Playdate game development in C

Abstract

Playdate is a new handheld console developed by Panic that will be launched in 2021. Its objective is offering a unique and surprising experience for videogame enthusiasts, and for that reason, it presents unconventional characteristics: in addition to the common directional and action buttons, it features a reflective monochromatic screen that draws only in pure black and white, an accelerometer, and a crank on its side that acts as a controller. This Bachelor’s Thesis will explore the videogame design possibilities stemming from such a peculiar hardware through the creation of several prototypes, covering all supported programming languages and evaluating them. In terms of performance, the Playdate falls on the modest side; for that reason, the focus will be in low-level programming to obtain the best performance possible. The knowledge acquired during this first phase will be applied to the development of a full game in C, “TinySeconds”. “TinySeconds” is a 2D platformer game where each level must be completed under 2.5 seconds. In addition to that limit, to progress to the next world the player must complete all the levels of the previous one in succession under an overarching time limit. This makes the game a frenetic experience with great replayability, as it invites the player to practice and improve their completion times. In addition to the time limit, different types of obstacles add variety to the levels making use of characteristics unique to the console, such as the crank. In addition to documenting the development of these projects, a C programming tutorial for Playdate will be included, teaching the basic principles of configuring the programming environment in Windows and developing a sample program. This chapter has the aim of supplying the lack of documentation about C programming for Playdate in a Windows platform, as the official manual is centered around the Lua language in Mac environments.