A few fixes

It should have been a calendar, and somehow I'm using it that way on the "recto" side. But it's a week-by-week calendar, which means it's also a near-A3 rigid laptop with good quality paper that I can use nearly anywhere to write notes about nearly anything. 

But I wouldn't be studying Turing processors this week-end, nor how the 1st Pokemon game stored its maps. Instead I was trying to tackle two old bugs in my editors that affect loading new files in AnimEditorDS and leaving "monsters edition mode" in LEDS. It's not very impressive, but it's releaseversary day, so here it is anyway.

And, well, it seems like it's been nearly one year since I made a release of the Dreamland demo itself. Now that the "WIP" level in the greenzone -- the one I intend to keep and that has been historically the first Bilou level ever -- has an exit door, I can make some release for that as well. Enjoy

• water slides
• revised appleman mechanics, including the funny rolling throw
• connected doors
• smashing big punches

I'm sure there are plenty of bugs and glitches here and there. This is not a polished demo, more a presumably playable snapshot of the ongoing work.

 

 

 

 

May the demo be with you

Well, I can't really call it "a release", but there's something new waiting for you to download it on sourceforge: an update of the "three rooms" demo with more Applemen.

Stomp them, stun them, pick them, throw them. I won't claim that they're working flawlessly, but at least they're working, compared to the many attempts that took place last month.

It should also allow you to try the water jets and the hooking mechanics if you manage to find the "hidden" second green zone "level". And if my records are correct, this is also your first opportunity to face Bangbash yourself, because last demo was last year, just before I started working on making it move!

Oyez oyez! voici un nouveau fichier téléchargeable pour explorer vous même toutes les petites mécaniques de jeu qui ont fait le buzz lors des "Screenshot Saturday" de ces derniers mois! Ramassez et lancez des Applemen ! Défiez Bangbash ! Bondissez grâce aux branches, aux jets d'eau ! Accrochez vous aux racines !

La dernière fois que vous aurez eu autant de fun, c'est quand vous étiez dans une plaine de jeu !

Parce que, bin, on ne va pas se mentir, ça reste une démo-plaine-de-jeu pour vérifier que les mécaniques principales du futur "Bilou Dreamland" fonctionnent bien sans devoir traverser un niveau de 2048x1024 pixels pour s'en convaincre. Mais ... mais ça pourrait bien changer prochainement. 

Vous allez voir qu'il y a encore plein de petits détails pas au point, surtout s'il vous vient l'idée de lancer des pommes dans l'eau. C'est assumé. C'est parce que pour la prochaine démo, je vais me faire une version "brouillon" des niveaux qui sont déjà dessinés histoire qu'on puisse voir ce qu'ils donnent avec la physique actuelle de Bilou. 

October update

That week off has been pretty B-usy ... The 'three rooms' demo now actually feature 2 additional rooms, including one that is level-sized. There are still quite some things to fix, tileset updates, adjusting to .more loading, and the like... 

• [done] separate exit special block from fall-through-door special block,
• [done] stop flashing school background by applying waterfall palette cycling only in the green zone
• [done] adjust bounding boxes ... many bounding boxes.

Bienvenue dans un post-qui-change... ma petite semaine de congé d'automne aura été bien remplie de p'tits Bilous (entre autres choses), avec en objectif #1 l'ajout de deux "niveaux" dans la démo "Three Rooms", comme proposé en Mars. Evidemment, comme ils datent tout deux d'avant SchoolRush, il y a eu pas mal de mini-couacs à corriger pour éviter de se retrouver avec un niveau au décor psychédélique qui se termine dès qu'on casse une craie

Well, some recent development are incompatible with some old mistakes... especially bounding boxes. I remember being puzzled by what worked and what did not worked when I introduced the 'sand waves', which did require one bbox x y w h command to align the visuals with the slope ... but it really was almost blind guesses.

For some reason, the "box size" bits were ignored, and the "offset" bits were ... well, it will work better with offsets that says "pictures starts 4 pixels on the right in the 16x16 frame. Of course, fixing the size first made most of the offset wrongs until I've got new offsets computed.

Even after one more afternoon of map fixing, there are weird things happening in that school zone level, like 

• [todo, not critical] Bilou not always hidden by front layer (e.g. hidden if you jump, but not if you're idle or walk)
• [todo, not critical] Inkjets not moving up and down following rails

Le plus gros morceau, ça aura été de corriger le code qui permet à un simple sprite 16x16 d'être considéré comme étant plus grand ou plus petit ... une modification essentielle pour passer du furblock à la branche mais qui interférait avec les gouttes d'encres d'inkjet et les vagues de sable ...
Alors, voilà: un joli bouton vert vers une nouvelle démo à essayer chez vous. Bien sûr, ça reste très en chantier et vous trouverez pleins de trucs pas au point, mais au moins, les horreurs ont été éliminées. Rendez-vous en Décembre avec une démo incorporant BangBash ?

