Strategy Guides – Knox Game Design, August 2021

August 18, 2021Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

A look back at strategy guides for 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and 16-bit Super Nintendo games.

How to Win at Super Mario Bros
The Official Nintendo Player’s Guide
Dragon Warrior Strategy Guide
Super Mario Bros 2 Inside Out
The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past Player’s Guide
4-Player Extra Strategy Guide
Ninja Gaiden II Strategy Guide
Final Fantasy Strategy Guide
Super Mario Bros 3 Strategy Guide
Top Secret Passwords Player’s Guide
Game Boy Player’s Guide
Game Player’s Strategy Guide to Nintendo Games
Nintendo Strategies / more Strategies for Nintendo Games
NES Game Atlas
Super NES Player’s Guide

Links and Notes

Nintendo Power scans at Internet Archive – https://archive.org/details/NintendoPower1988-2004/Nintendo%20Power%20Issue%20017%20%28October%201990%29
Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Knox Game Design

Strategy Guides - Knox Game Design, August 2021

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Adding Sound Effects to Your Game – Knox Game Design, July 2021

July 22, 2021Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

Demonstration of how to play a sound effect in various game development environments. This presentation covers Unity, GameMaker, Godot Engine, Unreal Engine (Blueprints), and Pico-8.

Source Code – https://github.com/levidsmith/SoundEffectsDemo

Links and Notes

Unity – https://unity.com
GameMaker – https://www.yoyogames.com/en/gamemaker
Godot Engine – https://godotengine.org
Unreal Engine – https://www.unrealengine.com
Pico-8 – https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
Frick n Frack Games – https://www.fricknfrackgames.com/
Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Knox Game Design

Adding Sound Effects to Your Game - Knox Game Design, July 2021

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Sound Effects with BFXR – Knox Game Design, June 2021

June 26, 2021Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

This month’s Knox Game Design covers the BXFR tool for generating sound effects for games. A look at different sound effect types, modifying sound effect properties, using the mixer to combine effects together, and an analysis for the various types of wave forms.

Links and Notes

BFXR – https://www.bfxr.net/
SFXR – http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html
Sound Theory by Dr Petter – http://drpetter.se/article_sound.html
Sweetwater audio glossary – https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/category/glossary/
Teach Me Audio, Sound Envelopes – https://www.teachmeaudio.com/recording/sound-reproduction/sound-envelopes
Creating Retro Game Sound Effects with BFXR – https://www.boomboxpost.com/blog/2016/10/17/8-bit-twice-shy-creating-retro-game-sound-effects-with-bfxr
WikiAudio, ADSR Envelope – https://www.wikiaudio.org/adsr-envelope/
The Sounds Resource, NES – https://www.sounds-resource.com/nes/
Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Knox Game Design

Sound Effects with BFXR - Knox Game Design, June 2021

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Ludum Dare 48 Entries – Knox Game Design, May 2021

May 11, 2021Game Competition Entries, Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

Knox Game Design had two great entries for Ludum Dare 48. The theme was Deeper and deeper. Let us know if we missed your game entry and we will add it to the list!

Delve Inc. by Jacob

You play as a dwarf in a hastily constructed drillship delving deep into an abandoned mining plot to search for much needed metals. However, the new inhabitants of the plot are not to keen on you invading their territory.

Digmania by Levi

Help Mr. Digger dig as far as possible into the earth. Pick up the shovel to start digging. Pick up additional shovels to speed up digging speed. Avoid the enemies as you dig. Get hit three times and the game is over. Enter your name for the online leaderboard.

Links and Notes

Podcast theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Knox Game Design

Ludum Dare 48 Entries - Knox Game Design, May 2021

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Image File Formats – Knox Game Design, April 2021

April 19, 2021Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

Comparison of file types for holding image data for textures and sprites in games. File types include BMP, GIF, PNG, JPEG, SVG, TIFF, TGA, PCX, HEIC, and WebP. Properties include transparency, compression, lossy vs lossless, and file size. Demonstration of how to programmatically decode and encode PNG files. Compatibility of image files with four game engines (Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot Engine, GameMaker).

