What's the GameTank Game Jam?
It's a jam to make games for the GameTank!
...What's a GameTank?
The GameTank is an 8-bit console! As in actual physical hardware with an 8-bit CPU and analog video out!
- Similar graphical specs to the Pico-8, 128x128* resolution
- Twice the clock speed of an NES, and 16 times as much work RAM
- Framebuffer graphics + speedy blitter engine
- Open source hardware and toolchains on github
- Available in kit form, soon in premade form, or download PCB files, or play the emulator!
How do I jam for the GameTank!?
You can write games in assembly, or in C, or we even have somebody working on a Rust toolchain. A C SDK is available to use with the cc65 compiler. Or if you have some other wacky way that you already write code for 6502-based platforms make something in that! On the wiki you can find deep technical descriptions of the hardware and register addresses, and there's even a few video tutorials on GameTank assembly programming on YouTube.
Once you have built a ROM file, typically with the extension *.gtr, make a page on Itch.io with screenshots, the rom file, and an embeddable emulator you can bundle your rom file into with this handy web-based packaging tool I made for the last jam.
There's also a discord channel you can join to get help, answers, ideas, or even just say hi!
I hear there's a theme this time!?
It will be announced at noon eastern time on May 1st!