Ah, and it's not in the school zone, but [done] that ugly pink background showing up in the green2 level, too... I'd rather have that fixed before uploading a new demo...

edit: There we are: 2 work-in-progress levels can be found if you explore the three rooms properly. There is still much to do, but also much to explore if you've never launched anything earlier than School Rush.

Un furblock qui a du ressort

ah. Voilà qui est mieux... Le saut est amorti, puis le bloc re-propulse Bilou en l'air une fois dans la phase à gravité positive. J'ai encore un glitch temporaire à régler, mais au moins Bilou ne se met plus à rebondir dans le vide une fois sur deux. Alors je suis sûr que vous avez d'essayer ça, donc.

And give it a try yourself. I finally have a bouncy block that is bouncy the way I want, dampening your fall, kicking you up when it is back.

Not only that, it also allows buffering of your JUMP commands so that you get a high-jump if you press and hold the JUMP button anytime while the furblock is dampening. JLN managed to get a high jump on any of his attemps. (of course, he is disappointed that it isn't possible to use the glitch to charge even more jump power and make a super-jump taking you out of the map into a super-secret area :P)

Et si on appuie sur le bouton de saut au bon moment (c'est à dire n'importe quand pendant qu'on est sur le bloc), on part en super-saut. Hahaa... On est prêt pour ramener ça sur la branche aussi...

$BACK->$IDLE on event2 [v1 256 <] ($VTHROWN(0) 0 :1 0:6); // 1 
$BACK->$IDLE on event2 [v6 0 <=] ($VTHROWN(0) 0 :1);      // 2
$BUMP->$BACKLAST on event2 [v6 1 =] (v1 2 / :1 v6 1 - :6 $DIR(D_DOWN));
$BUMP->$BACK_ on event2 (v1 2 / :1 v6 1 - :6 $DIR(D_DOWN));  // 4

$BACK->$BUMP on event2 (v1 2 / :1 $DIR(D_UP) $VTHROWN(VTHROWN 3 * 2 /);

$IDLE->$BUMP on hit0 [w1 0 >] ($VTHROWN(200) w1 512 m :1 $DIR(D_UP) 3:6);
$BACKLAST->$BACK_ on hit0 [w1 0 >] ($VTHROWN(200) w1 512 m 2 * :1 3:6);

The little glitch we still observe is linked to the BACKLAST state. Normal cycle alternates between BUMP where Bilou can stay landing on the block (think as "compressed" state) and BACK where Bilou would be ejected ("expanded" state). There may be up to 4 such oscillations before the block comes to a halt. A former glitch happened when Bilou would fall back while we're in BACK state and react as if it hit an eraser although it isn't close enough.

BACKLAST was intended to fix this: it let the block oscillate one last time, but it doesn't feature the hitbox that would propel Bilou up. Of course, that does not work alone, so I also added a transition that restart a cycle if Bilou still shows up, exactly as if we were idle. But we cannot simply do BACKLAST->BUMP, else we will screw up how the "on grid" controller decide where we should transition.

My last glitch came from the speed division on line #3, that makes each oscillation smaller than the previous one: if we keep the last line's expression identical to that of $IDLE->BUMP, the speed will almost immediately be very low, and we might not hit and propel as intended, hence the additional 2 * to compensate the division that is about to occur as soon as we've reached the "default" position of the block. (still, I'll have to cross-check the collision coordinates: it doesn't feel right that it need that much fine-tuning...)

update: okay, works for the branch as well. Just took 1 or 2 hour of tuning...

Show and Birthday

It's been 10 years I've swapped jobs. It's been 10 years and yet most of my colleagues had never seen my little DS games. Working as a software developer makes it a bit harder to show hobby software to colleagues. Few of them know this blog, and those who do do mostly because of their intervention on the cxx or rongtudju categories. Most know I'm drawing things because I had some of my drawings displayed on the wall before we move to the new building.

And then a new batch of colleague joined, including one who's been doing a Flappy Bird clone on FPGA for a school assignment. They are the same generation as my S-team beta-testers, so I decided to pick my DS along at one social event, showed it to the young team... not much more than AnimEditor, but they were quite smiley about it. I did not have any ready-to-run playable demo on the device, though, and the cheese pot came in ...

That was a few months ago. Two weeks ago, I was visiting Ged's place. I clearly couldn't get there without my latest demo in my pocket. Well, not quite that version. The 'ongoing work' one, with a different tune for every world, but still needing fixes every here and there. He did enjoy it, though, and his 8-year-old son did enjoy some not-too-old version of SchoolRush. I've been told that it is a shame we can no longer catch the highest apples on the green zone, though.

Then there was my birthday, alone until 13:00 where Cyril came and play some Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze ... and check the latest progress on Bilou. And I knew I'd bring some "cookies" at the office the day after. I typically prefer to make it so people can come and meet me at the coffee machine rather than just drop the stuff and disappear... So I decided it was about time to show them Bilou as well. 

