Over at GBATemp, user bobdamnit suggested that it'd be better if I release my 3DS games as .CIA files, so they can be installed on the main 3DS menu instead of just the Homebrew Launcher.

I should probably make this a regular thing, again. It's always fun to get a little back'n'forth going.

Dan from SoCoder

Recently, i saw a Choplifter game (Game Gear), on youtube and thought, with a bit of imagination,the rescuees looks like the platdude. So my idea is, if you like to make a Choplifter Clone or alike with platdude. At least something with Helicopter ? ^^;

It's been a long long time since I delved into the Mailbag, and having just peeked into it..
.. It's completely empty.
So, I'm reopening the mailbag.
If you've any thoughts, suggestions, ideas, game wishes, or .. Anything.. At all!!
The Mailbag is Open

I'm fairly sure I can make a draw-buffer work on the 3DS, but it seems I have a limit of 256x256 pixels due to my ongoing memory issues.
For the Desktop side of the Framework, I typically work with buffers of 1024x1024, so that's a 1/4 scaling thing from the get-go.
On the 3DS Framework, sometimes it uses full sized PC images when they're small enough, whilst other times it refers to smaller 1/4 sized scaled down images.
This is more or less the same issue on the buffer's s...

After each game's release, my inbox is filled with the writings of all the people who bothered to play it.
Let's see what @RSKGames thinks of this weeks game!
You can Download Franken Hopper here.

@RSKGames

Overview: In Franken Hopper you Hop and catch the flying creatures and avoid the blazing flames from the statues to the side and the fireballs from the big statue's eyes. The platforms help to climb higher to get creatures with more points(Lowest level 5 points, Mid...

I don't normally post a game on a Saturday, but with all the things I had to remember to do, I figured it best to make an early start on this week's posting incase things got a little crazy!

Eating bugs, just for fun!

The new choon that appeared last night, Generous Justice, is the music for Franken-Hopper.

I've just noticed a really odd bug in my site, via the method of visiting another site!
Over at Nintendo Max they've listed Flappadiddle as being from October 2017.
"October 2017? It definitely isn't from then.. Where on earth have they got THAT date from?"
.. I checked my own site, and...

I tried to tackle the online-leaderboard component of my 3DS target, yesterday. It didn't go well at all!

Having solved the "gap" issue from last night's post, I spent some time fiddling with the actual game.

Already the scaling is causing quirks!!

I did a little coding, yesterday, but nowhere near enough to be worthy of blogging about.
Instead, I sat and played quite a lot of Words With Friends (Username : Jayenkai, if you want to join in) and watched a ton of random bits and pieces on YouTube.
I've been watching a lot of Disneyland-Secrets things, lately, and I'm not really sure why. TPMVids filled an alarming amount of my time, last night.
Either it's the hot weather, or it's my mind's way of saying "Hey, I wr...

I can happily code in all kinds of weather, but when it's sunny, things start to slow down a whole bunch.

The epic Flappadiddle-Doo is now available on 3DS Homebrew.
95% of the game is intact, but the tiled backgrounds have vanished due to "I haven't added buffer-drawing to the 3DS Framework yet!" reasons.
Otherwise, it's pretty much identical.
6 worlds, 6 birds, 6 endless modes, and a whole lot of flappiness!

I might add a few extra functions for primitive drawing, or maybe a setting somewhere or something.
It's not too much of an issue, in that I know why it's drawing things at different scales, but it'd be a little easier if I didn't have to worry about whether something's going to be "The same scaled position as the larger desktop version" or "The exact location on the screen"

Although the 3DS games I've posted so far have looked reasonably well presented, there's been some horrible scaling and colouring issues all over the 3DS code!
Today I took the time to fix up a lot of the issues, and now I'm quite confident that scaling is no longer an issue, as long as you stick to percentages of the screen, rather than exact co-ordinates.
Exact co-ordinates don't do any fancy scaling, as I've found that tilemaps and the like start to get a bit screwy if you...

95% of Flappadiddle now works on the 3DS, but it still needs a bunch of tweaking to be done, in order to get it nicely 3DS worthy.
Like the level select menu...

With the 3DS onslaught in full swing, and this week's game being delayed, what better time than to stop and pause, and think about the other myriad of things that I'd like to do..?!

D'oh!
Well, I did say that Franken-Hopper was a little bit *too* difficult.
.. Now it's the exact opposite.

Today, I've rejigged a lot of the framework's opening memory gubbins, although not the way I'd've liked.
In the end, rather than solving my memory management issues, I actually ended up stripping out the largest array completely, meaning that all additional lines (ship trail, bullet trail, explosion trails) in "On a Space Shooting Trail" are all now missing on the 3DS edition.
They're not anything you'll specifically miss, especially on the tiny 3DS screen, but .. they...

I've found a number of minor issues with Micro Clampett, like how I'd forgotten to add the Music Volume setting to the Music Channel. D'oh!
My mind seems to be enjoying doing all these little fixes a lot more than working on actual games, at the moment, so I'm just going to keep doing that until I get bored!!!
We'll hold off Franken-Hopper until next week, and hopefully I'll come up with a more interesting gameplay style for it.
At the minute he can definitely hop,...

1. Finish off the Franken-Jumper game.
2. Rewrite my giant Array declarations.
.. Oh, and then double check that the new stuff works on all targets.

I tried to compile "On a Space Shooting Trail" for 3DS tonight, but it wasn't having any of it!
Seems that my habit of creating giant arrays, at launch, isn't very good when it comes to trying to then run them on the limited 3DS.
It seems that if I "alloc" the big arrays at a later point, they tend to work better than if I try to just declare "I'm having a ginormous array, here!", right at the start of the code.
The task, then, will be to rewrite a significant part of "On a Spa...

I have no idea.
Feels a bit like NeonPlat, and I'm slightly tempted to just make NeonPlat instead!!

After spending hours retweaking the 3DS part of the framework, I'm now mostly confident that everything's a little more compatible.

I sat around waiting for feedback from the GBATemp community, in the hope that I might be able to fix up any potential issues with my 3DS Framework.
Nothing arrived.
I've left it there for 3 days, and... Nothing...
So, here's release #2. Micro Clampett on the 3DS.