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Using the power of the Commander X16, a newly released 8-Bit computer I've begun the process of building a brand new 8-Bit block game. Through some heavy programming I designed a chunk loading engine in 6502 assembly. But because there weren't any great tile designing tools for the X16, like YYCHR for the NES, I had to make them myself. The links to my tile maker is available below. However, after designing a chunk rending engine with tiles, I realized that it looked terrible. I tore it out and replaced it with a new method of rending using the X16's bitmap mode. Although it uses more video memory, the isometric blocks look much better. And most of the code from my first attempt could be recycled, so nothing ended up being a waste. More updates are soon to follow so stay tuned.
Share your ideas and be first in line for the Beta test at / inkboxathenaeum
Additional Resources:
X16 4bpp and 8bpp tile and palette editor:
notin.tokyo/X16tiles
3D ant attack footage
• Ant Attack Walkthrough...
This video was sponsored by Brilliant
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first
how was this comment made 6 days ago but the video 4 hours ago
Render caves by skipping blocks below stanley's Y position to his feet and blocks above his height! Here is a suggestion for optimizing your rendering process. Method 1: Thinks of rendering your 3D world as a 2D Grid. Have an invisible 2D grid of data that store z depth of the highest block! This grid only get modified when you add or remove block. Then you render from bottom up! Method 2: Render Front side, then upper slab till it reach bottom back corner. and use 2 row of data that store depth. (Highest from lowest. Lowest from Highest) You modify those depth while rendering block by Z minus Y. And you use those data to skip everything that is hidden underneath. A more complicated but potentially minimal complexity! Needs a little more work for correct draw order. I'd be curious to see how well this would run!
@@EpiklyGuy The video was uploaded as an unlisted video 6 days before, and he made it public 4 hours ago
@@EpiklyGuy the video was uploaded six days ago but made public 6 hours ago likely to see what Brilliant thought about the sponsor segment
I was really scared this was just gonna be in the 8-bit art style and not actually 8-bit. I'm very impressed
Yea - this project is actually incredible. I cannot wait to see what comes next
Only the real thing here
@@mattgio1172yea, me neither
Yeah I've seen a lot of YT videos like that lately. Really cool to see an actual 8 bit demake
Yeah I hate when people call simple pixel art "8 bit", not realising the actual limitations of 8 bit systems.
The fact that it's not just 8-bit art, but 8-bit programming as well, is mind-boggling to me. I'm really curious to see how different layers are handled.
There shouldn't be a comma in between 'as well' and 'mind boggling'. (Yes ik this is the definition of ☝️🤓)
@@Aphlaa actually 🤓☝️, the comma there is perfectly appropriate. It’s an appositive comma. The clause “but 8-bit programming as well” is not essential to define any part of the encompassing sentence “The fact that it’s not just 8-bit art is mind-boggling to me”, so you can and, by all means, should use both commas there.
@@luckas221a oh yeah i see that now, ur right
I would love to see this revisited in 16bits to really demonstrate just how big a leap that was back in the day
I saw a video by a guy who made minecraft for calculator, he did isometric projection, but instead of using bitmap approach, he came up with a way to do tiling for isometric projection too, basically when you look at a block in isometric projection, you can split it into 3 sides, then if you split each of the sides into 2 tiles, you get 6 tiles per one block, yes the tiles have to be triangular and you have to make 6 per one block in the game, but it would definitely let you increase the texture size of your blocks, here's the link to the video of that guy if you wanna see how he made it kzhead.info/sun/dc5yc82Fhmhsq6M/bejne.html&ab_channel=TheScienceElf It came out yesteday so you might've already seen it idk
This is exactly what I thought! I think calculators are more powerful though
@@ericpalmer343yes, modern graphing calculators are more powerful than a lot of older game systems. Pretty cool!
@@ericpalmer343 Well the ti-84 runs on a CPU from the 80s and came out 20 years ago, so maybe it's not *that* far away in capabilities
yeah i saw that today lol
Was gunna say, this is a lit like that
You could probably speed up rendering significantly if you just searched for all visible blocks and rendered only them, as a matter of fact, since you have as much RAM as you do, you could probably store a list of all visible blocks and update it as the world is interacted with, that way you'd probably be able to smooth scroll again. Since you'd not spend so much time rendering.
