Write your Own NES Game

[Halcyon]

I have stated a few times, i could not program my way out of a wet paper sack but, like traveling to Rome and mass producing a Jump to Conclusions mat, it would be a goal of mine to one day be able to create an SNES or NES game that would play on an emulator.


I would guess as the NES Generation turns 30 someone has been thinking about writing a book detailing the process and making it (easy) for someone like me to just get to it.


I know some collages in the US offer a class for Computer Science Majors and maybe when i live back there again i will defiantly take one.


Is it an impossible task for a single person?


Has technology made it easier or just better understood in the last 30 years. i.e. if the world had the wisdom to keep making NES games could quality projects be churned out quickly now?


Is it better to start to learn how to hack a rom and change the color of the sprites or something like that? (how would that get started?)


Well if anyone else has this interest or knows a place to start looking let me know.


Thx!

 

[elwing]

I have stated a few times, i could not program my way out of a wet paper sack but, like traveling to Rome and mass producing a Jump to Conclusions mat, it would be a goal of mine to one day be able to create an SNES or NES game that would play on an emulator.


I would guess as the NES Generation turns 30 someone has been thinking about writing a book detailing the process and making it (easy) for someone like me to just get to it.


I know some collages in the US offer a class for Computer Science Majors and maybe when i live back there again i will defiantly take one.


Is it an impossible task for a single person?


Has technology made it easier or just better understood in the last 30 years. i.e. if the world had the wisdom to keep making NES games could quality projects be churned out quickly now?


Is it better to start to learn how to hack a rom and change the color of the sprites or something like that? (how would that get started?)


Well if anyone else has this interest or knows a place to start looking let me know.


Thx!

not sure, about NES, it seems ressources are hard to find, frequently lost, and not as good described as other console, might I suggest writing gba game? there's much more ressources, and of good quality... starting with tonc (assuming you already know programming)

 

[WizardStan]

GBA and NDS are both fairly well documented, with a pretty complete dev chain for homebrew. I wrote a few crappy GBA games back in university for a contest, but it was fun and surprisingly easy.

 

[Halcyon]

This Tonc looks great thanks for the heads up. I will screw around with that see what I can do.


I don't want to say im going to jump right in and then not do anything, but if i take a look at this and make some progress, I might ask if anyone has a homebrew game that they would share so I could take a look and see how it works.


Thx again!!

 

[Exophase]

All I know is that the process of developing an NES game today is probably pretty different from what it would have been like back then, and hopefully easier.

 

[Prometheus]

Probably? Unless you happen to have an HP 64000 mainframe and a Fujitsu FM R-50 HD, then it's more like definitely.

 

[craigix]

It's actually really nice to code for NES, SNES, GB, GBA, SMS etc. as they have hardware designed for games.

 

[Exophase]

Okay, but in details that go even beyond what kind of hardware you're using


For the development itself, you'd have access to a lot of tools that they wouldn't have. While you'd probably still want to write the game at least partly in 6502 ASM there are much better macro assemblers out there. And much better tools for editing graphics and composing music. It's also a lot easier to customize or design your own tools from scratch.


But the biggest difference is probably in testing. You can run the ROMs straight on your computer and a lot of emulators have decent debugging tools. If you do want to test on hardware it can be done using a relatively cheap and relatively quick to program flash cart that can accommodate most common cart setups. No need to program EEPROMs or god forbid EPROMs, and no need to work with mismatched hardware or fab special dev carts to match your cart arrangement (honestly I have no idea what companies actually did here)


I'm actually surprised to see that those mainframes had 6502 emulators.. but I'm sure it doesn't come anywhere close to what a modern accurate NES emulator can do.

 

[Prometheus]

Oh, no doubt. :lol: I just thought it was an interesting insight into what was being used back then.