Ruby code for PNG analyzer / generator – https://github.com/levidsmith/ImageAnalyzer

Upcoming Events

Ludum Dare 48 is Friday April 23-26, 2021. Meet with us at The Kitchen at Crafter’s Brew in Oak Ridge for a Ludum Dare kickoff at 7pm Eastern Time on Friday April 23, 2021. For more information on Ludum Dare see ldjam.com. If you make a game, let us know on our Discord channel and we will add it to the website!

Updated Games by Knox Developers

Roguely by Frank – https://github.com/frankhale/Roguely

Gomen-Nasai by Levi – https://levidsmith.com/games/gomen-nasai/

Links and Notes

BMP specification at File Format – https://docs.fileformat.com/image/bmp/
BMP specification at Library of Congress – https://www.loc.gov/preservation/digital/formats/fdd/fdd000189.shtml
GIF specification at W3C – https://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt
PNG specification at W3C – https://www.w3.org/TR/PNG/
Zlib compression – https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1950.txt
JPEG specification at JPEG.org – https://jpeg.org/jpeg/index.html
SVG specification at W3C – https://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/
TIFF specification at Adobe – https://www.adobe.io/open/standards/TIFF.html
TGA specification at File Format – https://docs.fileformat.com/image/tga/
Gimp – https://www.gimp.org/
Aseprite – https://www.aseprite.org/
Inkscape – https://inkscape.org/
Image file format comparison at Gimp – https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ImageFormats/
Theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Hosted by Levi D. Smith

Knox Game Design

Image File Formats - Knox Game Design, April 2021

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Sorting – Knox Game Design, March 2021

March 21, 2021Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

Overview of comparison of data types, sorting algorithms, and run times. Demonstration of sorting in Unity with C#, GameMaker with GML, Godot with GDScript, Unreal Engine with C++, and Pico-8 with Lua. For each game development environment, examples are shown for sorting integers, character strings (words), and a custom object type.

Example code – https://github.com/levidsmith/SortingDemos

Links and Notes

Sound of Sorting – https://panthema.net/2013/sound-of-sorting/
Big Theta – https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10376740/what-exactly-does-big-%d3%a8-notation-represent#12338937
C# IComparable – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.icomparable-1?view=net-5.0
GML array_Sort – https://manual.yoyogames.com/GameMaker_Language/GML_Reference/Variable_Functions/array_sort.htm
Godot Array – https://docs.godotengine.org/en/latest/classes/class_array.html
Unreal Engine TArray Sort – https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/ProgrammingAndScripting/ProgrammingWithCPP/UnrealArchitecture/TArrays/index.html
Pico-8 table sorting – https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=50453
Introduction to Algorithms by Cormen, Leiserson, and Rivest – https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/introduction-algorithms-third-edition
Unity – https://unity.com/
GameMaker – https://www.yoyogames.com/en/gamemaker
Godot Engine – https://godotengine.org/
Unreal Engine – https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/
Pico-8 – https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php
Theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Hosted by Levi D. Smith

Knox Game Design

Sorting - Knox Game Design, March 2021

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Mazes – Knox Game Design, February 2021

February 22, 2021Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

How to generate mazes using Prim’s and Kruskal’s algorithm. Example implementations in Unity with C#. Methods for solving mazes. Demonstration of maze generators available on the web.

Demo project in Unity and C# – https://github.com/levidsmith/MazeDemo

New and Updated Games by Knox Developers

Untitled game by Matthew

BlazorRogueLike by Mythik

Enfield by LocksmithArmy and Kendra

Gomen-nasai by Levi

Links and Notes

Mazes for Programmers by Jamis Buck – www.mazesforprogrammers.com
Maze Generator – www.mazegenerator.net
Prim’s Algorithm Maze Generation – www.integral-domain.org/lwilliams/Applets/algorithms/primsmaze.php
Maze Algorithms – www.jamisbuck.org/mazes/
Example maze generation with Prim’s in Unity – www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucWX34Vrel8
Prim’s algorithm – www.tutorialspoint.com/data_structures_algorithms/prims_spanning_tree_algorithm.htm
Dijkstra’s algorithm – www.geeksforgeeks.org/dijkstras-shortest-path-algorithm-greedy-algo-7/
Theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Hosted by Levi D. Smith

