nesdev.org

Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/43 ... l-assault/
Steam Greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =377961407

This obviously isn't an actual NES game, but I figured some people here still might be interested. I've been working on this game for a while now; you might remember around a year or so back, when I posted some NES FMV demos that I coded up while researching the NES specifications and limitations.

My game is called Steel Assault, and it's a 2D side-scrolling action game. It's set in the year 2040 after revolts and fascist uprising have shocked the United States. The game mainly focuses on close combat, but the player is also equipped with a variety of different weapons.

The game is aiming to be "arcade-style"; that is, tight length, tight design, and high difficulty. The ultimate goal is to clear it in one credit (life), and the total length will probably be around ~25-30 minutes on a good playthrough; however, getting to that good playthrough might take hours. There will also be multiple difficulty modes, ranging from Expert to Novice (arcade/early-console hard, down to "your Grandma can beat it").

The graphical style is inspired by NES games such as Shatterhand and Batman, which utilized heavy dithering and details in negative space to create a dark atmosphere within the system's limitations. We also have a style guide talking a bit about our approaches to the Famicom limitations: which ones we're following, which ones we're bending or completely ignoring, etc. And I also recently wrote up an article about parallax on the NES for the game's Kickstarter campaign.

Audio-wise, I'm composing the music for the game in Famitracker, using the Konami VRC6 expansion (so this aspect of the game is fully accurate to the NES specs). Here are a few sample tracks:

• [temple]
• [boss fight #1 (club)]
• [regret]

We also have a SoundCloud with even more tracks!

Finally, in case you were wondering, the game is being programmed in C++, using SFML as its main multimedia library.

So yeah, I think that about covers it. If you guys have any questions or criticisms, feel free to let me know!

I like the style of your game. It looks like something that could be fun.


If I'm being honest, the FMV is off-putting. It's so far outside the realm of "NES" that it doesn't seem to fit. I'm aware of your FMV demos, but what you've got here doesn't do anything to evoke the NES feeling to me, so all that I am seeing is FMV that looks really crummy because of the arbitrary 4-colour restriction you've placed on it.

I don't really care if the NES could do something or not, because you're clearly not working within that boundary anyway. You don't need to reference tech demos to give yourself a license to make effects uncharacteristic of the NES. Just do things that will make the game look and sound and play well! You're already showing a very strong NES style, you don't really need to prove the details. (If you do have to prove them, consider that most won't recognize them as "NES".)

The budget also looks very low to me, but I'm not gonna grill you about your funding.


Good luck on your game project! (Count me as a backer, but you've got a ways to go!)

Looks good/neat, I'll have to give it a try. Gameplay shots look quite cool. Also count me in as a backer!

My view on the FMV mirrors that of rainwarrior -- it just doesn't fit with the rest of the game visual style. Instead, check out some of the "intros" from NES games like Crystalis or Kabuki Quantum Fighter, or SNES games like Arcana. That might give you some ideas of art styles/methods to use that do fit more into the realm of NES/SNES (particularly ones I think might work for the story/information being told in the FMV -- my point here is hard to convey in text).

The cut scenes of games like Vice: Project Doom are instructive.

I like the look and feel of the game. Its like a DREAM NES game since its like an overpowered NES that probably couldn't exist on the real hardware. Maybe if you made the full motion video lag a little or something then it would look more authentic.

Like instead of 30 fames per sec or whatever its on do like 10 frames or 5 frames. Make it look more choppy as if the NES is maxed out trying to make it happen.

I think using a famitracker is also an excellent idea!!!

Erockbrox wrote:I like the look and feel of the game. Its like a DREAM NES game since its like an overpowered NES that probably couldn't exist on the real hardware.

Kind of like a Neo Geo pocket color? About the video, I don't think that I've ever seen a window that big for FMV even in SNES games. If you clipped off the sides a bit, it would probably look more authentic. Where did you even get the footage from?

Thanks everyone! And thanks for the pledges, rainwarrior and koitsu!

