nesdev.org

was just curious if anyone has been interested in making a super smash bros clone for the nes/snes i have quite a bit of skill in artwork both 2d and 3d and would like to be apart of a project based on said game. i have a bit of scripting / code knowledge but looking through the docs here this (6502?) language is way over my head. my main experience has been with photoshop/gimp, 3ds max, rpg maker engines, a bit of game maker, and the "quake" c language.

anyone who has nes / snes programming know how and would like to work on a project like this please contact me either here or via email (ceriux@gmail.com)

ceriux wrote:i have a bit of scripting / code knowledge but looking through the docs here this (6502?) language is way over my head.

The 6502 is the name of the NES's processor. The SNES uses the 65816, which from a coding perspective, is 6502 assembly with more instructions I think and some other stuff, but it's generally the same. You can just call it 65xx assembly.

ceriux wrote:my main experience has been with photoshop/gimp, 3ds max, rpg maker engines, a bit of game maker, and the "quake" c language.

How does photoshop, gimp, or 3ds max have anything to do with programming? I don't have a clue how the rpg maker engines look, but I bet it's very high level.

ceriux wrote:anyone who has nes / snes programming know how and would like to work on a project like this please contact me either here or via email (ceriux@gmail.com)

Do you know the limitations of each system? That way, you could choose whatever system best suits you needs. There seem to be quite a bit of people here who try to make something on the NES, but then get angry that they don't have 2 scrolling fields or more than 25 colors onscreen.

One thing I always wondered is has anyone ever tried to make a thread that just asked for help, kind of like you'd ask someone how to do something and someone would do it? Kind of like just state the problem and eventually someone will take care of it? The problem I could see from this is if people got sidetracked. It would just be like a game development thread.

sorry if i was too vague i have a very limited experience with coding/scripting being that through the rpg maker , game maker , and quakec.

iv reviewed the tutorials and documents iv found around these forums and have come to the conclusion the programming language used to program nes games is above my skill level and understanding when it comes to programing.

i am more of a digital artist , and since i feel i will not be able to ever actually produce anything code wise to a project i was curious if someone would be willing to start a project with me ( or has one that i can join ) to contribute my usable skill set towards.

i am aware the nes and snes both have limitations in fact i feel its more enjoyable to make things for games with limitations. which hopefully seeing that i have experience with modding quake 1 , that might be fairly obvious? although the limitations for quake are not nearly as close to those of the nes i have made artwork for games with low spec sprites as well. such for the game called Nestalgia

how ever being used to pc game engines im not exactly sure how sprites and coloring ect work for the nes. are they all grey scale and the programmer assigns a palette color? i guess specific things like that. with a few things addressed i could still easily create the artwork required for a nes or snes project. it would be fun and challenging.

i would like to thank you for such a speedy reply and the interest you've taken in my thread.

ceriux wrote:i would like to thank you for such a speedy reply and the interest you've taken in my thread.

I'm pretty much always here. God dang! Maybe I should settle down...

ceriux wrote:how ever being used to pc game engines im not exactly sure how sprites and coloring ect work for the nes. are they all grey scale and the programmer assigns a palette color? i guess specific things like that.

I guess you could say that? The pictures are just information, and when they are put to the screen, they always have to use a color palette out of the 4 available on the NES. So basically, a paletteless picture is not grayscale, because it's not even displayable because it will always use one of the palettes. If you don't mess with any of the palette bits, it will still be a palette because "0" is a palette.

ceriux wrote:iv reviewed the tutorials and documents iv found around these forums and have come to the conclusion the programming language used to program nes games is above my skill level and understanding when it comes to programing.

Well, it's hardest getting started, but you don't have to do it if you don't want to of course. I remember the time I wanted to do SNES programming the first time, I didn't find any tutorials or anything but I found something called "Nerdy Nights" for the NES. I felt like looking at it because I thought it would be useful for helping me get into SNES development, but I didn't get it in the slightest. It's the people here who've helped me.

ceriux wrote:i am more of a digital artist , and since i feel i will not be able to ever actually produce anything code wise to a project i was curious if someone would be willing to start a project with me ( or has one that i can join ) to contribute my usable skill set towards.

Have you done any artwork that you would be willing to show?

i dont have much still left, imageshack changed and i lost all of my pictures. if there are too many pictures i can make them all links.

most of what i have recently has been quake models. maybe a few half-life models.













http://www.servimg.com/image_preview.php?i=6&u=18244255

only the shotgun is mine.










i didnt make the model or uv map of the model, but i did spruce up the texture for this:
http://media.moddb.com/cache/images/mem ... retex1.png

Oops, I meant related to the project.

oh no, but i could make some mock ups with a bit of time.. i wont lie to you i didnt want to start anything with out anyones interest. would you like to see a literal super smash bros mock up or one with my own ideas (characters, stages, ect) based off the same gameplay?

Definitely original characters and original stages, so as not to anger any lawyers.

I've mooted a platform fighter for NES several times before. Here's the plan I've considered:

• Start with characters from famous pre-1923 fairy tales (Grimm, Andersen, Collodi, Baum, etc.) to avoid copyrights on famous video game characters. Could a grass-type like Pinocchio or Scarecrow defeat a fire-type like Fire-eater or Wicked Witch of the West?
• Characters should be about 40 to 48 characters tall. This is noticeably smaller than a typical Street Fighter II character and closer to a Shaq-Fu character (or indeed Thomas from Kung Fu), but it's small enough to allow maneuvering around a playfield.
• It might take 150 to 200 frames to do an entire moveset.