Most of my team were pleased to give a look at the game, a few of them played either 3-Rooms (.nds) or School Rush, and among those who did, none found it obvious that GRAB is GRAB instead of PUNCH. I might want to do something about that before I make a release of DreamLand... A few colleague actually tried to beat level 1 of School Rush and one even managed to reach level 2.

In other teams, there were of course some colleagues to find it odd that I do that with a Nintendo DS rather than going for Androïd or Nintendo Switch. The recent court face-off between Big N and the team behind 3DS and Switch emulators doesn't really speak in favour of retro-homebrew approach ...

Final round was yesterday with my even-younger-nephews who wanted to try 3-Rooms after I shown it to my brother for music selection approval. Last but not least, that triggered a question from the 15-y-o Tango nephew who was curious to know where he could download the tools I used to build the demo and asked whether programming was required to create new characters.

Demo: Scorpeye, Apple, Water and Sand

A new demo appeared. At last, my checklist is complete (and sure, there are still many more things to write for a next list). The demo is still based on the "three rooms" -- mini-maps barely larger than the screen, each presenting one of the zones the full game should provide. Don't expect much more land to explore. I still have a few concepts to prove before I can do that.

Enfin direz vous, et je ne vous contredirai pas. Voici la nouvelle démo de mes travaux en cours sur Bilou's Dreamland. Toujours limitée à 3 salles à peine de 2x2 écrans qui servent pour expérimenter les nouvelles mécaniques sans passer trop de temps à courir jusqu'à la nouvelle fonction à tester. Mais pour la première fois, vous allez pouvoir nager, affronter les sables mouvants, lancer des carapaces. Et puis il y a toujours le rodéo d'éponge et le saut en encrier. Allez, quoi. Sortez votre linker et faites-vous plaisir :)

Compared to the previous demo, you can try

• the new appleman animations
• the collapsing platform (pyramid)
• the scorpeye shell (jump on the scorpeye, then grab it like you'd do with a blador)
• flowing sand, pushing you down the slopes
• improved swim mechanics, waterflow
  

tested on NDS Lite, desmume 0.9.11 and desmume 0.9.6

Feel like playing a real game ? Try my previous titles ;)

Tools update

It'd be fun to try your editors! I'd probably do any serious development on a computer, but it's still cool to have an opportunity to try something I would've loved to have as a kid.

(Nova Storm, 7 February 2024)

I told you about Nova's work on NES and SNES already. Earlier this year, she shown interest into NDS homebrew and linkers, so I proposed her to try the dsgametools, and she replied with the heartwarming sentence above. My last tools release dates back from 2021, and while there are not that many things that have changed since, some annoying bugs were fixed nonetheless. So I went for a new package with some README, example files and PERL tools in addition to the .nds files proper. 

Salut les neveux. Si vous voulez tenter de faire des jeux sur Nintendo DS avec mes outils, vous êtes arrivés sur la bonne page. Téléchargez le .zip en utilisant l'image-lien ci-dessus et copiez les fichiers *dlta.nds à la racine de la carte-mémoire de votre DS. Tant que vous y êtes, vous pouvez aussi créer un répertoire nommé "moving" à la racine de la carte mémoire et déposer les fichiers présents dans Demo/efsroot/ du zip. On fait bien attention à ne rien effacer, on éjecte en toute sécurité, on remet tout en place dans la DS et voilà.

Level Editor: 

• fixing bugs with meta buttons;
• add support for special tiles used in conveyer belts and flowing water
• cosmetics: buttons with shadow and show when they are pushed
  

AnimEditor: 

• fixing 'apply to all previous frames' and 'apply to all future frames' buttons.
• only store thumbnails when the animation is used. 

runME:

• cosmetics: buttons with shadow and show when they are pushed 

SEDSdlta est votre éditeur de graphismes. Il permet de définir des palettes de couleurs et des pages de blocs 16x16 ou 32x32 qui seront sauvées dans des fichiers .spr. Ces fichiers peuvent ensuite être ouverts dans l'éditeur d'animations MEDSdlta ou dans l'éditeur de niveau LEDSdlta. Les niveaux créés par LEDSdlta seront sauvés dans des fichiers .map

Deux points communs dans tous ces éditeurs: maintenir L enfoncé pendant qu'on touche un bouton/une grille/une image à l'écran permet de faire une opération différente. Et appuyer sur L+R donne un peu d'aide.

These tools seem like they're very compact and full of features, maybe to the point of feeling a little bit cramped or unintuitive, though it's tricky to do something about that with this sort of screen resolution. I do appreciate the manual that you can access whenever to find out how to do stuff, and I'd rather have all the features than have a simplified tool. I liked the "scan" button in the sprite editor; that's not something I've really seen in pixel art programs.

