Pi-Pico-Game-Boy

Code for the Raspberry Pi Pico Game Boy

• YouTube video
• Assembly instructions

How to Use?

• Install MicroPython on the Raspberry Pi Pico
• Copy the files of this repository to the root directory of a Raspberry Pi Pico
• To automatically start a game when the Raspberry Pi Pico is powered on, rename the game (e.g. tetris.py) to main.py

Available games

• tetris.py: Tetris
• GameOfLife.py: John Conway's Game of Life
• PicoFlappyBird.py: Flappy Bird, my son's favorite game! *** work in progress ***

Other files

• st7789.py: MicroPython ST7789 OLED driver, SPI interface
• PicoGameBoy.py: A class to easily write games for the Raspberry Pi Pico Game Boy
• Utils/png2fb.py: Utility to convert a .png image to a framebuffer for the ST7789 display

How to create new sprites/images for The Pi Pico Game Boy

• Create or open an image in GIMP (max. resolution is 240x240 pixels)
• In GIMP, export the image as a .PNG file: File>Export as...
• In the "Export image as PNG" window, replace "automatic pixel format" by "8bpc RGB" and click Export
• Open a command line and install Pillow for Python:

pip install pillow

• Convert the image to a bytearray:

python png2fb.py corner_12x12.png

or to a .bin file:

python png2fb.py tetris_title.png tetris_title.bin

• To display a sprite on the Raspberry Pi Pico GameBoy:

>>> from PicoGameBoy import PicoGameBoy
>>> pgb=PicoGameBoy()
>>> corner=bytearray(<copy & paste the output of "python png2fb.py corner_12x12.png" here>)
>>> pgb.add_sprite(corner,12,12) # load corner_12x12.png data into sprite #0. sprite #0 is 12x12 pixels
>>> pgb.fill(0)                  # fill the screen in black
>>> pgp.sprite(0,120,120)        # display the sprite in the middle
>>> pgp.show()                   # transfer the frame buffer to the actual screen over the SPI bus

• To display a full size image (240x240 pixels) from a .bin file:

>>> from PicoGameBoy import PicoGameBoy
>>> pgb=PicoGameBoy()
>>> pgb.load_image("tetris_title.bin") # load the .bin file into the framebuffer
>>> pgb.show()