Game progress 02/11/25-04/11/25

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 DS game, so I was expecting it not to work at the first try.

However, I am planning to change the sample as well, because it might be a sample problem, even though I doubt it.

GRAPHICS

I haven't done much pixel art: I mostly adjusted some things like the colours, the dimensions of the player sprites, and their positions in the background. I created an animated selector, in addition to the "?" and "!" cards.

TEXT

I finally started learning how to write text, and even though I might have to adjust what I wrote by using a smaller font, I am pretty happy with what I achieved: I managed to do the very basic things, and the logic of the code is pretty clear. On the other hand, I haven't taken a look at fonts yet.

FUTURE PLANS

This paragraph will serve as a reminder for my future tasks.
It’s still a long way from finishing the game, but I have pretty much everything planned, so it all comes down to translating those ideas into code and pixel art. And that's surely not easy.

The next things I'd like to work on are:
- improving the dice animation
- making the selector move on the board
- making the player sprites move on the board
- refining details:
            - fixing the music
            - finishing the board design
- creating a title screen
- pressing the A button opens a menu with information

There's also something else I'd like to remind myself of. Working with animation gave me an idea for the other project I am working on, which I'll refer to as "Project P".
The cards given to the opponent and the player can be animated: I could create a big sprite (128x128 pixels) and draw cards in different positions, simulating the idea of giving cards to the players.
If I could use that spritesheet 5 times, I would just have to play with the delay. The same goes for the animation of flipping a card.
The only thing I am missing is how to assign to a blank card a certain value and design (for example, the number 3 and the sign of spades for a 3 of spades card). I do have something in mind, but I fear it's not going to be visually pleasing.
Anyway, that's a problem I'll have to face in a long time, since Project P still requires much work, especially graphically.