I can certainly agree with that. It isn't rare that I have to dig my own blog -- or worse, the source code -- of AnimEDS when I want to do something a bit less frequent like copy a frame to a given position, create a new skeletton or adjust hit boxes. I'll have to complete the "L+R to get hint on how to use things" but it's good news that someone noticed it and appreciated it. Maybe it could be completed by a "please explain that control" mode where you can touch something on screen and learn about it rather than use it ...

I feel like it would help a lot to have buttons that bring up menus (especially on the animation editor, which needs more explanation than sprite editors do), where you'd have more room to make it clear what each option does or avoid needing button combos so you can fit more options on-screen, but that has to be weighed against how much it would slow down a user who knows what they're doing. You *could* have quick shortcuts with small icons alongside a button that brings up a menu that's less compact, though.

I have started something along these lines for 'monsters edition' in LEDS... That will be motivating to push it further

As you may have guessed, that lovely avatar for Nova comes straight from her website ;)

Les piles momies animées.

Au milieu d'un mois de dingues, j'ai quand-même réussi à améliorer un peu les graphismes de mes piles-momies et à faire une petite machine d'état qui fonctionne.

En fait, maintenant que j'y pense, pour ceux qui arrivent à atteindre la plate-forme là-haut, on peut même essayer de voir ce que ça donne de sauter par-dessus. Allez, ça mérite une démo téléchargeable, ça.

It's been a tough month. Let me tell you, when release-day came out on 24th, packing a binary with some new stuff to offer to you all was the last thing I had in mind (just before I'd fell asleep. Or maybe just after). But I still managed to improve a bit the undead-cell graphics, mirror the animation and give it a state machine so that it can be placed in levels. It isn't interacting with anything yet, just checking whether it should turn back at the edge of platforms, but there it is. You can practice tricky jumps if you feel so ;) The downloadable .nds finally made it to the Internet.

La démo de Février

ça n'aura pas été une semaine facile, loin de là. Heureusement, il n'y avait pas trop de travail à fournir avant d'avoir une meilleure gestion de la physique dans l'eau. je peux donc vous proposer comme prévu une nouvelle démo avant d'aller chercher la remplaçante de ma voiture déclassée ...

To be honest, I had little hope I could actually provide you a new version of the 3-rooms demo with fixed swim mechanics, given how much thing I had to fix over the evenings last week. Hopefully, there was only minor changes to implement and thus, the new demo is there anyway. Enjoy.

Dreamland: on fait le point

 La deuxième année de développement de "Bilou Dream Land" tire à sa fin. Il n'y a pas encore de nouvelle maps, mais je pense que les outils sont maintenant prêts à l'emploi.

Ce qui n'était qu'un brouillon avec quelques notes est maintenant une démo exécutable sur DS. Bugguée, certes. Incomplète, tout à fait, mais une démo tout de même. Je me donne l'année 2022 pour continuer d'ajouter des mécaniques de jeu dans ces trois pièces (branches rebondissantes, de l'eau où on nage, des plate-formes mobiles et des écrabouilleurs pour la pyramide, etc). Après 2022, il commencera à être temps de construire les niveaux eux-même avec tout ça, et de réfléchir à la technique pour faire les boss.

Au niveau du contenu du jeu, j'ai un premier projet de niveau dans la pyramide (depuis Aout) -- gardé au secret, évidemment -- et la zone-montagne commence à se dessiner peu à peu. Le "goomba-like" et les "bricks-like" sont venus compléter le bestiaire de la pyramide: je ne devrais plus avoir besoin de rien de ce côté-là. Ce qu'il me faut maintenant, c'est convertir tout ce petit monde en pixels.

Well, why not swapping the years with a flash back on what has been achieved. I almost did it last year. With 2021 closing, it's been 2 full years working on my "Bilou Dreamland" objective. The cornerstone of the year was introducing the "3 rooms" milestone. I'm proud to announce that as of today, that milestone sketched in March is now a demo, of 3 interactive environment packed into one (huge -- 2.7MB) .nds with swapping songs and shared contents for Bilou.

Beyond those got-them-working steps done, I've got most of the monster design for the Pyramid zone covered ... and starting to get idea for the final "Peaks zone". So stay tuned: 2022 will be the year for implementing all those fancy mechanics within the 3 rooms before I start doing full-fledged levels. Maybe I'll even be able to prototype the NPCs.

Il y aura encore eu quelques gros bug-de-murs pendant l'année, mais tout semble indiquer que Bilou supporte convenablement son nouvel environnement, maintenant. En tout cas, on peut essayer les maps de J.L.N sans devoir redémarrer à tout les coins de couloirs.

Euh ... donc en fait ... mise à jour de la Démo.

