BlocklyVN32X - A visual tool for making visual novels for the Sega 32X

[haroldoop]

Hi,

 

I have been playing with this a bit now. There is a rough 1st version of the Lynx code created. Here is a small screenshot (not related to the "Always winter, never Christmas"-visual novel).

The font is written for this application. It mimics Arial and it can automatically format the Say statement with the talker.

 

The graphics is just 16 colours at 160 x 102 pixels. Not as nice as for a modern console but ok. Here I use only 6 colours in this Star Wars inspired picture.

 

 

Spr.data = youaremyonlyhope;
tgi_sprite(&Spr);
say("Girl", "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.");

Screenshot from 2017-11-06 12-39-53.png

 

Or the small intro from the real novel.

Spr.data = wishingwell;
tgi_sprite(&Spr);
say("", "My mom would always give me a cent or two to throw into the water fountains near Stockmann's Christmas display.");

Screenshot from 2017-11-06 13-04-57.png

 

My experimental target will be maintained here: https://bitbucket.org/karri/alwayswinter/src in case someone would like to support other cc65 targets.

 

There will be scripts in blockly that generate this target source tree. The actual cart binary is created by giving the command "make" in the top level.

 

Congratulations, that looks pretty cool so far!

 

Any chance for a plain old sega genesis version? Last time I tried GINCs it was really unstable.

Well, the IDE just generates C code and then invokes a Makefile to compile it, so it would be mostly a matter of:

• Porting the support C libraries for the target hardware;
• Setting up a few command line image conversion utilities to convert the PNG images to a format that can be used on the target hardware;
• Creating a Makefile that will call the image conversion tools and compile the C file.

Also, it the compilation requires the generation of some source files besides the C file that is already generated, Blockly's API also makes it relatively easy to do so.

Essentially, it shouldn't be incredibly difficult to coerce the tool to output binaries for other platforms, as long as the hardware is sufficiently capable, and there is a C compiler available.

Edited November 6, 2017 by haroldoop

[Smoke Monster]

This is a great tool, haroldoop. I played around with it a bit tonight to see how it works.

SmokeMonster Afterlife RPG (PD) v4 SmokeMonster, BlocklyVN32X.zip

Edited November 8, 2017 by Smoke Monster

[haroldoop]

This is a great tool, haroldoop. I played around with it a bit tonight to see how it works.

Thanks! That game has a pretty interesting concept, not to mention a quirky sense of humor.

[haroldoop]

Version 0.10.1 is now available:

• Product name string on the ROM header changed to "Powered by BlocklyVN32X";
• Generated ROM will be automatically padded to 256KB, 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 3MB or 4MB (that is, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24 or 32 mbits).

Release page: https://github.com/haroldo-ok/BlocklyVN32X/releases/tag/v0.10.1

Portable version: https://github.com/haroldo-ok/BlocklyVN32X/releases/download/v0.10.1/blocklyvn32x-portable-0.10.1.exe

[+karri]

I have been a bit away from the forums while working on my novel.

 

Most things in Blockly have been nice. And perhaps even enough for an interactive novel. However, there are times when I went back and created part of the game using C-code. So the complete novel is not in Blockly right now.

 

If time permits I will try to implement the missing functions in Blockly too in order to release the novel by Xmas on Sega too.

 

One crucial question is audio. Is there some supported music format that would work for Sega 32X? mp3, midi, abc notation?

[haroldoop]

I have been a bit away from the forums while working on my novel.

 

Most things in Blockly have been nice. And perhaps even enough for an interactive novel. However, there are times when I went back and created part of the game using C-code. So the complete novel is not in Blockly right now.

 

If time permits I will try to implement the missing functions in Blockly too in order to release the novel by Xmas on Sega too.

Great job so far! It seems to be a pretty cool project.

 

One crucial question is audio. Is there some supported music format that would work for Sega 32X? mp3, midi, abc notation?

Yes, there are native players for both Ogg and XM formats, though I haven't been able to experiment with them yet.

 

Also, there are quite a few sound players for the Sega Genesis; in theory, some of them should work on the 32X, too, though it would be necessary to implement a communication layer so the SH1 CPUs could ask the 68K CPU to play the music.

 

As for ABC music, one possibility would be to use some MML Compiler, since MML syntax is very similar to ABC.

Edited November 27, 2017 by haroldoop