Cool
Yeah, seemed a bit weird to me that rendering unseen blocks was even considered, let alone done. I mean, people bricked their PCs trying to "export" a small minecraft world because the tool they used did not have culling enabled and 3 billion objects is a bit much.
The only issue is processing power and memory. It's faster to check 4096 values once than run an algorithm that requires some amount of extra memory and still may require checking thousands of blocks continously.
@@InkboxSoftwareI think they are referring to rendering. From your explanation it sounds like you are rendering all blocks, regardless of if they are visible. This is a waste
Currently the blocks that aren't visible aren't being rendered. I do copy each block to a buffer, which may later be overwritten by later blocks. It's true, that is a bit of a waste, but how do I know which blocks are visible or not without checking a significant number of other blocks for each and every block? In the current method, I examine each block once, then I can copy the buffer to VRAM to be processed visually. So blocks that aren't seen aren't rendered by the VERA (the video card).
I love that the X16 is actually finding good use in the niche it's been designed for. Beautiful to see such projects succeed.
Listening with headphones I can't fully concentrate with the music in one side (I like the music, its a vibe) and voice over in both. But besides that, this is fascinating honestly
I only had one headphone in and didn't even realize there was music
Yeah, super hard to watch, even though the content is great
yeah, same
i agree
It's fucking me up even on my phone, it has stereo speakers but I keep thinking my headphones are playing something elsewhere in the room
The fact that this uses the X-16 is awesome to see honestly. I remember back when the X-16 project was barely anything more than a concept in the 8-bit Guy's brain, but now I get to see it pop up on other channels! Awesome video, my guy!
yeah, it’s so cool that it’s gotten this popular
Man, you're one of the most underrated KZheadrs on this platform. I love your content, and your programming skills are amazing... I wish you the best.
Thanks man, more to come
Yes, thanks @@InkboxSoftware
Oh yes… This guy is the most unique and intriguing content producer… Waiting for more!
I think a major issue here will be being able to see things obscured by the blocks in front of it. Maybe add the ability to rotate the camera 90°, which should be feasible with your method of chunk storage.
yeah, it won’t fix all perspective issues, but the ability to rotate between 4 different viewing angles is pretty common for isometric games, like Rollercoaster Tycoon, and really helps disambiguate when there’s a question.
An additional idea that could further help in such situations is an “cross-section” toggle that when activated only renders blocks at stanley’s current head height or lower. still wouldn’t be *easy* to navigate below ground, but would make it more possible.
@@IONATVS Maybe instead it just stops rendering at head or foot height in that mode. Otherwise it’d be easy to fall into lava or down a pit
@@JG-vh6oy True, though it can be hard to navigate on the plane if you don’t know what blocks are in the head-height layer…so how about this: one 8-bit word for the overall view perspective, first 2 bits stores the orientation 0-3, next bit stores boolean 0 if cross-section toggle off, 1 if on. Next bit stores a boolean for 2 ways of implementing cross-section: 0 for “survival/adventure mode” cross section, where the draw height options are relative to current player foot height, with a min of seeing the block layer beneath your feet on top and a max of the block above head height on top, then 1 for “creative/spectator mode” cross section, where they’re instead fixed with respect to bedrock. In either case the last 4-digit nibble (which can be extracted with modulo 16 division) would hold the numeric offset 0-15 from that reference level for the cross-section to stop rendering at.
@@IONATVS maybe swapping out blocks obscuring the player with something like a wireframe block? I'm having a hard time picturing it in my head, but I'm thinking similarly to how games like Diablo make foreground objects semi-transparent.
As an EE student, I'm blown away! Incredible job so far, I hope you can complete the project. Subscribed!
EE?
@@OneTwoMark Electrical engineering. I've taken a couple classes related to the topics in this video.
Like someone else said, I think you should assign a button to rotate the view by 90° so you can see the blocks behind other blocks. If you find it useful, you can add an arrow that shows how the view is rotated, an arrow that points NE, NW, SW, SE based on the way the camera is currently oriented.
That is so cool! This is giving me a HUGE reminder of Paper Minecraft back when I was on Scratch. I will 100% be following this project, because this is the coolest CX16 project I'm seeing so far.
