Divine Retro - Retro Style Games With BabylonJS

I am in the process of redoing my portfolio site so I decided to port one of my old projects to babylon. In the process of doing so I ended up creating two new small libraries for building retro styles games with babylon.

@divineretro/ascii
The first new library I created is for creating ASCII art games. The old project I ported was actually originally a Node.JS terminal app.

Link To Live Demo
You just use the WASD keys to move around. Its just a really a small demo of a game I could spend forever on it if I had the time.



And here is a video of the original:

@divineretro/tile
After creating the ASCII library I almost could not stop myself from creating a NES/SNES style renderer. So I built one and a small editor app to go along with it and yes all the textures for the demo I did make myself. I tried to stick to as close as I could the NES 52 color palette.

Link To Demo




You can check out the libraries here:

I am still working on Divine Voxel Engine. I spent the last month building a very advanced voxel model system. Now DVE cam have every voxel shape MC does and much more.


I just kind of needed a break from voxels for a bit.

Thanks again everyone!

And extra thanks for this article:

If you notice the retro examples have a retro effect I was able to get it from here and modify it a bit.

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Man, all of these look awesome ! :smiley:

But the links you shared, I have a blank black screen :confused:


No errors on first link :


Only some warnings on second link :

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Oh my this is so amazing. Your style is very unique and has a defined aesthetic. Every time you do a demo I’m impressed.

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Thank you!
Always though when I post something it does not work for one person lol.
I am not sure. It is doing nothing crazy other then using version 300 GLSL for the shader and using thin instances. It works in chrome and firefox for me on my windows machine. I would need to know more about your setup to really debug it right now.

Thank you!
I do try pretty hard to have the “divine star” aesthetic. Whatever that is though depends on how I feel at any given moment. But I am very influenced by games like Super Metroid and Red Asphalt.
I started working on voxels cause I wanted to make 3d pixel art games and just got lost in it now I am trying to reconnect with my roots in 2d.

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Ahah, classic ! Sorry to be that guy, this time :joy:

Sure :

  • Linux Ubuntu 22.04
  • Black screen on Chrome (129.0.6668.100 (64-bit))
  • Black screen on Firefox (131.0.2 (64-bit))
  • Nvidia GPU running under 535.183.01 driver
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Black screen as well:

  • Linux
  • Chrome
  • Firefox
  • Nvidia GPU (nvidia 560.35)

Not really seeing any errors or logs

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Don’t know if you fixed it, but… works for me.
On legacy rig, though. Currently on my testing rig for min-requirement. MacPro 2009, 1GB mid-range GPU. May be you Guys need to acquire one of these to play retro-games. Sadly I got rid-off my Amiga years ago (should have kept it for a museum :rofl:)

Else, what can I say (more than I already said about your engine and your work): Simply amazing, Strong identity, Strong tech, Strong design. You just tick all boxes :+1: :heart_eyes:

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I can’t wait to discover what is causing the fact that this BabylonJS session is 100% black on Linux only, regardless of the browser :thinking:

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Thank you! And yes sad you got rid of your Amiga. I still have an NES and play games on it. I got an ever cart so make things fun.

I am happy it works on your 2009 MacBook lol.
It works on my windows machine and my mac studio but not my android phone. It’s doing nothing too weird other then using thin instances. It is using a texture atlas that it creates on runtime and uses toDataURL for the ASCII texture and toBlob then createObjectURL for the tile texture because it is way bigger.

And I am sorry I did not respond to that one post you tagged me in a while ago. I kind of forgot about it. My engine actually had the same problem lol. I am no expert just forever a student willing to share my journey. I saw that they made their own game so pretty happy for them.

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I currently do not have access to a Linux machine but it does not work on my phone so I will have to look into that. Like I said it is doing nothing too weird.
I would maybe check the network tab and make sure the final loaded textures look all right.


Okay I was able to port the whole ASCII renderer to a play ground,.

I guess let me know if that works for you.

Still black on my side, sorry :see_no_evil:

I had the feeling that it might be a post processing issue (since plain black without error)

And indeed, commenting lines 1438 and 1439, I go from this :


To this :

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Same here.

@lucas-divinestar this is insane :slight_smile:

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Thank you!
Always happy to see your response.

I would like to eventually add reflections, custom materials, and some of the wavy texture effects they did on SNES to the tile engine. I may be using it to add cut scenes to Crystalline Bliss kind of inspired by Journey or make an independent game with it I am not sure.

Though the projects were just a few of the other cool things I built this month. Some made with three some made with babylon.



I have to get back to DVE though. Just added candles and levers. Now I need to add particles among other things.

And thanks again for all the hard work you and the team do for babylon!

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