[SHOW & DISC] from pixelboy to peopleboy

peopleboy ~games by and for the people~

some of you may remember my old "pixelboy" adventure: retro gaming in a gameboy-like console, showing 5 different colors in a little screen...

i started to work on the game "meteor busters" from quite some time now as free project, and today the game is finally finished (minimum 20 minutes of gameplay to finish it, though the difficulty level is really... difficult, so you'll probably need way more, knowing that you can also unlock many things at the end) > you can have a few additional infos here, though it's still almost empty atm (you can listen to its original soundtrack though). note that the game is still not online yet, i'm waiting for some beta tests feedbacks.

anyway, back to peopleboy.
the peopleboy will allow you to play not 1 but many games... actually it looks like this:

1) that button will start and/or reset the peopleboy (no need to refresh your browser to launch another game)
2) here's the main navigation so far (for example in the "profile" folder, you can insert your pseudo, it is used to save your hi-scores directly)
3) an example of what you can do with that navigation, like adjusting the brightness
4) the "games" folder lists every available game
5) before launching the game, you can display some infos about it or configure it
6) here's "meteor busters" in action

1) http://www.dot-invasion.com/___misc/FK_PB1.jpg 2) http://www.dot-invasion.com/___misc/FK_PB2.jpg

3) http://www.dot-invasion.com/___misc/FK_PB3.jpg 4) http://www.dot-invasion.com/___misc/FK_PB4.jpg

5) http://www.dot-invasion.com/___misc/FK_PB5.jpg 6) http://www.dot-invasion.com/___misc/FK_PB6.jpg

i've seen some great stuffs around here (game marathons, game contests, warioware etc), and i thought that maybe i could configure "peopleboy" to allow any of you to submit your games in peopleboy format... that's what i did. "peopleboy" is then configured to accept your games and is online hi-scores compatible. of course there'll be several rules to follow code-wise and art-wise (including some built-in functions and pointers to use, i'm planning to release a proper document), but i think the idea is interesting? no need to have an impressive RPG or anything, a simple pong or arkanoid is ok... of course original games are welcome too ;)


now to the real point of that post

what do you think about the whole project? would you be interested in creating or converting your existing game that way? feedbacks are welcome... of course this is a non-profit adventure (so far?)...

First of all: YEAH, I REMEMBER IT!!! KEWL STUFF!

I really dig the style, and now you've almost made a whole OS out of it! Amazing :)

I think it's a great idea! I miss those old 24 hour game comps you guys used to throw :D

I hope some of the great developers around here have the time and the will to support the project :D

Good luck with it!

I think that that would actually be really neat. And depending on how its put together I may be willing to try my hand at a few peopleboy games ;) Looks great so far, I like the idea :thumbsup:

awesome idea. I will try and make something for it, dont know if i will have time though :(
Hope it gets a good response

Ali

absaoloutley lovely stuff marmotte, as usual, and if I wasn't completly snowed under with game work, I would love to make something for it. Maybe I will when I get this current project outta the way, got quite a few nice simple games that could convery quite easily...

chris

Look great, hope to see some cool games on it too. Keep it up.

phreax
don't be fooled by the images, it's far from being like an OS... i tried to have drag'n'drop icons and a double-click feature to open the folders, but it was too much for what it is supposed to do (play games). so well, let's say it's a very simple OS so far ;)
btw i converted some movies in pixelboy/peopleboy format, that's awesome! unfortunately its way too heavy, unless i compress the video, but it will not display in 5 colors anymore, heh heh

I hope some of the great developers around here have the time and the will to support the project
what about you then? :p
i thought about having groups of people, because some have art skills and others have code skills. in that case 2 people might collaborate to create something. this is an idea...

chuckury
sounds good ^_^

alillm
yes, i hope you'll find the time to do something one day with it too

chriserrorplain
weeeheee

hooligan2001
thanks ;)

Not a bad idea at all. Iam quite busy right now, but I'll keep an eye out on this to see how it goes and maybe I can contribute some of simple small games.

EDIT:
BTW, won't it be great if the rules for making the games also included a color rule, where people can only use the gray scale colors? (or maybe Iam just too oldskool gameboyed)

Nice idea babe.

Wonder how much effort it would be to shrink my JBJ Milk-it mix down a pixel or two... Hmmmm.

So the "holder" will have it's own api that the games will call, and the holder will just load the swfs in as and when ?

Could be very very cool if you get some good content, and hopefully the processor hit from running it within the holder won't even be an issue due to the really small screen size / image bitdepth.

You going to post up a template and some of the api stuff then cheeky ? :)

Squize.

hehehe... I made one of these ages ago! Only had Pong, Tetris and Snake in it though :)

Cool project... I found the biggest problem in my games was _root.

I'd created each swf with its own calls to _root. which doesn't work when you're loading games in via levels! So just to warn you all :)

Ever since, I've never used _root. only _parent. and _this... :)

its generally a good idea not to use _root and _parent if not absolutely needed but (what many don´t know),flash7 introduced this nice thingy:
_lockroot

its value is boolean,so either true or false.

