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This Week At Gamercade Sep 2022 2/4

· 3 min read

It's been an exciting week at Gamercade this past week! We're going full-speed ahead for our first real release. The community is continuing to grow with more contributors and members in the discord each day! Here's to another great week ahead.

Sprite Sheet Editor

General Updates​

In this section, we discus changes and improvements which happened over the week.

Push for 0.1.0 Release​

As stated in our last weekly update, we are focusing our efforts on rounding out the whole experience in preparation for our first 0.1.0 release! This will be a big milestone and a culmination of a lot of hard work over the past months. There was a lot of housework-style tasks to be done, like organization of the projects, issue tracking, etc. But from now the majority of these efforts are being tracked by this issue.

From the current looks of things, most of the features are already implemented, with documentation and examples being lacking. Any issue on the nice to haves list will be great to have as additions in future updates - as these are also updates which wont fundamentally break Gamercade by introducing them.

Console Improvements Odds & Ends​

  • Implemented flip_x and flip_y for drawing sprites.
  • Added as_raw_state and related functions for better performant input handling.
  • Removed a few unimplemented API functions:
    • draw_text - this will be added again at a later date
    • bgm_is_active & channel_is_active - this functionality has been replaced
  • Added get_length style function on data api for audio, which returns either the length in seconds or game frames, for a bgm or sfx.
    • bgm_length_secs
    • bgm_length_frames
    • sfx_length_secs
    • sfx_length_frames

Editor Improvements Odds & Ends​

  • Palettes can now be renamed.
  • Removed unimplemented "Rename" and "Export" buttons for Palette Editor

Audio Engine Improvements Odds & Ends​

  • Phrases now correctly use "volume levels" when playing back.

Website Improvements Odds & Ends​

  • Added reference updates for new api functions.
  • Removed references to removed api functions.
  • Major updates to the entire graphics editor documentation.
  • Major updates to the Rom Settings documentation.
  • Added Nelua bindings and examples to their relevant pages.

What's Next​

In this section, we discus primary focus areas for the project. This includes features actively being worked on, as well as things potentially coming in the near or long term future.

Continuing First Release Prep​

Same as this week, we will continue improving the projects documentation and examples to provide a much better user experience for all future users! Of course, any critical bugs will be resolved if found. Again, the expectation of the 0.1.0 release is sooner rather than later. From a tech standpoint, Gamercade is ready! But we really want to ensure a solid developer in order to make a stronger impact during the big announcement.

Call to Action​

What can you do to support the project?

  • Consider sharing the project with your friends, and getting them involved with the community.
  • Building out more examples and have them featured on our page!
  • Contributing code and documentation to the project's GitHub.
  • If you're interested in contributing, please prioritize the issues outlined on here first!
  • Hang out and chat with everyone in discord.
  • Shape the future of Gamercade! Take part in larger feature discussions.