WEBVTT 00:00.000 --> 00:22.000 So, we hear about rediscovering the fun of programming with the Game Boy. 00:23.000 --> 00:29.000 Sorry, actually, we lied. Hopefully, Iran agrees that this is fun, right? 00:31.000 --> 00:38.000 Okay, before we actually start, we thought that you might appreciate knowing a little more about, you know, the speakers. 00:38.000 --> 00:42.000 And this will also serve to this claim our own personal biases. 00:42.000 --> 00:47.000 So, my name is Eldred, but I usually go online by the nickname Isotim. 00:48.000 --> 00:55.000 I got my first Game Boy really late, so I have absolutely zero nostalgia for it. 00:55.000 --> 01:01.000 I love strongly type languages with love static checks and being down to the metal juggling robots. 01:01.000 --> 01:05.000 And I have also grown a strong distasteful CNC++. 01:06.000 --> 01:08.000 And my name is Sylvie. 01:08.000 --> 01:16.000 I grew up playing a Game Boy color and an N64, and basically didn't basically didn't upgrade those consoles. 01:16.000 --> 01:20.000 So, I have considerable nostalgia for it. 01:20.000 --> 01:25.000 On the one hand, there's a lot I appreciate about high-level languages, functional programming, 01:25.000 --> 01:29.000 lots of wheels that you don't have to reinvent. 01:29.000 --> 01:36.000 But at the same time, I also enjoy just writing direct procedural code running it right on the CPU. 01:36.000 --> 01:39.000 That's this talk. 01:39.000 --> 01:42.000 Let's get to what you came here for. 01:42.000 --> 01:45.000 Since we are rediscovering the fun of programming, 01:45.000 --> 01:47.000 what made it on fun in the first place. 01:47.000 --> 01:51.000 Where is the increased fun of Retro Dev? 01:51.000 --> 02:00.000 Well, so the first thing that drains fun out of activity is being taken out of, you know, the zone to deal with some trouble. 02:00.000 --> 02:02.000 For example, waiting for long build times. 02:02.000 --> 02:06.000 Raise your hand if you have seen this comic before. 02:06.000 --> 02:12.000 There's also stressing your network bandwidth and waiting some more while it fetches a whole bunch of libraries. 02:12.000 --> 02:18.000 And finally, there's how to hardware requirements constantly increasing. 02:18.000 --> 02:24.000 So modern development techniques tend to demand a lot of work out of a lot of people. 02:24.000 --> 02:29.000 And it can be practically impossible to get an entire project complete, 02:29.000 --> 02:35.000 especially if you're a small team, let alone a solo indie developer. 02:35.000 --> 02:38.000 Let's, you know, it's just hard, man. 02:38.000 --> 02:44.000 The modern PC platform is redive us with a lot of screen sizes, how do I combinations and configurations. 02:44.000 --> 02:51.000 And on top of that, all of those targets are constantly moving as well, which makes things even worse. 02:51.000 --> 02:58.000 Furthermore, debugging suffers, because to do that well, you have to grasp what the old platform is really doing. 02:58.000 --> 03:03.000 And on such a large system, that's kind of ineffective. 03:03.000 --> 03:11.000 And finally, just the sensation that you don't grasp what's going on, it just doesn't feel good. 03:11.000 --> 03:17.000 Okay, so we've spent a lot of time explaining why this machine right here is bad. 03:17.000 --> 03:22.000 So now let's show why retro game dev can be a solution to all of the above. 03:22.000 --> 03:29.000 Especially, I want you to give this in mind, developing for a 90s console doesn't mean you must go back to a 90s experience. 03:29.000 --> 03:44.000 So the game was tools SDKs, libraries, and resources have improved a lot over the decades since it was released. 03:44.000 --> 03:54.000 Even the pixel art and the four channel audio can benefit from the latest programs for editing graphics, audio sequencing, etc. 03:54.000 --> 03:58.000 No more plotting pixels directly on graph paper. 03:58.000 --> 04:04.000 You can compile all of your source code and graphics in a playable ROM in mere seconds. 04:04.000 --> 04:10.000 And you can use modern debugging conveniences. We can step through the code. You have time travel debugging. 04:10.000 --> 04:14.000 All of that, it applies to the game by now, too. 04:14.000 --> 04:18.000 Also, the gameplay simplicity is just refreshing in many ways. 04:19.000 --> 04:27.000 Not only is it a good support to learn some fundamental lower-level concepts, but it remains an interesting object in its own right. 