Vircon32: Creating my own console

[carra]

So, about a week ago I bought this console. It is an Anbernic RG552, a decent emulation machine. I chose this model to turn it into a portable Vircon32 because it fits my console so well. It has widescreen, good d-pad placement and can run both linux and android.



I had never coded for android, but I was able to build an android version of my retroarch core and import it into the console along with game roms and thumbnails. I'm quite pleased with the results, you can see the console running here:



EDIT: And now, thanks to the people at Discord, the core works not only on Android, but also on iOS/MacOS/tvOS.

[carra]

Well, it finally happened. Vircon32 got officially accepted into RetroArch! That means you can now install the core automatically from RetroArch itself. This core works on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, tvOS, Raspberry Pi 4 and the Nintendo Switch.



In the current version the Vircon32 standard bios is embedded in the core itself (since it is legal), so just install the core and you are good to try the games!

The RetroArch team also opened a Steam page for Vircon32:



With this I plan to stop working on the console itself for some time, so that I can focus on the games.

[deleter]

awesome! looking forward to seeing what games you make with it

[carra]

It's been some time since I last updated this, so I'll make a post.

I have been working on making a racing game for the console. You can see the prototype I made in this video (with my comments in it). I was able to make a "mode 7" effect for the ground.



Now, to make a better car sprite with more directions I thought about using some free 3D car model, but I'm not a 3D artist so it would be hard for me to do it well. I could hire someone but that could be expensive and it would be hard to ensure I get the right perspective, angles and lighting. So I had the idea to use toy car models. They are cheap, easy to find and look good so I bought a few.



I made a controlled setup with the right position and lighting, and took photos turning the car 15 degrees each time, to get 24 positions. I drew a grid to control that the perspective was correct too. A tiny colored dot on the ceiling marked the turning center for me.



This is the final result. Here you see a larger model, and also the reduced model to use in game for a more "pixel art" style. This all took quite some time, but it looks really good. It also adapts quite well to the perspective in game, so I'm pleased

[carra]

It's been some time since I last wrote. Here is a video with some updates, and documenting what I did so far for the racing game.



Now I am working on making some props to populate the circuits and make them less plain. I made this by hand myself, but I also have some other already made miniatures for trees and plants.

[Sirocco]

Holy cow, that's really nice work! The car scan turned out very well, and reminds me of old DOS games from the 90s (this is a good thing, to me)

[carra]

So, here is some more progress on the car game that I had not shown here. I now have several 2D objects on the circuit and the car can go through them. No collisions yet, working on that now.



But I have more important news today. I have been thinking about this for some time, and I'm finally going to stop working on this console. I'll share the explanation below.

I've been working hard on Vircon32 for 5 years now. I'm quite happy with what this project has reached: The console is finished. It has software, tools, documents, and tutorials. I've made several full games and demos. And Vircon32 got integrated into RetroArch and other related systems. So mostly, the only thing left for me to continue is to keep making more games.

On the other hand, it doesn't seem that the console is going to have a much larger public than it has now. To my knowledge there's no one making games for it either. One of my bets with this was to try and form a small community around Vircon32, and that's why I invested a lot of time in making it as accessible as possible. But sadly that effort did not pay off.

You may remember: in the last months I made the decision to make more elaborate games. I've been working on my car game for 3 months now and, at this rate, if I were to be ambitious it could easily take another 4+ months to finish it. I feel this is too much of my time for a system where only a handful of people will play the game, even being free.

That's why I thought: if the console itself has not much left for me, and since I'm going to invest so much time in a game, why not go the extra mile and try to make a commercial game? So that's what I'm going to do from now on. I have an idea to make a metroidvania type game and I'm going to release it on PC for Steam. At the moment I don't have anything to show, but if any of you is interested I can post it on GDR when I do.

Still I don't want to just abandon the car game. I'd like to try to finish it, even if I have to cut some things from it to not take too long. In the meantime I'm going to learn Godot and I'll get information about everything I may need (Steam dev account, become a freelancer/create a company, etc).

But as for Vircon32 the car game will be the last one I will make for the console, at least for now. This new project is very ambitious and will require my full attention.

[carra]

Hmm it's been some time since I last updated the thread. There have been some other news since then but today I want to post about something else.

A few days ago I saw the interface of NESmaker and it made me think how a possible Vircon32 Game Maker could be. So I have done this quick mockup in Visual Studio. This would allow games to be made in a way much more similar to current game engines (like Unity or Godot), defining all game components visually and connecting them via events or small scripts.

To be clear: nothing here is really functional, and I'm not sure if I will ever make a program like this. Even if I did, it would probably be a very limited version and not very flexible (unless I had help from someone else).





I also thought a bit of the architecture that would be needed for this to work. I think it would be something like this:



(I only have the image in Spanish right now, but I think it's easy to follow)

The editor GUI itself would not actually be that important or that hard to do in the whole process. The 3 really hard parts would be these:

1) Designing a game framework that can run a game based on the concepts we want to base the editor in. Like: rooms, layers, entities, etc. With those it should be able to simulate motion and physics, make objects follow paths, trigger events, run scripts, etc...

2) Designing an XML format for game projects that can declare lists of assets, define game objects, hold script texts and establish relationships between them.

3) Make a source code generator that can translate the XML projects from 2) to code and data usable by the framework from 1)

I think the most complex part here is the game framework (1), though I have already done a part of that since I made libraries for collisions, tile maps, text fonts, and some other things.

[carra]

Hi, some more news. You can now play Vircon32 using savestates!
The RetroArch core for Vircon32 even lets you rewind the game.



There have been several new games for Vircon32. The game database at RetroArch is also updated, and the new games have thumbnails too.



Here you can see one of the new games: RetroTime, by Willems Davy. It is a compilation of 8 classic games (Tetris, Pang, Space Invaders...) that you can play with fixed lives, fixed time or in a carousel, trying to get a high score.

[Sirocco]

Very nice. Hopefully one day someone will make a demo (as in demoscene) for your platform. That would be sweet