Export Games and make Icon & Titlescreen

Creations

Sorunome

5 years ago

How to export games from the Arduino IDE to the SD card!

Get the binary

You can easily get the binary from the Arduino IDE:
either via "Sketch" -> "Export compiled Binary" or by hitting "Ctrl+Alt+S"

Export Binary via Arduino IDE

Now the compiled .bin file will appear next to your ino file:

ugly exported file path

The binary file is named example.ino.gamebuino_meta.bin, but that is a pretty long and ugly name, so let's just rename it to example.bin

cleaner renamed file

Now that we have the binary file, it is time to prepare the folder to put onto the SD card!

Folder of the SD card

The binary file is supposed to land in a folder with the same name (except if you specified a different one in config-gamebuino.h). It should look like this:

Simple game folder

Now toss that folder onto your SD card next to your other games and it sould appear in the game loader! You will see, however, that it is lacking both an icon and a title screen. We'll get to that in a bit.

Default icon Default titlescreen

Adding an icon and a title screen

The icon and the title screen are added in the same way: You need to create a normal BMP image with an image editor you prefer. Even though you have all the colors available, it is still recommended to stick to the colors of the Gamebuino Palette.

The icon is a 32x32 pixels BMP named ICON.BMP, while the titlescreen is an 80x64 BMP named TITLESCREEN.BMP. Simply add both to the folder of your game and copy the folder back over to the SD card. In our example they are both just blue background with "yay" in yellow written on them.

with ICON and TITLESCREEN

Of course, your game should have more a more recognizable icon and title screen than this.

ICON TITLESCREEN

Grabbing the GMV files

You may have noticed some longer pause before it displayed the icon and the title screen. This is becaus the Gamebuino converted the BMP file to it's own internal format: a GMV file. Now, if you also put the GMV file into your game folder, other people using your game won't have to wait that little pause (this especially makes a huge difference with animated title screens).

IMPORTANT: it isn't enough to just copy the GMV files from the SD card, you will have to copy both the BMP and GMV files. This is because the Gamebuino magically flags the BMP files as "Hey, there is a GMV file matching to this image"

When done, your game folder will look something like this:

with GMVs

Animated title screen

As briefly mentioned, a title screen can be animated! For that, just stack all your 80x64 frames vertically in your TITLESCREEN.BMP. The entire thing will be then played back animated, at 25FPS. This is, for example, a five-frame animation:

animated titlescreen frames

And this is what it looks like in the loader:

THE GRAND TITLE SCREEEN

You may have noticed that the loading times are way higher here, that is because there is more frames to process. This is why it is strongly recommended to provide the GMV files when using an animated title screen.

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chris-scientist

NEW 5 years ago

Bonjour,

J'ai essayé d'exporter mon appli mais le résultat est bizarre.

J'ai fait une icône et un titlescreen mais l'îcone qui s'affiche dans le menu ne ressemble pas à celui que j'ai fais et de plus le titlescreen ne s'affiche pas.

J'ai copié mon dossier avec le programme (.bin) et mes deux BMP (ICON et TITLESCREEN) mais ça bug.

Il y a t'il un cache à supprimer ? Ou une manipulation complémentaire au copier-coller du dossier ?

Merci d'avance

jicehel

NEW 5 years ago

Ton programme (.bin) doit s'appeler comme le dossier dans lequel tu le mets. ICON.bmp et TITLESCREEN.bmp doivent être dans ce dossier et sauvegardés en 24 bits par exemple et là ils apparaiteront comme ils le doivent. Je suis en vacances alors si tu reposes une question ne t'tonnes pas si je mets du temps à répondre  ;)


chris-scientist

5 years ago

Merci jicehel !

J'avais exporter mes images en 256 bits, mon erreur était là.

chris-scientist

NEW 5 years ago

jicehel jicehel

Merci jicehel !

J'avais exporter mes images en 256 bits, mon erreur était là.

jicehel

NEW 5 years ago

Super  ;)   Bonne soirée et bon début de création

Weveract

NEW 5 years ago

Great tut!

jicehel

NEW 5 years ago

Super tuto. I'll update my titilescreens when i'll be back after these so short holidays ...

Very simple, very useful when you start to make your first games. Dans un prochain tuto tu devrais expliquer comment utiliser le config-gamebuino.h (où il faut le mettre, ce que l'on peut faire avec et comment)

STUDIOCRAFTapps

NEW 5 years ago

TYPO:
under "GRABBING THE GMV FILES"
something something "title screen. This is becaus "
Because because needs a "e" at the end because else it would be incomplete

makerSquirrel

NEW 5 years ago

Hiho,

Is there a way to stop the animation after a certain amount of repetitions (i.e. the first one)?

As an example of what I mean, here the repeating version of my Snake5110 Meta: one of the advantages of having a stopping version is to be able to add the version info solely on the last frame, so I do not need to add that info to all frames...

Sorunome

5 years ago

Unfortunately no. You could, however, have the last frame be a few seconds (as in, repeating it a bunch of times) to make it seem like it freezes a bit before restarting

Sorunome

NEW 5 years ago

makerSquirrel makerSquirrel

Unfortunately no. You could, however, have the last frame be a few seconds (as in, repeating it a bunch of times) to make it seem like it freezes a bit before restarting

makerSquirrel

NEW 5 years ago

Ok, thanks for the reply. Is there a size-cap for bmp/gmv files which I should take into account there? I think of longer cut-scenes and stuff...


cheers

Sorunome

5 years ago

In theory no size cap, however a cap of a maximum of 65535 frames

Sorunome

NEW 5 years ago

makerSquirrel makerSquirrel

In theory no size cap, however a cap of a maximum of 65535 frames