This project is based on the GCE Game Time Watch from 1981, designed by Tom Sloper.
- Brief demonstration of all four games
- Demonstration of Firing Squad game (I wish I had found this one before I wrote v1!)
- Longer demonstration of Missle Strike game
- Designer Tom Sloper speaking at the 2002 Classic Gaming Expo (audio only)
- Game designer Tom Sloper's blog entry "#18: How I Got My Start; The GAME TIME Watch"
- Game designer Tom Sloper's blog entry "#68 'Game Time watch' vs. 'Game & Watch'"
This project is an attempt to replicate the games on the 1981 Game Time Watch designed by Tom Sloper.
v1 is just the Firing Squad game. It is running on a Wemos D1 Mini clone (ESP8266) with the Wemos TFT 1.4 Shield. I used the Arduino IDE.
It's not great:
- The original game had two types of rounds, which I'll call "wall of bullets" and "string of bullets". Currently only "wall of bullets" is present, and it doesn't behave the same way as the original.
- The hardware platform is not good.
- ESP8266 works fine but is out of date (ESP32 much more common).
- D1 Mini doesn't have enough pins (I think). I need 2-3 more buttons.
- The Wemos TFT 1.4 Shield isn't available anymore and maybe not very common in the first place.
- The Wemos TFT shield doesn't play well with the TFT_eSPI library (work in progress).
Note
I'm happy to document how I got the D1 Mini + TFT 1.4 Shield + TFT_eSPI working, just ask. I didn't do so because I don't think anyone else is using this setup.
... So my next step is to implement it on the Lilygo TTGO. The TTGO has a rectangular screen with the right proportions, and supposedly the two on-board buttons, which are nicely located, can be used for gameplay. I plan on taking advantage of the excellent VolosProjects Youtube channel.
Update 2025-03-30:
I got the TTGO T-Display and it's almost perfect. It would be perfect had I not just seen the difference betweeen the T-Display and the newer T-Display S3 with a bigger screen. We'll see whether I can resist the temptation to upgrade. Also I figured out how to use the C preprocessor to detect the type of board the code is being loaded onto. Will be easier to support multiple boards.
V1.1 is still just the Firing Squad game.
It's a lot better than v1.0:
- Gameplay is much closer to the original with varying "walls" and "chains" of bullets.
- I added a "select" button and a "fire" button. No actual functionality yet but should be coming soon. The buttons do work.
- I added some screen art, drawn by my kid.
- Added basic "high score" functionality. Currently it gets overwritten when the device restarts but there's an easy way to make it persistent.
- I did a lot of refactoring of the code. Still awful but should be a lot easier to work with.