But each time, it has gone nowhere because nobody has been willing to post a sprite sheet for even one character's complete moveset as a proof of concept. So if you can make these, I'd be willing to go into more detail about what would be needed to make it fit the NES or Super NES.

• One level (512x224 pixels, 256x224 visible at once)
• One character's moveset

tepples wrote:Definitely original characters and original stages, so as not to anger any lawyers.

You're really afraid of copyright... (Not that that's a bad thing.)

ceriux wrote:would you like to see a literal super smash bros mock up or one with my own ideas (characters, stages, ect) based off the same gameplay?

I wouldn't mind. I probably would be of that much help because I really haven't done much of anything myself. I've currently been working on a game engine for a run and gun, but it can be adapted into a SMB type game relatively easily because it's pretty flexible. I still have a large amount of things I haven't even gotten to yet though, like an animation engine, or something for checking collisions and another thing for making stuff appear in the level when the screen scrolls. I have an overwhelming amount still left to do, but in terms of making it, I'm probably a little over halfway done, but it took me almost a year to get here.

tile dimensions , sprite dimensions , and background image info?

Are you asking for an opinion or something? (never mind, I understand.) The NES runs at 256x240, and the SNES runs at 256x224, if that's what you were wondering. Tiles on both systems are 8x8 pixels, but only every 16x16 pixel area in the background can have its own palette, without the use of the MMC5. Sprites on the NES can be either 64 8x8 or 8x16 sized sprites and there can only be one or the other onscreen at a time, but you cannot have more than 8 sprites together on the same line horizontally before flicker sets in. With the SNES, you have 128 8x8, 16x16, 32x32 and 64x64 sized sprites, but the width of all the sprites horizontally on the same line cannot be over 272 pixels long without this kind of weird effect where any extra pixels just don't get displayed. You can also only have 2 different sprite sizes onscreen at a time. On the SNES, all the sprite tile data has to fit into an area that is equivalent to 8 64x64 sized sprites, so just don't use 64x64 sized sprites because they offer no advantage over 4 32x32 sized sprites. A lot of objects in both NES and SNES games are actually many sprites together. For example, Mario in the original Super Mario Bros is 16x32 pixels large. Since the game is using 8x8 sized sprites, he is made of 8 sprites. On the NES, you have 4 palettes that consist of 4 colors, a set for the BG and a set for the sprites, but the first color in each palette is the transparent color, kind of like the "alpha channel". Whatever the first color of the first BG palette is, the back of the screen is, so it is actually possible to have 4 colors per BG palette, (even though one of the colors is always going to be shared) but since sprites are generally over the BG, the transparent color for sprites will just show whatever is behind so BGs can kind of use 4 colors, (but one of the colors in each of the 4 palettes is the same) and sprites can only really use 3 colors. On the SNES, the same basic rules apply with transparent colors and whatnot except you have a set of 8 16 color palettes for the BGs and sprites. Again, the first color of each palette is transparent. The SNES can actually change the amount of colors the BGs use per tile, in that there's a 256 color mode that actually also uses the sprite palettes and the first color of each 16 color palette is not invisible for it, only the first color of the whole thing. There's also another mode where it's like the NES in where it has 4 color palettes, and the first two normally 16 color palettes are turned into 8 4 color palettes. Again, the first color in each now 4 color palette is transparent, but is shared among all the palettes if the layer is in the background. The SNES has 8 different graphical modes that generally balance out the number of colors per color palette (it's called bits per pixel, and it makes sense if you see how the tiles are stored) and the number of BG layers. The most useful modes are 1 and 3, which I will tell you about. It's not hard to look up the others, but they generally aren't as good. (Mode 7 is good for racing games though.)

Mode 1: 2 16 color palette BGs (4bpp) with 1 4 color palette BG. (2bpp)

Mode 3: 1 256 color BG (8bpp) with 1 16 color BG. (4bpp)

There's more to it than that, but just ask questions.

ceriux wrote:tile dimensions , sprite dimensions , and background image info?

Quick summary of NES graphical capabilities:

-256 8x8-pixel tiles for the background;
-256 8x8-pixel tiles for sprites;
-54 colors to chose from;
-1 background color (color 0);
-4 3-color palettes (colors 1, 2 and 3) for the background;
-4 3-color palettes (colors 1, 2 and 3) for sprites;
-color 0 is always transparent on sprites;
-2 256x240-pixel backgrounds (can be arranged side by side or stacked vertically);
-palettes are applied to 16x16-pixel background areas;
-sprites can be 8x8 pixels (only 1 tile) or 8x16 pixels (using 2 consecutive tiles);
-sprites can be flipped vertically and horizontally;
-64 sprites per frame;
-only 8 sprites can be drawn per scanline;

These are the rules as originally designed by Nintendo, but some of them can be bent with programming tricks and/or special hardware in the cartridge.

thank you all for this information its useful ill try and start a mockup tomorrow after work.

i just want to let everyone know the left click on my mouse randomly decided to stop working... iv ordered a new mouse and as soon as i receive it ill update the post.

okay got my mouse this isnt really much but iv started messing around with character design ideas... this is a 32x32 sprite...

please feel free to coach me if iv done anything wrong when it comes to nes sprites.

this was a quick try. maybe i should move to to a larger sprite size?



the character is like a praying mantis type alien. currently unanimated? i just dont want to progress any furtherif something should be changed.

ceriux wrote: i should move to to a larger sprite size?

Definitely not. The NES can only handle 64 sprite pixels before flicker sets in, and I'm not even sure if you would want this to be 4 player or not. By the way though, the picture isn't working.

One thing though is that you could aim for more human shaped characters and have a 32x48 sized sprite.