nesdev.org

Classic text adventures requires text input, you wouldn't want to do it using gamepad. You can easily make an IF game, though.

If you going away from text input and just provide set of commands, it is a step to graphical adventure, only without graphics - does not make much sense.

Don't know about commercial games, but it was used in some players on home computers. Drawback of this method is limitation for max song speed/tempo, but you can have at least one additional frame, because speed 1 is surely not common.

My guess is that Megaman engine optimized by data size. Let's say, Contra has 8 songs by ~1 minute long, and three jingles, and it's NSF is 17K. Megaman 1 has about 10 songs with similar durations, and few jingles, and it is just 11K. Battletoads has about 20 songs, but it's NSF is 32K - probably op...

Results from the Megaman are confirmed by Gil, who tested it with the game and VirtuaNES (his results are 2075, 8252). jsr also confirms he getting similar numbers with his tests. I can only wonder how Rare programmers managed to make so fast player in Battletoads then. And how Capcom programmers ma...

Work on a NES sound engine raised my interest, how much CPU time sound engines from commercial games take. I got idea that I could measure it if I mod a NSF plugin, and tried it. I took Nosefart (was easy to compile, no other reasons) and added a cycle counter into it. I'm not sure it gives correct...

You can measure exact numbers using this VirtuaNES mod build (found on this forum, provided by Memblers). Write something in $401e when music code starts and in $401f when it ends, and you'll get the numbers. EDIT: Another interesting result I've got with modded NSF plugin is that the demonstration ...

I've used VirtualNES mod with cycle counting functionality and measured how much CPU time is used by the player on the demonstration song. Don't forget, currently there are no sound effects code and no DPCM channel. Average is below 2000 cycles, like 1500-1900, and peak is 3866 cycles. The peak grow...

Well, you can use player with multiple songs without sharing the instruments or other data currently, so it is not absolutely necessary now (would be really needed for a project with a lot of music). Sound effects are top priority now, DPCM next. Edit: Maybe I'm wrong, but channel labels have the sa...

The music engine has no unused features, look in the code - it is just ~500 lines. Sound effects part planned to be mostly independent, with disable/enable at compile time. First I've thought to make sound effects as part of music player (common way), but I think it is not the best approach for mult...

[Old topic; discussion continues here ] This is a continuation of General music and sound solution thread, started by me about two weeks ago. I know very well that if you want something, one of the best ways is to do it yourself, so of course I've started work on my custom solution too, which I wan...

There could be infinute number of music engines. One company could use one engine, but it evolves from game to game, with both minor and major changes. Also, designs of the engines and trackers could be very different, so capabilites of a tracker just isn't cover capabilites of an engine. Source cod...

The grid currently shows both tiles and attribute blocks (2x2 tiles), do you need it to show the attribute bytes as well (4x4 tiles)?

Honestly, to make pixel art you need an artist who able to make proper pixel art, not something that maybe could be converted somehow.

Some pixel artists use Photoshop, though, and I've heard that someone made a custom plugin that checks/fixes an image for certain limitations.

I would like to get idea which assemblers are most popular for NES development today. Please vote for one you use currently. If you use something else, post it in thread.

I see two problems in these requests: non-rectangular selection would require complete redo of selection code and change look of the selection as well; ability to edit more that one tile at a time was discussed above in this thread, it is not decided yet if it would be comfortable. Other requested f...