Edit: J.L.N me rappelle qu'il y aura des boss en plus des 4 mondes. J'imagine que mon prochain milestone (en plus de remplir ces salles de tests), ce sera de faire un proof-of-concept avec au moins un boss. N'importe lequel.

xmas21.zip

I finally posted something more on my sourceforge project: the set of editors (plus runme) as I've got them by this Christmas, invoking oven-hot slopes support.

I wish I could provide you with a meaningful 'change log' for this 'release' of my tools, but let's be

honest: there are over 20000 lines changed between then and now (assuming that you're only interested in what changed since last AnimEDS release in 2020). It won't be exhaustive, but I'll try to give you an idea of what's in anyway.

Sprite Editor

• allows you to work on any file you've got on your memory card (including automatic backups put in /DATA/SEDS/*)
• better 'colors zapping' implementation.
• 'where is that color used?' now cleanly implemented in the PaletteWindow
• (improved host tools sprdo and sprck are missing from this pack)

Animation Editor

• allows you to work on any file you've got on your memory card. 
  

Level Editor

• uses new map layout with dedicated PHYS layer (accidentally named 'SYHP' in the file >_>)
• show the 8 color palettes when selecting a block in DRAW mode (A). Color paint mode now available on both foreground and background layers (trigger with L+A on the desired layer)
• supports new any-sized special blocks with 'lookup arrows', features revised 'meta buttons' widget to select tile properties.
• reads new 'slopes %d = "%x"' hint in .cmd or .gam files and populates the slope tiles graphics accordingly. Different maps can use different slopes or share them by importing the same .gam file.
• supports spritesets and tilesets overlay commands

runMe (gameplay preview & WiFi transport)

• Allows live-skipping of buggy script lines
• allows auto-repair of the /moving/ directory
• features new level map engine
• supports script-driven song swapping with zik.file = "%s"
  
• Improved modplayer playback speed stability
• supports spriteset overlays (spr.more "%s" ...) and tileset overlays (bg0.more "%s" ...)

All these .nds files will work from anywhere in your flash card, but if you install them with their original *dlta.nds filenames at the root, you'll be allowed to hope from one tool to another with the embedded buttons (quit, LEDS, SEDS, MEDS) in the application welcome windows.

3 Rooms - Release Early

 

There we are. The first demo featuring the first 3 environments of Bilou's Dreamland cycling to one another, changing music and graphics. It's super work-in-progresss, and there are so many things to be fixed that I won't try list them now. But you know what they say: "release early, release often", and a fellow gamedever asked me earlier this week about being allowed to test and so on. So if you think he's right, enjoy this St-Nicolas gift.

Download: Dreams.nds updated Dreams.nds for new year

Voici donc (enfin ?) quelque-chose de téléchargeable avec les environnements que j'ai l'intention de faire évoluer pour y amener toutes les nouveautés de gameplay de Bilou's Dreamland. Alors, soyez avertis quand-même: c'est vraiment une version 0.0.0.1 là. Pas même une ébauche, tout juste un canevas. Y'a des retouches à faire par-tout. Y'en a tellement que je n'aurais même pas le temps d'en dresser la liste avant d'aller me coucher. Mais qui sait, ça vous amusera peut-être.

AnimEDS, cru 2020

Okay, these will be the first tools release with my new devkit setup. They seem to work fine on my iPlayer + lime DS setup.

I won't try to go with a 'how to use XXX' here, as this will be the mission of the AnimEDS manual page I'm editing this week. but you may want to know what to do after you

Download AnimEDS-2020.zip

right ? 

I want to use them on my NDS

Fine. Look at all the files in the archive, find back your micro-SD adapter and copy the files at the root of your SD card. The files themselves need to go there, not the AnimEDS-2020 folder. Don't change any file name.

Then put back everything in place, ensure your DS linker supports DLDI and launch medsdlta.nds. You can load the demo spritesheet by pressing START then L then A.

I want to use them in an emulator

Fine as well. I suggest you download the latest desmume (or at least 0.9.11). 

• In the Config menu, check "ROM Loading > Load entirely to RAM"
• In the Config menu, click "SLOT 1" to make the dialog box appear
• opt for R4 as the type of device
• point the 'director' to the location where you unpacked all the files. spriteA.spr should be in that directory.
• launch medsdlta.nds 

Then, again, press START, then L then A to get the santa-demo file loaded.

Why should spriteA.spr be at the root of my SD card ?

This is where the Sprite Editor and the Animation Editor will look for your projects. That allows reliable load/save commands even when you're commuting, rather than having to cross finger while you tap the screen with the stylus.

Why shouldn't I change the names of the .nds files ?

They have path to each other hard-coded, so that you can switch from one to another easily (real hardware only, so far). This is also why you should drop them at the root of your media card.

Hope that will help ManafilledMangoes try out the soft.

One last fix.

I'm pretty pleased to hear my 5-year old asking me to play School Rush. But for some reason, j.l.n has a fascination about power. And in School Rush, he wants to get the power-ups. He knows the pendats hold them and so he wants the pendats down.

