Arduino Games .ino, .arduboy

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Sat Jul 28, 2018 10:19 pm

Hi,
would it be possible to load some arduino games made for the Arduboy?
If so, how would someone approach this task? Is there a flashable .fw to do that already?

Thanks

rooted · Post by **rooted** » Sun Jul 29, 2018 1:15 am

You can see here that porting is possible.

viewtopic.php?t=31723

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Sun Jul 29, 2018 1:48 am

You would need to compile the sketch with the odroid setting and then build the .fw from the generated .bin file.

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Sun Jul 29, 2018 2:03 am

rooted wrote:You can see here that porting is possible.
viewtopic.php?t=31723

I saw that but its rebuilt with vector graphics.
I do not believe its used straight from the .ino file itself. At least that is what he said at the bottom of the page.
I may be wrong...

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Sun Jul 29, 2018 2:05 am

mameise wrote:You would need to compile the sketch with the odroid setting and then build the .fw from the generated .bin file.

And what are the tools used to do just that?
I am not a programmer, just a 3D artist. :p, but I can learn!

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Sun Jul 29, 2018 2:10 am

Check the doom thread in general chat section. Crash explained there how to do and i successfully converted my sketch.

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Sun Jul 29, 2018 2:13 am

mameise wrote:Check the doom thread in general chat section. Crash explained there how to do and i successfully converted my sketch.

Once its converted, do you just load it the same way we load Doom or Go-Play?
Thanks for the tip.

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Sun Jul 29, 2018 2:21 am

Yes when you have the .fw file there is no difference to doom or the emulators.

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Mon Jul 30, 2018 10:53 pm

Ok and what would be the tool used to compile these .fw, because I read everything on the DOOM port topic page and there is commands and everything but nobody mentioned what tool or software they uses to create these .fw...
Thnaks

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Mon Jul 30, 2018 11:15 pm

mkfw tool from crashoverride

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Mon Jul 30, 2018 11:51 pm

mameise wrote:mkfw tool from crashoverride

Yes lol, but these are script that you need to call or run somewhere right?

mad_ady · Post by **mad_ady** » Mon Jul 30, 2018 11:58 pm

You'll need to compile mkfw first (not sure if it compiles under windows), and call it with the correct (still not officially documented) parameters

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 12:01 am

For Windows users: If you are on Win10 try the Ubuntu for Windows feature. I also use Windows on my primary device, but the Ubuntu for Windows enables all the Linux functionallity needed to compile and use the scripts and stuff.

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 12:14 am

Ah here we go, no problem I have a couple linux distro CD laying around my desk.
Thanks

mad_ady · Post by **mad_ady** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 1:14 am

How much space does linux subsystem for windows take?

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 1:32 am

Will have to check later. Not that much. About 1gb i would say but will confirm later.

Edit: yes it is around 1gb with the packages installed like ffmpeg and things needed to compile for firmware.

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:18 am

Can semeone tell me what is the pack name for FFMPEG in Ubuntu Windows?
Sudo apt-get install ffmpeg does not work.

Think I found it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/trusty-media
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get install ffmpeg

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:32 am

Just did sudo apt update and after that sudo apt install ffmpeg and worked.

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 2:58 am

Man I am tired. Why are all info's coming so slow from this community? Is there any complete and clear tutorial out there because I still have issue with:
./mkfw "Application Description" tile.raw 0 16 1048576 app build/application.bin (-bash: ./mkfw: Is a directory)

Now, I am a 3D artist, when someone need my help on some modeling, I take the time to explain correctly. The thing I do not do is give small pieces of informations and make sure he is lost... I am not pointing to anyone in here but there should be some sort of clear step-by-step guide on how to do this. These products sell themself with the mention that its open source, there is a great community, you can learn things blah blah blah. Well its not the case. The community share informations in a manner that is really really hard to understand for someone that is new to all of this. That is bad! Its sad.

Sorry, I had to say it.
Sorry for my english.

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:25 am

Well i think you mean mainly me

Reason for my short answers: I am on vacation atm and only on my mobile phone. Thats makes copy paste and stuff like that a bit complicated.

But to defend the community: Everything has been asked a lot of times and was explained more than once. So with a bit effort all information is here. I am no programmer nor an 3D artist, but i can program and also create 3D parts to print them. So it is always about what you are willing to learn and read.

But i will try to help you. What is the issue? You need to compile your arduino code and get the .bin file out of your temp folder in Windows.

