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Best Way to Put Custom Programs on a GBZ

Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2016 3:48 am
by Lottel
Hello all.

My project is going to be a bit different than the average. I'm going to having gameboy emulation mostly as an afterthought.
The reason I'm building one of these is for Dungeons and Dragons.

I have a program designed but not made. The plan is when it runs for there to be a fighting game style character select screen. When you choose your character, it switches to a screen showing a small image as well as their stats. Pressing left or right will move you though the pages, showing skills, inventory, spell list, and a page full of attacks you can do with a macro to roll the dice for you. (I also want to copy over and make a tiny screen friendly Monster Manual as a separate sister app but that's neither here nor there)

But I'm not sure the best way to go about actually running it on the GBZ. I want it to run as smooth as possible.
Should I write the program for the raspberry pi completely separate from the retropie emulation stuff? Would there be a way to tie it into the emulation station menu?
My original plan, before thinking about even using the raspberry pi, was getting a gameboy flash cart and programming a gameboy game (found a few tutorials here and there) but thought about the raspberry pi, found a few GBZs and decided this was a much more versatile approach.

So, as I wait for my last few parts to arrive in the mail (the actual pi0 itself is being frustratingly slow to be delivered) I thought I'd ask: What's the best way for me to make my Dungeon Boy a reality?

Re: Best Way to Put Custom Programs on a GBZ

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 8:40 pm
by Merlin04
Lottel wrote:Hello all.

My project is going to be a bit different than the average. I'm going to having gameboy emulation mostly as an afterthought.
The reason I'm building one of these is for Dungeons and Dragons.

I have a program designed but not made. The plan is when it runs for there to be a fighting game style character select screen. When you choose your character, it switches to a screen showing a small image as well as their stats. Pressing left or right will move you though the pages, showing skills, inventory, spell list, and a page full of attacks you can do with a macro to roll the dice for you. (I also want to copy over and make a tiny screen friendly Monster Manual as a separate sister app but that's neither here nor there)

But I'm not sure the best way to go about actually running it on the GBZ. I want it to run as smooth as possible.
Should I write the program for the raspberry pi completely separate from the retropie emulation stuff? Would there be a way to tie it into the emulation station menu?
My original plan, before thinking about even using the raspberry pi, was getting a gameboy flash cart and programming a gameboy game (found a few tutorials here and there) but thought about the raspberry pi, found a few GBZs and decided this was a much more versatile approach.

So, as I wait for my last few parts to arrive in the mail (the actual pi0 itself is being frustratingly slow to be delivered) I thought I'd ask: What's the best way for me to make my Dungeon Boy a reality?
On the emulationstation wiki, there is some content about how to add a custom system. Research "es_systems.cfg". For the software, Pygame might work.

Re: Best Way to Put Custom Programs on a GBZ

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 5:57 am
by meldaryste
Any updates on this? Sounds interesting