Knox Game Design

Mazes - Knox Game Design, February 2021

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Animation in Blender – Knox Game Design, January 2021

January 23, 2021Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

Demonstration of how to create a simple humanoid armature in Blender to be used in a game development environment. Explanation of how to assign a mesh to an armature and weight painting. How to create simple walking and standing animation by adding key frames. The model and animation are exported into FBX format and imported into Unity, Godot, and Unreal Engine. C# script for switching between animations in Unity.

Demo projects and models – https://github.com/levidsmith/BlenderAnimation

New and Updated Games by Knox Developers

Unlock Fred’s Markers with Journals by Zachary

Disc Connect by Levi

Links and Notes

Blender – www.blender.org
Unity – unity.com
Godot – godotengine.org
Unreal Engine – www.unrealengine.com
Mixamo – mixamo.com
Theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Hosted by Levi D. Smith

Knox Game Design

Animation in Blender - Knox Game Design, January 2021

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Allegro – Knox Game Design, December 2020

December 30, 2020Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

Overview of the Allegro game programming library. Compiling a legacy Allegro game with DJGPP through DOSBox. Installing and building a game with Allegro 5 in Visual Studio. How to use event and polling based methods for handling keyboard and gamepad input. Explanation of how to create a “Hello World”, Number Guessing game, and simple space shooter. Comparison of C++ to C, Java, and C#. Explanation of how to load music, sound effects, font, and bitmap files. Review of the Allegro drawing primitives.

Source code for examples – https://github.com/levidsmith/AllegroExamples

New and Updated Games by Knox Developers

The Cursed Office by Matthew – https://matthewbringledev.itch.io/the-cursed-office
H3D Christmas by James – https://locksmitharmy.itch.io/h3d-christmas
Polyglot Pelican by Levi – https://levidsmith.com/games/polyglot-pelican/

Links and Notes

Official Allegro site – https://liballeg.org
Allegro community – https://www.allegro.cc
Allegro 5 API reference – https://www.allegro.cc/manual/5
Delorie Software (DJGPP) – http://www.delorie.com
DOSBox – https://www.dosbox.com
Visual Studio – https://visualstudio.microsoft.com
C++ reference – https://www.cplusplus.com/reference
W3Schools C++ Tutorial/Reference – https://www.w3schools.com/cpp/
Strike of the Centurion (Allegro) by Frank – https://frank-griffin.itch.io/strike-demo
DJ Delorie blog at Red Hat – https://developers.redhat.com/blog/author/djdelorie/
Theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Hosted by Levi D. Smith

Knox Game Design

Allegro - Knox Game Design, December 2020

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Raspberry Pi Arcade – Knox Game Design, November 2020

November 22, 2020Meetings and Presentations, PodcastKnoxville Game Design

Overview of building a Raspberry Pi arcade system. First build was a Raspberry Pi (1) Model B and the second build was a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B. Explanation of what components and tools are needed. Installation the RetroPie operating system and configuration of Retrogame software to convert joystick movement and button presses into simulation key presses.

Links and Notes

Labyrinth by James, early access on Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1456900/Labyrinth/?beta=0
Adafruit, Retro Gaming with Raspberry Pi – https://learn.adafruit.com/retro-gaming-with-raspberry-pi
Building Raspberry Pi arcade – https://levidsmith.com/my-raspberry-pi-arcade/
Raspberry Pi arcade update – https://levidsmith.com/raspberry-pi-arcade-update/
RetroPie – https://retropie.org.uk/
Retrogame keyboard simulation – https://learn.adafruit.com/retro-gaming-with-raspberry-pi/adding-controls-software
Joystick – https://www.adafruit.com/product/480
Buttons – https://www.adafruit.com/product/474
Theme music – Ride by Pocketmaster

Hosted by Levi D. Smith

Knox Game Design

Raspberry Pi Arcade - Knox Game Design, November 2020

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