Vircon32: Creating my own console

[carra]

I think it's difficult to overstate how nice it is to have a physical manifestation of your work :]

So true. I love coding, but even then every once in a while I feel the need to also build something I can hold in my hands

[carra]

Today I was feeling the artistic mood and I thought I could try imagining how a physical design of Vircon32 could look like, if it was built not in console format but as an arcade. What do you think?





Just to be clear, I'm not thinking of actually building this hehe

[carra]

I made a design for a game box, blatantly inspired in the SNES. I'm afraid my first prototype for the game box has been unsuccessful. There have been a couple of obvious problems. First is the place where I got it printed: although the print quality has been spectacular, they don't control sizes very well and the box is about half a centimeter larger than it should. Then there is the problem of the shapes. You can see the box is bulging and there are faces that are not straight at all.



This was because of my process for making the box. The printed sheet itself is not thick and rigid enough to make a cardboard box. Not only that: making the box with just the sheet makes the inside white and visually it does not look very good. Classic boxes have your typical gray cardboard inside. So what I did is reinforcing the inside with gray cardstock that has a similar texture.



It seems I have either not applied the glue correctly or it was not the right type of glue. In addition to the bulging you can see that some box flaps have a tendency to peel off. I will keep doing more tests to see how I can fix it. Otherwise I am happy with how the box design has turned out. Reinforcing with cardstock gives it the perfect thickness and resistance, it is very similar to the feel of a Super Nintendo box.

[Sonrisu]

Pretty awesome to be building physical for this. Did I miss it somewhere in the thread: are you planning to sell physical copies of the games / console?

Not even sure how one begins to find a place that will print boxes. Seems like it would be expensive if it's a one off and you're not asking for hundreds+ copies? :]

[carra]

are you planning to sell physical copies of the games / console?

On the contrary: my intention is to create a new repository to upload the designs for all physical elements I will be making: cartridges, labels, boxes, manuals... and some day, even the console itself. That way everybody can make their physical copies, or make designs for their own games if they make any.

About price, if you wanted the box made directly I guess it would indeed be expensive. What I did is just go to a print shop and get a regular sheet printed. Then I reinforced that with cardstock and then cut and folded the box myself.

[carra]

These days I was going to work on writing the spec documents, but I felt like working on the games physical editions instead . So, here you have a preview of the instruction manual for Basic Platformer:

[carra]

At last I was able to finish the physical version of my games These 2 for now. It took a lot of effort but I'm pleased with the result:



Here you can watch an unboxing too.
Again: my comments in Spanish, but subtitles are enabled.

[Sonrisu]

Wow; these look amazing. Really impressive! :]

[carra]

Wow; these look amazing. Really impressive! :]

Glad you like them!
Also, I have uploaded to GitHub the last pending spec document: part 8 (external elements).

For a reference, the full specification (all 9 documents, removing covers and filler) is 170 pages. You may be wondering why it is so long, if Vircon32 is supposed to be very simple. There are several reasons:

• All components (CPU, etc) are custom and have to be fully explained.
• I try to cover all possible situations, to not leave anything to chance.
• I explain possible ways to implement certain things in practice.
• I include many pictures, diagrams and tables to clarify explanations.

With this I have achieved the goal I was aiming for, which was finishing the full console specification before the end of the year (just barely, but it still counts ). This is an important point for the project, since from now on "I am no longer necessary" and anyone should be able to make their own Vircon32 implementation (either with software or hardware). For that, they would have at their disposal:

• The complete specification of all aspects of Vircon32.
• A complete reference implementation (my emulator).
• A simplified implementation designed to better follow the code.
• The suite of test programs, which test different aspects of the console.
• Several complete games, to be able to do more complete tests.
• Development tools to be able to do custom tests.

I think this should be more than enough for anyone who might be interested .

[Sirocco]

I somehow missed the pics of the arcade rendering (last few months have been... *whoosh*)
That's a nice, clean design, and I like that it has cart and card slots up front. I'm wondering how the diamond button layout would work out. While this maps to the gamepad nicely, most arcade games around here use a staggered layout. I'm trying to remember if I've played any with that layout (I probably have lol).