Exceeding Actor Limits in GB Studio

[@chimaeraarts]

Reminds me of Surge's Gym for some reason

[@xXLeandro12]

Hmm...

[@Raddishist]

Solid video. Extremely informative, straight to the point without being confusing.

[@tonywtyt]

I'm an old C developer, that was transformed into a web app developer, which I've been doing for close to 30 years (20 being web). I'm interested in game development and want to have fun. I've toyed with a number of engines and frameworks, and then came across GB Studio last night, then spent the whole day today playing with its nuiances. There was a bug in the example script, in that it failed to release custom scripting from a button so "space dog" became very stupid : ). It took me forever to figure that one out. Then, I started trying to figure out a way to display a kind of HUD and ran into issues with 8px digits for 16px actors to display those digits, and struggled with learning Aseprite's way of doing things. I finally came up with something that should be manageable, but have to create some new assets. Anyway, to finish the evening off, I came across your wonderful sector setup. I've heard of this strategy on other platforms and this was a wonderful illustration of its use. Thanks for sharing!!!

[@COMBOY]

I found that issue too, I think it actually makes the B and A buttons to stop working, which causes a kind of softlock in the game that stops you from interacting with any actor in it, like the space dog for example. I think that the space battle minigame scene is what is actually causing the issue because of how long the scene is. I'm not an expert in coding, but that's just what I'm suspecting.

[@zachreddy]

Brilliant. I can think of a few other possible uses for this, I'll need to do some experimenting...

[@zigmenthotep]

Great, let us know if you come up with something good.

[@sk45293]

Such a creative solution. Thanks for sharing!

[@nintendonerdjoseph]

Awesome stuff! I'm loving these tutorials!

[@NukeOTron]

From what I can tell, though this is due to me using GB Studio 3.1 on Color mode, the sprite limit seems dependent on how many BG tiles used and how big the room is. With 192 BG tiles taken up in a room, you can use 64 sprites per room, and not all actors need sprites or collision boxes. Also, since I'm experimenting with it, I tested out something similar for palette-swapping characters. However, my method involves taking advantage of how some objects can only do their update events when they're on-screen, and switching variables so they only have to do it ONCE, when they're on-screen. I kinda figured GB Studio could do this. If it means I can move/make enemies further down the road without screwing up the VRAM, it'll be very helpful.

[@shaungreer3350]

Boo-lio is my spirit animal

[@CaioCesarCampos]

You are amazing man. Thanks a lot.

[@_Jarkor]

Hey, that's some great vid. Thanks, appreciated.

[@mikethetowns]

Awesome stuff dude, nicely done.

[@alwaysasn]

This is super useful. Thanks so much!

[@Shmynkellbonkenstein]

Very clever!

[@cbpostservice]

I don't understand how you'd make a large game on this. You'd have to individually manually update EVERY event after a certain event was made? Like imagine you talk to 20 NPC's. Then something there's a chapter 2 in the story and all those 20 NPC need to be gone in chapter 2. But come back for chapter 3. Then only certain ones for chapter 4, but only on certain pages of chapter 4. That's a LOT of work just thinking about it. Imagining making all of that with just a notebook and my tiny screen laptop sounds ridiculously stressful.

[@chafacorpTV]

So you're telling me they had to come up with this trickery on assembly language back then, with no way of failproofing it easily but by dumping the code into a testing eeprom? yooooooooooooooooooooo.

[@zigmenthotep]

Well I don't know about the Game Boy, but they did some crazy stuff on the Atari 2600, a system which technically can only display 2 single-color sprites at a time.

[@pixelbrat7478]

is there a way to make timed events like a ticking bomb or somethin?

[@zigmenthotep]

As far as I know, no. The closest thing you could do it set up a value to increment with every step and then go off when it reached a specific value.

[@casekocsk]

I don't know if it's because you use older version of GB Studio (or not, IDK the version number since it's already 9+ months since this video) but IDK if there is a limit to actor numbers... AFAIK the limit is only the sprite numbers (max 25 unique sprite) which means you can have "infinite" number of actors as long as they use same sprites... Then again, if you only use static object, why not just use triggers instead of actor? Sure it can't light up like your example, but AFAIK there is no limit on how much triggers you can add in a scene.

[@zigmenthotep]

I haven't gotten a chance to get into the newest version, so I do not know, but if the trigger and actor limits are one I don't even care that my tutorial is no longer relevant. As for triggers, once again I don't know if this was changed in the latest version, but triggers trigger automatically, whereas actors need to be interacted with to trigger.

[@MaxOakland]

You can’t have infinite actors in version 2. You can have up to 30. If you need more, this is still useful And there is also a limit on how many triggers you can have: 30

[@bbhoodsta]

One of your ghosts has a badonkadonk

[@zigmenthotep]

Yes, that's Boo-donkadonk.

[@thuongtran6859]

Character In the video It's great, I like it a lot $$

[@shortbreadhead]

I'm still researching gb studio to know what I can do in it. Is it possible to have a game that goes between top down and side scrolling, like.. if I wanted to make a game that had sections that were viewed from a side perspective, (let's say for example something like lemonade stand, that kind of view with people coming and going from the left and right) but other sections of the game had top down exploring. Is that possible? Going back to the lemonade stand thing because it's a good example, that game has a level of randomness to the customers and it increases the people when you do better, are you able to work in things like that? lol it sounds like I'm just wanting to make lemonade stand but not at all, it was the best example I could think of that incorporate elements I'd want to know about!

[@LuppetCentral]

I'm doing this in the game I'm making.

[@kokroucz]

No, it's not the reason I clicked video. I don't even have GBS. In order to stay young and pretty I have to feed of genus ideas. Quite a good that one.

[@ToonymanStudios]

why would they make this with limitations? so lame! especially sense the gameboy era is no more! they could keep it's style but without limits! back then they had no choice! but to use what they had at that time. and you want to play on a hardware well you can just 3d print one or get one of those pie game emulators made for this like what microsoft makecode is doing!

[@zigmenthotep]

The whole point of GB Studio is that it makes games that will run on original Game Boy hardware.