If you’ve hung around the GB Studio Discord, then you probably recognize the name NalaFala (Yousurname). You may have also interacted with them on reddit under the name MannedGuild65. Regardless of how you know them, their impact on the GB Studio community has been felt immensely, and it’s time to bring them some much deserved recognition and appreciation.
For simplicity, I will refer to them as Yousurname, as that’s their GitHub name (stylized as Y0UR-U5ERNAME). I can’t count how many times I’ve been stumped with an idea in GB Studio, and Yousurname swept in to help me. They seem to have an encyclopedic knowledge of how GB Studio, GBVM, and GBDK work, and have pointed me in the right direction, solving so many of my challenges. For this spotlight, I’m going to focus on three areas of their work and community support that I think are worth noting.
Guidance
As a person experienced in traditional software development and computer science concepts, Yousurname has offered their expertise and insight countless times on the GB Studio Discord and elsewhere. I’m going to highlight a personal experience as an anecdote.
In the early days of GBVM being public, I was attempting to use the tile swap commands to render a fairly complex animation on screen which consisted of dozens of tiles. At the time with the tools available, I was examining the tile maps and using the hex values of each tile to facilitate the swap, but with little understanding of how GBVM operates, I was plotting everything out on a spreadsheet, and converting all the hex values into decimal to indicate the index of the tile. Sharing this on the Discord, I mused: “I’m sure there’s a better way to do this,” and Yousurname replied that GBVM can accept hex values with the preface “0x”. That small, but insightful piece of knowledge made my attempt at implementing it much easier, and I was able to get it all done much faster. While the latest version GB Studio makes tile swapping a breeze with built-in events, I still use this small piece of knowledge, and the later fact also shared with me that binary values can be input with “0b” all the time in my GBVM code.
I often find myself searching the Discord chat for an answer on how to best implement an idea, or what options are available both in GBVM and the underlying GBDK/C code, and 90% of the time, it’s an answer or resource posted by Yousurname that guides me to the correct answer.
I’m always super appreciative of the time they’ve spent answering specific questions, providing guidance on how to best implement things, and also theorizing what’s possible on the Discord and other platforms. I think that alone is worth the recognition, but that’s not all they have to offer.
Plugins
Yousurname’s plugin collection is in my regular rotation as both a dev and when recommending tools to other devs. We wrote about how to leverage developing for the Super Game Boy with GB Studio, and that was centered largely on Yousurname’s Transfer SGB Packet Plugin. The Set Palette Colors Plugin was the basis for our DMG Palettes article. But the real testament is how many of these plugins (or at least their ideas) have been incorporated into GB Studio itself. The While Loop, Advanced Math Functions and Scene Snapping that are now part of GB Studio were for a time only available as a plugin from Yousurname. Having these as part of the main branch benefits everyone who uses GB Studio, and we are deeply grateful for that.
Games
Finally, while being a guiding voice and a developer whose work has benefited all GB Studio devs, Yousurname is also an amazing game developer in their own right. Whenever I want to be inspired with what’s possible with GB Studio or other game engines, I visit Yousurname’s itch page and spend some time playing their games. They are fun, unique, and put a cool spin on puzzles including the puzzle-platform/adventure genre. I recommend checking out their games and links to their other work there.
We love to celebrate the sometimes unknown heroes of the GB Studio community, and I think we can all send a lot of love to Yousurname for the positive impact they’ve provided!
Audio Engineer, Mac Technologist and Video Game Developer. Managing Editor of GBStudio Central. (he/him)
