Vulcalien recently announced a GBA port of Minicraft, a 2d adventure game from the original creator of Minecraft (and very much in the same theme) first released back in 2011 as part of a coding contest in which you had 48 hours to code something. Ports having previously been seen for the 3ds (newer fork still) where it is one of the more popular pieces of homebrew for the platform.

In the past months I've been working on a GBA demake of Minicraft, a 2D game made by Markus Persson (aka Notch) for the 22nd Ludum Dare.

I think this GBA demake would be a nice addition to the great collection of games published in the website.

Here is some information about the game that might be useful to you.
• The game is fully finished; it's not a demo.
• It should run and save without any issue on hardware.
• The save file is 128 KB Flash ROM (1 Mbit).
• The license is GPL3+.

Minicraft for GBA​

This is a demake of Minicraft by Markus Persson (aka Notch), a game made for Ludum Dare 22 in two days.


My aim is to make a version that is as close as possible to the original. Of course, the GBA has some hardware limitations but, since the game isn't too complex, I could port it without too many problems. When the limitations were impossible to overcome, I had to hack a few things, change others, put limits and so on.


To improve the experience, I also added a pause menu and a way to save and load the world.

Differences due to Hardware limitations​

	Original​	GBA Demake​
World size	128x128​	112x112​
Entity limit	∞​	255​
Chest limit	∞​	32​
Inventory size	∞​	128​

Game Light​

The light system is completely different, both visually and in how it works.


The original Minicraft calculates the light for each pixel: that is, for various reasons, impractical to do on the GBA.


So I had to find another way, and the best one seemed to use tiles, because the GBA is very good at handling them. That gives light a 'blocky' look, but it seems acceptable.

Running​

Download or build the ROM (.gba extension). Then open it with your GBA emulator of choice. If you don't have one, I highly recommend mGBA.


If you have any trouble with the save files, try to manually set the save format to 128 KB Flash ROM.

Performance Overlay​

By holding the L and R buttons down and then pressing Select, the performance overlay is enabled.
Four hexadecimal values are written at the top corners:


FF <--- vcount after 'tick' entity count ---> FF
FF <--- vcount after 'draw' sprite count ---> FF

Building​

To build the game, I use the Makefile present in the files. You will need the gcc-arm-none-eabi compiler. I've not tested any other compiler and, if you want to try, I cannot guarantee that the game will work or that the performance will be as good (since it's optimized for the GCC compiler).


Run make: it should build without any configuration.

License​

The original game Minicraft was made by Markus Persson in 2011. I do not own it, nor am I affiliated to it.


This demake of the game is released under the GNU General Public License, either version 3 of the License or any later version.

Links:
• The .zip file containing both source code and ROM:
https://github.com/Vulcalien/minicraft-gba/releases/download/1.0/minicraft-gba_1.0.zip
• GBAtemp mirror
https://gbatemp.net/download/minicraft.37785/
• git repository for those wanting the source code
https://github.com/Vulcalien/minicraft-gba

• Minicraft Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicraft


Source GBAdev.org
https://gbadev.org/demos.php?showinfo=1562

 

[x65943]

I remember playing this back in the day when Notch first made it, was super neat at the time although obviously not a full game

Pretty cool to see this ported to the gba all these years later

It was made for ludum dare, a 48 hour competition to make a video game. The Latin means to give a game (ludum meaning game and dare being related to the word data, which means "the things given")

 

[DinohScene]

Nice!
Never thought I'd see this happen.

 

[jt_1258]

ahh, haven't seen it in action but from the pictures it's kinda funny to see it thrown more back to it's roots as a dwarf fortress clone in a vauge way. who needs 3d. how confusing could a whole bunch of layers be

 

[Robika]

Still waiting for Skyrim on the GBC.

 

[lattechan]

View attachment 338921

Can we all just appreciate this DS it's beautiful

 

[Deleted member 610824]

Always glad to see homebrew ports for older consoles. Shows that people still care about these precious devices.

 

[BaamAlex]

Can we all just appreciate this DS it's beautiful

Totally agreed.

 

[RAHelllord]

Played it for about 45 minutes so far and it's pretty neat. A few graphical glitches with the menus but otherwise I haven't encountered anything game breaking yet.

 

[dragonblood9999]

Still waiting for Skyrim on the GBC.

They amount of ports Skyrim has, it's only a matter of time

 

[Vulcalien]

Thanks so much for the article! This is my first work on the GBA, but I wish to make more for it!
And if anyone is finding bugs, feel free to write me a chat message.

 

[MaxiBash]

can't wait for YouTubers to flood my recommendations with "Minecraft on the GBA" in the title

 

[SylverReZ]

can't wait for YouTubers to flood my recommendations with "Minecraft on the GBA" in the title

Same with me also.

Post automatically merged: Nov 20, 2022

Thanks so much for the article! This is my first work on the GBA, but I wish to make more for it!
And if anyone is finding bugs, feel free to write me a chat message.

Kudos to the original developer of this fine Minecraft remake for the GBA. Your work is outstanding, keep it up.

 

[Shape]

The consoles themselves are the show-stealers here. Headline should be "AWESOME GBA & 3DS combo play Minicraft v1.0"

 

[SylverReZ]

The GBA was the first portable console I got as a kid. Can't believe the GBA homebrew scene is still going.

Post automatically merged: Nov 20, 2022

The term 'port' is an often misunderstood term for game remakes than anything. Porting is where you 'port' code, simply taking code from one console to another. It takes a LOT of time and effort to rewrite everything, and there are many limitations you have to consider also such as hardware limitations, resource usage, architecture, and much much more. Remakes on the other hand are a totally different thing entirely - to put it simply, the goal is to create a game from scratch that retells something from earlier on into something new.

I hope my words of wisdom has helped clear some confusion.

 

[lordelan]

I've never been a Minecraft fan tbh but what always looked too ugly for a 3D game does indeed look pretty decent as a 2D pixel art game for the GBA and I'll happily give it a shot.

Btw another pretty nice GBA homebrew game: https://skylandgame.io/beta/
I know there are thousands, especially on itch.io but this one was submitted on the GBA Jam 2021 iirc and it's really good so give it a shot.

 

[susbaconhairman]

noice!

 

[Egoistamamono]

Tested on my supercard & Gbarunner2, the game can run but it seems can't save, or stuck at saving. But it can save with no problem on mGBA.

 

[urbanman2004]

Never heard of this... I must've been sleeping under a rock all these years

 

[dudeguy2022]

I remember seeing this come out for 3ds and being amazed, so I'm excited that it's able to run on a GBA.