(Changelog v1.02)

• Fixed spelling mistake. Thanks Tarma for reporting!

Yes, I have quite some more feedback 

I believe that Thumby's success can be greatly increased if you do not just consider Thumby as a cool tinker device for nerds like us that just want to code on this awesome device and be amazed.

To reach the next level of success, you have to position Thumby as a user product, not a tinker product. A product  for kids and retro-loving adults - that's a much bigger market and you have so much more potential reach.  And if you position Thumby as a user product, game developers will have the feeling that the games they develop will be played. And that's the main motivation for creating a game on Thumby, since there will be no other likely return on investment. So if you want to have lots of developers and games, make Thumby a user product.

Imagine Nintendo's Gameboy would be launched today and on it's main website you would get the feeling that it's a tinker product, and the main thing you would find is the IDE, the developer documentation and somewhere a github repository where you could download some games. It would only be a developer product with very little users and not a huge user product.

How to turn Thumby into a user product:

• On www.thumby.us, you need to prominently have a "browse games" section right on top that redirect to the Games Store
• The Game Store needs to feel like a Game Store, and not just a website that was quickly hacked together.
• Each game in the store should  a screenshot and 2 buttons: 'Install' and 'Play in browser' (which would start the emulator)
• The Game Store has to be also browseable on mobile: You will be surprised how many mobile users will play thumby games in the emulator on your website. This is great for user acquisition and selling more Thumbys!
• On the Thumby, you need to tell people that there are more downloadable games online, by adding a menu item "More games", you can use a QR code to the Game Store if it is scannable.

I also recommend you create a game dev contest, where you can win a Thumby Developer Edition / or some cash. We got hundreds of developers for AirConsole like this and some pretty cool small games. See our last contest: https://developers.airconsole.com/#!/dev_competition_2020.

There is a lot you can do, as I said, I'm happy to elaborate on a call if your team is interested.

A little bit of background about myself:
I'm the founder of AirConsole, a web based video game console that allows you to control games on your PC / TV using your smartphone as gamepads.
Because we use smartphones as gamepads, we had to create all our games ourselves and couldn't just reuse existing games out of the box (just like Thumby). By now we have a developer community of over 10'000 registered developers that have created over 180 high quality games for our platform (incl. ports from xbox, switch and PS4 games) and we have tens of millions of players.

Hi Thumby Team

Do you already have plans to create a store for Thumby games, where all developers can submit their games and players can download them from?

I think a centralized store will be vital for the success of Thumby. It should also be easier to use than the IDE, for Players that just want to browse games and click to install them without ever seeing code. You should also add a Menu item "Download Games" in the Thumby that gives you instructions on how to do it and maybe a display a QR code so you could browse it on mobile.

With AirConsole we have a lot of experience in creating a user friendly game store. If you are interested, I can give you a quick overview what we did in a video call.

Cheers,
-Andrin (Founder of AirConsole)

So I decided to give every user that solves the Sudoku on the Thumby, one week of our premium AirConsole subscription for free, cause I think it's awesome to be able to win real prizes on this lovely little pocket game device - they just need to scan the QR code that is displayed in the winning screen

Update 1.01:

• Removed the Ad pop-up
• Improved number input for user
• Fixed tiny bug
• Added QR-code price

The new version is attached in the original post.

Hi there

I've created a 9x9 Sudoku for Thumby.

Feel free to give it a try, the script is attached. The game is in landscape mode.
When you try it in the emulator, make sure you rotate it by pasting the following in the javascript console of your browser:

Code Select Expand

(function(s){s.transform = "rotate(-90deg)";s.top="5%";})(document.getElementsByClassName("emulator_main")[0].style)

A little bit of background on how I implemented Sudoku:
It took me about 8h, it's amazing how easy it is to create games for this awesome platform. I'm used to much longer game-dev cycles with our gaming console 
Anyways, generating a valid Sudoku grid actually requires quite some computational power.
In my first version, I tried to create a random Sudoku grid on the fly, but the stack size is unfortunately too small for my backtracking algorithm.
That's why I created 39 base patterns on my strong computer and added them as data to the script.
The base patterns can be flipped, rotated and group shifted in 72 ways, which give you already 2800 different Sudokus.
Together with number swapping (362'880 variations) we can generate 1'018'967'040 different Sudokus from the 39 base patterns.
All these Sudokus are "very hard to solve" and only have 25 or less clues. The data also includes the solution, which allows us to generate easier levels using clues and the solution on the fly.

I had a lot of fun implementing it and will probably create a few bigger games for Thumby.
Only wish I could already test it on real hardware. No idea how accurately the emulator is and I don't have a Thumby yet.
So anyone who already has one: Please let me know if the game works

Enjoy,
Andrin
(founder of AirConsole)

(EDIT: Version 1.02 Attached)

[You can just look at the javascript console of your browser.]

I can answer my own question:

You can just look at the javascript console of your browser.
There exception and print statements are visible.

Hi all

I would like to start developing games for Thumby, but my order hasn't arrived yet.

The emulator is great, but it does not throw any exceptions.
Is there a way to see exceptions in the IDE with the emulator?
And if not, is there a way to execute log statements, e.g print(123), and see the logs in the emulator?

Thanks,
-Andrin