BINARY BOOKS
Retro Game Dev books by Derek Morris - www.retrogamedev.com
Learn Multi-platform Assembly Language books by Akuyuo - www.LearnAsm.net
Terrific Tools boxout:
Multi-Platform Arcade Game Designer by Johnathan Cauldwell - https://jonathan-cauldwell.itch.io/multi-platform-arcade-game-designer
The Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit (visit my site dedicated to the Kit) - https://www.seuckvault.co.uk
Shmup Creator by Bulo Studios - https://www.shmupcreator.com/ (available on Steam)
GameMaker - https://gamemaker.io/en
GBStudio - https://www.gbstudio.dev/
NEWS BYTES
Bearsden Primary School's Year 6 Spectrum games from 2022: https://bit.ly/bearsden-2022
ATARI ST: An impressive one-level demo of Metal Slug for STE (4Mb of memory) launched, with a separate Mega Drive demo. https://masteries.itch.io/metal-slug-for-megadrive-ste
ATARI XL: Self-Striking Stick from Salmax is a clever puzzle game where you must protect the moving stick as it bursts soul bubbles - https://salmax.net/indexen.html
AMSTRAD: Recent releases include Goody by 21bloques - https://21bloques.itch.io/goody - and Paco El Hombre from jjaranda - https://bit.ly/pacoelhombre . The GX4000 conversion of Blinky’s Scary School has also been completed - https://drive.google.com/file/d/17s_W1yzehEv2BXCLjyNES1hWwlI1d-xu/view?fbclid=IwAR0GokamvvNdwNfFTJJlwjasXr6DEno3kzbkDjq2zbM1W1AvusYW3So73EU
C64: The free version of Lykia – The Lost Island launched on July 14th, with the cartridge (Protovision) and disk/USB cassette (Psytronik) due this autumn. https://psytronik.itch.io/lykia
MEGA DRIVE: Geri8 has released Platformer Engine, for the SGDK development kit. https://geri8.itch.io/platformer-engine
PC: Ben James released his fantastic Exolon Redux. https://benjames171.itch.io/exolon-redux
VIC-20: Huffleduff has been busy with YASIC (Yet Another Space Invaders Clone - 16K memory expansion) that includes music, cutscenes and speech, and vertically-scrolling Galaxian Sleena for the unexpanded VIC. https://huffelduff.itch.io/
ZX SPECTRUM: In Ghoste’s Grunge, you must help GhoSte find his lost music and instruments. Appropriately, it has great 128K music from KUVO. https://buck.itch.io/ghostes-grunge
And in Bufonada, you swap control between a crazy jester and his magic goat in a very clever puzzle platformer created by Roolando. https://roolandoo.itch.io/bufonada
SPECTRUM NEXT: Pat Morita Team announced a Kickstarter for Shovel Adventure’s conversion to the Next. https://bit.ly/shovel-next
CHAMPION CODER
Jeffrey Janssen
From: The Netherlands
Websites: https://twburn.itch.io/
Good Deal Games http://www.gooddealgames.com/inventory/Cd-i.html
Format: CD-i
Previous game: Nobelia
Working on: Skyways
Jeffrey Janssen develops homebrew for the Philips CD-i.
Q. How long have you been programming, and games in particular?
I started programming around the age of 10 I think, I currently do it professionally. I never really programmed any games, maybe once or twice throughout the years, but nothing as extensive as Nobelia.
Q. What drew you to develop for CDi?
I was looking for something interesting to do during Covid, and I still had a CD-i player with games on the attic, and thought that was interesting. I started by making a controller adapter so I'd be able to use an USB controller on it. After that, I wondered if it was possible to program on it. I did some experiments, had some great help from the community.
Q. Is there a particular environment or language you need to use when developing for CDi?
Nobelia is programmed in C, a language I only had a little experience with. The CD-i is an old machine, and so are all the tools (compiler, image building, etc) which meant I had to use a 32 bit Windows VM to be able to run those tools. After compiling a new disk image is built, which I load into a CD-i Emulator (CDiEmu) to test it. Every so often I also burned a CD-R to test it on my actual CD-i.
Q. How were the graphics and sound created?
The main graphics (sprites, tiles) are from public graphics sets, which I adapted when needed to suit the needs of the game (for example I added and combined tiles, recolored the character sprites). The sound effects come from public sets, as well as two of the music tracks. The other ones I licensed.
For the graphics I created my own tools to convert them for use on the CD-i. The music and audio were converted using the original tools used by developers back in the day.
Q. Do you have access to the CD when programming, to load in new levels/scenes?
I can access the CD during the game, but it's only possible to do one thing at a time. Most of the time the CD is in use to stream music. At the start of the game the whole map is loaded, but only the visible screen is drawn when needed.
Q. How do you devise and design the control method?
The CD-i has a vast range of controllers, gamepad, mouse, remote control, and more. All of these are handled by the CD-i in more or less the same way, which means that all controllers can be used to play any game. Also, the input delay is quite big on the CD-i. This meant that really fast gameplay is hard to achieve. I adapted the game and the controls to that, to be as responsive and intuitive as possible.
Also, the CD-i only supports two buttons, with a third one often simulated with buttons 1 and 2 pressed simultaneously. Quite some thought has been spent on how to make the most of this, while maintaining intuitive gameplay.
Q. What games on CDi do you like or play?
The games I played a lot on the CD-i are Pac Panic, the Family Games collections and the infamous Link and Zelda games, and quite a few more.
