PlantBoy by siObyte

[raw]
made by siObyte for LD34 (COMPO)
-- PlantBoy --
The goal of the game is to harvest crops, but for your crops to grow you need water! And planet-rabbit-land, there is no water! So you must kill rabbits, harvest their blood, and use it to water your crops!

You will need either a Gameboy emulator, or a flash cart to play this, this is a *REAL* Gameboy DMG game!

-- Controls --
D-Pad - Move
A - Shoot
B - Water Crops

-- More details --
PlantBoy was a challenge, the goal was never to win, or even do well! I set out in the hopes of creating a simple, functioning *real* Gameboy game, written fully in z80 assembly in 48 hours.

Having about only a weeks experience in z80 assembly, and only little knowledge of assembly in general this was a big challenge. I'm happy with how far I got though, I plan to refine the code a little in the next few days.

Oh, and if anyone actually does play this on a physical Gameboy, and not an emulator, please record a video of it and show me! I've only been able to test this on emulators myself.

-*NOTICE*-
If you don't want to download an emulator, you can download the .gb file and play it on this website (It's a Gameboy emulator in flash!)

http://nesbox.com/emulator/flash/

Ratings

Coolness 73% 3
Overall 3.50 278
Audio 2.74 427
Fun 2.82 709
Graphics 3.47 289
Humor 2.59 379
Innovation 3.72 155
Mood 3.28 276
Theme 3.51 662

Feedback

SketchyGalore
14. Dec 2015 · 05:02 UTC
Awesome achievement! I imagine programming in that format couldn't be easy! I had to emulate it of course, but it would have been neat to try it on an actual GB!
utoxin
14. Dec 2015 · 05:08 UTC
Sorry, can't run it (no emulator or GB), but it sounds really neat.
mrjorts
14. Dec 2015 · 05:11 UTC
Wow! Very cool to see a game boy game. It plays well, but it doesn't seem to get harder as it goes. I'm a little worried about why the plant needs to be watered with blood D:
danbolt
14. Dec 2015 · 05:16 UTC
I ran with OpenEmu on Mac OS X. If I had a DMG flashcart, I'd be on this in a second and changing the pallettes on my GBC.

How did you find assembly programming on the Game Boy? I've looked into C assemblers for it but I've never been so brave.
mackthehobbit
14. Dec 2015 · 05:21 UTC
Glad to see how this turned out! It's not really fun to play, but it's awesome that you got something functional writing just assembly. Great job!
xdigdoug
14. Dec 2015 · 05:23 UTC
This is a gameboy game. I was able to run this on a GBA emulator. Very interesting them, a little short though, only one level, but I don't know the details of programming for Game Boy.

Overall, a pretty decent game. For your next game, maybe make it so that you can collect more than 1 resource at a time (can only hold one blood)!
yumaikas
14. Dec 2015 · 05:46 UTC
This is definitely worth taking a little look, if only to see what it 48 hours of work on a GB game looks like.
Bemmu
14. Dec 2015 · 05:59 UTC
I'm really impressed you pulled off making anything playable on this platform in the allotted time.

Points for sound just because there are some! I liked the little gun bounce as you walk around.

As for the game, I wasn't exactly sure what to do. I guess collect blood, then grow that center thing and get crops. I got up to 6 crop before figuring out that probably nothing else would happen.
Bobrocket
14. Dec 2015 · 06:41 UTC
Awesome game! It would have been awesome to see how this plays on a real gameboy though.
prymidion
14. Dec 2015 · 11:13 UTC
Damn, it's pretty cool that you're capable of doing something like this in two days!
🎤 siObyte
14. Dec 2015 · 15:33 UTC
Here's a video of it playing on a real Gameboy DMG, thanks to /u/gpremier on reddit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA5JopDTlc0
refreshgames
14. Dec 2015 · 16:32 UTC
Whoa! You did this in raw assembly! That is crazy awesome! I only delve as far down to GBDK and C. So, that must have been quite an effort! Once my replacement Flash Cart arrives I'll be putting this on there pretty sharpish!