04:27.000 --> 04:36.000 Further, one dev or a small team, if you'd like, can wear more hats at once without any of them individually being too large to handle. 04:36.000 --> 04:46.000 This isn't part due to the system's lower specs, making it easier to have something that, you know, can feel reasonably complete. 04:46.000 --> 04:51.000 And yes, the system is underpowered, but I would argue that's actually a good thing. 04:51.000 --> 04:54.000 Because, as the saying goes, limitations breed creativity. 04:54.000 --> 05:01.000 And on top of that, it can also make it very interesting to figure out how to make an idea you've had to work on the system. 05:01.000 --> 05:06.000 It can feel like, you know, puzzle solving. 05:06.000 --> 05:12.000 Creating games is, of course, a central part of game-boy development, but it's not the only one. 05:13.000 --> 05:21.000 We hope to show you a series of things where at least one of them will peak your interest and make you think that looks like fun. 05:21.000 --> 05:31.000 Okay, so, as I can probably tell from the number of stickers on my laptop, no code tools on for you may jam, so I'm going to be talking about this from an outside perspective. 05:31.000 --> 05:38.000 But GB Studio should nonetheless be mentioned, since it has enabled many non-programmers to get into the game-boy niche. 05:38.000 --> 05:45.000 And it also lets users grow their skills and write how of a much custom code they are comfortable with. 05:45.000 --> 05:48.000 Now, let's talk about the programming solutions. 05:48.000 --> 05:55.000 The usual suspect for working with an embedded platform, like the Game Boy clearly is, would be, of course, C. 05:55.000 --> 06:00.000 And, well, going down the region from GB Studio, which, remember, no code. 06:00.000 --> 06:04.000 There is ZGB, which is basically a game engine. 06:04.000 --> 06:10.000 Now, then you have something called GBDK, which is, quote, quote, just a tool chain, which is, you know, still a lot. 06:10.000 --> 06:16.000 And if that's your jam, you can also try creating your own tool chains, like, here's a link to one. 06:16.000 --> 06:22.000 Again, follow the slide live if you want to click the links and there will be available. 06:22.000 --> 06:26.000 And at the lowest level, we get to assembly language. 06:26.000 --> 06:33.000 Maybe that's making you think of long, complex, and scutable code with too many consonants that the compiler can do better than most people can. 06:33.000 --> 06:41.000 But on an 8-bit platform like the Game Boy, it's assembly language was designed for people to be writing. 06:41.000 --> 06:49.000 So, it is surprisingly human-friendly, not too complex, relatively easy to get started. 06:49.000 --> 06:56.000 And here's a link to a tutorial that has gotten some praise for its accessibility and thoughtess. 06:56.000 --> 07:02.000 Full disclosure, I wrote half of that tutorial. 07:02.000 --> 07:07.000 And as for the choice of tools, well, RGBS is the most popular choice by landslide. 07:07.000 --> 07:15.000 But there is nonetheless some variety in choice if RGBS's choices don't work for you. 07:15.000 --> 07:21.000 As well, some languages attempt to bridge the gap between, you know, C and... 07:21.000 --> 07:23.000 Assembly. 07:23.000 --> 07:30.000 And being a high level assembly, so those you've probably never heard before, but they are worth giving a try. 07:31.000 --> 07:34.000 Bless you. 07:34.000 --> 07:38.000 There are also ongoing efforts to bring more languages to this console. 07:38.000 --> 07:44.000 In particular, we would like to highlight the in-progress port of LLVM. 07:44.000 --> 07:49.000 So you'll be able to use languages like C++ and Rust. 07:49.000 --> 07:52.000 Okay, hopefully we have some. 07:52.000 --> 07:55.000 Okay, yeah, we don't have sound. 07:55.000 --> 07:57.000 We have a... 07:57.000 --> 07:58.000 Yeah. 07:58.000 --> 07:59.000 Yeah. 08:03.000 --> 08:07.000 So this is a rhythm game made for the game, made for the game boy. 08:16.000 --> 08:18.000 This was made playing by the way. 08:19.000 --> 08:24.000 And here's a... 08:24.000 --> 08:26.000 Here's another game boy. 08:26.000 --> 08:27.000 So all of those are homeroom. 08:27.000 --> 08:30.000 I either were made by non-professionals. 08:30.000 --> 08:33.000 This one is on the super game boy, which is why you have a wide screen. 08:33.000 --> 08:36.000 Because this is actually running on a super NES. 08:36.000 --> 08:37.000 Look it up. 08:37.000 --> 08:38.000 It's kind of crazy. 