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This Week At Gamercade Sep 2022 4/4

· 4 min read

It's been an exciting week at Gamercade this past week! The big 0.1.0 release went well and we're seeing lots of growth in the community! Here's to another great week ahead.

General Updates​

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

0.2.0 Roadmap​

We've decided on the main requirements for the next 0.2.0 release! We may add additional issues as problems or quick-fixes are found, but this is the core set of features we hope to have ready for the next major release. The main theme for 0.2.0 is "two." This includes things like 2 or more local player support, 2 or more networked sessions, and 2-channel audio support. Feel free to chime in on any of the discussions or on discord with requests or suggestions for the next release.

GitHub Sponsors Page​

We've been approved for GitHub Sponsors! This is a great way to support the project. Additionally we are offering services to help bootstrap your Gamercade development process. Of course, Gamercade and related tools will always remain free and open source forever, however any donations or sponsorships will go a long way in securing the future of the project. If you want to support the project in other ways, please see our support Gamercade for more information.

Console Improvements Odds & Ends​

  • Support for non-f32 output audio formats
  • Option to open raw .wasm files and use default assets.
  • Added Mouse Api Functions
  • New write_pixel_buffer function which takes a pointer, length, and start index and allows a more efficient way of calling set_pixel en masse.

Editor Improvements Odds & Ends​

  • Support for non-f32 output audio formats

Website Improvements Odds & Ends​

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.

Audio System Improvements & Research​

Gamercade's Audio System is also due for another large improvement. In the current plan, we are hoping to add support for panning and proper stereo sound in 0.2.0. This will also lay the foundation for the audio effects system we plan on adding in 0.3.0 or later. While the console does output audio on two channels, it's the same audio just duplicated on each channel.

These additions require a bit of research, planning, and possibly some code refactoring in order to ensure good comaptibility across different kinds of hardware, while still remaining flexible and high performant as the current sound engine. We don't have anything ready to show you just yet, but things are happening behind the scenes.

Support for 2+ Player Sessions​

As mentioned briefly in the 0.2.0 roadmap section, we are making a big push for supporting larger play sessions. Gamercade relies on p2p technology, which is great for small-scale multiplayer games. We also don't want to limit gamers to strictly requiring one player per game instance. This means that we can realistically support up to 4 separate console instances (possibly up to 6 in ideal network conditions), where each instance could have multiple local players. While we can't confirm what the hard cap is, we know for certain that we want to support different configurations such as (but not limited to):

  • 4 Instances, 1 player per instance, for 4 players total.
  • 2 Instances, 2 players per instance, for 4 players total.
  • 2 Instances, 1 + 3 players per instance, for 4 players total.
  • 3 Instances, 1 + 1 + 2 players per instance, for 4 players total.

The technology can support any number of players, so if there's someone out there crazy enough to organize a 4-instance, 4-player per instance, 16 player game session, we want to give you that option, but due to the networking requirements of a 4-player mesh (or more!) we don't expect this to be the norm.

Call to Action​

What can you do to support the project?

  • Read the suggestions on our support Gamercade page.
  • 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.
  • Hang out and chat with everyone in discord.
  • Shape the future of Gamercade! Take part in larger feature discussions.