Get the zip from crash with the mkfw package. Go in Ubuntu bash to the folder where it is located. ( you might have to ‚cd ..‘ twice to get out of your home folder and go to: /mnt/c/yourlocationformkfw

In that directory just type: makefile (or similar,sorry, no pc here, but there is only one file that matches) this will create or compile the mifw and you will gwt an error telling you all: not found (at least i got but still works)

After that you have the mkfw in that directory. Now just type the command ./mkfw xyz (whatwver you want) 0 16 ..... and at the end your .bin file (i copied it into the mkfw directory) this will create your .fw file.

Hope it is a bit clearer.

mameise · Post by **mameise** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:34 am

Give me an hour or so and i will try to make a better howto.

lix-alpha · Post by **lix-alpha** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:35 am

Nice but I was not talking about you mameise, just the way info circulate in this forum in general.

mad_ady · Post by **mad_ady** » Tue Jul 31, 2018 3:40 am

Firmware development is in rapid development. The current arangement is barely a week old. Documentation is not yet stable or officially written. When it settles, it will be documented

crait · Post by **crait** » Thu Jan 09, 2020 5:22 am

I _did_ port over some of my Arduboy games to the Pocket Go and BittBoy and LDK Game.

Definitely possible to make a similar wrapper and drop in the code. But, I don't have an ODROID...

millim · Post by **millim** » Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:40 pm

Dear all,

I want to connect to this topic, not starting a new thread on this.
Is there any progress on this topic? Or is time already up for the Arduboy and the Odroid GO justifying this effort?

I mean, team ARG did some great games on the Arduboy, as I know, meanwhile the team disappeared. Still the game sources are available here: https://team-arg-museum.github.io/
I have also seen that there is a port of the arduboy library available for the esp32: https://github.com/tonym128/ESP32_Arduboy
I think still the ATMlib needs to be ported, it contains the timer interrupt loop for the music oscillator written in assembler. The routine is well documented.

I mean, It would be nice to have a full Arduboy games collection running on the Odroid GO.

millim

kelbot · Post by **kelbot** » Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:16 am

I agree millim. There is a good library of games for arduboy that would be a great fit and welcome addition to have available on Odroid Go. It seems unfortunately that interest in developing for the Go is starting to wane especially now that the Advance and Super are available and the Go being discontinued. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a Go v2 happens and then maybe some new users will help push some new development.

millim · Post by **millim** » Thu Mar 25, 2021 4:15 am

kelbot wrote: ↑
Tue Mar 23, 2021 12:16 am
I agree millim. There is a good library of games for arduboy that would be a great fit and welcome addition to have available on Odroid Go. It seems unfortunately that interest in developing for the Go is starting to wane especially now that the Advance and Super are available and the Go being discontinued. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a Go v2 happens and then maybe some new users will help push some new development.

Thank you kelbot!

Maybe I will invest a couple of days to get it done. Unfortunately, the OG does not come with a simple "gaming loop" where you just need to drag and drop a new emulator. I have already a lot of experience how to do it, however, missed to pay attention to it for another project.

Still for every new emulator, the basic things need to be done from scratch:

- Audio streaming
- Color mapping
- Video streaming
- File I/O (OG)
- File I/O (emulator)
- Memory management
- Rom loading
- Preferences I/O
- User interface (GUI)
- Timing
- Event handling
- Navigation

Hopefully the OG v2 addresses this, for doing much faster, more diverse software (game) development. And hopefully it comes with a simulator (SDL2.0 or HTML based).

millim

lordhardware · Post by **lordhardware** » Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:25 pm

An arduboy interpretor would be a good middle ground though, as then you can develop for the arduino (which does have SDK and pc emulation) and deploy it on the Odroid.

millim · Post by **millim** » Sun Mar 28, 2021 4:20 am

lordhardware wrote: ↑
Sat Mar 27, 2021 9:25 pm
An arduboy interpretor would be a good middle ground though, as then you can develop for the arduino (which does have SDK and pc emulation) and deploy it on the Odroid.

Yes, good point!

Meanwhile, I have invested a some hours on that project. I was able to port the Arduboy2 lib + CastleBoy (for testing) to esp_idf already. But, still without the fancy

stuff.
I think video will be straight forward with 2x upscaling, same for keypad. Sound will be tricky, I think it needs to go through an emulation stage to get 44100 kHz samples to the speaker/Bluetooth or I2S.

Furthermore, plane to use the SDcard for configuration and snapshot (maybe - if I find a way to do that). Unfortunately, the AVR emulator is 10x times to slow on the OG for real time usage. So in case to have multiple games, all needs to be compiled at once. which adds an extra level of complexity on the *.ino setup() and loop() function handling - at least this is my view.

