ADVANCE_LAB_00

  A lot of people actually make fun of me for using Linux, since "it's too much work" or "things don't work". I love Linux, and I would never switch back. I am definitely a big Linux fan, and other fans should also address, as I am now, that sometimes it’s true that not everything works. Usually, those things are pretty specific, and there's an alternative to almost any kind of app or service. I myself prefer using certain services at times; also, Windows app compatibility isn't missing either. However, this is the story between Linux and me: my journey and why I love it. I first installed Linux when I was about 16 years old (probably 2016-2017). I had a quite old and almost unusable notebook in my room, and I decided to try Linux on it. I remember choosing between Ubuntu and Linux Mint, unfamiliar with the rolling release model. In the end, I chose Linux Mint because it was the most up-to-date. Once I installed the OS, I was amazed at how a sluggi...

Today I worked a bit more on my Asuka sprite. I am not good at pixel art (or any art), but I am trying to learn. I should be way more serious about this: I barely watch any tutorials, and I often end up copying existing pixel art. However, this time I couldn't find a good Asuka pixel art, so I downloaded an image, uploaded it to a website that converts pics into pixel art, and tried to learn from the newly generated pics. Those pics were 128x128 pixels, which means they wouldn't be suitable for the GBA (unless I uploaded them as a background, I suppose). But since I was mostly copying, I felt like I was passively learning rather than actively creating. Still, every step counts. I feel somewhat incompetent; I couldn’t have figured this out on my own. When it comes to art, one of my main issues is proportions, and pixel art can sometimes help with that (thanks to pixels). However, especially when you have limited pixels, it’s hard to manage the available space and highlight the...

In the last three days, I’ve made very good progress on one of the games I have been working on, and I learned many new things. ANIMATION I learned the basics of animation in Butano and managed to create dice rolling, though currently they're just cubes without numbers on their faces. Overall, the animation is quite there, but it’s still not perfect. The problem in this case is not on the coding side, but rather the pixel art: I find it really hard to think about what to draw to make an object move, and then also to choose the correct frame order to make the animation. What I used was this spritesheet: I think Butano made animations pretty easy, and I feel like I’ve got the very basics covered. MUSIC I worked on the music as well, but it still doesn’t play properly. I think the issue could be that there are 14 channels, which is a big number for the GBA, even if I read that the console can support up to 16 channels. The song I am using isn’t even from a GBA game, but from a ...

Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog! I am ADVANCE_LAB_00 (pronounced “advance lab zero”, as a reference to Evangelion Unit-00), and this blog represents the launch of a project that I hope to keep alive and see growing in the next years. I am a 25-year-old from Italy. My English is not perfect, but I love languages, music, and many other things. One of my biggest passions is gaming: I started playing when I was 7, and despite not having really played many games, it became one of my favourite hobbies. The series I have played the most, and in which I feel more confident and competent, is Pokémon. My first game was Pokémon Diamond, and since 2008, if not for a short period, I have never stopped playing Pokémon games. The focus of the “ADVANCE_LAB_00” project is, however, not just connected to my passion for Pokémon (which began to fade after the last few games), but in general to the Game Boy Advance world. Despite not being my very first console, I grew fond of the GBA SP hardware a...