"Papa, je peux jouer à Bilou?" .. Celle-là, je l'ai attendue ! Et voici donc J.l.n qui, du haut de ses presque-6-ans s'attaque au niveau qui avait été dessiné sous la direction de sa grande soeur. Mais pour une raison que je n'ai pas encore identifiée, mon p'tit bonhomme est plus ou moins fasciné par la puissance. Et dans school rush, la puissance, c'est le power-up du "gros poing". Il veut l'avoir et donc il veut éliminer les crayons qui le détiennent ...

remember your first pendat ?

But the thing is, the first encounter was designed to let the player easily avoid the pen, not to easily dispatch it. So he tries, again and again, asking for help when he's out of bladors (amno) because he's so scared to get down in the pencil' lair, grabbing them back. He's wishing so hard that you could throw a sponge at the pencil instead, wich would turn its harmful spike into a friendly moving platform (yeah, he's been watching me playing some Rayman, too).

Oui, mais l'endroit où on rencontre son premier pendat n'a pas vraiment été pensé pour qu'il soit facile de vaincre le pendat. Bien que ce soit tout à fait possible, on nous invite plutôt à le contourner en passant par les crayons. Mais ça, J.l.n ne veut pas en entendre parler. Il me demande de l'aider en lançant le taille-crayon pour lui (jusqu'ici j'ai refusé) ou d'aller récupérer le taille-crayon tombé à côté du crayon (le "trou" du crayon lui fait peur. Il m'invente des solutions où on peut lancer une éponge -- moins effrayante -- sur la pointe du crayon pour le transformer en une inoffensive plate-forme mobile (je garde ça pour l'encourager à essayer de faire du gobscript lui-même l'an prochain), etc.

I'm not going to grant that wish, partly because that could affect the gameplay balance too deeply, and partly because doing that himself could be a powerful motivation to learn letters, words and numbers...
But there is one more thing, something I can -- and did change : fixing a collision bug with the pendat. See, every time J.l.n makes a successful throw, the game never triggers the collision. He always manages to throw the blador at the exact time where the pendat bounces back and before it turns back. And during those few frames, the pendat is unfortunately unvulnerable in "aftermaths" version.
This is clearly a bug, an easy to fix one, and I'm quite surprised that it never annoyed anyone else so far. Anyway, that makes one more release to make one little kid's life easier.

Mais bon, il y a quand même un truc que je peux -- ai que j'ai -- corrigé: un bug de collision jusque là passé inaperçu et qui permet au taille-crayon de passer à travers le crayon sans le toucher quand celui-ci est dans son animation "rebondit en arrière après s'être cogné à un mur en courant".

School Zone: aftermaths

Five year ago, I released a single-level "anniversary" game featuring Bilou in a school zone settings. A bit later, in early November, I had the opportunity to have it play-tested by my nephews, who were 7 to 13 years old by then. From there difficulties to approach the game, I added one "preliminary" level that is now level 1 in school Rush.

Voici 5 ans, je vous faisais un jeu-anniversaire avec Bilou dans la zone de l'école. Quelques semaines plus tard, en septembre, mes p'tits n'veux me faisaient me rendre compte qu'il me fallait quelque-chose d'autre comme niveau pour introduire les mécaniques du jeu. Ce niveau non-tutoriel est depuis devenu le premier niveau de School Rush.

Download SchoolRush - JLN build.

So yeah, the 5 levels I'm releasing today for Bilou's 25th  anniversary took me long time to make. And it doesn't even feature the level that started it all. Because meanwhile, I grew interest in speedruns, and I wanted the game to focus on going as fast as we could and save the books. Things with a focus on wandering, discovering, solving or exploring will happen in another small game.

I'm proud I could get feedback from several professionals with the 2016 release. I hope the game is better now. May there be many of you finding it, may you have a fun time playing it. This is my gift to whoever makes free software, free music, or free videos. Thank you all for making coding possible/enjoyable. 

The engine code is LGPL, the tools 'used to make it (animations and level editors) are GPL, the art and level design remain my copyrights, but they are free to play, and free to share unmodified as part as this School Rush release.

Aujourd'hui, le développement de School Rush prend fin. Ce fut long, parfois fastidieux, mais je voulais l'amener jusqu'au bout. Comme dans tout jeu, il y a des choses qui ont été abandonnées en cours de route. Soit qu'elles ne convenaient pas, soit qu'elles m'écartaient du but premier du jeu... soit qu'elles promettaient de devenir un gouffre de développement rendant irréaliste toute sortie tant que je serais en solo sur le développement. Que ce jeu soit mon cadeau à tous ceux qui ont écrit du code free software que j'utilise tous les jours, les musiques que j'écoute en codant, les vidéos sympa qui m'ont donné envie de continuer. Merci à tous pour votre travail.