Let's see how far I can go before giving up...
millim

kelbot · Post by **kelbot** » Mon Mar 29, 2021 12:04 am

I'm cheering you on over here if that helps.

millim · Post by **millim** » Thu Apr 01, 2021 3:32 pm

kelbot wrote: ↑
Mon Mar 29, 2021 12:04 am
I'm cheering you on over here if that helps.

It helped ..

Spent again one/two hours on that project. Have now full ported CastleBoy (including sound emulation). On the display, I have used 2.5x3.75 scaling to fit the 128x64 pixel display to the 320x240 OG display. I could make this configurable to 1:1 2:1 for correct aspect ratio, in case it make sense to somebody? For sound, I have found a very simple solution for the ArduboyTones library to emulate the timer. Should also work for ATMlib and Beep lib.

On the multiple game selection, I am not clear, maybe you have some suggestions how to do? I think all the games use static allocation of the classes and globals, so in case multiple games are compiled into one source, I will run into memory resource issues quickly. I think it is doable for 10 to 20 games. Maybe you have suggestions which games should be preferred for the first release.

millim

lordhardware · Post by **lordhardware** » Thu Apr 01, 2021 3:44 pm

@ducalex this would likely be a lot more useful long term to people over SNES on this device, and also allow for the firmware to load user generated games natively

kelbot · Post by **kelbot** » Fri Apr 02, 2021 1:12 am

millim wrote: ↑
Thu Apr 01, 2021 3:32 pm

kelbot wrote: ↑
Mon Mar 29, 2021 12:04 am
I'm cheering you on over here if that helps.
It helped ..

Spent again one/two hours on that project. Have now full ported CastleBoy (including sound emulation). On the display, I have used 2.5x3.75 scaling to fit the 128x64 pixel display to the 320x240 OG display. I could make this configurable to 1:1 2:1 for correct aspect ratio, in case it make sense to somebody? For sound, I have found a very simple solution for the ArduboyTones library to emulate the timer. Should also work for ATMlib and Beep lib.

On the multiple game selection, I am not clear, maybe you have some suggestions how to do? I think all the games use static allocation of the classes and globals, so in case multiple games are compiled into one source, I will run into memory resource issues quickly. I think it is doable for 10 to 20 games. Maybe you have suggestions which games should be preferred for the first release.

millim

Great work! I haven't played any arduboy games yet to know which would be best to include. Maybe there is a best of list somewhere that would be a good place to start.

How hard is it to compile? Is a small cli tool that you can supply your own list of aruduboy files to feasible?

kelbot · Post by **kelbot** » Fri Apr 02, 2021 1:32 am

Here's a few that look pretty neat.

https://community.arduboy.com/t/circuit ... -tool/2490
https://community.arduboy.com/t/evade-s ... ooter/2712
https://community.arduboy.com/t/evade-2 ... t-sim/4634
https://community.arduboy.com/t/dark-st ... -game/8570
https://community.arduboy.com/t/knight- ... night/8587
https://community.arduboy.com/t/the-cra ... ormer/7413

rcarillion · Post by **rcarillion** » Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:21 am

Hi
Here are the great games on the Arduboy Fx.
https://bateske.github.io/ArduFXTest/
Erwin's Arduboy Collection
A curated list of 281 games
https://arduboy.ried.cl/

millim · Post by **millim** » Sat Apr 03, 2021 8:24 pm

rcarillion wrote: ↑
Fri Apr 02, 2021 11:21 am
Hi
Here are the great games on the Arduboy Fx.
https://bateske.github.io/ArduFXTest/
Erwin's Arduboy Collection
A curated list of 281 games
https://arduboy.ried.cl/

Thank you. Right, these are very good references, I am already aware off.

millim

millim · Post by **millim** » Sat Apr 03, 2021 8:51 pm

I worked a bit on the multi-game concept:

A.) I have started with the ATMlib, and a game using it (ARDUVENTURE) keeping it in parallel to CastleBoy in one executable. BOOM! Linker symbol collision.
B.) The problem is that a lot of games use identical file names or classes. I think to make it organized, every single game needs a unique namespace. What is in principle possible, but not worth the effort.
C.) Compile every single game stand-alone and runtime dynamic linking. No code from ESP32 IDF available. Not simple, hacking of the ELF files necessary. Otherwise it is the well known FW overwrite process of the OG when switching from one game to another.
D.) Arduino just needs setup() and loop(). There is no delete() function in the Arduino concept. Therefore, all libraries are normally static memory allocation based. Need to change the game allocation structure to dynamic (runtime heap location), and add a unload() function the game is called when switching from one to another to free up all resources.

