Time Frame for Full Game Development

[lidnariq]

Or, try to do floating point math entirely in ASM.

e.g. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64156 , http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30210 , http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=26538

And these are just 100-ish x86 instructions each.

[dougeff]

Tepples wrote:

I actually wrote a decimal floating-point library back when I was considering writing an idle game (Cookie Clicker style) for the NES. I wrote my own multiply, divide, and arctan for Thwaite, and they ended up reused in RHDE and Sliding Blaster.

Well, you sir, deserve some kind of Nobel prize, because that is not easy.

[Joe]

Or, try to do floating point math entirely in ASM.

e.g. http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=64156 , http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=30210 , http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=26538

And these are just 100-ish x86 instructions each.

You can do a lot of floating-point math in 100 instructions when the CPU supports floating-point instructions...

[Erockbrox]

This is just my opinion on this, but I say since its so hard to make an NES game why not just use Lunar Magic, the super mario world editor and create your game in an NES style. You will be basically using the SMW game as an engine. It has hundreds of levels already in the game that you can use for levels and its an extremely advanced editor. Just use only 4 colors for your backgrounds and sprites and such to fit the restrictions of the NES.

There are also hundreds of pre-coded blocks, patches, sprites and lots of tools for that specific game already. Someone even coded a way to make a Zelda style game (overhead). Change Mario's physics and make him slower or jump not as higher to give the game a unique feel. There is an easy way to get extra graphics into the game and you can put a TON of extra graphics in the rom.

For music, you could just code music using the original smw sound engine or thanks to advancements in the MSU1 media chip you can now play MP3 files with full CD quality audio. Thankfully Conn coded MSU1 to be compatible with SMW. Since you want to create an NES 8 bit game then just use your favorite NES sound tracker like famitracker and then convert the format to MP3 and like magic you can play 8 bit songs as if they were coming from the NES its self. You could even use another music program which might have a better user interface and create 8 bit style music from that.

So I don't see why this way isn't a good option for SOME people. If you are a professional video game company and you are certain that you want the game to play on an NES then fine, great go ahead and make it if you have the resources, but if this is a hobby and its going to take 5 years to code the darn game since your starting from scratch and most likely the project will fail and never see the light of day then turn to another alternative. Go the easy way in other words.

[dougeff]

Not to get too philosophical, but why do anything hard? Why climb a mountain when you can take a car? Why run a marathon? Because we are compelled to by some unseen driving force... Or just because we can (for no good reason). I don't have answers. I could make another SMW clone. Sure. But, I always wanted to make an NES game... When I was a kid, I'd sketch out levels and and enemies. And, I guess making an original NES game just seemed more interesting to me. But, you know what really got me started - was I saw the homebrew section of RHDN, and I said (for some of the games) "I can write a game better than that". Maybe someday I will.

[Kasumi]

And as far as making things easier, just make the game on PC in NES style. Why Super Mario World? There's a lot more predone things for PC than there is for Super Mario World, and there's no copyrighted code involved at all. (By this I mean Nintendo's code, not the using of the patches you mention, which I assume are free to use.)

[Erockbrox]

And as far as making things easier, just make the game on PC in NES style. Why Super Mario World? There's a lot more predone things for PC than there is for Super Mario World, and there's no copyrighted code involved at all. (By this I mean Nintendo's code, not the using of the patches you mention, which I assume are free to use.)

I picked SMW because the SNES is closer to the NES than say a PC.

[tokumaru]

I don't know about others, but I don't want to simply see my sprites jumping around in a hacked version of someone else's engine, I want to have full control of my game, down to the tiniest detail. I want something that I can say is 100% mine, that I was able to build from the ground up. It's not just about having a final product ready, but about the satisfaction of being able to put everything together myself. In addition to that, I want to know that everything I made is running in my platform of choice, I don't want to make any compromises just to get my game done quicker.

[MottZilla]

In my experience of homebrew development, it's the art assets that have always held me up. Programming is the easier part. It really depends on your skill set and experience for what development time is going to be. No one can really say for sure how long a project will take you.