Look forward to any further developments on this in the future. Damn, ASM jamming, that's nuts, crazy cool nuts :D
martincohen
14. Dec 2015 · 16:44 UTC
Ran in on my GCW Zero. I had fun playing it. Amazing you did it in Z80. I bow to you, good sir.
George
14. Dec 2015 · 18:24 UTC
Nice work on getting this working - I couldn't stand doing that much Assembly!
rogberth
14. Dec 2015 · 18:27 UTC
Coding a game in z80 assembly for Game Boy. Now that is hard work! Congrats!
GeeItSomeLaldy
14. Dec 2015 · 18:36 UTC
Web version links to the download page, no web version there
🎤 siObyte
14. Dec 2015 · 18:46 UTC
@GeeItSomeLaldy

There is no "web" version as it's a Gameboy rom file, you either need to run it through a emulator, a real Gameboy (using a flash cart), or you can use the online-flash based Gameboy emulator I have linked at the bottom of the description if you don't want to download one yourself. (You still need to download the rom file, to use it on the flash-emulator page)
nonetheless
14. Dec 2015 · 19:26 UTC
Really impressed, game is super pretty, great you did it with such constraints. Amazing entry!!!
tayl1r
14. Dec 2015 · 20:14 UTC
Dark
mlepage
15. Dec 2015 · 00:13 UTC
Nice! I played it in the online emulator and it worked OK, I harvested 5 crops.
fluidvolt
15. Dec 2015 · 00:22 UTC
Holy smokes are you ambitious. Assembly! Week's experience! How?

Even though this is super simple, it's really astounding you completed a gameboy game in 2 days. I enjoy the simple graphics, they look really clean and sleek, especially considering the gameboy restrictions. Good job.
🎤 siObyte
15. Dec 2015 · 00:44 UTC
Thanks! It was definitely a big challenge, I tried to learn as much as I could the 5 days leading up to LD, and in the end I still had to learn things mid-LD. Like the rabbits, I had no clue how I was going to implement an arbitrary number of rabbits in assembly, but I got it figured out in the end!

The full source is up on github, though some things I could have done much better (I should really refine the collision code into a few nice sub-routines, that I can use for any collision), and github seem's to have bugged the indenting a bit, I should fix that to..
drludos
15. Dec 2015 · 00:52 UTC
A gameboy game in 48h? in assembly? Impressive! (it's the 2nd GB game I play during this LD, I guess GameBoy is the new cool, beware Unity! ;))

The game is also quite fun to play. Simple idea but effective, and I like the graphics! Well done!
NuvlearGames
15. Dec 2015 · 09:25 UTC
Very nice, took awhile to figure out the controls, but very good considering the constraints. Well done
josefnpat
15. Dec 2015 · 17:28 UTC
Wow, this is one hell of an achievement! Really awesome job! This totally makes me want to make a z80 game now, wow!
lurils
15. Dec 2015 · 20:13 UTC
simple but nice, congratulations on making it work perfectly.
Weloxux
16. Dec 2015 · 10:56 UTC
Really cool stuff! Loving the graphics, and most of all, the effort of doing it in asm. My score seems to disappear after 10 points, sadly.
🎤 siObyte
16. Dec 2015 · 12:00 UTC
@Weloxux lol, yeah..I didn't get time to properly implement a numbering system with tiles, if you get a score above like, 255. Then the score tile will start going through the rest of the game tiles :p
local306
16. Dec 2015 · 16:34 UTC
Wow! That's super cool how this was built!
g12345
17. Dec 2015 · 12:17 UTC
Quite an achievement for doing a GB game in 2 days, in assembly! Well done!
OldPeculier
18. Dec 2015 · 05:12 UTC
Major ratings for the technical achievement. Yeah... not so great ratings for the gameplay. But Hey!—Z80 assembly! Wow!
randomhuman
20. Dec 2015 · 15:28 UTC
Not much to the gameplay, but I definitely respect the ambition and graft required to put something together in assembly for retro hardware! And it looks good as well, with cute little animations.
scorched
20. Dec 2015 · 19:21 UTC
You are the champion of making people click to play the game (itch.io + emulator) :-) Looks fine, but I don't get how to press A and B in that emulator (I don't have a working gamepad)...
🎤 siObyte
21. Dec 2015 · 06:18 UTC
The controls on that web emulator appear to be the standard Z and X for A and B. :)
brainstorm
22. Dec 2015 · 18:32 UTC
Woah, that's amazing. Porting a game to a Game Boy is really good! Though the gameplay itself it's quite simple and repetitive, what I really vote in this game is that you've a great achievement!

4/5
kmakai
26. Dec 2015 · 19:35 UTC
Wow, this is awesome! Congrats on completing this and submitting to the compo, that really is an achievement. I'm looking forward to perusing the source, too. I really like the graphics, this would have been a nice look even if it weren't restricted to the Gameboy hardware!

My only suggestion/critique is that the counter for "blood" makes it seem like you could collect more than one at a time, which was slightly confusing at first, but overall not a big deal at all.

Really, awesome job. Congratulations on the accomplishment!