Q. You have made some CDi tools available on GitHub, did you create them to meet your own needs?
Yes, most of them have to do with the conversion of graphics files to the formats used by the CD-i. I decided to release them as open source, in case others might find those useful as well.
Q. What inspired Nobelia?
Initially I wanted to create a different game, however since starting to program for the CD-i was quite a challenge, I decided to go for a more basic game, where there was no scrolling, etc. I thought Bomberman was a nice fit. I'm not much of an artist, so I started looking around for a public graphics set that would fit my needs. After some searching I found the pack used in the game, which I really liked.
It however reminded me more of Zelda than Bomberman, so combining the two game styles felt natural, and that's the way Nobelia came to be. The name itself refers to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite. I also thought the name Nobelia could refer to both the world, as the main character herself, which is intentionally left unresolved.
Q. Are you happy that there is a physical release, and what challenges were there in creating a new CDi disc?
I'm very happy with the end result! During development I've got quite a few requests to make it a physical release, so when I neared the completion of the project I started to look into possibilities of getting discs professionally duplicated or pressed, and I ran a poll to see if it would be economically viable to do this. I also got a very nice quote to press the discs, and get the artwork printed, so I went that route. Designing the artwork for the case and disc was also very fun to do.
The biggest concern I had was that there was no company anymore that had experience with pressing CD-i discs, so I was a bit afraid that I'd end up with 300 expensive coasters. The moment I put the first disc in my own player and seeing that it worked felt great. The response and interest in the project has exceeded my wildest expectations!
Q. What has it been like working with Good Deal Games?
It has been a good collaboration, having them handle the US distribution made that a whole lot easier.
Q. Are you working on any more CDi projects, or other homebrew titles?
During the development of Nobelia, I got more and more familiar with the CD-i and it's capabilities. I'm currently trying various things out, playing with things I didn't got to do with Nobelia, for example the Full Motion Video system, that I can hopefully use in new games. I definitely do plan to continue to make some new games for the CD-i.
Skyways announcement:
Jeffrey's new project is the CDi version of MS-DOS game SkyRoads.
DATABURST REVIEWS
Duckstroma
Format: Amiga (1Mb of memory required)
Credits: UltraNarwhal
Price: $2.99 or more
SCORE: 82%
Red Planet
Format: Amstrad CPC
Credits: Play On Retro (salvaKantero, tacha, masterklown, blackmores)
Price: Free download
SCORE: 80%
Brainbreak
Format: C64
Credits: Psytronik - Daniel Krajzewicz, Antti Hannula
Price: Digital $4.99 / Physical from £9.99-£24.99
SCORE: 77%
PROCESSING
Ruby & Rusty for Game Boy Color (Bitmap Soft): https://bit.ly/rubyrusty
Wink (demo) for Game Boy Color: https://bit.ly/wink-demo
Max Oakland's Instagram: http://instagram.com/maxoakland.art
Full interview with Max Oakland:
Q. What got you into Game Boy programming?
I love pixel art and was making retro games in Gamer Maker already. I have always been obsessed with retro game systems. I watch a ton of videos about the techniques devs used in the past to make 8-bit games look amazing. I love seeing how they pushed the limits. I’ve been interested in trying to make my own and when I saw GBStudio existed, I got excited. I decided to try to make a demake of Wink and things took on a life of their own
Q. What is your development setup, and do you have a game engine?
I have a MacBook and I use GBStudio. If there’s a game engine, it would be the Wink Engine since I used Wink and took out all the Wink sprites and music and replaced them with new stuff for Ruby & Rusty
Q. What inspired Ruby & Rusty?
I wanted to make a game for a Gameboy Game competition. It took me a long time to think up what I wanted to do with it and I actually almost didn’t do anything but this idea slowly developed. I think the biggest inspiration was living on a farm for a bunch of years when I was a kid. There are things about living on a farm you don’t see until you do it, like exploring the barns, forests, and cornfields. I wanted to combine that with a vibe straight out of the original Wizard of Oz novel from the 1800s so that’s what inspired the storybook aesthetic
Q. How long did it take to develop?
A lot of it was already there because of Wink but after that, it started in late 2021 and I’m just finishing it up now
Q. What are your favourite things in the game?
I’m very proud of the music. It reuses some basic melodies like Super Mario World did in different keys and tempos to create an atmosphere. I’m also really proud of the level design. I went with a short but sweet level concept inspired by Super Mario 3’s level length. People have complimented that a bunch and I’m going to remember it going forward.
Q. How did you come to work with Bitmap Soft as the publisher?
They contacted me about publishing and I was happy to talk with them. Originally I was planning to publish the physical release myself but it’s been great to have a team to work with
Q. Why did you choose to use GBStudio for your new game Wink?
I started Wink first and it was originally going to be a demake of the Wink game on my itch.io for Mac and PC. After a while of developing it, I decided it would be a sequel to that game. I chose to make games in GBstudio because I’ve always wanted to make a real GameBoy game. The limitations of old hardware can create tons of creativity and also streamline the development process. I love it
Q. How did you come up with the character?
With all my characters the answer is drawing and doodling. I post a lot of my art on Instagram (http://Instagram.com/maxoakland.art) and you’ll often see things from there pop up in my games
Q. How much more work does Wink need?
All the levels have the basics there, they just need polish and bosses. The game also needs a working shop to use the coins you collect in the game. I also have mini games in the code but have to put them in the actual game and make them accessible, then polish them up to make them a little more fun. At first they were way too hard and now they’re way too easy Another thing with Wink is trying to get it to fit in a 2MB cart, if possible.
You can test the Wink demo in your web browser or download it at