@retrodotcards.com
he/him Making new games for the Nintendo GBA E-Reader and the GBA proper. If you support Trump, JK Rowling, AI, or anything like that, please do not follow me. https://retrodotcards.com email matt@retrodotcards.com
A screenshot of Pixel Pup for the Game Boy Advance. This is again nineties pack gameplay. And again it is the Mac OS classic them. But this time, the main nonogram app window is a proper Mac window instead of a Windows 95 style window.
Order has been restored.
It's been so long I forgot what the widget in the lower left corner is called. That's the control strip. I miss classic Macs :)
A screenshot of Pixel Pup, playing the Nineties puzzle pack. It shows Franny the dog sitting at a computer with a classic Mac OS desktop. The puzzle is being played in a Windows 95 style window.
I'm sorry everyone. I managed to cross the streams.
"I haven’t played this in forever…"
That's better than me, I completely forgot it even exists.
A screenshot of Pixel Pup for the Game Boy Advance. It shows a nonogram puzzle embedded in an old style hutch, a piece of furniture that typically holds dishes, books, etc.
The DIY puzzle pack is starting to come along as well, featuring a killer hutch made by @objetdiscret.itch.io
The final version will not just have the hutch sitting in a void :) #wip
Pixel Pup is a nonogram (aka picross) game coming out for the #GameBoyAdvance
#screenshotsaturday #indiedev
I got to look at reference photos of dogs in scuba gear while I was working on this sprite! I never got to do that kind of stuff at my old job. 😄 🐶 🤿
(This is not an accurate depiction of dog scuba gear, lol. 😆)
The main collection menu in Pixel Pup for the Game Boy Advance. It shows on the left side various puzzle collections to choose from. The puzzle pack "taiyaki fab B" is focused, and Franny the dog is floating the left in scuba gear.
@objetdiscret.itch.io's Franny in scuba gear cracks me up :)
Thanks for the video @mrmegamanfan.bsky.social
A good watch if you enjoy read errors :)
He had some pretty good luck with these. The small handful of sets I've given out were taken from the best cards I could find, scannability wise. Of the hundreds I tested, only a few made the cut.
I put up another batch of Analogue Pocket e-Reader extenders. Will start shipping in the next couple of days.
ko-fi.com/s/285cf729a2
Awesome, I was on the search for just such a tool. Thanks!
Yeah, that's an option we'll definitely look into.
The gradient as seen on a modern device with (at least) 24 bit color. The higher bit depth means there are more blues available, allowing the gradient to be nice and smooth.
The gradient as it looks running on the GBA. Since the GBA only has 15 bit color, there aren't as many blues available. So due to that, the gradient ended up with bands in it due to having to settle for not quite the right blues throughout the gradient.
We're working on an under sea scene for Pixel Pup. So we wanted a blue gradient for the water.
After I finally got my background palette ducks in a row, the gradient loaded in the game. Where I remembered, oh yeah, the GBA only has 15 bit color! So on the GBA the gradient has bands in it. Doh :-/
Neo Geo games did this. It worked decently well on CRTs, but almost always fails on modern displays. It also fails on many YouTube videos, probably because they were recorded at 30fps. MAME sees the flickering and just replaces it with a transparency which is nice.
The puzzle collection menu on the GBA version of Pixel Pup. There is a menu made out of "blades" on the right side with these entries: entomology, diy, fantasy, the nineties, taiyaki fab. The background is a pattern of treasure chests. The treasure chests show through the blade menu due to the GBA's blending ability.
The GBA allows for simple alpha blending between layers. Here I'm using it to let the treasure chests peak through the circular backdrop.
We think blending like this is doable on the e-reader too, as i has functions for it. But at least for me, I've not been able to get them working just yet.
huh, I never made the Joust connection. But that makes sense. I guess due to Balloon Fight I assumed they already used up their Joust inspiration.
I'm starting to research buying my own printer. Not sure how realistic this is but if I find one that would fit the needs it would change everything
That's how I print them at home. And how I would print them again on the printer I used to make the solitaire cards if I had access to one.
But for these giant presses, it's probably easier to configure it to just print black when the image calls for black.
That's kind of it though, I didn't have a pipeline. I just gave the printer my PDFs and they printed them. I now realize I got really lucky with series one. Both a blessing and curse.
I'm going to try and find a printer where I can have more say and hopefully have control over these details.
I form the dot strips as svg circles so I can control how much gap is between them. That has been helpful in controlling this.
But the real problem here is I just don't have the control. I hand the files off and hope for the best. If I can find a printer willing to work with me, that would be huge.
An e-reader card under a microscope. This is a series one card. it has hazy dots formed of pure black toner. Despite the haziness, this card scans into an e-reader like a champ.
An e-reader card under a microscope. This one has solid, entirely black dots. But even though it looks like this should scan well, it doesn't.
And while we're looking at dots under a microscope...
The left one is a series one card, which scan extremely well. They were made on a Kodak press. The right image is a pixel pup beta card (which scans very poorly), made on that same Kodak press with as far as we know, everything identical 🤷
An e-reader card under the microscope. It shows the dots being made out of black, blue, yellow and magenta ink.
A different e-reader card under the microscope. This time the dots are made entirely out of black ink.
Th left image is from a print run (on a different printer) where I accidentally provided a full cmyk image instead of 1-bit. And yup, these cards did not scan. The right is after I corrected the image.
Yeah I suspected this too. I had similar issues with my solitaire cards and found the easiest solution was to use a 1-bit black and white image.
No one cares about how a printing press works at this level of detail, except for e-reader devs :)
So it's unfair (and maybe even impossible) to expect the print shop to be able to maintain this much control over the print.
Maybe some day I'll have a printing press of my own? 😍
I talked with the printer about this and they have no idea what caused the difference. And that's kind of the crux of this whole thing, each print run is a roll of the dice on what you'll get.
In the video I talk about how the test cards we made scanned fine. Then the pixel pup cards, made on the same press, did not.
The first image is a test card under a microscope. And it has very solid black dots, minimal color. The other picture is pixel pup, with multi colored dots.
Off topic reply: I watched your Red Earth video and it was great! I didn't know you have a channel, it looks like lots of good stuff to check out.
Here is a little demo and some explanation/pondering on what happened with Pixel Pup on the e-reader.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnrS...
Here is a little demo and some explanation/pondering on what happened with Pixel Pup on the e-reader.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnrS...
For more information, use AOL keyword "pixelpup"
Pixel Pup is a nonogram (aka picross) game for the Game Boy Advance being developed by myself and @objetdiscret.itch.io
This BSOD will be an Easter egg in the game :)