I used the butano game engine
https://github.com/GValiente/butano
My source code is here (though be warned, it's VERY messy)
https://github.com/blaise-rascal/KnightOwls
If you want to try out gbadev, the following discord server is a great place to talk shop:
Discord
Overall, it was a lot of fun for me to make this GBA game, but I don't think I'll ever do another GBA project, simply because the GBA sound card is terrible. I really don't want to go to the effort to figure out how to use it to make good-sounding music.
blaise-rascal
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hi there! mgba is free & easy to download: https://mgba.io/downloads.html
as far as making the game playable without an emulator, that is certainly something I will look into. but it's tough; i'm just one person, and there are other things i'd like to work on with this game... only so many hours...
Thanks so much for the kind words! You should check out Slay the Spire if you haven't. It's pretty much THE deck-building roguelike on Steam. In fact, it's such a massive hit, that indie devs like me have a hard time getting out from the game's shadow and making something new. Knight Owls was my attempt to do something similarly fun, but different enough to feel fresh. (Warning: Slay the Spire is quite addicting...)
Also, thanks for the Morpheus art. Definitely got a laugh out of me
Thank you so much for the reply, Deft Spade!
I've managed to mostly solve my issue by choosing louder samples and cranking up their volume, to drown out the noise. (If you make your song in beepbox, the instruments that work well for this include, at the very least: contrabass, voice synth, french horn, cello, and standard drumset; just export as .mid and convert to xm by openmpt and it should work fine.) And I'm also learning to embrace the noise. It is perhaps part of the "charm" of developing for these old systems... Oh, and maybe I'll try increasing the mixing rate. Thanks so much for the help, Spade, and everyone else! Making music this way is pretty fun :)
Thanks for this guide! Anyone know why I'm getting loud white noise whenever a note plays? I only get noise in mgba, not in beepbox nor openmpt. See this video:
https://github.com/blaise-rascal/KnightOwls/blob/main/screenshots/noise.mp4
To transfer my song to my game, I'm doing the following:
1. IN BEEPBOX: Export as .mid
2. IN OPENMPT: Open the .mid file
3. IN OPENMPT: Go to View -> Song Properties and change Type to Impulse Tracker IT. Click OK.
4. IN OPENMPT: Click File -> Compatibility Export -> save it in a place where my butano game can see it.
You're welcome to see my source code as well, by checking out the github repo above. And here's the beepbox file. (Itch.io won't let me embed the beepbox link, so just click this file and copy the string into your browser.)
https://github.com/blaise-rascal/KnightOwls/blob/main/editables/beepbox-link.txt
I've tried a bunch of things, but nothing seems to be working. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I like w3schools for practical c++: https://www.w3schools.com/cpp/default.asp
That page has example programs, exercises, and text explanations for whatever style learning you prefer.
Once you've studied a bit, it's probably a good idea to download an editor like Visual Studio Code and try recreating these programs yourself. Good luck!
Another thought: I really think this game would benefit from the maps being split into specific "rooms," similar to Binding of Isaac. Some of the rooms would be the same size as the game window, and some would be larger and thus require panning (again, similar to binding of isaac). Whenever you cross over into another room, the camera would rapidly pan to the new room.
The game world would still be all one contiguous piece, but I think that splitting things up with the camera would help with the cohesion of the world. It would allow me to more clearly delineate which areas of the world are different from each other; perhaps some rooms could be "challenge rooms," where you have to do a platforming challenge or a puzzle to get a clearly visible "coin." (It's becoming more and more clear that this game needs collectables.) It's also nice for the camera to remain static for longer periods of time, because then you get to see the art more clearly.
I agree that the hitbox for the raindrop is not great. As I wrote in my postmortem, this is partly due to challenges with the programming of the game; I had trouble writing the code to see which object the raindrop was directly over. Here's hoping I'd have time to fix this in a post-jam version... someday...
Thanks for the review!
The controls were definitely very "floaty." This was partly by design, though I wish I'd turned it down a bit.
And yes, there's nothing to do after reaching 101%. I could have made the game end there, but I thought maybe people might wanna continue exploring the island. Again, probably not ideal.
Thanks for the review!
Fun little puzzle platformer! The claymation isn't just a gimmick; it legitimately looks really really good. Massive kudos for creativity!
I might have preferred a mechanic where you could CHOOSE which element you want to leave behind you, from the elements you have at your disposal. At first, I was stressing out over which order I picked up the guys, because I thought I'd be unable to solve the puzzles if I picked them up in the wrong order. It ended up not really mattering, but I'd still like to offer that possibility for your consideration!