Can't wait for SNES, Genesis, N64, PS1, PS2, Gamecube, Wii Minecraft next
But that is isometric and paper minecraft is viewed like a platformer game
@@LavaCreeperPeople Actually Minecraft on the Wii already exists, it's a homebrew project
nice@@DinoNuggies4665
@@LavaCreeperPeople there already is a PS1 mincecraft, and its full 3d
this is why i love this channel, its not unity "8-bit style", its actual 8-bit keep up the amazing work!!!
Now make 16 bit Minecraft
"It's only a waste if I give up" Man, that hit hard.
If I had one suggestion, it would be changing the palettes of the blocks based on time of day? Really not sure how much that would take, but it would add a lot to this charming little thing!
This!
Not very practical in bitmap mode
Maybe a layer of a canvas fully of gray color with transparency to simulate the night?
@@unusuariodinternet4879as far as I’m aware, opacity isn’t possible with 8 bit hardware, but a checkerboard pattern mighht work
It'll take a bit of math, but I think it should be possible, all I'd have to do is have a day palette, and then a night palette, and switch them when it's time. Good idea.
This is actually so cool, nowadays we take for granted how powerful our machines are
This is great!! One suggestion just about this video specifically - I'm wearing headphones, and the hard-left pan of the music made it difficult for me to concentrate on what you were saying, because the music sounded like it was just a little guy playing music in one ear while you were talking to me. So, in future videos, maybe consider having the music in stereo / both ears (even if panned some), instead of just all the way to the left.
my right ear feels lonely
DUDE I KNEW I WASN’T ALONE (the music is only playing in the left headphone 😭)
fr i thought i was tripping
my right earbud is broken lmao
OMG SAME
my left ear really enjoyed the music
I only used my left headphone the whole video until I saw this comment
HATSUNE MIKU!?
Insane, the resulting style is honestly really appealing too, the tiny sprite size is adorable.
AAAAAAA MUSIC WHY IS IT ONLY IN MY LEFT EAR
ITS TERRIBLE!!! BUT I WANNA SEE THE VIDEO
Just watched a video where I don’t understand 90% of what’s going on 💀
Fr
Literally me 💀😂🤌
Then the video is not for you. The video is for people who understand and enjoy computer science
@@thecoolkittensarecool just because you don't understand something doesn't mean you still can't enjoy it 🙄
@@betsey96 He's a hater lol 😂
amazing video but the music in the background was heavily headache inducing. I wanted to hear what you were saying so I had volume up, but it's so much louder than your voice.
If you’re using earbuds, use only the left one and you won’t hear any music at all. The first time I watched this I didn’t even know there was music until I read this and put the other earbud in lol
@@Calcifer111you mean right
His voice is more annoying than the music
I was so captivated I didn't even notice the music 😔
Dude, yes! This is going to be fantastic! I love the aesthetic of the 2.5D look as well. I'm eager to see this thing finished. I appreciate how you showed the direction you were taking and how you had to pivot due to unforeseen problems - something that I think is often omitted from most dev logs, which typically only showcase the end result. I also value the detail you provided while visually presenting it. Overall, great video, and I'm excited for part two!
Like all the others, a great video! I had a good chuckle with the one line though. "One of the best things about being a programmer is being able to make your own tools to do the things you need to do". Also one of the worst things about being a programmer is having to make all the tools before you can ever get around to the thing you need to do. The duality of being a programmer 🤣
Holy crap, I'd 100% pick this up! If this ever becomes playable on something like an Analogue Pocket I'd be rocking this on the bus every week
I plan on developing this 8-Bit game into an official release soon, but I'm not quite sure about a proper title. The best I've come up with are "8-Bit Miner" or "Isomine". I would love to hear any suggestions in below.
Good video
minicraft, tinycraft, picocraft - great video, surprised it hasnt popped more, cheers for the crazy amount of work and rework
craftman, craftian...
Octo-Miner?
cubeBit
Great video 👍 over all. The only thing that I complain about is the background music. I can only hear it on my left ear(I use headphones) everything else is completely fine. It is just really annoying to listen.
Really creative and interesting video! Can't wait to see more! Only thing I'd recommend is lowering your music sound, or boosting your voice volume, the music overpowered you a little during some parts of the video.
This is awesome! As someone who's done stuff with assembly on limited systems myself, I think this is really neat and I can't wait to continue watching the series in the future.