Interesting that you guys largely aren't fans of the FMV effect (I thought it looked pretty cool hahah). The FMV is just for the game's initial intro at the very start, there are going to be two Vice: Project Doom style cutscenes later on (once before heading into the first area, and another at the ending). There are also probably going to be short mid-level dialogue snippets that play over the action, a la Star Fox or Assault Suits Valken. Thanks for the recommendations on which games to study re: cutscene design too!

rainwarrior wrote:I don't really care if the NES could do something or not, because you're clearly not working within that boundary anyway. You don't need to reference tech demos to give yourself a license to make effects uncharacteristic of the NES. Just do things that will make the game look and sound and play well! You're already showing a very strong NES style, you don't really need to prove the details. (If you do have to prove them, consider that most won't recognize them as "NES".)

The budget also looks very low to me, but I'm not gonna grill you about your funding.

Yeah I completely get what you're saying, but I figure that having a clear and consistent guide for our style like this kind of serves to separate us from the many "retro" games which don't really have a thought-through style at all. In any case, my philosophy is that if I have to choose between the game and the restriction set, the game always wins out.

Part of the reason the budget is so low is because all of my food and living expenses are mostly paid for (by an academic scholarship to my university), and because a significant portion of the level art is already done. If this wasn't the case, it would probably be a lot higher.

Espozo wrote:Where did you even get the footage from?

The footage is compiled from a variety of sources, and put through a 4-color filter which I programmed based on Bisqwit's pattern dithering article. Off the top of my head, some of the sources are: media footage of citizen riots in France and Iran, building demolitions on Youtube, nuclear test launches from documentaries, and an iPhone video some guy took of a burning car on the highway. I don't have the exact links on hand right now, but if anyone's interested I can get the file where I saved them on my other PC.

So, I guess I'm the minority for really liking the FMV sequences. Echoing Erockbrox, I think reducing the frame rate would be a good idea. It's a very stylistic choice, but personally I would reconsider some of the color choices. Red/orange suits the last images (people setting stuff on fire) but green and purple really don't convey an emotion, at least none that evokes what the FMVs are about.

Everything else looks awesome imo. Game looks like it will turn into something fun. Good luck!

Cool game! The art is really good! I actually like the FMV too, it helps set up the mood.

Erockbrox wrote:Maybe if you made the full motion video lag a little or something then it would look more authentic.

Technically, the kind of FMV he's using is possible as long as there are several MB of CHR-ROM (and a custom mapper to access it!). Switching 640 new tiles for every frame would be instantaneous. Even if he wanted to reuse tiles to save space (which would require modifying the name tables), it would be possible to update 320 NT entries each frame with extended blanking (there's a fair amount of blank space above the video and below the text).

Like instead of 30 fames per sec or whatever its on do like 10 frames or 5 frames. Make it look more choppy as if the NES is maxed out trying to make it happen.

Yeah, this is probably what it would look like with period hardware, with the video being decompressed from PRG-ROM and uploaded to VRAM/CHR-RAM.

Well, his demo ROM I think was something like 1/6 the resolution and 1/3 the framerate, by comparison. I think it had a bandwidth of maybe 5k per second? (Very rough ballpark, don't take this as a definitive analysis.)

As for the ROM space required, if you were to make cartridges, how much of your cost margin is worth throwing at an FMV sequence? Even today with ROM as cheap as it is, I doubt anyone would find it worthwhile, and it would have been absolutely ludicrous in the real NES era.

Eh, you can buy an 2GB SD card for ~$5. Yes, you need extra hardware to deserialize that to be used by the PPU, but that's not hard. No, in a commercial sense, it probably wouldn't be worth the ~$20 extra from the standard 4x markup.

A minute of full-motion uncompressed NES tiles (60 Hz, 256x128 pixels, 2bpp) is only about 30MB. You can buy a 32MB 3V NAND FLASH for $2/1, which I think should be fairly easily integrated. Specifically in the case of full-motion video, the in-order requirement is fine.

I was thinking, what if you actually made an SNES game which looked like an NES game. It still wouldn't be an NES game per say, but it would be more closely related to an NES game than a game for the PC.

The SNES could produce all of the effects you would need I would assume. Heck, you could even make an SNES cart look like an NES cart to make it even more authentic.

Just a thought.

Erockbrox wrote:I was thinking, what if you actually made an SNES game which looked like an NES game. It still wouldn't be an NES game per say, but it would be more closely related to an NES game than a game for the PC.

The SNES could produce all of the effects you would need I would assume. Heck, you could even make an SNES cart look like an NES cart to make it even more authentic.

Just a thought.

The one game that would actually put mode 0 to use.