Porting Bitsy engine to Pokitto

Pokitto Programming Games
41

So it was a poor word choice and an underlying issue :smiley: I wasnā€™t aware that we are limited to the multipies of 220x176.

Then I think either centering or lowering the screen by 8 or 16 pixels would be a better solution. Maybe creating a border around the screen would also help. And the text can be rendered on the bottom as @FManga originally intended.

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42

Finally had some time to work on this again.
dream.bin (69.1 KB)
Thereā€™s still a bunch of stuff to do, but itā€™s moving along.

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43

Final(ish) conversion of a few games I found that are compatible with the engine as it is:

Odd One (or ā€œdream.binā€ in the other posts so far).
OddOne.bin (69.8 KB)

Silverybield Foss:
SilverybieldFoss.bin (49.0 KB)

Junk Shop Telescope
JunkShopTelescope.bin (56.1 KB)

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45

Hey @jonne, I tried to put 325 bin files on the SD, but the loader was not pleased. :laughing:
The Up/Down arrows donā€™t work, but you can flash the first game in the list. Initial rendering takes a while and so does switching from Settings to File.

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46

Haha! Yea, it might have some trouble with that many .bins

I think at some point I might have to change the system to use directories instead, but but butā€¦ its mostly a matter of memory space (and the lack of it).

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47

I tested your programs. Really good work. Executes very quickly.

However I think the graphics are too small on Pokitto. I like the idea of Bitsy, but maybe games should be build exclusively for Pokitto screen.

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48

Thanks :smile:

Yeah, the size is pretty awkward. Iā€™ve got some ideas that might help remedy this, I just havenā€™t had a chance to try to implement them yet. First I need to make sure the games actually work! :slight_smile:

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49

Hereā€™s my first attempt at solving the size problem.

Press C to toggle zoom. I donā€™t remember which is which. One contains cats, another has a scenic train ride with passengers that speak some language I could not identify, and the other is a little adventure with multiple endings.

0A5B0213.bitsy.bin (44.6 KB)
0BDF73F8.bitsy.bin (53.6 KB)
0CA8CCC9.bitsy.bin (64.2 KB)

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50

Iā€™ve found that some games work pretty well zoomed in, others not so much.

For some reason, and despite the shortcomings, these games are more interesting/fun to me on the Pokitto than on the PC. Itā€™s nice to have 50 of these little games sitting on the SD card for when I have a spare minute to play one.

You can find the 352 games I batch-converted here, itā€™s better than me posting that many bins in the forum. :stuck_out_tongue:

Edit: Now I wish the loader had some way to mark games as favorites, so theyā€™d show with a different color in the beginning of the list. It would also be nice if it could delete games (or at least hide from the list). @jonne is the source code to the loader available somewhere?

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51

Oh wow, @FManga that is some awesome progress!

The zoom works awesome. I think thatā€™s the best solution for pokitto resolution.

There are few bugs I have noticed, hope you donā€™t mind me bringing them up:

  • The animation of the sprites is still a bit too fast it seems.
  • The controls seem to be tied to something, as single clicking will often not register. I guess it is because it is not during a refresh frame when animation changes.
  • The animation stops when the text renders.

Now, if we could get a tool or a tutorial how to plug bitsy game and turn it into a .bin it would be awesomeā€¦

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52

Thanks, @VonBednar! Bug reports are welcome!

  • Yeah, I still need to fine-tune the speed. EDIT: See latest release
  • EDIT: Fixed. Inputs register correctly, now.
  • Since the text is over the sprites and Iā€™m not using a framebuffer, having animation play while text renders would result in a lot of flashing. Pausing the animation was the less-annoying option. :stuck_out_tongue:

Right now, setting everything up locally is quite convoluted (Node.js, armgcc, make). Iā€™m thinking of making a github site where you drop in a bitsy html file, it does the compilation for you and gives you the final bin. This will solve a few hard problems (looks like lots of bitsy games are broken, but still work due to bugs in specific versions of the engine. Each game needs to be parsed by the engine itā€™s bundled with) but is going to be some workā€¦ and Iā€™m still busy trying to get the engine right.

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53

This dude deserve some special badge I think.

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54

@FManga is hereby also elevated to the class of Wizard King

Reasons:

  1. Making Bitsy games work
  2. Making the Sega VMU PotatoChip games work
  3. ProjectABE emulator
  4. ā€œWizard Supreme Emperorā€ badge is not yet ready :wink:

Letā€™s have a round of applause, shall we?

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55

Ooo, shiny! Yay! Thanks! :smiley:

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56

Iā€™ve been admiring bitsy for a while now and have been thinking about making a bitsy games interpreter. and here it is all ready to go ) Iā€™ll try to run it too

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