Games / community with the tiny screen and gamepad?

[zet23t]

Hey there,
I am working on a 2d space game that utilizes the gamepad and I was wondering if there are others who work on other games as well. I couldn't find much. Is there a community or something alike for exchanging games and ideas?

If you have a tiny gamepad and a tinyscreen, you can give my code a try:
https://codebender.cc/sketch:98686

There's no gameplay yet, but you can fly a spaceship in front of a parallax starfield.

Any feedback is welcome!

[calvinthedestroyer]

Looks great, can't wait to see more

[MrAkai]

I forked the space invaders demo and added joystick support. 

https://codebender.cc/sketch:100732

It's mostly just pieces from two demos smooshed together now but I hope to flesh it out a bit (multiple rows of baddies, make them move, etc)

[zet23t]

Ah, the space invaders game! Yeah, I was thinking to do something more simple than what I am tackling right now, but I had more ambitions. One of the things I worked out was a more generic rendering system with which I can draw rectangles / circles / triangles with. I can't draw many since I have to keep them in memory, but it gives me more flexibility. I am right now working out a UI system to allow me doing something in that world. I am bit shocked how much flash memory that is eating up though D:

[gary_f]

I forked the space invaders demo and added joystick support. 
https://codebender.cc/sketch:100732

This is a good start. I like the joystick support and using the right stick to fire. I hope you can get the rest of the game working? Thanks.

[gary_f]

I am working on a 2d space game that utilizes the gamepad and I was wondering if there are others who work on other games as well. I couldn't find much. Is there a community or something alike for exchanging games and ideas?

If you have a tiny gamepad and a tinyscreen, you can give my code a try:
https://codebender.cc/sketch:98686

Hi. I tried to run your code in codebender but it said "There was an error compiling". It sounded promising. Do you have any plans to continue working on it?
Thanks.

[jonwingrove]

I've started working on this, a tiny Outrun style game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYmHtBGt6fU

I'll post the code up soon!

[gary_f]

I've started working on this, a tiny Outrun style game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYmHtBGt6fU
I'll post the code up soon!

That's really cool! Is it compatible with the Tiny Steering Wheel board?

[Tony Batey]

I've got most of a space invaders code down. I just need to add a few details such as a death screen, score counter and have the invaders shoot back. Here this sketch https://codebender.cc/sketch:110168 let me know what you guys think!

[gary_f]

I've got most of a space invaders code down. I just need to add a few details such as a death screen, score counter and have the invaders shoot back. Here this sketch https://codebender.cc/sketch:110168 let me know what you guys think!

It's looking good, Tony. Don't make the invaders too mean unless you're going to supply a few barricades to hide behind! Or maybe a special weapon by pulling down on the right stick? (I guess that wouldn't be classic Invaders then)

[jonwingrove]

That's really cool! Is it compatible with the Tiny Steering Wheel board?

Thanks I'll keep working on it later in the week.
Haha, it'd be great to play it with a wheel! I was thinking of building a miniature arcade cabinet to house it in...

I've been working on some helper stuff for efficiently drawing sprites and tiles - if anyone is interested, I've put it up on github, here:
https://github.com/jonwingrove/tinyscreen-spritetile-lib

Currently the tiling is limited to 8x8 sized tiles - but the sprites drawn on top can be any size (within memory limits, obviously!), and can be flipped and positioned however required. Screenshot attached!
It uses a line-by-line rendering set up, so there's no overdrawing or flickering. Hopefully this'll help people write some cool games!

[rainnw]

Nice work! I have been doing something similar.

I ended up forking the TinyScreen library to add support for tile maps, sprites, and a very useful drawBitmap(image,x,y). There are also some powerful screen functions that I added support to, especially the hardware copy.  I also have support for cropping tiles, which makes way for scrolling.. my goal is to add native side scrolling support.

My current implementation supports alpha sprites, but they draw after the tile map. This does introduce some flicker, so I am going to work them into my scanline routine.

One thing I noticed right away is that PROGMEM is where everything must be stored, otherwise, you can quickly run out of RAM. This introduces a little bit more latency, but it is tolerable.

Here is a game I have been working on. Tile graphics need work, and the sprite call is a bit sloppy (I call it several times in a loop, rather than once, making it flicker like crazy), but it's playable. I have about 20 screens now today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3JklWtZTzk

I am using a homegrown pixel and map editor I wrote in HTML5. It needs work, but its usable. It generates C code for the graphics.

8x8 tile editor: http://mobilesquared.com/pixels/tinyscreen.php?x=8&y=8&w=125#

map editor: http://mobilesquared.com/pixels/game.php#

[zet23t]

Looks cool. What do you mean with hardware copy?

I also have implemented a scanline renderer - it's opensource and is available here: https://github.com/zet23t/tinyduinogame-playground

[rainnw]

Looks cool. What do you mean with hardware copy?

I also have implemented a scanline renderer - it's opensource and is available here: https://github.com/zet23t/tinyduinogame-playground

There is a screen command to take a screen X,Y and size and copy it to another position. You can use this as a way to implement a hardware scroll. You can also "conveyer belt" scanlines into a copy command and implement a very low overhead sideways scroller.

[zet23t]

Hm. Hardware copy sounds neat but without double buffering, the uses are a bit limited. I am most annoyed by the flickering - therefore I just use the scanline rendering for everything. It's fast enough to scroll all sprites/texts that I draw in any direction anyway.

It would be much more useful if the screen had

- Selectable 8bit palettes (currently it's 2-3-3)
- Double buffering
- Uploadable sprites that can be used as textures (32kb or so would suffice)

Essentially the Double buffering would make the difficult-to-use scanline renderer obsolete - which uses also quite a bit of precious ram. And it would make the hardware commands more attractive again - right now I chose not to use them.


Is there an overview what hardware commands are supported?