[HN Gopher] Wooden Game Boy
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Wooden Game Boy
Author : _Microft
Score : 219 points
Date : 2023-11-03 21:32 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (there.oughta.be)
(TXT) w3m dump (there.oughta.be)
| stuckkeys wrote:
| I watched the process on YT. Fantastic job.
| userbinator wrote:
| _This drills 1mm holes into the poles for the screws to tap in.
| As mentioned in step B03, the 1mm holes also did not work
| perfectly. In my opinion they are better than the 1.5mm holes I
| used on the bottom half, but the longer poles near the display
| were split by the screws in this case. If you come up with a
| better solution, I would like to know._
|
| This is probably the best example of how different materials,
| despite appearing like you can machine them to look the same,
| will behave very differently. Wood is, in particular, very
| different from plastic and metal, because it is far more
| anisotropic due to its grain structure. Those long and narrow
| bosses are acceptable in a metal or plastic part, but won't hold
| up at all in wood. For a better solution, I recommend not trying
| to follow the exact shape as the plastic part for the internals,
| but have as much material as possible; if you need to, use longer
| screws.
|
| Many electronics were housed in wooden cabinets for over a
| century (e.g. radios, televisions, turntables, etc.), so it would
| be wise to look at those for examples of how they used wood in
| their design.
| convolvatron wrote:
| i dont work in wood very much, but cocobolo and ebony machine
| alot more like a soft metal. you can certainly catch the grain
| wrong and chip off a piece, but they take a thread pretty well.
| avar wrote:
| > I recommend not trying to follow the exact shape >
| as the plastic part for the internals[...]
|
| Good advice in general, but in this case I don't see how they'd
| have that option, as the long poles need to mount the display
| and a circuit board. See [1] and subsequently [2], and [3]
| which shows the rear of the GameBoy (where those screws go).
|
| I think a better solution in this case is to either just forgo
| wood for those particular areas, e.g. you could use plastic or
| metal parts that the screws would go into, and glue or
| otherwise securely mount those to the wood.
|
| Or similarly, use wood for the poles, but don't drill holes in
| them, and use some alternate mechanism to hold the body
| together. They're already using magnets for the battery cover,
| and could presumably use a large amount of magnets to hold the
| two pieces of the body itself together.
|
| Finally, I don't think looking at antique wooden electronics is
| going to be useful. When electronic consumer products were made
| out of wood the electrical components were _much_ bigger, so
| they didn 't need to deal with these sorts of problems. Most of
| those only used wood as the "box", see e.g. [4].
|
| 1. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm4.jpg
|
| 2. https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/asm5.jpg
|
| 3.
| https://there.oughta.be/assets/images/2023-11-03/batteries.j...
|
| 4. https://halestrom.net/darksleep/blog/001_jena5020radio/
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| The holes could be tapped before shaving down the wood, and
| then screws with less thick threads could be used. That would
| prevent splitting and still provide a secure connection.
| avar wrote:
| There's better and worse ways to do this, but in the end
| wood is just inherently unsuitable for things of this size.
|
| Any screw needs to "grab" onto the side of the hole it's
| drilled into, when that screw is going through a cylinder
| that looks to me 1-3mm in diameter it'll only take so much
| force before it'll snap.
|
| And that's assuming that you get lucky with the material,
| you might run into a knot in the wood, in which case it
| would just fall apart without any force being applied to
| it.
| foobarian wrote:
| A hidden property of wood, that I'm sure every woodworker knows
| and nods knowingly at this, is that it changes size as a
| function of humidity. You measure everything perfectly in a
| humid summer expecting it to behave like a chunk of metal, and
| then it all falls apart when dry winter rolls in.
|
| That's when you start noticing particular details in
| professional furniture that are designed to accommodate this;
| things like certain elements intentionally not being glued or
| attached to allow for this movement.
| aidos wrote:
| I built myself a shed earlier in the year and the right now
| my unclosable windows are a damning reminder of this fact.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Get a wood planer, either manual or automatic (electrical).
| If you can temporarily remove the window you can shave off
| just a bit of wood to give it more space.
| aidos wrote:
| That's my plan. We're in the Uk and it's basically rained
| most days this year. Will take a look once things dry
| out. In the meantime I've just been leaving the windows
| open for ventilation anyway.
| kazinator wrote:
| Looks like acacia? That would be worth mentioning.
| mrbombastic wrote:
| It is walnut
| nmstoker wrote:
| The wood used is specifucally mentioned in the fourth sentence.
| valyagolev wrote:
| If you want controls and scrolling for the youtube short link,
| just use the short id as the video id in the normal youtube url:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePvpYVNEvzk
| mon_ wrote:
| It would look a lot better and probably be stronger if the grain
| was going vertically IMO
| renewiltord wrote:
| Wow, the result is stunning!
| Damogran6 wrote:
| Stellar upvotes and kudos for the domain and URL naming scheme!
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| This actually wouldn't be that hard to make with hand tools. You
| basically make it in sections and then combine. Layout can be
| made exact by using an imprint.
| jstanley wrote:
| Why don't you show us how it's done?
