for the background of both the sub and main screen. I figured out how to allocate the memory and transfer the image directly into that memory location. I'll be posting some screen shots and some sample code in a little bit.

I was also able to implement some ruff menu navigation, using the touch screen. I did have to do some jiggy rigging to get the menu to change appropriatly. For some reason the isdown for the touch pad is always down. So I fixed this by checking the position of the stylus. If it's up it's always at a point that is off the screen x=0 y=-256 I think it is. Again check later for some code snippits for my implementation of this.

The next thing I'm working on is getting sprites to work. They seem to be usefull in their functionality, but difficult to understand and implement the first time.

Next post should have some screen caps and code.

Images and Palettes

So I created a few images, using paint, just some basic sprites, and a basic background layout. It's taken me a little bit to get the right information on how exactly to set up your image for the DS. A lot of tutorials out there will explain in detail how to set up the registries and code, but it's hard to find a clear one on how to convert the image into .bins and getting a palette all set up. I finally found this blog of another developer, and it's turning out usefull:
http://liranuna.drunkencoders.com/nds-2d-tuts/lesson-2/
I'll post some screen shots soon on how my images are looking.

DS vs DS Lite

So I've been asked to compare the new and old DS's. I'll list out what I've found. Most of this has been found on wikipedia as well as some other sites.

• Screen Brightness - Now has 4 levels of brightness adjustment
• Dimensions - 42% less volume
• Battery - Has a 1000 mAh battery instead of the 850 mAh battery and last longer: up to 19 hours on low brightness and 5 to 8 on highest brightness.
• Screen quality - Designed to resist more shock
• Weight - 21% lighter
• Power button - Now a power slide instead
• Microphone relocation - Now located in the middle between the two screens
• Stylus - Larger than the previous, and is side loaded next to the power switch
• Colors - A vast array of colors and special edition designs are available for the DS Lite
• Processors - Not changed except for a smaller custom process which requires less power.