ZNAX σε Amstrad, Atari ST, XL

[Blue Max]

Hey joyrider3774,

You've been an incredible ambassador for ZNAX over all these years. Communicating with you in this thread has been invaluable to me.
I continue to support your efforts and genuinely celebrate every new port you release.

It's truly incredible to see how far this little game has come, all the way from Pocket PCs to the Nintendo Switch.

Your version has now become more famous than my original ZNAX, and that makes me truly happy.

That Four Corners game looks really good!
Who knows, maybe its creator played ZNAX many years ago and got inspired.
Either way, they've developed the idea beautifully.

Out of curiosity, how many platforms have you ported your ZNAX version to so far, in total?

 

[joyrider3774]

That Four Corners game looks really good!
Who knows, maybe its creator played ZNAX many years ago and got inspired.
Either way, they've developed the idea beautifully.

Yeah its really good, I asked the author and he said he was not inspired by any game, he made the initial game in the early 2000's in javascript, so you both may have had the same idea then

You've been an incredible ambassador for ZNAX over all these years. Communicating with you in this thread has been invaluable to me.
I continue to support your efforts and genuinely celebrate every new port you release.

Thanks, thought I should post about them here to keep track of it

Out of curiosity, how many platforms have you ported your ZNAX version to so far, in total?

Honestly? i lost track of it let me try to list the ones i've done personally and backtrace a bit, but some of these are based on the same source code

1. Znax GP2X
2. Nokia N810
3. Znax windows version
4. Znax mac version
5. Znax linux version
6. Znax funkey / rg nano
7. Znax steamdeck
8. Znax anbernic RG35XX
9. Znax miyoo mini
10. Znax espboy
11. Znax pimoroni tufty2350
12. Znax pimoroni explorer
13. Znax vircon32 version
14. Znax microstudio / js / web version
15. Znax trimui smart pro
16. Znax trimui brick
17. Znax raspberry pi
18. Znax nintendo switch

those are the ones i did personally and could find back but some are just recompiles with minor changes, other people also ported my version to other devices like the pandora version or the portmaster version for all the different chinese emulation handhelds and i just noticed on github even a ps5 test version ( https://github.com/gen04177/Znax/releases )

 

[Blue Max]

Wow, thank you so much for sharing that incredible list!

I'm honestly blown away by the range of platforms.
From the GP2X and Nintendo Switch all the way down to tiny devices like the ESPboy and Funkey.
It's absolutely mind-blowing to see ZNAX running on such diverse hardware!

You've basically made the game immortal.

I'm curious: which platform was the most difficult or unusual to get working properly?
Was there any that gave you particular headaches?

 

[joyrider3774]

Wow, thank you so much for sharing that incredible list!

I'm honestly blown away by the range of platforms.
From the GP2X and Nintendo Switch all the way down to tiny devices like the ESPboy and Funkey.
It's absolutely mind-blowing to see ZNAX running on such diverse hardware!

I forgot about the nintendo switch version, i added it to the list

You've basically made the game immortal.

i released source code also so people can keep on porting that version and some already did

I'm curious: which platform was the most difficult or unusual to get working properly?
Was there any that gave you particular headaches?

Probably the very first gp2x version, gp2x made me learn about c/c++ and SDL 1 and i did not had much experiance with it then, its also the very 1st game and main game version i had written all other versions are basically ports of that initial gp2x version. Except for the nintendo switch version that was a complete rewrite starting from the beginning again in fuze for nintendo switch. The switch version had it's caveats as you could not import any assets so had to redo those from the beginning from a selection of assets availble in that program for nintendo switch but all others were basically either adjusting sdl1 code (once) to sdl2 and / or adapting sound or graphics to different resolutions or just simple recompiles with different compilers and thats much less problematic than creating the initial version

 

[Blue Max]

Thank you for everything, my friend. It's been an absolute joy talking with you and seeing ZNAX's journey through your eyes.
I'll be following your future ports with a huge smile.
Keep being awesome.

 

[joyrider3774]

Hey,

A Few weeks ago i finally made a port of znax for playdate, since playdate is 1 bit graphics (only black& white) i reverted to using shapes with some contrast changes to easier see the differences between blocks. It's just a direct port with different graphics. The port is also playable in browser using X & C as a A / B buttons and arrow keys F3 switches between playdate graphics and the previous skins that were made. Thats only possible in the windows, mac and web version of the playdate version though because of some porting sdl2 reimplementation i did of the playdate api.

available here: https://joyrider3774.itch.io/znax-playdate-windows-mac

 

[Blue Max]

Hi there!

It looks awesome, and the shapes you chose create a really cool visual effect in black and white. I watched the video and the game plays great!
I actually didn't know about the Playdate console, it seems to have a lot of great titles.
Congrats, joyrider3774! Awesome work, and please keep me posted on any future ports you make!
By the way, is this port written in Lua, or did you use the C API with your SDL2 wrapper?

 

[joyrider3774]

Hi there!

It looks awesome, and the shapes you chose create a really cool visual effect in black and white. I watched the video and the game plays great!

I actually did not invent these myself, it was the author of vircon32 fantasy console that gave me the initial shapes graphics and he also had the idea about the contrasts. I initially had made other shapes, those shapes are not included for the playdate game itself but they are in the web, windows and mac version as a skin. It looked like this but was not as good as the ones that were proposed by the vircon32 author.



Afterwards I also created a skins with numbers but that was even harder

I actually didn't know about the Playdate console, it seems to have a lot of great titles.

Yeah it's a neat little console and got many games on both itch.io and on their own catalog store. You can indeed by default create games using lua or c, most people choose lua though i however c. Other languages support like rust, go, c++ etc have been added by the community. The playdate got it's own set of functions and their own sdk and simulator app on pc, so you can actually develop games without owning a playdate, but I do own one myself.

Congratulations, joyrider3774! Awesome work, and please keep me posted on any future ports you make!

Will do, currently got nothing in the works, but I did "back" some device on kickstarter so I may potentially eventually create a port for those but not sure yet as I do not have those devices in my hands currently

By the way, is this port written in Lua, or did you use the C API with your SDL2 wrapper?

The game is written in C, it is a port of my sdl version to c, so it uses playdate specific api functions. The port from sdl to c playdate sdk took about 1-2 days but i had prior experience porting other sdl games to c playdate sdk.
The source code is here btw: https://github.com/joyrider3774/znax_playdate

The SDL2 Wrapper is actually something entirely else, it's not a wrapper for running sdl(2) games on c playdate sdk but the wrapper implements the c playdate sdk header functions in sdl2. Basically i took the c headers of the playdate c sdk and for every function available there i implemented them in my own way using sdl2. This allows for recompiling any (unmodified) playdate c sdk game using my sdl2 api reimplementation to make them work on other platforms like the web using emscripten, windows, linux, mac, .. with arm, x86 etc

 

[Blue Max]

Thank you for explaining everything clearly. That makes perfect sense now. Your wrapper approach is very clever.
Wish you the best with your future projects!

About Lua, I have a story.
I once embedded Lua into my BASIC interpreter. I mixed BASIC and Lua code together.
But I stopped there. I did it out of respect for Lua as a language. You know what I mean.