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I'd also like to see it done with hand tools so that I can
| give it a go.
| hinkley wrote:
| I wonder which wood has the highest thermal conductivity. I've
| seen strength and modulus and a few other things but not
| conductivity.
| cyclotron3k wrote:
| Ironwood
| jader201 wrote:
| This is a bit of a tangent, and not sure I'll have any other
| opportunity to mention this here, but...
|
| I used to play the heck out of Tetris on to OG Game Boy. I
| probably played it, by far, more than any other Game Boy game,
| and probably any game around that 5-10 year period.
|
| But boy has it not aged well, at all. I played it recently on the
| Switch, and couldn't handle it for more than a few minutes.
|
| The lack of multiple next tetrominos, no hold, no instant drop,
| no ghost, the completely random draw of pieces [1], and it just
| felt sluggish.
|
| I didn't realize how much it had evolved, and how spoiled I was
| to the QoL updates over the years (and I think these were all
| fairly evolutionary additions, making it hard to realize the
| drastic difference).
|
| I'm usually more nostalgic for classic games (I still enjoy
| playing some classic NES/SNES games), but when it comes to
| Tetris, give me the modern one any day (Tetris 99 and Tetris
| Effect are two of my recent favorites).
|
| [1] https://simon.lc/the-history-of-tetris-randomizers
|
| Edit: corrected next and quick drop.
| Xenoamorphous wrote:
| > The lack of a next tetromino, no hold, no fast drop, no
| ghost, the completely random draw of pieces [1], and it just
| felt sluggish.
|
| Maybe I've misunderstood something but the original GameBoy
| Tetris definitely showed you the next piece and had fast drop.
| jader201 wrote:
| You're right, it does show the next piece. But some modern
| ones show you more than one (e.g. Tetris 99 shows the next
| four pieces queued up).
|
| Re: fast drop, I mean press up to insta-drop. OG Tetris
| allowed pressing down for a fast-ish drop, but not instant
| (which is what I meant).
| cubefox wrote:
| Showing more pieces in advance makes the game easier, but
| it's unclear whether it also makes it better.
| jader201 wrote:
| Yeah, for sure. I think it can be helpful when planning
| tetrises, and figuring out whether to just plug the chasm
| with a non-line piece to buy you some time when you're
| close to the top.
| blizdiddy wrote:
| For anyone looking for a high quality Tetris clone, check out
| Apotris https://akouzoukos.com/apotris It is for the Gameboy
| Advance and plays well on handheld emulators and flash carts.
| ginko wrote:
| There's ROM hacks that add most of the modern features of
| tetris to the GB version.
|
| https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDYciJzzTvw
| krs_ wrote:
| I can still play older Tetris games without the modern features
| and enjoy them for what they are. In fact, I kinda like that
| there wasn't an established "standard" of how Tetris games
| should play back then, and the different games feel quite
| different to play as a result. But the randomizer in the Game
| Boy game sucks a lot of enjoyment out of it for me. Combined
| with the shorter playfield (18 rows instead of the standard 20)
| and the blocks instantly locking upon touching the bottom, it
| often feels like a single mistake is impossible to recover from
| at higher levels.
|
| Recently I found this romhack for it that essentially adds all
| those modern features to it, and it does play a lot better.
| https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/5813/
| cubefox wrote:
| Regarding the randomizer article: Tetris requires some
| randomness, but also some prevention of "floods" and
| "droughts". This sounds remarkably like the use of blue noise
| in dithering. Unlike purely random white noise, blue noise
| optimizes for "even" sequences without too many repetitions or
| large gaps in occurrences.
|
| I assume a similar thing is possible in a randomizer, which
| would make more even sequences of draws more likely than ones
| which are less even.
|
| Of course perfectly "even" distributions would no longer be
| random at all (each of the seven pieces would reoccur after
| exactly seven steps), but one could make anything else just
| less likely, depending on how far it deviates from the most
| likely seven step reoccurrence.
| tunnuz wrote:
| What a cool thing!
| jstanley wrote:
| Very nice work, and impeccable documentation, fantastic.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I once tried to make a wooden Gameboy advance, but it wooden
| work.
|
| _Ducks_
| ashu1461 wrote:
| CNC set up looks a little bit more complicated than a 3d setup,
| is it usually the case ?
| georgesimon wrote:
| If you meant 3d print, then yes for beginner setups. CNC
| requires a closed loop system and should include dust
| extraction if hardwoods are being used.
| belalebrar wrote:
| Really cool. I wonder about it's conductivity though.
| aduermael wrote:
| This is gorgeous. Would love Nintendo to release exactly this,
| even if a bit expensive. I would like my kids (6 and 7yo) to
| experience cartridges (aka "one game at a time") if possible.
| OliveMate wrote:
| The Gameboy is impressive but I can't stop chuckling at the
| site's URL pattern, that's what really ties it together for me.
| detritus wrote:
| Lovely! That is, except for the shoddy white in-filled graphic
| details. Should've lightly laser-etched those, imho.
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