is mario paint possible on NES?

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iamooos
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is mario paint possible on NES?

Post by iamooos »

so i came across this,

https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/PPU_pattern_tables

i am totally new to this architecture, but i believe this means that a mario style paint program is technically possible?

you can in theory draw pixels.

would you be able to make sort of like a NES SCREEN TOOL working on the ACTUAL nes?

where you can pencil the pixels directly onto the character table and then on the nametable.

i don't see why this is not possible... you would have to build the characters on ram but i think there's nothing stopping this?
and yet i dont know why there hasn't been anything that even remotely lets you draw on the nes. a guy even made a painting
nes program not long ago but it was severely limited. i dont know if this is because of real limitations on the hardware or just because
he wanted to make something for kids like a coloring book

come to think of it isn't this how ELITE actually works by building the necessary lines in realtime to the character table?
or is writing to the character table not possible
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rainwarrior
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Re: is mario paint possible on NES?

Post by rainwarrior »

Mario Paint has 16 colour graphics. NES could do something similar with 4 colour graphics.


The main problem is that normally CHR-RAM is only 8kb, which is enough to cover only half the screen, and after the first 4k you have to do timed splits to switch to a new CHR-RAM page.

For example, with MMC3 + 32k CHR-RAM you could use the scanline IRQ to swap out CHR-RAM banks across the screen.

(Some emulators might not support this, because no older MMC3 games had more than 8k CHR-RAM, but recently Haunted Halloween '86 does run as MMC3 + 32k CHR-RAM.)

If you wanted to go without large CHR-RAM, you could either keep the image on a smaller part of the screen, or another option might be 2 colour graphics. By using 2 different palettes you can pack two 1bpp layers into the 2bpp CHR tiles, allowing you to cover the whole screen with just 8kb and one timed swap.


You can even support the SNES Mouse on NES of you want. It works with any SNES to NES controller adapter.
Fiskbit
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Re: is mario paint possible on NES?

Post by Fiskbit »

You should check out CutterCross' CrossPaint. It just provides a canvas rather than a nametable and tiles, but it's pretty similar to what you're asking about. During the console's commercial lifespan, there was also the Oeka Kids tablet and software for the Famicom and Videomation software for the NES that allowed drawing.
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tokumaru
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Re: is mario paint possible on NES?

Post by tokumaru »

There's also Videomation from back in the day. This one is suspiciously similar to Art Alive on the Genesis... maybe it was made by the same people, I don't know.

While possible from a hardware standpoint, the biggest drawback of a drawing program on the NES is the 4-color limitation. A good pixel artist will be able to work around the color limitations, attributes and palettes, but the average person won't.

Mario Paint and Art Alive are more accessible to the general public with their 16-color palettes.
iamooos
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Re: is mario paint possible on NES?

Post by iamooos »

thanks guys,
actually i am trying out cross paint and it is JUST what i was hoping to see on an NES.

i'm happy that i found out about it
tepples
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Re: is mario paint possible on NES?

Post by tepples »

iamooos wrote: Wed Nov 09, 2022 5:19 pmwould you be able to make sort of like a NES SCREEN TOOL working on the ACTUAL nes?

where you can pencil the pixels directly onto the character table and then on the nametable.
What you describe sounds similar to a background graphics editor that runs on the NES that I made back in 2012.
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Gilbert
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Re: is mario paint possible on NES?

Post by Gilbert »

tepples wrote: Wed Nov 16, 2022 2:09 pm What you describe sounds similar to a background graphics editor that runs on the NES that I made back in 2012.
If you own a FDS system, there was also an unlicensed editor called Hokusai doing exactly this too. It was quite robust and I used it to rip and hack graphics of FDS games (mostly stopped until I reached Side B of the games, as I was not able to make them to work, probably due to the "hidden file copy protection" that I didn't know at that time) in the early 90's.
There was also another (also FDS) editor used internally by Sunsoft, available from a ROM prototype lot someone acquired some years ago, but it seemed to be a bit harder to get into than Hokusai.
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