08:38.000 --> 08:42.000 Nintendo put in a 9-ty game boy in the cathart. 08:42.000 --> 08:44.000 This one is called Quartet. 08:44.000 --> 08:46.000 It's a little puzzle game. 08:47.000 --> 08:49.000 And this one is... 08:49.000 --> 08:52.000 This one is for the game boy, Cole, hence, you know, the colors. 08:55.000 --> 08:58.000 And never let anyone tell your system it's underpowered. 08:58.000 --> 09:00.000 When you can run an entire Denmark who on it. 09:00.000 --> 09:15.000 And those are just a sample of the homeroom games available. 09:16.000 --> 09:18.000 Yeah. 09:18.000 --> 09:19.000 Yeah. 09:19.000 --> 09:40.000 There are even more on homeroom which is a site started by the GP dev organization community. 09:40.000 --> 09:43.000 Where a lot of these can be downloaded or downloaded. 09:43.000 --> 09:47.000 If you're making them uploaded. 09:47.000 --> 09:56.000 By the way, even today, people are still making physical cartridges of their homeroom games. 09:56.000 --> 10:00.000 Here's an example of a game that was successfully crowdfunded last year. 10:00.000 --> 10:05.000 A real packaging and a real cartridge inside. 10:05.000 --> 10:08.000 According to a survey of... 10:09.000 --> 10:12.000 Yeah. 10:12.000 --> 10:13.000 Okay. 10:13.000 --> 10:14.000 There are clear patterns there. 10:14.000 --> 10:21.000 But on the other hand, this survey does show that in 1996, which was the Game Boy's 10:21.000 --> 10:27.000 Hey Day, there were fewer games published than there were in 2022. 10:27.000 --> 10:30.000 And the quality remains about on par. 10:30.000 --> 10:32.000 No joke. 10:32.000 --> 10:39.000 There are some extremely good quality games like the three we showed were actually really solid. 10:39.000 --> 10:40.000 Okay. 10:40.000 --> 10:41.000 Okay. 10:41.000 --> 10:42.000 That was a lot of the software. 10:42.000 --> 10:46.000 But maybe you're more of a hardware person and all of that sounded boring to you. 10:46.000 --> 10:47.000 Don't worry. 10:47.000 --> 10:53.000 Because you know, a cartridge is basically a PCB that gets five volts in ground and a couple of address lines. 10:53.000 --> 10:57.000 And also there's a communication pole that's just right there. 10:57.000 --> 10:59.000 It's basically a SPI. 10:59.000 --> 11:02.000 And by the way, there are precedents. 11:02.000 --> 11:04.000 You'd not be the first. 11:04.000 --> 11:07.000 Like this is a Game Boy sewing machine. 11:07.000 --> 11:08.000 This is official. 11:08.000 --> 11:11.000 It has been released license by Nintendo. 11:11.000 --> 11:13.000 There you can also look that up. 11:13.000 --> 11:15.000 There's Wikipedia page on it. 11:15.000 --> 11:20.000 But there is also a son of a fishing and an aesthetic mask. 11:20.000 --> 11:22.000 Like, yeah, for podiatrists. 11:22.000 --> 11:23.000 Yes. 11:23.000 --> 11:25.000 On a Game Boy. 11:25.000 --> 11:27.000 So. 11:28.000 --> 11:29.000 Music on the Game Boy. 11:29.000 --> 11:32.000 Can't really use the formats from modern machines. 11:32.000 --> 11:34.000 No MP3 decoders there. 11:34.000 --> 11:39.000 But it's instead composed on applications called trackers. 11:39.000 --> 11:43.000 Typically, you would run those on your PC, such as huge tracker. 11:43.000 --> 11:50.000 But there are also alternatives that are designed for the Game Boy itself. 11:50.000 --> 11:56.000 Here's an example of an application that is designed to take the data from one of those 11:56.000 --> 11:57.000 trackers. 11:57.000 --> 12:01.000 And you know, don't need to use actual sound, which you've heard some before. 12:01.000 --> 12:04.000 Like, you know, those games had sound. 12:04.000 --> 12:10.000 And here's an example of one of those drivers, especially its demo ROM. 12:10.000 --> 12:12.000 It's called sound system in this case. 12:12.000 --> 12:18.000 And we're going to show you an example of a music that was composed in a huge tracker, actually. 12:19.000 --> 12:37.000 That music actually won the music category of the Game Boy 2020 for jam. 12:37.000 --> 12:40.000 And, well, okay, you may be saying, yeah, okay, that's cool. 12:40.000 --> 12:43.000 But, you know, that's just still a little bit, I want something fancy. 12:43.000 --> 12:44.000 Okay, don't worry. 12:44.000 --> 12:46.000 How about voice samples? 12:46.000 --> 13:01.000 That was the runner-up of the same compo. 13:01.000 --> 13:06.000 Again, there's a page on db.io that lists all of those. 