Lightspeed Tyrannosaurus

Lightspeed Tyrannosaurus Gameswww.lightspeedtyrannosaurus.com

What is fl0w? fl0w is an interactive evolutionary game created

by Jenova Chen as part of a masters degree. The game adapts depending on how the player

progresses, resulting in a unique experience.

Nintendo DS tech specs

Dual screens, 256x192px (one touch sensitive) Two ARM processors, 67MHz and 33MHz 4MB RAM Microphone WiFi connection Virtual surround sound stereo speakers

...all of which poses an interesting programming challenge.

Over 40 million systems have been sold worldwide(!)

Why the NDS for flow??

Novel Gameplay Ideas Using a Stylus instead of a mouse. Shouting into the microphone to ward off larger

enemies. Using the top-screen for a radar.

Implementing these ideas proved be near impossible. Homebrew Community

2 distinct libraries, PALib and libnds Emulators The pity regarding the Homebrew community is that

it’s still young and many people use the community to pirate games so there’s no as many hardcore programmers as originally anticipated.

Java [mo|ba]ck-up (saviour)In order to understand the concepts of fl0w and model it's gameplay, we initially created a test game in Java codenamed Darwin. We ended up relying on this as our main project as the NDS version pwned us. This was due to flaws in the DS libraries and lack of support available to us.

Darwin Gameplay

Multiple evolutionary paths – the player starts as a small cell-like creature, but is soon given the choice whether to become and “Eel”, a “Jellyfish” or a “Ray”.

3 statistics – strength, resistance and speed – which impact how your creature performs.

Enemies can target you, or food, or each other. The player moves through progressively more

dangerous levels, improving their statistics to take on more difficult enemies.

Afterthoughts

Too much time was spent trying to figure out bugs and how to use the NDS libraries properly.

The java mock-up originally helped us to understand game-play but porting it to the NDS proved very difficult, and vice-versa.

The project overall was a welcomed learning experience and challenged us to a very high degree. We also lost many nights of sleep and clumps of hair.

A look to the future

We have all agreed over the Summer months to try help the NDS Homebrew improve as there’s no single place to find out everything you need and not very many people understand how to approach programming games. Don’t get us wrong there’s lots of great contributors and programmers in the community but it seems that most members are a lot more take than give.