I'll just update November post with the link to December contents, if you don't mind. How-to-play etc. is there. If you're looking for a changes list, it's been posted already ;)

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History tracked on playeradvance, tigsource, homebrewlegends

School Rush : Post your score

it has been almost one year since the last release of Bilou : School Rush. Through unpractical ideas, oversophistication and deep engine refactories, I finally get something to share with you. Here is maybe the penultimate release bringing 1-UPs and hi-score tables to School Rush.

Download

Voici enfin une nouvelle release de School Rush. Je laisse donc tomber les options trop complexes pour me concentrer sur ce qui compte vraiment pour le jeu: les 1-UPs, le calcul du score (distance parcourue si on ne finit pas le jeu ou temps écoulé si on le termine).

So, compared to the previous builds,

• you can get 1-UPs by collecting letters. Everytime you get one, the next one will be more "expensive", though.
• every loading screen show how long it took you to get there and how far was that "there".
• there is a "congratulations" level at the end of the 'secret, good ending'
• there is a "game over" screen
• in both case, a hiscore table will show up. You'll compete for the shortest time if you found the good exist, and for going as far as possible (in pixels) if you're game over.
• no new levels this time. Core gameplay unchanged.

I do not have yet the code to let you enter your own name at the end of it though (that will likely be for the latest release). The purpose of this one is to ensure that the arbitrary scores mentioned as "special thanks" can be beaten. So you'll always be "Player One" and the pointing hand will not yet help you to see where you are.

J'ai un début de table des scores, aussi, mais pas encore la possibilité d'y enregistrer son nom. ça, ce sera pour la dernière release.

The times are shown as MINUTES:SECONDS:FRAMES, btw. I managed to get to the end in about 10'50", while losing 2 lives (which took me about 2 minutes). So beating KirbyKid will ask you at least deathless play through and beating Wintermute will almost certainly require to pull off some emergent gameplay and speedrunner skills... which isn't necessarily bad.

gameplay

You're controlling Bilou, a blue, ball-shaped explorer. You make him JUMP with the (A) button and grab things (or throw them) with (B). Your goal is to reach the right of each level before you're caught by the ever-raising ink.
You'll need to be quick, too. Use (R) or double-tap in left/right directions as if you were a pink, living vacuum cleaner.

You can stomp some monsters, you can throw sharpeners at others. Remember: the pencil soldats are the only real threat here, and they must be stopped from pouring even more ink for their autoritarist plans. Everything else that looks dangerous is mostly acting on fear and may prove very useful if you keep your head cold. Think about how useful a bobbing sponge could be if you could ride it (B). or how high an inkwell could shoot you ...

There are rumours of magical artifacts that could help you. The Fist of Justice, that noone can stand against (double-B) and the Floating Twister (hold A), that let you reach far away places. It's unlikely the pendats will let you recover them without a fight, though.

Story

At the far east of this school-like country, there is a gauge that will stop the ink. Rush for it! The books city is close to be destroyed once for all, and the elders' knowledge will be lost. This must be another plot from Square Root, who decided that mathematics are the only thing worth of being written down.
Everyone here seems to believe that Bilou is a sort of legendary hero...


How to play

Get the NDS image and play it on your homebrew-ready console or in an emulator, such as DeSmuME. See this page if you need extra explanation/instructions for running homebrews.

NB: download links have been updated to point towards "aftermath" version, and finally 'jln' version (gameplay fix). The "Gameover" version they were initialiiy pointing to is still downloadable, if you really want to.

SchoolRush NY2018

Happy New Year Everyone. I've got a new build of SchoolRush uploaded. Hope you'll enjoy it. For those of you who mastered the game, you'll discover the credits level and the hint towards the secret, vertical level that I've been working on half this year.

Prêts pour la nouvelle année ? Voici une version de Bilou: School Rush avec un niveau secret terminé, des images de chargement qui racontent l'histoire du jeu, la séquence de crédits ... Et pour ceux qui n'arriveraient pas encore jusque là, deux modifications qui rendent le jeu moins impitoyables: on peut "nager" hors de l'encre (encore faut-il pouvoir trouver une plate-forme où atterrir) et on grimpe automatiquement dans les encriers quand on tombe dessus, même si on tenait un taille-crayon entre les mains.

For everyone, you'll enjoy the "swim up for your live" mechanics that will let you go forward even if you missed a jump and fell into the ink. Well, you cannot recover *every* missed jump that way, but it's already much more forgiving than it used to be.

You'll also enjoy how jumping into an Inkjet now automatically let you in, dropping the Dumb Blador you're carrying, if any.

Story and gameplay migrated to latest release post
how to play
Get the .NDS image and play it on your homebrew-ready console or in an emulator, such as DeSmuME. See latest post if you need extra explanation/instructions for running homebrews.

