Adding Movement to a Third Person Character

In this tutorial we are going to look at adding movement to a third person character in the Unreal Engine. This is going to be using Blueprints and should get you started with some of the basic principles regarding the engine and how to move a character. Create the Project Open the Unreal Engine Choose […]

Fading Images onto the Screen

Cast your mind back to the opening title of Sonic the Hedgehog. As the game loaded, the title screen went from an entirely black screen to our spiky blue friend and his impressive logo. This is a technique which can be performed fairly simply and using the knowledge that we have previously learned regarding the […]

Creating Tiles from Images

It’s impossible to make a game by creating tiles by hand. What we really want to do is use our knowledge of the Video Display Unit to bring in some pixel art and display it on the screen. This is the art of creating tiles from images. First thing we need to do is grab […]

Tiles and Planes: How Graphics Work

The Megadrive / Genesis uses three planes to display graphics. Planes A and B are used for the 2 scrolling playfields and 1 Sprite plane. Each plane is made up of tiles. Each tile is made of an 8×8 sprite. These tiles are the basic units when it comes to loading and displaying graphics on […]

Unreal Engine : Beginning C++

In order to understand Unreal Engine you need to know some C++. There’s no getting around this. You can use Blueprints and craft a great game with them, however, as this is a coding blog I will be focusing on C++. Using Blueprints can only take you so far as their functionality is limited. Setting […]

Unreal Engine : Getting Started

In a bit of departure from the usual posts in 8bir Heaven, I want to look at some more modern ways of developing game titles. This is in the hopes of helping others get a start in game development. This is a bit of a guide and tour of the interface. First things first, download […]

Megadrive Programming : Adding Controller

In this section I will be teaching you how to detect the console’s controller input. The function which we need to call to initialise controller support is JOY_init(). We place this at the beginning of the main function. This function resets the controls and begins to check what buttons on the controller are being pressed. […]

Megadrive Programming : Hello World

In this series I am going to start looking at the Sega Megadrive / Genesis and how to begin programming for it. These tutorials will mostly be focused on the C programming language and will be using the Sega Genesis Development Kit. In this post I will show how to setup your development environment and […]

Gameboy Programming : Sound

After looking at Graphics, the next logical step is to look at sound, music and sound effects. This tutorial will look at how to make the basics of Gameboy sound design. The Sound Channels The Gameboy has four sound channels : two square waves with adjustable duty. a programmable wave table and a noise generator. […]

Gameboy Programming – Scrolling Backgrounds

In this section we are going to take what you know regarding sprites and build a background which scrolls across the screen. There’s not a tremendous amount of new code here In order to follow along with this tutorial you will need a copy of the Gameboy Map Builder. This can be found here. Building […]