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Devblog about The Sims 2 Strangetown for the Game Boy! Using GB Studio, couldn't do it without it!

[strangetowngb]

The Sims 2™ for the Game Boy Color (Maxis, 20██)

[thesims2comics]

More iron bead art! These sprites are from the art of @strangetowngb, I simply made them with iron beads and picked the colors

[strangetowngb]

Again, this is really amazing!! :D I’m so glad my sprites could inspire this!

[strangetowngb]

Hey there, how've you been? Are you still working on the project, or has it been on hold? I'd love to see more of your stuff, it's so creative and made with passion, I love it!

Hey!! Thank you so much for the kind words and for checking in with me!

I’m sorry, that I just disappeared like that. Yeah, I haven't worked on this project for a while. Last year was just very draining on my mental health and it was very hard for me to work much on anything.

That said, I do not at all plan on abandoning this project. The Sims 2, Strangetown and the GameBoy are all special interests that accompanied me for many years. My enthusiasm may be higher or lower sometimes, but I think it's safe to say that I'll return to this project eventually!

[strangetowngb]

This is literally the coolest thing I've ever seen I love this so much

Sorry for the late answer! Thank you so much, I’m super glad to hear that!

I’m honestly happy to find how many Strangetown fans there still are! :D

[strangetowngb]

would you be cool with me using the opening art as a phone background??? <3

Oh, yes! Of course!

My art is free for personal/private use. Just please don’t repost it anywhere!

[strangetowngb]

Been a while! It’s been so hot here, where I live, I almost felt like I’m actually in Strangetown. I didn’t get to work too much on the game during this heat, but here is a bit of what I’ve done!

[strangetowngb]

Just today I re-did the EA™ logo (not that they deserve my creative genius) and made a Maxis™ logo!

[strangetowngb]

Now here’s a friendly face, that you might recognize if you ever played The Sims 2 for PSP!

My main focus is still very much to make the game about the PC version of Strangetown, but Mambo Loa here will help the player a little in the very beginning!

It was honestly very hard to make sense of her outfit at first, because the original was just in such a low resolution and so blurry! Until I finally noticed that she was wearing necklaces lol

[strangetowngb]

Do you already know what kind of music you'll use? For example, will you try to make your own, borrow music from another game or commission someone? ^^ just curious!

Original plan was to use an actual Sims soundtrack, like the one for The Sims 2 DS/GBA.

But unfortunately I can’t just take any music, because GB Studio requires “.mod”-files, which also can only use certain instruments. Here’s a better explanation on how it works exactly. So the music basically has to be specifically made for GB Studio and I’m not skilled enough at the moment to make my own.

That’s why I’ve been using community assets! And they had everything I needed so far! But that also means, of course, that the music won’t be unique to the game and you might hear it in other GB Studio games.

Hope that answers your question, Anon! :3

[strangetowngb]

Oh no, what happened here?

[strangetowngb]

A little screen that I made for the intro!

[strangetowngb]

This by the way is how it is going to look like ingame.

I think the animated stars make a great difference!

[strangetowngb]

A little screen that I made for the intro!

[thesims2comics]

Made Ophelia Nigmos with iron beads! :D

Original pixel design by @strangetowngb

[strangetowngb]

OH MY GOSH !! This is incredible !!! :o

[strangetowngb]

Idk if this is a dumb question but are we gonna be able to play this game on PC? We'd just need an emulator or something, right?

Not a dumb question at all!

And you’re right! If you download the game, you’ll need a game boy emulator like the BGB Emulator for example! But I also want to host the game on itch.io, which would mean (if I’m correct), that you’d also be able to play it in your browser and even on your phone!

[strangetowngb]

I know I’ve been awfully quiet on here and I’m sorry for that! I just unfortunately haven’t been able to work much on the game recently …

BUT

I’ll post a little something later today!

[strangetowngb]

In the meantime, I honestly can’t thank you enough for all the follows and nice words that I’m still getting even after I haven’t posted anything in like 2 weeks !!

Any reblogs, tags, etc… mean the world to me! :D

[thesims2comics]

thats okay, this is something you do in your free time with no profit! take breaks before you need ‘em and try let this passionate game become a chore to make!

[strangetowngb]

That's something I have to remember sometimes! Thank you so much, I really appreciate it!!

Also I love your blog! Your Sims art is great! :3

[strangetowngb]

Create A Sim

What’s a Sims game without CAS? That’s why I really wanted to implement at least a little player customization into the game! Of course, it’s not much and I actually planned to have a bit more customization similar to this:

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get a menu like that to work correctly yet. So I instead settled for choosing between a few premade looks like you’ve seen in the video above. And after all it’s a game boy game with the player sprite being only 16 x 16 pixels big. So that the CAS wouldn’t be super detailed was foreseeable.

That being said though, there a 2 points I really want to address:

I do plan to add more premade looks! Also the ones you’ve seen in the video were made pretty spontaneous, so they’ll probably change aswell!

I absolutely wish I was able to use the 2nd to darkest color (same color as the background in CAS), for player sprites, but like I explained in another post that’s unfortunately a technical limitation that I can do nothing about. I’m genuinely sorry, if your skin color isn’t represented in the game!

New Font

Not much to say about this one! But I do think the custom font fits the game much more nicely!

It’s based on a font called Glasstown (free download), which in turn is based on the font used in The Urbz (GBA)! And I wouldn’t have found that font without stumbling across this very helpful blog post listing the fonts used in all kinds of different Sims games!

Soundtrack

Yes, you’ve heard that right! It’s music!

I honestly thought at first that the game wouldn’t have any music or sound effects at all, because the process for making those for a GBStudio game is pretty complex (at least for me) and you can’t just use any files, it has to be “.mod”-files using specific instrument sounds set by GBStudio, I think? But thankfully there are these community assets specifically made for GBStudio!

Thank you so much to ...

... krümel for making “Great Melody02″ (very fitting name), which I use for the title screen! ... and Tomas Danko (www.danko.se) for making “FridgeMusic”, which I use for Create A Sim!

[strangetowngb]

do you plan to charge anything for your game?

I do not! One reason - of course - is avoiding possible trouble with EAxis. I am using their copyrighted stuff after all!

Also it’s just supposed to be a little fan game, practicing my pixel art and game making skills, while paying homage to my favorite hood in The Sims series! :3