nesdev.org

Nestopia is the most accurate AFAIK, and it has an NTSC video filter which is really cool.

FCEUXD SP has lots of awesome debugging tools.

Those are the two I use most frequently.

You, sir, are a madman. Thanks for that awesome suggestion!

Suppose you have a single byte value you'd like to write to successive locations in PPU memory. Assuming that PPUADDR ($2006) has already been set, bit 2 of PPUCTRL ($2000) = 0 (i.e. VRAM address increment = 1) and zpBuffer is a zero page variable, the code might look something like this: LDA zpBuff...

You know, you could actually do away with any collision with the level map. All you really need to know is where the floor is, which is constant. Unless you'd really want for levels with lots of platforms. What he said. :) However, you could move the characters in 8 pixel chunks, updating the BG in...

While scrolling horizontally, it would look really cool if each scanline of the arena floor were scrolled just a little bit faster than the scanline above it. That would create a sweet parallax effect like the one used in Street Fighter 2 on the SNES (or the bonus stages in Battletoads in Battlemani...

Glad to be of service. After all, it's in my name! I really love this place because of all the great ideas everyone presents. If these forums didn't exist, I may have given up on my project already, because there are so many things I never could have figured out without all the helpful information/s...

Everything you said is absolutely correct. In fact, until recently I was using the "file = %O" attribute to have the linker generate the NES file directly. It's true that the order of the segments doesn't matter, only the memory sections. But still, as a matter of personal preference, I li...

I'm just curious... what was the problem? What did you change to make it work? I wasn't aware that I had to place the fixed bank after the other PRG ROM banks in the NES file. I had previously been writing the fixed bank immediately following the iNES header. Of course, tokumaru told me exactly wha...

Yeah, that's what it sounds like to me.

Once you run the music code, the bank containing music data no longer needs to be mapped to the CPU address space because it isn't being accessed. You could safely swap that bank out until the next frame when it's needed again.

YESSSS!!!

After much struggling and frustration, I finally built a working UNROM project! I can now write to CHR-RAM, which I intend to exploit shamelessly for maximum kicking of ass.

Thank you all for your suggestions; I'd have been completely lost without them.

The sky's the limit. I'm stoked.

That's really awesome! That gives me some ideas that'll hopefully get my UNROM setup working.

EDIT: That totally worked! Manually assembling the NES file from the individual header/PRG files at the end was the crucial step. Thanks!

Of course you don't have to use the whole 128KB if you don't want to, you could just use the last 32KB. But be sure to place your vectors and reset code in the last 16KB bank, because that's the one UNROM keeps mapped at $C000-$FFFF at all times. For the life of me, I can't figure out how to do tha...

Welcome, Zom! I'm in exactly the same boat as you. I'd like to get a PowerPak at some point, and eventually burn my game onto a physical cartridge if all goes well, but alas, I'm an emulator-only kinda guy at present. Not that it's any guarantee of success on actual hardware, but I try to test my ga...

I've collaborated with others on game projects in the past, and it hasn't really been successful thus far. It seems there are always problems with conflicting schedules, varying levels of availability/commitment, and some team members pulling more weight than others. Then there are the inevitable de...

Okay, I've updated the header and linker config file. Nestopia no longer displays the "Corrupt file!" message; however, now all I've got is a blank screen. My CHR data is located in the BANK2 segment. I suspect one of my problems is that I'm not successfully copying the data to CHR-RAM. Th...