As my conclusion, it is doable for a single game, but a collection of games within one single FW is far from trivial.

millim

millim · Post by **millim** » Fri Apr 09, 2021 4:35 am

Short Update ...

I have finalized the Arduboy multi-game concept on the OG:

.. at the moment with two games compiled into one FW file.

- Full emulation of ATMlib and ArduinoTones audio libraries.
- All games run at 60 FPS, audio at 22050 Hz, display runs at 25 FPS (might go up to 30 FPS with faster blitting routine - I think the display does not support B/W or 8 color mode data transfer).
- Games are encapsulated in unique namespaces.

I might complete if for the "Team ARG Museum" games.

I can share the code if you are interested. Still a hack, just to get an appetizer and see how it works?

millim

rcarillion · Post by **rcarillion** » Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:40 am

Wow! This is crazy how far this has come.

millim · Post by **millim** » Sun Apr 18, 2021 5:13 am

rcarillion wrote: ↑
Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:40 am
Wow! This is crazy how far this has come.

I had a bit of time to continue here. This is the status so far:

twelve games in one source. I still need to work on two basic sound libs to make it complete. Then I will share a FW file here + some more games.

millim

millim · Post by **millim** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 1:26 am

Arduboy for the Odroid GO.

Please find in here THIS LINK a firmware release of this project. It includes a list of Arduboy games. The game name and its copyright owner is listed in the Menu. All credits go to the game programmer and the Arduboy library development team. I just made it available for the Odroid GO.

After flashing the FW file and reboot, you will enter the game launch menu. You can move <up> and <down> by one or, by <left> and <right> for page up an down. By pressing <A> you can select the game you want to play. You will see “Game Loaded!” text message on the display. By pressing <M> + <B> you can leave menu to start or continue the game. With <M> + <B>, you will enter the game select menu again.

In the Menu, you can move <MENU>+ cursor pad from the Game Select Panel to the Preferences Panel forth and back. The Preferences are self explanatory.

In principle you can work without the SDCARD. But, without storing default settings or game status. In case you want to use these features, prepare two folders: "/sd/aby/eeprom" and"/sd/aby/aux". /sd” means the SDCARD mount point.

In case you find this collection of games attractive, or in case you have additional suggestions, please let me know. All in all, it was a nice project to understand the Arduboy architecture and the “how-to” of tiny hardware game programming.

In case there is more interest in this, I can open a new thread for more games to come in one package. Other than that, hopefully the next OG generation is based on a ESP processor capable to reuse all of the code.

Millim

Nemo1984 · Post by **Nemo1984** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 2:57 am

Unfortunately, it doesn't save the game in Arduventure.

Hensch · Post by **Hensch** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:02 am

Thanks Millim for your effort. I'm testing it right now and wanted to create the folders as you suggested. Unfortunately on Windows one cannot name a folder "aux". Can this be changed in the source code?

millim · Post by **millim** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:31 am

Nemo1984 wrote: ↑
Wed Apr 21, 2021 2:57 am
Unfortunately, it doesn't save the game in Arduventure.

oh, I forgot to mention this. Unfortunately the SDcard writing process is very slow (at least the experience with my device), so that in-game update of the EEPROM data is not possible without messing up the game-to-hardware synchronization. I decided to do it that way: When a new game is selected in the menu, the previous game EEPROM will be "flashed" to the SDcard. So you need to to that to save the game in Arduventure for example.

I might think about adding a entry in the preferences menu to be more specific. So by clicking it, the game EEPROM will be stored.

millim

millim · Post by **millim** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:34 am

Hensch wrote: ↑
Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:02 am
Thanks Millim for your effort. I'm testing it right now and wanted to create the folders as you suggested. Unfortunately on Windows one cannot name a folder "aux". Can this be changed in the source code?

Really?! I am not using Windows. Sorry for that. Will rename it to "ini" if this works out for you?
...then I will update the firmware and repost.

millim

ODTxF · Post by **ODTxF** » Wed Apr 21, 2021 3:37 am

millim wrote: ↑
Fri Apr 09, 2021 4:35 am

I can share the code if you are interested. Still a hack, just to get an appetizer and see how it works?

Hello, your .fw works for me (just tested hopper and squario). Please, can you share your code to see how it works?

Suggetions for games to add in your .fw:

Circuit Dude https://community.arduboy.com/t/circuit ... -tool/2490
FlappyBirdie https://github.com/GameExpress/FlappyBirdie
MicroCity https://github.com/jhhoward/MicroCity
Shadow Runner https://github.com/Team-ARG-Museum/ID-15-Shadow-Runner
Logix https://community.arduboy.com/t/logix-game-jam-3/5691

Could you add an option to disable the "battery %" pop up in game?