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True words with Guyfawkes...
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I'm very pleased to introduce you to one of the most committed guy in the emulation
scene. Not just a British webmaster of emulation sites during the
past 4 years: he's a cool programmer of GBA
games and an "insane" beta-tester of N64 emulators...
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MADrigal: Hi Guyfawkes, it's a pleasure to meet you again!
I think more than a month has passed since we last chatted on ICQ...
GUYFAWKES: More like two months!!
MAD: Would you mind introducing yourself to N!Zone's readers? Please tell
us something about yourself, your family, job, hobbies...
GUY: OK, well my real name is David, but everyone knows me as Guyfawkes. I
chose this name many years ago because when I first got into emulation (Dave's Classics
days) people got me confused with the real Dave of Dave's Classics on their chat rooms,
it was bonfire night here in the UK so I stupidly chose this name and I got stuck with it
ever since
(NOTE: click here
for more infos about Guy Fawkes Day)
MAD: First came ExplosionNet,
then EmuHolic,
GBAEmu and now the cool
Pong Fighter game for
GBA... how do you feel your tributes to the emu community has improved in quality during these years?
GUY: There was in fact a site before ExplosionNet, it was more of a personal homepage with
some of my favourite emulators and news about them.
This evolved into ExplosionNet which had
daily emulation related news and then into Emuholic which is still going strong. Over the years
I have been involved in many projects such has the original compatibility lists for N64 emulators,
beta testing etc. I do alot of things behind the 'scene' so although people may not know who I am
they have probably used an emulator, game or program that I have had my grubby mits in.
ExplosionNet |
Emuholic |
GBAemu |
MAD: Oh sure! Now I remind of your compatibility lists!
 Looks like you've
always been a Nintendo fanatic over all these years hehe. Which are your favorite games among the
ones released on Nintendo consoles?
GUY: I dont get much time to play games now, but my favourite three Nintendo games are
Mario Kart (SNES), Tetris (GB) and Street Fighter II (SNES). Mario Kart is
one of my all time favourites, I recently gave Dijital a good thrashing at a Retro games show in London.
Despite spending
ages on the N64 comp. lists I never really liked the machine!
Street Fighter 2 |
Super Mario Kart |
Tetris |
MAD: I recently read the whole Nintendo FAQs about emulation, and they obviously don't approve
it at all.  Do
you feel the current status of GBA emulation will harm Nintendo in some way?
GUY: You have opened up a extra large can of worms here! My opinion is of course emulation
'harms' Nintendo but with the GBA its a pocket console, the whole purpose is playing the console on
the move. Unless you have a laptop or similar it kind of defeats the purpose. I think the authors who
sell their emulators (i.e. VGBA) is
wrong as the machine is still on sale.
Just my opinion though, I kept this answer deliberatly short
as this has been discussed to death many times
MAD: I agree 100%. Let's talk about the current GBA developing scene. Would you like to?
GUY: Sure
MAD: Are there any really talented game developers in the GBAdev scene? If so, who are they
and what are they programming at this moment?
GUY: My first biggup has to go to Bruno and his great
'GBAPac' game, this game is great and is
easily the best homegrown game that I am allowed to talk about. The authors for emulators on the GBA
are also doing a great job, [The HiVE] (ZXAdvance, ArcadeAdvance),
Strags (Foon), Loopy (PocketNES) and Goldroad (pocketSMS).
Too many names I can mention here but a big thanks has to go to the people who
released the first GBA demos with source code, I learnt alot of information from them especially from my
good friend Nokturn!
GBAPac (options screen) |
GBAPac (playground) |
MAD: I think you once told me that your Pong Fighter is the first freeware game for GBA. I believe
many readers are curious about how to get started with them. Do you think it's difficult?
GUY: It wasnt the the first freeware game for the GBA, it was my first game I ever made though.
As with any programming
you need alot of free time. If you dont already know C you need to learn this first, then you need to
learn how to program for the GBA. It is difficult if you dont spend alot of time learning before you start
coding but there are many tutorials, tools, source code to learn from. I wouldnt consider myself to be a
good programmer, so far I have winged my way through programming Pong
Fighter!
Pong Fighter (options menu) |
Pong Fighter (playground) |
MAD: Hehe... yes, I know what you're speaking of!
Which tools would you
suggest them?
GUY: I use ARM SDT as my compiler, its very easy to set up but it is *cough* commercial *cough*
software. There is also various GCC compilers for the GBA but these are a bugger to set up.. especially
for someone new to programming. As I said above there are many tutorials, source code/libraries people
can use. You have Dan Cotters GBA
library which is very good and for docs, tutorials and source code I would visit
GBADev.
MAD: I have a couple friends in the GBAdev scene, and they told me the
"Mappy Virtual Machine" emulator is a
"must-have" tool for programmers. I personally tried it but found it very buggy... Did you use it while
programming Pong Fighter?
GUY: I used it when I first started programming but it does not work with my latest (unreleased)
version of Pong Fighter, its something to do with the sound that causes it to screw up... works perfectly on
hardware though! I would recommend Mappy to any GBA programmer, the debugging features are very useful.
MAD: Er... you said "unreleased version"???
 Are you planning to release
it sometime soon? Does it have new features or is it a bug-fix release?
GUY: Yes I am planning to make another release. Costis has been helping me out and we have made good
progress since the last public release, so far we have a new CPU AI code, sound and music and a new text
display routine. I have some other features that will be added to the game including a choice of backgrounds
and different characters plus of course some minor bug fixes and tweaks.
MAD: Are you planning to programme some other games in the future?
GUY: I started work a few months ago on another game. The new game is based loosly on
Cabal / Blood Brothers, it will also feature a Silent Scope sniper style level. It is in
the very early stages but a few people have tried it and they say it shows potential <- i.e. Game looks
rubbish but with alot of work it would be nice
Cabal |
Blood Brothers |
MAD: These news sound *much* interesting indeed!
When will it be ready (or at least a beta version) ?
GUY: I want to finish off what I have planned for Pong Fighter before continuing with
this new game, dont expect to see anything public at least until after March 2002. I want to
release it as a full game, not like what I done with Pong Fighter releasing various versions etc.
MAD: Can't wait to see it then!
Thanks much for your time, Dave. Is there someone you wish to thank/greet?
GUY: I would like to thank (in no particular order): Emuholic
& GBAEmu staff: Dijital, James and Kojote + everyone that helps us by
sending us news, assistance etc. All the emulator authors, without their
hard work there would be nothing! Greets to the above peeps + [The HiVE],
Craig, Gollum, Nokturn, Bruno, Alex, everyone who visits both my sites and
anyone else who knows me. Oh I suppose I had better give some greets to
you as well MADrigal
MAD: Oh no, I thank you!
I wish you a great luck with your projects... and Merry Christmas!
GUY: No problem, Merry Christmas to you as well mate. Good luck with the new site!
Guyfawkes' sites and projects
Emuholic: www.emuholic.com
GBAemu: www.gbaemu.com
Get the latest version of Pong Fighter for GBA from GBAemu
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