So this is Christmas… and what have I done? Not written a complete Game Boy game that’s for sure.
Back in April I set myself the target of writing a Game Boy game by Christmas, with the idea that if I succeeded I would buy myself a present of a special flash cartridge so I can play it on our original childhood Game Boy. I also kept a diary about it…
Things were going pretty well until I went off for a long summer vacation and, well, never really returned to the project. Work kicked up a notch and evenings became more of a time for switching the tired ol’ brain off.
But Jumpy is not dead! No! I shall be returning to the project in the new year with a new goal of having the whole game done by my birthday, which conveniently falls right in the middle of the year (and before any summer holiday). I’d try a stretch goal of Easter but who buys themselves presents for Easter? Nah. Let’s hit a summer deadline and put that flash cart on my gift list.
I’ve also decided to go an extra step with “working in the open” and will host the code on Github. Over the new year break I’ll get a clean snapshot of the most recent code up on a repo and each ROM I upload will have the repo tagged. As with the diary my intent is to build up an artefact of progress/learning and not any sort of tutorials to follow. (There are already a bunch of great resources and tutorials out there which I’ve linked up here and here.)
Quick thanks to all the support I’ve had on the adventure so far; the many fantastic folks from around the world dropping into my mentions & hitting retweet. Didn’t get there as quickly as anticipated but hey, no big deal, be kind to yourself and all that. Let’s get you a playable game by summer.
Oh how life gets in the way of our best intentions. Like you, I was hoping to have a playable GB game at some point and it hasn’t materialised. And much like you I am determined to get back on the DMG horse. I even considered setting myself a challenge of creating one micro-game per month, each in a different genre, but I’m just too busy to do that. But if I don’t have an aim then I won’t do it, so a new micro game every 2 months is what I’m going for. I might try and blog it, might even put the source code up if I can figure out how git works.
I’m looking forward to hearing more about your GB adventures in the new year, and even more so, playing your game. Good luck.