_lockroot specifies to what _root refers. so if you set its value to true all calls to _root in a loaded in swf will refer to the _root timeline of the loaded in swf and not to its containers _root.
very handy little addition which will surely help you a great deal for projects like this and others where you load in other swfs :)

On the project itself,cool idea motto,though sadly i have no time for it in the next weeks.

Very interesting project. Would that mean any game that would be played on peopleboy would have to be pixel-based? By that, I mean that graphics style?

One other question, what is the resoultion the games have to be?

Looks awesome as always.

oh,to give feedback on the look of the console,overall it looks very nice,i don´t like the outer rounded frame of the screen,it feels strangely blurred on the round edge which i don´t like (not because it looks bad but because its all about the stylish pixel art look,no? )
i also liked the name pixelboy way more than people boy.
generally just nitpicking though,nice idea for a project and graphically a strong start =)

thanks for the inputs so far, apparently it seems that we'll have some games there ^_^

ok, here's a little start regarding the limitations i have in mind so far
(of course the list will expand until the release a final document and an example.fla)

> size: 192 x 160 pixels
> framerate: it's set to 60fps
> possible colors: 5 colors:
#FFFFCC
#CCCC99
#999966
#666633
#333300
> how to achieve 5 colors:
1) do your game in pixel art directly
2) open our final image in imageReady for example, and scale the color down to 5 (selecting the colors above of course)
^ it's also possible that you give me your final images for the conversion
> no loader, but 1st frame empty: no need to draw or create a loading bar, peopleboy does it for you. you'll need an empty 1st frame though. when your game is totally loaded, it goes to frame 2) (that's where you can put your title screen, intro, logo etc)
> buttons used: you can use 7 buttons maximum:
up, down, left, right, A, B, start
> no mouse: the games aren't supposed to be mouse compatible (this is something to discuss of course)

code-wise, you'll be able to use some pointers from the _root (the _root = the peopleboy, as tomsamson said, your game's _root will not be _root anymore when it will be loaded in the peopleboy). for example, there's a pointer for the keys... so instead of writing Key.isDown(Key.LEFT), you'll have to write something like Key.isDown(_root.keyL)... this is important, because the user will be able to change the key configuration from the peopleboy (so every game has the same buttons used).

also i'm planning to write custom functions that you may use, for example a function that shakes the entire window (used a lot in "meteor busters")... something like _root.shake_window(3,10) (where 3 = how much does it shake, and 10 = how long). if you have ideas of interesting functions, tell me...

we'll also have to talk about the sounds, because they sound very 8-bits, PLUS i applied a headphone-like filter. maybe the peopleboy will hold a collection of basic sounds (jump, attack, explosion etc) that you'll be able to call from your game, but this is something to be decided...

so far the hi-scores saves your pseudo (max. 8 slots) and a score value. the same pseudo can be only used once in the hi-score list, so we will not end up with a guy called "****Ninja69" written everywhere *cough* :p

that's it so far...

Quote:

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i don´t like the outer rounded frame of the screen,it feels strangely blurred on the round edge which i don´t like

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actually the pixels are only displayed in the screen, the peopleboy/pixelboy itself looks like a real image, with reflections on the scren ;)

Quote:

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i also liked the name pixelboy way more than people boy

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yes, me too :(
but i think that the whole "peopleboy, games by and for the people" sounds good. though i like "pixelboy" way more too. maybe in 1 or 2 years, i'll do a PSPixel, with colors this time :D

Its like mind reading, exactly the things I was thinking, the colors, the control scheme and everything.

Unfortunatly, I have to move to another city so these few weeks will be very busy for me, but Iam loving the idea of the 8-bit sounds which can be reusable. I'd love to hear the same *thud* sound in different games.

My concern overall in this would have to be the fps, I have never made a game more than 31 fps

Great stuff, would love to download the template asap :)

"maybe the peopleboy will hold a collection of basic sounds"
I think that would really make it Marmotte. If the games all feel like they really are using the same sound chip, I think the user would bve really convinced that what they are playing with is more than just a frame around some games. Think it would also be nice if in very special places, some degraded digitised sound was used. If I remember correctly the first Simpsons game on Gameboy had one bit of bart's speech at the start of the game which wasnt' _exactly_ CD quality :)

Oh, I forgot to ask, will this be Flash 8 compatible?

Sounds great... the only problem I have is the no mouse rule... You could do some cool NDS pen type thing in a game... :)

Maybe you could setup a default.fla with the calls to the sound engine, and any other bits and bobs you want to put in there (maybe a preloader) :)

That looks great, can't wait to see more games for it:)

one question - what will buttons A & B actualy be on a keyboard? Somthing like a and s?

Yeah, the screens say it all. Can't wait to try it out and get some ideas. Nice work as always.

I'm not familiar with Flash business on the web, but do you do this for a living (these game projects)? You work with a development team right? I was just wondering because by the looks of your site, you are definitely a professional as opposed to an amateur like some of us here. Sorry if I sound too nosy, but I just wanted to know how all these Flash development teams are established.