Paris Graphics

(more screen shots here)

For Blip Festival 2007, I was determined to do all of my visuals on game systems rather than using a laptop. My gp2x applications were ready but I wanted to try another platform. Dusted off my Gameboy Advance and thought that due to the fact that just about everyone can get there hands on one of these, it would be a great platform to write some video applications for. I spent the next few weeks reading everything that I could find on the web about GBA programming.

I ended up having several small applications written in time for Blipfestival. They were all written in C. A few use images as sprites but most are my usual style - math. Basically, I write a bunch of equations and map them to a button so that the user can push and choose (or get a random one). Each equation has some variables which are mapped to the D-Pad (Joystick) so that the values change with up/down, right/left.

The GBA uses a 16.78 MHz ARM processor and at that speed it’s kind of crazy to be writing individual pixels to the screen, but something that I wanted to try after doing it with success on the GP2X. I plan to revisit the code for these and see if they can be optimized to the point where others might like playing with them. If not, I’ll try other approaches.

I finally got around to doing some video captures of what I’ve done so far - thanks to Bitshifter for loaning me his TV out adapter. I’ll put them together with some music and post on You Tube later this month.

For now I’ve posted more screen shots on this page.