If you made one of the bits in the id correspond to whether a block is full/opaque, you could quickly determine during in rendering whether a block is fully surrounded by opaque blocks, in which case you don't need to draw it
Never been more sad to see this is 5h old! I was so ready to binge a series! Can't wait for the next one
Seriously, devlogs are one of my favourite things to watch on KZhead, it fills me with great joy to see a project come together
same 😭
The best type of youtube video is one that can interest someone that knows nothing about the subject and explain it to them through good writing and editing, while also being entertaining. This video is excellent you have earned my sub
It’s gorgeous, it genuinely looks like the beginnings of something really cool
This looks insane! I really like what you were able to do with bitmap mode. Good job!
Make it possible to change view, maybe 4 diagonal/isometric views or maybe 8 using your first flatish technique for the other 4 POVs.
This is really impressive, I can't wait to see how this project will turn out! Wish you best of luck working on this!
This is just fucking insane. Your work behind this is just unimaginable. Loved the final version so much that I hope you'll continue this project. It really makes me want to play it!
Bro just casually shared some eldritch arcane knowledge with us and expected us to be on the same level. On a serious note, that's some impressive work mate, well done!
Between you and Coding Secrets I can't help but wonder what a game on modern hardware would look like if this level of skill and time and finesse was applied to all the little intricacies of the hardware. Awesome project, keen for more
I love the look you managed to achieve. And the isometric view really suits what you have made.
This is absolutely FASCINATING. I would love this as a home brew SNES game - I’m looking at this with the same kind of starry-eyed wonder as the Portal 64 de-make. Such a wild time for retro games.
Wow! I wanna see the block interactions. Building and breaking. It'd also be cool if you use old-school game design principles to implement modern game mechanics and vice versa.
I am truly amazed. This was one of the most memorable KZhead videos I have ever seen. The amount of detail you were able to pour into a 13-minute video about such a complex topic is incredible. Just subscribed, so excited to see more!!!
Share your excitement in your social media channels then
Are you 12?
This is really cool! Seeing your process was absolutely fascinating and I can't wait to see where it's going next.
The final bit about the movement was brilliant! Can’t wait to see how this develops
This is beautiful. I absolutely love the isometric look. honestly the limited color pallete, lack of detail and maybe even screen tearing give it that authentic 8 bit charm. but I do also love the solution of shifting the screen whenever you hit chunk borders. I am very excited to see what you come up with for the gameplay and if you need any alpha/beta testers I would love to get my hands on this! great stuff man.
This is awesome. The isometric view you ended up with looks genuinely great
This is the greatest project I’ve ever seen
I absolutely wanna see this project go further and I would wonder how mining might possibly work.
It looks AMAZING. I’d want to see the building/mining system implemented, as well as what you do for mobs.
This is honestly great. I can't wait to see the final product. Since you're using a super-beefed up 8bit SOC, and doing everything from scratch, the likelihood for this to eventually make it into a console rom is low I assume?
Not a SOC, the X16 is just a regular 8-Bit computer. Likelihood it will become an X16 cartridge: high.
This is insane. The fact something like this is possible blows my mind.
Remember when Minecraft had Isometric screenshots?
Wish it would come back
@@AltAccount-ec2ck maybe eventually
Looking good! I think that instead of rendering a bit of every chunk around the player (13:12), rendering just the "current chunk" that you're in, and have a transition for travelling between said chunks would be a good choice! Saves a bit of processing power, too, hopefully. Looking forward to more progress 😸
I've been following progress on the x16 since it was announced and clicked on this video without realizing that it was going to be made for the platform. I was very pleasantly surprised, looking forward to what you do with this project!
Huge respect to you and all the developers that coded these games back in the day. I feel so lucky being a programmer in this day and age when you don't have to worry about memory or processing power, you just do whatever you like.
Shit got me soo hooked I went to check the other videos to make sure this isnt a minecraft only channel, and im soo glad there are more video like this for diffrent games
Now this is the quality content I like seeing pop up randomly in recommended. Would absolutely love to play around in 8-bit isometric Minecraft and build epic houses. Honestly if you could manage to make this have a usable survival mode (even without enemies and crafting, just collecting and using blocks) that'd be a genuinely remarkable.
This is amazing! If it could be possible, try making something where loading a new chunk could have some sort of transition? Such as even 1 frame of being in between the new chunks and the new ones.
