Games Introduction

Making Impulse Games

You should read this page before attempting to make any games for Impulse or they won't run on the system. There are several procedures that need to be followed for your game to run on Impulse.

Step 1: Naming

The general naming convention for Impulse games is to call the main file 'startgame'. The info file (explained later) must be called 'info' or the game will not install. If you don't have an info file but the game is called 'startgame', you can still play your game from the disk, but you can't install it.

Step 2: The Info File

Impulse game disks must have an info file called 'info'. This file tells the console about the game. Here is an example for a very simple game.

return {  
    sName = "Example",  
    sGameFile = "startgame",  
}

Let's break this down. return { and } are needed for this to be a valid info file. sName is the name of the game that will show up in the game explorer. sGameFile is the name of the file that will run the game. The comma signifies the end of that line.

Step 3: Add your APIs

Any APIs you wish to use can be put in an APIs folder on the game disk. It's that simple! No extra configuration is needed.

Step 4: Extra Files

If you wish to have extra files such as images in your game, this requires some configuration. First of all, in the info file, you must add a line with the text 'bExtraFilesRequired = true,' without the quotes. You must then add a table called 'tExtraFiles' with every file in it as a string. This isn't recommended for a game dev who is starting out as it can go wrong very easily.

Step 5: Testing!

Now you've put in the hard work to make your game, it's time to test it! You can do this on any Impulse easily by putting the disk in a drive adjacent to the console and loading up "Floppy" from the Impulse Menu. You should then click Install to install the game. You can then play the game from "Play" and delete it if it doesn't work properly.

Thanks for reading and I hope this guide has helped.