Childrens games for DC

[Chris_147]

Hi all,

I got recently involved in http://childsplay.sourceforge.net/. These are simple games for children just beginning to use a computer. A similar package is http://gcompris.net/. They are for children of age 3 tot 10.

Now playing on a console is more fun than on a pc. Now I was looking into a GameCube to see if it has similar small children games, but I also have a DC which easily allows to play homebrew games and is cheap to get.

Now I don't know the development environment for the DC (know a bit SDL from using with Python on PC), but would you guess such games would be difficult to make?

A simple example I can think of: catch the fish:
background is an aquarium, one fish swims along each time and the player has to catch it with a net (by sweeping it across the fish)

A lot of the images could be reused from the projects above (GPL!)

Please share your thoughts...

PS suggestions for games are also welcome! (even for the PC version)

[GyroVorbis]

Yeah, that type of stuff would be more than easy on a Dreamcast.

Especially if you use SDL, you could probably do it in a few hours or so. SDL is almost exactly as it was on PC, with the exception of changing input and files saving, etc. The only thing would be that you'd have to use C or C++ and setting up the dev environment isn't very fun...

[Chris_147]

Hmm, 2 years ago or so I had set up the DC DevKit once.
But I didn't pursue it because testing the programs on the DC was such a hassle having no coders cable or BBA.
But for simple games maybe I could do it first on PC, try in DC emulator and then burn to cd to test on DC.

Other problem: my C, and especially my C++, is a bit rusty.
I'm a bit spoiled by Python these days

[WRAGGSTER]

would these work on GP2X or PSP, both have python ported to them ?

[OneThirty8]

Hmm, 2 years ago or so I had set up the DC DevKit once.
But I didn't pursue it because testing the programs on the DC was such a hassle having no coders cable or BBA.
But for simple games maybe I could do it first on PC, try in DC emulator and then burn to cd to test on DC.

Other problem: my C, and especially my C++, is a bit rusty.
I'm a bit spoiled by Python these days

If you're on Windows, check in our Programming discussion forum for LyingWake's DCDev ISO. I haven't used it personally (I've been using Linux for DC development) but others have, and from what I understand setting it up should be a simple matter of installing it to your hard drive, and you should be good to go.

For C/C++ with SDL, have a look at Marius Andra's tutorials at http://cone3d.gamedev.net for starters. He's got some tuts on your basic C++ stuff and then several on using SDL and SDL_mixer for graphics and sound. Those should help you figure out how to do basic drawing of stuff, moving sprites around, and that sort of thing. That's what got me started. The Space Shooter lesson, for example, is useful for learning how to do a scrolling background and moving sprites around, although I never managed to get that game itself working on the DC. (If I remember correctly, the graphics were simply too huge, but a similar game would be easy to do once you understand what's going on in that game.)

[Sweater Fish]

There was a contest a couple years ago for people to write the best homebrew game for children. I can't recall if the contest was over all consoles or just for the Dreamcast, but there were two Dreamcast games produced for the contest. Pop-A-Cap and VocabuMonkey. In my opinion, both games are somewhat simplistic even beyond the obvious need to be understandable to young children, but you should check them out.

Also, about devving without a BBA: DCHakker can boot things off of multisession bootdiscs, so it's really not all that difficult to add a new compile to an old disc and pop it in for testing. DCHakker also allows you to exit out of a game back to the DCHakker menu, so you don't even have to reset your Dreamcast all the time if you're testing multiple successive revisions. I find it very simple. I've never used a BBA, of course, but I actually don't think it would be all that much simpler.


...word is bondage...

[Chris_147]

Thanks guys, I'll look into it.
I also noticed a thread below where some guy made a game with Fenix. Maybe that's even simpler.

Wraggster: out of the box, they would for sure not work. GCompris is in fact written in C or C++ and depends on GTK I thought. Childsplay is in Python, but you also need PyGame (Python layer for SDL), and the resolution is 800x600. I doubt those consoles can do that. Maybe with some hacking, the source is available...