School Rush update

At last, here comes an update on School Rush. Still featuring the 4 levels from last year, but with improved gameplay (especially through slightly increased gravity), improved game feel and a starting level that is more fair. I dub it "splashed" release because most of these changes were suggested by the author of Splashers ;-)

Voici enfin une mise à jour pour School Rush. Toujours les même 4 niveaux que la fois dernière, mais avec un gameplay amélioré, plus de petites animations sur les objets interactifs (gommes et bonus) et un premier niveau plus accessible même en mode normal. Et vu que la grande majorité de tout ça m'a été recommandé par l'auteur de Splashers, je baptise cette release "splashed" ^_^

(gameplay and story migrated to latest release

How to play

Get the NDS image and play it on your homebrew-ready console or in an emulator, such as DeSmuME. See this page if you need extra explanation/instructions for running homebrews.

School Rush Ready

Here comes a new challenge(r). Bilou: School Rush is at last ready for "VIP" players. There are no more things I need to add/fix for those 4 levels of platforming challenge. It may not be significant change compared to the last release, and these are clearly minor fixes compared to the last build, but it means the player should now no longer need some briefing: all the aspect should be readable and clean.

 Nous y sommes enfin! une version de School Rush qui tient plus du jeu que d'un béta-test. Ce n'est pas encore aussi parfait que je le voudrais, et ça manque sans doute de nouveauté pour mes fidèles testeurs, mais cette fois, j'estime avoir atteint le niveau de finition sur les quatres niveaux disponibles pour qu'il ne soit pas irrespectueux d'en parler aux dévelopeurs professionnels avec lesquels je suis en contact.

Si vous vous demandez "mais comment on y joue", n'hésitez pas à jeter un oeil au let's play de Pirez. (Enfin, assurez-vous quand-même d'avoir un émulateur NDS. DeSmuME, par exemple.

gameplay

You're controlling Bilou, a blue, ball-shaped explorer. You make him JUMP with the (A) button and grab things (or throw them) with (B). Your goal is to reach the right of each level before you're caught by the ever-raising ink.
You'll need to be quick, too. Use (R) or double-tap in left/right directions as if you were a pink, living vacuum cleaner.

You can stomp some monsters, you can throw sharpeners at others. Remember: the pencil soldats are the only real threat here, and they must be stopped from pouring even more ink for their autoritarist plans. Everything else that looks dangerous is mostly acting on fear and may prove very useful if you keep your head cold. Think about how useful a bobbing sponge could be if you could ride it (B). or how high an inkwell could shoot you ...

There are rumours of magical artifacts that could help you. The Fist of Justice, that noone can stand against (double-B) and the Floating Twister (hold A), that let you reach far away places. It's unlikely the pendats will let you recover them without a fight, though.

Story

At the far east of this school-like country, there is a gauge that will stop the ink. Rush for it! The books city is close to be destroyed once for all, and the elders' knowledge will be lost. This must be another plot from Square Root, who decided that mathematics are the only thing worth of being written down.
Everyone here seems to believe that Bilou is a sort of legendary hero...

How to play

Get the NDS image and play it on your homebrew-ready console or in an emulator, such as DeSmuME. See this page if you need extra explanation/instructions for running homebrews.

WARNING : difficulty selection on this release is partly broken : you have to touch the desired difficulty to get it selected. UP and DOWN directions, although changing the cursor's position, have no effect.

Go play SchoolRush!

I got all those little details fixed now, and at last, I am ready to release an improved version of Bilou: School Rush with the completed bottom screen. It hints you what to do. It reminds you how powerful or weak you are. It makes whatever happens on the top screen easier to decide about.

WARNING : I just (May 10th) spotted a bug when running on the Real Thing.
 A fix is written. It has been uploaded on May 11th. 
Look for SchoolRush-lazy.nds packaged within SchoolRush-cow.zip

School Rush is a speed-driven platformer. The action takes place above the ink. Don't fall. And make sure you don't let the raising it reaching you. If you loved challenge of platformers of the Amiga age, if you're the kind of player that seeks mastery of a game and enjoy to re-play the game to see whether you've progressed, School Rush is made for you

• use the D-PAD to walk left and right and double-tap the D-PAD to run (better run whenever you can),
• use A to JUMP and FLOAT.
• use B to GRAB and THROW.
• double-tap B when you have the punch power-up to PUNCH freaky supplies.

Oh, and if you're a dad or mum with kids, the 'easy' mode of School Rush is for them: it offers a more free playing mode where ink doesn't move, allowing to toy with the environment and learn how to go through obstacles in a more friendly way.

PS: now all's left for me to develop is the extra 20% : the secret level, endings and power-up shop.

PPS: voilà, Gilles. C'est la release dont je parlais ce matin: Bilou, la balle bleue qui essaie de devenir la plus rapide du monde! Assez rapide en tout cas pour arriver à stopper la montée d'encre qui menace la livrille. Sûrement encore un coup de ces envahisseurs de crayons-soldats. Heureusement, Bilou à plus d'un tour dans son sac!