I'm so excited to see this as a full game if you continue this project. I hope one day you complete it and make it to where you can get the whole Minecraft experience in 8 bit from the over world all the way to the end and dragon fight. Keep up the great work. These videos are interesting to watch
Seriously well, fast paced explanations of the concepts and limitations. Very well done!
Big props to you man! I thought at first it was going to be like everyone else who says "8 bit" and it's just in a 8 bit style but you legit did it 8 bit. I can't wait to see what you do in the future I'll bet it's going to be amazing!
Hi! You gotta set the background music to mono, it's only playing on the left channel
great video,didn’t understand like 90% of it but it was genuinely interesting
This style is super adorable, I would kill to have a full scale sandbox game using these visuals.
The amount of effort that you had to put in to make this video is insane to me. I'd love to see you finish this!
This is incredible! I never thought I'd see someone make something like this, yet here you are! Here it is! Fantastic job my dude 👍
watched this the day it was uploaded and i have been back every day since. waiting. hunting for another video on this topic. i had never seen this channel since before then, but im subbed now and waiting for the next 8bitMC video!
Woah, I admire your dedication! This is a seriously impressive final product- and as many others have said, it’s so amazing that this isn’t only 8bit art (which is still awesome.) Great vid!
I think it'd be an interesting challenge to try and figure out how to let the player break/place blocks behind other blocks despite not being able to see where they are placing/breaking.
Your videos are so unique, from your work on preserving older Kanji to this. Keep doing what you’re doing! Always a treat
My only feed back is that I need to see the rest of this project. Quick subscribe for me. I loved hearing you work through the challenges presented by the hardware, and the end result is already looking very intriguing!
"But it's only a waste if I give up." Damn that's inspirational.
This honestly looks super cool, this has inspired me to go out and try making something.
I think if you could manage some shadows somehow, that would go a long way for helping provide an accurate sense of depth
I love how this is going. Can’t wait to see more!
Tip: use the Wide Boy, cause it has access to more ram, an extra tile layer, with a custom bios, it can do the super gameboy colours.
Super cool! And that mark about programmers creating their own tools, so true too! My favorite and most well received tool is a unix script. It takes in a program runs it, keeps a log of all of its output and send you an email when its done with the run time :)
I mean - the next obvious step is to get a pickaxe and a sword!!! I cannot wait to see the next installment!
This looks awesome! I'd love to see a simplified survival gameplay mixed in with maybe some small story elements of the lore and history of the world of Minecraft.
I’ve been dreaming of an 8 bit or 16 bit minecraft for a while now. Great job! The final look is fantastic, and I can’t actually believe you actually made it in an 8-but hardware! Hardcore!!!
Happy to see the commander x2 mentioned in something completely out of the 8bit guys circle
Amazing video! Would love to see how you handle water. Also, why is music only in the left channel?
Man this is nuts i couldn't possibly imagine how hard this project was
I think the chunk loading thing at the end is pretty cool. A good way of overcoming the issues it had and it's kind of cool
Make music more loud.
Honestly the isometric view looks great, better than the original plan!
I think a minecart system where you craft and put down rails from one place to another but actually riding the minecart is just a little cutscene of Stanley riding the minecart to the end of the chunk before being teleported to wherever the minecart ends would smooth out the gameplay of any implemented future exploration aspects and fit one of minecraft's main themes of being able to build whatever will make your in game experience easier
Easy subscription!! Im hyped to see more and im curious as to what you'll implement for mining, going to lower levels within a chunk, and block destruction/collection or if sny of that is even possible in the first place! Great stuff either way man!
the music starting at 6:24 was really distracting imo, couldnt watch the rest of the video cuz of it
The bitmap version feels much much more 8-bity to me. It has a strong ZZT vibe which is just so nostalgic and cozy for me
I may not understand some BIT of this video, but dude please continue it, this project is actually cool. Seeing the process of getting over challenges in developing in 8-bit is nice
i took an assembly class in college and it was one of the worst things ive suffered through. to do this for fun is wild, props to you
This showed up on my KZhead feed today. Needless to say, I’m impressed already. How are you going to handle occluded blocks? I know that’s a common issue with the isometric perspective
Here's a challenge for you: make some of the chunks have caves
This is fascinating, brilliant, and coding entirely in assembly is a nightmarish task. I commend you a thousand times, best of luck as this project goes forward.