50 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
2.3 KiB
Markdown
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---
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title: "Mara: Sh0rk of Justice: Version 1.0.0 Released"
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date: 2020-12-28
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tags:
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- gameboy
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- gbstudio
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- indiedev
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---
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Over the long weekend I found out about a program called [GB Studio](https://www.gbstudio.dev).
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It's a simple drag-and-drop interface that you can use to make homebrew games for the
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[Nintendo Game Boy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Boy). I was intrigued and I had
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some time, so I set out to make a little top-down adventure game. After a few days of
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tinkering I came up with an idea and created Mara: Sh0rk of Justice.
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[You made a game about me? :D](conversation://Mara/hacker)
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> Guide Mara through the spooky dungeon in order to find all of its secrets. Seek out
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> the secrets of the spooks! Defeat the evil mage! Solve the puzzles! Find the items
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> of power! It's up you to save us all, Mara!
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You can play it in an `<iframe>` on itch.io!
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<iframe frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/866982?dark=true" width="552" height="167"><a href="https://withinstudios.itch.io/mara-sh0rk-justice">Mara: Sh0rk of Justice by Within</a></iframe>
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## Things I Learned
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Game development is hard. Even with tools that help you do it, there's a limit to how
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much you can get done at once. Everything links together. You really need to test
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things both in isolation and as a cohesive whole.
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I cannot compose music to save my life. I used free-to-use music assets from the
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[GB Studio Community Assets](https://github.com/DeerTears/GB-Studio-Community-Assets)
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pack to make this game. I think I managed to get everything acceptable.
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GB Studio is rather inflexible. It feels like it's there to really help you get
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started from a template. Even though you can make the whole game from inside GB
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Studio, I probably should have ejected the engine to source code so I could
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customize some things like the jump button being weird in platforming sections.
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Pixel art is an art of its own. I used a lot of free to use assets from itch.io for
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the tileset and a few NPC's. The rest was created myself using
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[Aseprite](https://www.aseprite.org). Getting Mara's walking animation to a point
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that I thought was acceptable was a chore. I found a nice compromise though.
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---
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Overall I'm happy with the result as a whole. Try it out, see how you like it and
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please do let me know what I can improve on for the future.
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