Homebrew [Release] POWDER 3DS

nop90

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powder_header.jpg

POWDER is a roguelike originaly developed specifically for the Gameboy Advance (GBA). It is not a port of an existing roguelike as the controls of the GBA are very different from the traditional keyboard, and the screen imposes some additional limitations. It is built around replayability and long term ergonomics, not short term learning. It uses actual graphic tiles (16x16) rather than the traditional characters.

The game goal is very simple (:evil:), descend into the depths of the dungeon until you reach the foul daemon known as "He who the author cannot spell consistently", or, Baezl'bub. When you have slain Baezl'bub in heroic combat, or, if Baezl'bub dies in any way, retrieve his black heart and bring it to the surface world.

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The source code of my port is on my github (https://github.com/nop90/POWDER-3DS).
The compiled game (3dsx an CIA versions) is released on github (https://github.com/nop90/POWDER-3DS/releases).

Credits:
The original game is made by Jeff Lait (http://www.zincland.com/powder/?pagename=about)
This game uses the sf2d library created by @xerpi

Changelog

Ver. 1.1 (04 February 2017)
- Raised walking speed
- Changed version string from GBA to 3DS

Ver. 1.0 (02 February 2017)
- Added an option to select dual or single screen
- Fixed stylus touch point alignemt with starting menu
- Fixed home menu events handling (for CIA version)

Ver. 0.3 (22 January 2017)
- More tilesets
- No more freezes and creashes
- CIA version

Ver. 0.2alpha (16 January 2017)

- Fixed colors
- Added bottom screen
- Added stylus control support
- Fixed key input

Please clean any sav file in the 3ds/Powder folder from the previous version, or you'll have problems.

Ver. 0.1preview (08 January 2017)
- First release (not stable).
- Very basic GUI

Installation

In the zip there is a folder with the 3dsx and the smdh files inside, to be used with a homebrew launcher. All the resources are included in the executable using romfs.

The game creates a Powders subfolder inside the 3ds folder if doesn't exist. Here will be saved your savefiles and game configs.

Commands

PAD - move
A - select/throw
B - back/cast spell
Start or X - open menu
Select or Y -open inventoty
L and R can be mapped to some actions (play the tutorial for more info)

Known Bugs

- The keybord grid is not aligned with characters

To Do List

- Add an grid for the movement input with stylus

Screenshots

POWDER1.png
POWDER2.png
POWDER3.png
POWDER4.png
POWDER5.png
 
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nop90

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This is only an preview release, everything seems to work but the game sometime hangs ant there are a lot of thing to do to improve the GUI (like using the bottom screen adding touchscreen support and increase the resolution to a full 400x240 pixel (now it's a gba resolution zoomed).

If you wnato to test it, save often to avoid to lose your game if the system hangs.

EDIT: this release is to celebrate my 1.000th post :)
 
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nop90

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You don't rlease the cia until the final release right?

This time I'll not wait the final release to make a CIA version, but there are many thing to fix before I can do it.

The 3dsx version is not stabke and has problem exiting (needs a reboot), a cia version would be worse, or could not run at all.
 

nop90

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A new alpha version is out. The port is almost completed, but the game hangs very often. A really a difficoult thing to fix.

In this version I splitted the graphic output on the two screen (see new screenshots), and on the bottom screen I activated the support for the stylus.

Only forgot to disable the movement control with the stylus, so touching the black center of the bottom screem makes the player move (maybe I could add a grid to guide the directional input instead of disabling it).

Please try the game on different 3ds/FW versions and let me know how often it hangs.

On Citra it never hanged so far.
 
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nop90

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This game reminds me Dragon Crystal on master system. Is it somehow a variant of it?

This is a roguelike, a genre of game created much before than the master system era. I don't know Dragon Crystal, but reading about it, seems to be inspired to this kind ok games too.

But from POWDER do not expect to survive so easily as compared to a console game.
 

nop90

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sf2d hasn't been maintained since the original port to citro3d, which also completely broke rendertargets... one might be better off with a bit lower of an abstraction from c3d, akin to my RenderCore https://github.com/zetaPRIME/starlauncher/blob/master/source/starlight/gfx/RenderCore.cpp

Yes I know but sf2d i so easy for a quick port and most of the time doesn't give any problem.

Next weekend I'll try to use C3D directly, should not be hard, I only have draw a stretched texture after copying in the data for the next frame.

Thank you for letting me use you code as example.
 

nop90

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Changed the render codo to use Citro 3D directly instead of sf2d.

The code doesn't hang anymore and the CIA version (not released yet) now works fine. I'm very happy :D. Just updated the github repository with the new code.

I'll try to finalize the other minor changes in the weekend to release a beta version in both 3dsx and CIA version.

Bad news: the game crashes when a monster uses potions (not an easy event to replicate, but I was so lucky to see it two times today). Fixing this will be hard.
 

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New release, the game is stable and almost completed. I only have to add small things to better handling the stylus input.

And I built a CIA version too, but don't press the Home button :wink:, it needs to be fixed.
 
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