So after a huge learning curve to overcome and lots of trial and error I now have (what I believe anyway) to be a decent set of graphics functions for wire frame graphics. Here is a little demo I wipped up using these functions. I’m most happy with the line algorithm which automatically plots the parallax based on the z value while writing the pixels to the frame buffer. So parallax actually takes care of its self as the line is being plotted on a pixel by pixel basis. I haven’t actually seen this on the Virtual Boy yet but my brother has and said it looks pretty good. My first attempt at this demo was a little hard on the eyes so I adjusted some values and hopefully this one is a little easier to look at. If you use the left d-pad you can move around a bit.

Attachments:

1. starwars.vb

This is great. I hope you make a full game out of this.

Argh, I was waiting for this and now I can’t try it out until Wednesday. Did the sound work out the way wanted in the end?

As far as sound the answer is yes and no. I ended up abandoning trying to use wav data and just composed a midi file using Musescore. I wrote a simple midi file parser using java and used it to calculate the interrupt timing I needed to play my song on the VB with a 20 microsecond timer. Ben has been my tester and although I was happy with getting a wav file to play the midi file makes it much easier to perform other code while the music is playing. Ben said he thought it would be a better experience anyway comparing it to your Game Hero game so I switched it up.

Thanks a bunch for the source code it helped me to quickly change my philosophy.

AGGRR can’t try this out either atm…anyone able to upload a few min to youtube ?

-Eric

Greg Stevens wrote:
As far as sound the answer is yes and no. I ended up abandoning trying to use wav data and just composed a midi file using Musescore. I wrote a simple midi file parser using java and used it to calculate the interrupt timing I needed to play my song on the VB with a 20 microsecond timer. Ben has been my tester and although I was happy with getting a wav file to play the midi file makes it much easier to perform other code while the music is playing. Ben said he thought it would be a better experience anyway comparing it to your Game Hero game so I switched it up.

Thanks a bunch for the source code it helped me to quickly change my philosophy.

You actually got the fishbone sound code which is more advanced. I can sent you my midi converter when I’m back in Germany as well. Maybe it will work on your midi. what tool did you use to compse your midi?

[Greg Stevens]

what tool did you use to compse your midi?

I used a program called MuseScore.
http://musescore.org/en

It’s really great. You can just compose the musical notes on a score and it plays it for you. It will also import a midi file into all the different tracks and display all the notes/tracks so you can take an existing one and easily modify it. I also attached my java program source code that converts midi files to VB code for me. It works pretty well for my needs. I designed this to be able to play individual tracks of a midi file and then export those tracks to VB code with relative ease. It’s a console app so no gui but it just has a few options to it. It will also parse a wav file and generate output as well.

bigmak:

Also Ben said he would upload a few minutes of the demo to his youtube account sometime today. I recorded it in mednafen and there is a graphics glitch that doesn’t seem to appear on the actual VB. The first few writes to the frame buffer don’t seem to take in mednafen for some reason.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by Greg Stevens.
• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by Greg Stevens.

Greg Stevens wrote:

what tool did you use to compse your midi?

I used a program called MuseScore.
http://musescore.org/en

It’s really great. You can just compose the musical notes on a score and it plays it for you. It will also import a midi file into all the different tracks and display all the notes/tracks so you can take an existing one and easily modify it. I also attached my java program source code that converts midi files to VB code for me. It works pretty well for my needs. I designed this to be able to play individual tracks of a midi file and then export those tracks to VB code with relative …

Hehe, that’s pretty much what I did as well, I really should polish and release everything… Could you publish your midi so that I can compare results?

I uploaded two videos that Greg made of his demo on YouTube.

The regular version played on Mednafen can be viewed here:

The 3D version played on Mednafen can be viewed here:

Could you publish your midi so that I can compare results?

Here it is

Attachments:

1. starwars.mid

I looks really really great. The music reminds me of game hero (which is not a bad thing). I searched for star wars midis when you asked me to look into your sound code but I could find one that worked well with my current converter. Maybe composing the music from the scratch is the better way to do it. As soon as I’m done with Faceball I will publish my converter and the Midi player code. It is about time.

I luv all the stuff that’s been going on with the vboy 🙂

My mind went one place when I saw this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSwul6HaGag 😉

Keep it up! Can’t wait to see what comes of this tech!

Who could of ever forgotten this gem of vector graphics. Also as mentioned before on PVB there was a release of Empire Strikes Back. First we see Arwings, then Marquees and the start of a trench battle. What’s next a wireframe Samus Aran clad in Red and black.
Don’t give up Greg…..Very Impressive.

Excellent work Greg.
I have only just looked at the vid Ben posted, will try it on hardware soon, but what i have seen looks great. I love wireframe & vector graphics, so this made me smile, thanks fella.

BRILLIANT!

Now, just replace the TIE fighters with Zero Racers and make a track that bends 😉

[Morintari]

The Force is with you Greg… Always.

Just wondering Greg, not criticisim. But since your dealing w equasions in direct draw could you draw circles for the cockpits instead of diamonds. A circle would only get smaller and larger. it seems that a circle would be easier to calculate and render I’m no programmer just an artist here so I really don’t know what I’m talking about. But hey Greg am I even close.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 8 months ago by Morintari.

Holy shit, this looks great in 3D.

morintari wrote:
The Force is with you Greg… Always.

Just wondering Greg, not criticisim. But since your dealing w equasions in direct draw could you draw circles for the cockpits instead of diamonds. A circle would only get smaller and larger. it seems that a circle would be easier to calculate and render I’m no programmer just an artist here so I really don’t know what I’m talking about. But hey Greg am I even close.

The answer is yes it is possible. But currently all my objects are arrays of x,y,z coordinates. So my draw function simply draws lines between all the points just like a big connect the dots. However it would be possible to add equations for other types of processing it would just require a storage format capable of “storing” the equations or more specifically the values of the equation and which equation to use and then putting them all back together as a game entity along with the “connect the dots” format. On the upside I have written a wavefront OBJ file parser so I can create objects in something like blender or 3D Studio and export to an OBJ file and generate VB code for my functions. The downside is that the VB is not capable of rendering very many lines in a single frame so the polygon/line count has to be really really low.

thunderstruck wrote:
Holy shit, this looks great in 3D.

Yea I thought it would look pretty good. Like I said earlier my line function is able to plot parallax on a pixel by pixel bases so the 3d effect is about as good as I think I can make it. The trick is just finding the limits that don’t give everybody a headache while trying to look at it.

I for one can`t wait for a full game of this 😀