pouët.net

HexaGBA Demo 1

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                        ---[ by cartr, 2017 ]---

  Q: What is this?
This is a demo of a game similar to Terry Cavanagh's Super Hexagon, written for
the Game Boy Advance.


  Q: How do I play it?
You can use a multiboot cable to send the file "hexagon.mb.gba" directly to your
GBA.  The game also works okay in VBA-M if you want to emulate it, though it's
better on hardware.

Alternatively, "hexagon.cartridge.gba" should work with your flash cartridge.  I
did most of my testing with the multiboot version, so that's what I recommend;
the cartridge version has only been tested in an emulator.

Once you've started the game, use L and R to control the little triangle and see
how long you can last before you hit a wall! My current high score is around 300
seconds.


  Q: How does it work?
Super Hexagon uses your phone/computer's graphics hardware to draw polygons on
the screen.  The GBA doesn't have polygon hardware, so HexaGBA uses affine tile
maps, palette animation, windowing, and HBlank interrupts to achieve a similar
effect.  The cool part is, I managed to get it running at 60 FPS on real
hardware.  It took... a lot of work, let's leave it at that.


  Q: Where are high scores saved? What save type/flash size do I use?  
For now, high scores are only saved in memory; they'll go away when you turn off
your GBA.  It doesn't use any kind of save battery or flash storage.


  Q: I found a bug!
Please let me know at carter.sande@duodecima.technology and I'll try and get it
fixed for the next demo.


  Q: The sound sucks!
Yeah, yeah, I know.  After the graphics were finished, there weren't a lot of
CPU cycles left over for the sound, and I'm pretty bad at composing chiptunes.
If you'd like to help with music, email me at carter.sande@duodecima.technology.


  Q: What font did you use?
The font is Bump IT UP, by Aaron Amar, released under CC-BY-SA 3.0.  You can
download the font at https://fontstruct.com/fontstructions/show/155156#.