april design challenge

[adekto]

hey guy’s just wanna propose this idea of monthly challenges
these will mostly be entirely concept design and idea’s u may have on given topic

for this month i like to propose this:
gamebuino board game

now just to help you out a little this can be far and wide, design a board game video game, conceptually design a modules that can link the gamebuino to an existing or new board game (simple example is being the electronic bank of monopoly) or anything wild and creative

if u have a hard time writing your idea consider drawing it out
have fun

[hrangan]

chess.

I'd end it there, but I'm guessing you'll want more information

I'm aiming to get in touch with the developer of http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html, it's the most minimalistic chess algorithm around weighing in at 133 lines. I've just got interested in the game after a nephew of mine introduced me to it, and thought it'd be nice to have a functional game on the gamebuino.

I'm not really trying to win this challenge, just putting forth my ideas. I know it's a very straightforward idea and I'm looking forward to seeing what the rest of the community has in mind.

I've also got an Advance Wars/Fire Emblem kind of troop movement game in mind. Right now I'm playing those games again to see what they did right. Until I get a gamebuino and the screen, I can't really tell how well the screen resolution will hold up for displaying multiple troops on the game. At present, a rogue-like representation of units is the best I can come up with.

[rodot]

link the gamebuino to an existing or new board game (simple example is being the electronic bank of monopoly)

A dice roller to play D&D of course! Thad'be fun to make nice rotating sprites of the dices, with collisions, sound effects and everything.

[martinsustek]

chess.
I'm aiming to get in touch with the developer of http://home.hccnet.nl/h.g.muller/max-src2.html

I have implemented one variation of this engine for Uzebox - http://uzebox.org/wiki/index.php?title=Chess4uzebox .

It is working good but there is one big problem - recursion. You have to use trial and error method to estimate maximum depth of recursion. AVR is not able to detect stack overflow. If stack overflows into static variables, game will start to do invalid moves or crash totally. And Uzebox has 4KB RAM.

The second problem is speed - Uzebox CPU has to generate signal all the time, because it is TV-out console, and there is not much time left for computation. I handled it with option to disable generating video to save some time which resulted in screen turning off during computations and dramatically raised speed of CPU moves. In case of Gamebuino we have separate controller with own VRAM, so we can disable rendering routine and use all CPU power without user be noticed.

The third problem is display resolution. It will be very hard to create readable tiles with pieces on around 6x6 pixels B/W.

[rodot]

You can measure the depth of recursion using global/static variables you increment every time you enter enter a recursive function, can't you?
But I have to agree that the lack of stack overflow detection is really a pain.

You don't have to fit the whole board in the screen, you can make it as large as the screen (84x84px board = 10.5x10.5px/cell) and the camera would move when you move the cursor? If you REALLY want to see the whole board, 6x6 sprites are going to be difficult to draw, for sure. You can use an intermediate level of grey, but it would use more CPU time. You could make a checkers/draughts game instead

PS: to avoid redrawing the whole screen at every frame you can use gb.display.persistence = true; but anyway if you are calculating stuff which takes time, the rendering routine will only run once you're done.

[hrangan]

I have implemented one variation of this engine for Uzebox - http://uzebox.org/wiki/index.php?title=Chess4uzebox .

It's great that you've already worked on this, your sprites look amazing.

It is working good but there is one big problem - recursion.

I had not thought about this, I had just assumed that calling micromax would be enough. Hmm...

In case of Gamebuino we have separate controller with own VRAM, so we can disable rendering routine and use all CPU power without user be noticed.

Yeah, as long as the screen isn't wiped there should be no problem.

The third problem is display resolution. It will be very hard to create readable tiles with pieces on around 6x6 pixels B/W.

Yes, I thought about this. Since it's mostly something for me to pass the time with, I was thinking of use letter notations for the pieces (Kk, Qq, etc).

Also, I count 7x7 pixels.

board.png (419 Bytes) Viewed 10206 times

For some reason, I thought it was a 84x84 screen. Damn. 48 gives us a lot less than 6 pixels to work with, taking into account borders.

[hrangan]

You don't have to fit the whole board in the screen, you can make it as large as the screen (84x84px board = 10.5x10.5px/cell) and the camera would move when you move the cursor?

A better idea would be to have the cursor to function as a magnifying glass. The diametrically opposite quadrant could display a large image of the piece under the cursor (14x14 or so). And this way, after a while, the player's trained to recognize the sprite and can turn off the magnifying glass. I think it's important to display the board in its entirety.

--edit--
Or perhaps the magnified image is displayed near the cursor. This can be playtested to see which is preferable.

[rodot]

I confirm, it's 6x6px
I think we can do something using an intermediate level of gray with persistence, but it might be a little flickering as this screen doesn't have Vsync.
I'm not a good pixel artist, but here is a quick try:

chess.jpg (27.88 KiB) Viewed 10199 times

[adekto]

impressive, most impressive
i like the idea of chess allot and looking at the people interested its going to be a real thing

[hrangan]

I confirm, it's 6x6px
I think we can do something using an intermediate level of gray with persistence, but it might be a little flickering as this screen doesn't have Vsync.
I'm not a good pixel artist, but here is a quick try:

chess.jpg

Yes, I made a mistake and assumed the screen was 84x84 instead of 48x84.

The board you've mocked up is very nice, I did not think of using grey to differentiate the tiles.