13:06.000 --> 13:11.000 We invite you to go there. 13:12.000 --> 13:17.000 Again, boy. 13:17.000 --> 13:26.000 So, as for pixel art, you can use practically any graphics editor to draw things for the 13:26.000 --> 13:30.000 Game Boy, but it has more restrictions than just that. 13:30.000 --> 13:36.000 Dedicated editors for pixel art, such as a surprise and fiscal, they have, 13:37.000 --> 13:42.000 Dedicated, they have Game Boy's specific features, such as controlling the tile grid, 13:42.000 --> 13:47.000 or animating frames one at a time, and handling the palette restrictions. 13:47.000 --> 13:53.000 Speaking of palette restrictions, the original DMG Game Boy had exactly four shades of piece 13:53.000 --> 13:59.000 of green, but even there, some clever programming can get around it, or clever artistry. 13:59.000 --> 14:05.000 You can use dithering in space, as well as time, and here, if you blink colors properly, 14:05.000 --> 14:08.000 then it looks like you have more than four. 14:08.000 --> 14:11.000 That's for the Game Boy color. 14:11.000 --> 14:12.000 It seems like so many. 14:12.000 --> 14:18.000 You have 32,000 whole colors to use, but even there, there are the restrictions on which 14:18.000 --> 14:20.000 ones can be in a palette at a time. 14:20.000 --> 14:25.000 And, again, with a little programming wizardry, you can get around that and have, 14:25.000 --> 14:31.000 quote unquote, high color mode, and make games look exceptionally artistic. 14:32.000 --> 14:36.000 Okay, okay. Maybe the console, actually, doesn't really interest you, don't worry. 14:36.000 --> 14:40.000 We can even get you covered if you want to do some work outside of the console. 14:40.000 --> 14:45.000 We mentioned programming earlier, so obviously, it follows that one can work on the tools that 14:45.000 --> 14:51.000 necessary to, you know, make the language, language is work, assemblers, and compilers. 14:51.000 --> 14:57.000 More on the GUI side, there are techniques for creating your game assets, 14:57.000 --> 15:04.000 graphics editors, Tom App editors, audio sequences, individual games may also use their own 15:04.000 --> 15:12.000 custom tools, like for editing, enemy AI data, or scripting cutscenes. 15:12.000 --> 15:18.000 And, yeah, your imagination to limit, you can make all of these as you need. 15:18.000 --> 15:23.000 If you'd rather make your own game and tools for it, there are several GB dev projects that 15:23.000 --> 15:29.000 would be looking for contributors, there's a strong culture of free software, so anyone can 15:29.000 --> 15:32.000 contribute, and maybe even get paid a little. 15:32.000 --> 15:37.000 Yeah, we have some boundaries, actually, that found it by donations. 15:37.000 --> 15:42.000 Just we would like to go back quickly on that, as some people mentioned before, RGVDS, 15:42.000 --> 15:46.000 which is a GB dev project. It's currently 25 years old. It's original release, 15:46.000 --> 15:51.000 was in August of 1999. So, hey, close to the first them. 15:51.000 --> 15:56.000 And, yeah, full disclosure, the two of us are the content maintainers of it. 15:56.000 --> 16:00.000 It's actually how we met. 16:00.000 --> 16:06.000 And, well, I think it's grown to have all the features that you would want from an assembler, 16:06.000 --> 16:09.000 ignore the 50 issues on GitHub. 16:09.000 --> 16:16.000 And, honestly, please, please try it out. It's software that people tend to like, 16:16.000 --> 16:25.000 and you might also like it and contribute to it. It's, again, free software. 16:25.000 --> 16:29.000 There's also the world of emulation, which you can work for. 16:29.000 --> 16:35.000 Emulating the gameboy on your computer is a common recommendation for new program. 16:35.000 --> 16:43.000 Yeah. Well, if it's over, we're just going to leave you with some pictures of the two best 16:43.000 --> 16:47.000 in the two best in the latest on the market and that action. 16:47.000 --> 16:52.000 And, well, then, some people might recognize this picture. 16:52.000 --> 16:56.000 It's called Gameboy Acid 2. 16:56.000 --> 16:58.000 Do I need to explain anything? 16:58.000 --> 17:02.000 And, this will be, this will be our last thing. 17:03.000 --> 17:05.000 We're going to be on the gameboy. 17:24.000 --> 17:27.000 I don't have much time left. 17:27.000 --> 17:29.000 I don't have much time left. 17:32.000 --> 17:35.000 I don't have much time left.