The first beta of Game Slate will be going out the weekend of December 2nd! If I owe you beta access please send me an email.
If you want beta access also send me an email. You’ll need to create a Skewworks account, for beta forms, threads, and updates, and be active on Skewworks OR TinyCLR.
You do NOT need any hardware to participate; Game Slate has it’s own emulator.
For the first beta you’ll be able to create Tower Defense, Brick Break and Classic Adventure games. If you happen to have a ChipworkX or Cobra I might give out hardware drivers for those as well. 
I’ll be posting videos of game performance on this thread as I get more demos running.
We’re running a bit behind be we’re definitely still on track for this month.
Sorry for the delays; there’s a lot of projects going on at the same time here.
While you wait; enjoy the new Game Slate logo.
Looks good, although doesn’t really relate to “game” aspect of the project to me.
Just a feedback if you care
@ Architect always care about feedback from you guys! Problem is it’s really hard to capture “game” as a logo when it’s not one game but a set of engines. So we went w the retro look playing off both old school feel of some of the games and success of recent “modern retro” games like the BioShock and Fall Out series.
If you have suggestions I’m always happy to hear em.
@ Alex you’re already signed up Mr. Contest Winner. And we should have the first of the prototype boards this week.
Your updated prize (FLEX): Hydra, Screen, Joystick Module, Music module, 6 button module and possibly our other module thathasn’t been announced yet.
Well, I guess, as long as there is “game” word in the product name as in “Game Slate” there shouldn’t be any confusion. Current logo does have cartoonish look which usually is associated with games. So looks good! ;D
Actually, when I first saw the logo my first thoughts were “Metropolis City” (Batman) and “Megatropolis” (Megamind). So, I think it’ll work just fine!
[quote]Actually, when I first saw the logo my first thoughts were “Metropolis City” (Batman) and “Megatropolis” (Megamind). So, I think it’ll work just fine!
[/quote]
Hmm, first thing I thought about was Futurama… 
The University is bringing me up on disciplinary charges… wait… that’s not good news at all.
I still hear the theme song in my head now.
Hi Skewworks… I’ve been very busy with the Free Standford Online Classes :wall: , yet thery are very interesting. I will prob. take the January Tech Busisness Class. (need to sell some of my projects someday )
Your New Logo looks great; retro 1920ish Indutrial revolution, a new gamming era. Nice.
keep up the good work 
I’ve been pretty quite on this front for awhile. GS has been through a lot. The originally intended hardware had the carpet yanked out from under it, our new target hardware is still in beta ;), and funding dried up awhile ago.
But I’ve by no means stopped!
You’ve already seen some super basic sample games (brick breaker, mario scroller, pac man clone) but I’ve been working on something special.
The next code I post for Game Slate will be a short (yet well featured) RPG. I’ve added parallax scrolling, and a few other fun things. GS now divides maps into “zones” much like other games do with large maps. Of course going over SD card GS won’t load as super fast but I think the following just might help with that:
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The max supported zone size is 1280x960 pixels; though we could actually more than double that easily.
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Tile (i.e. non-animated, bottom level sprites) are fully loaded and disposed of at zone load time.
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For maps that are larger than the zone size GS handles in the following: 16 full screen buffers are created and loaded as you move the buffers get their indexes updated and new buffers are loaded from the map. This gives you 1.5 screens in all directions of buffered data to give you time to load the next time.
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Partial Anti-aliasing. Full anti-alias support is allowed for “effects” during combat and I’m looking into how many levels of transparency (if any) can be supported for normal walking around.
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Dual Screen support will be available once Hydra’s capable of handling the OLED (soooooon)
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Awards; obviously
I still remember all the people that wanted in the beta so as soon as the game is ready I will be sending it out to you.
Thanks for the update - good progress!
Ran a test of a 1280x1024 map last night with collision detection, variable speed walking (controlled by joystick), warps, and auto walk.
FPS ranges between 72 and 82 FPS depending on the work load.
I’ll be adding anti-aliasing to the sprite today to see if it can support that while sustaining +30FPS. Video in the next couple of days.
Looking forward to the videos!
Fun! Now how do we play with it?
With a Hydra, Joystick and T35. 
The engines for Game Slate (minus awards, for obvious reasons) are open source and when this game is finished (possibly prior) I’ll be releasing the associated source to everyone that requested beta access.
I’d already have stuff out but the SD card still seems to have issues on Hydra so I’m currently doing some steps in program space that really belong being grabbed from the SD and parsed.
Pokemon forever! ;D ;D ;D
