nesdev.org

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2014/0 ... n_the_snes

I just came across this article.

Too bad the artwork is bad.

Anyone got the rom of that game ? seems cool ... even the modern 8/16 bit GFX

I'm not very fond of this "pseudo-retro modern pixel art" style, too bad they're going with that for an actual SNES game.

funny to see that is doable on real retro console ...

These graphics seem just plain lazy to me.

It does say in the article that the guys who're doing this are not artists, which must be why they're mimicking this type of sad excuse for pixel art that's so common these days.

I wish I knew what the whole "SNES has no documentation" thing is about. Nobody is going to write a tutorial explaining every single hardware aspect in great detail. That's why we have separate tutorials for 65816 ASM, memory maps, PPU, SPC700, ect.

wow you guys, nothing but complainers (except lint).

How about a little bit of encouraging words, they actually help build community.
What if they read your comments, would they then want to hang out here?

Note that article's from 2014. No apparent updates on Twitter since, nor do they seem to have any non-social-media presence.

Well, I'm glad they figured out how to program the SNES. I still wonder exactly what is missing in SNES documentation.

Well, it's not like we have much to go on... just a single screenshot and a generic interview. Having a new homebrew game is great, but that doesn't mean we have to kiss ass by default (there are tons of bad homebrew games!). I'm not being an asshole either, I just think they made a bad choice with the artistic direction, going for a bland generic style instead of something more remarkable. It doesn't look bad, just... bleh. The game might still be really good despite this, we'll see.

Myask wrote:Note that article's from 2014. No apparent updates on Twitter since, nor do they seem to have any non-social-media presence.

Yeah, I don't think they're working on this anymore. Development ceased after a few months.

Here's their Twitter by the way: https://twitter.com/namespacegames

I guess the team is one guy and one girl. The pictures in the article had me thinking it was two guys.

Fair enough. Let me revise my previous comment.

The graphics serve their purpose, but you'd probably want to polish them before a release. We don't have live photage from what i can tell, but for instance, i guess the trees have a light/shadow effect to show that they're platforms to reach the cliffs in what i think is a non-moving single screen. That's fair enough. But since they are the only elements that have lightening/shadow applied to them, they pop out more than anything, including the characters, which are shown in front but doesn't look like it in comparison. If the foliage has highlights, why doesn't the grass? Light/shadows, if used, should be applied globally as far as possible.

I could also be wrong about the trees, in which case their popping is misleading. Maybe the cliffs are meant as blockades which you can't overcome.

I think the background as a whole needs to follow a ruleset that takes gameplay into concideration. Devs, artists, and designers need to remember that a first time player don't know what's what. Solids should be more popping than semisolids/jumpthroughs, and semisolids should be more popping than pure immaterial background.


Artistically, i have a personal inclination partly against (for the lack of thinking up a better term) retrofakeing, but that isn't universal and it certainly doesn't mean it can't be done in a pleasing way (Shovel Knight looked and felt great). An example i hope can help illustrate this is the common difference i've experienced (and am assuming others have experienced) between actual video game music and many chiptune tracks. In SMB1, the music reflects the mood of the stage. Underground feels underground, the creepy castle music puts you on the edge of the chair, especially the first time, and so on. Much chiptunes, especially stuff i heard people play live in the 00's, had basically one expression: "i want to represent a general sense of video games without reflecting the the specific content of an actual or imagined video game". So for the most part i heard LSDJ live shows with super-cheery, gallopy, childhood-encopassing blippetyblop, with the occational heavy metal-like variation. This is not truly representative for video game music, however reminding of dominant strokes.

This goes for a lot of the 'indie' content seen on the wii u online store. Instead of presenting original aesthetics that are tailored to the intended experience, some of these devhouses think it's enough to make it look like what the general public may think is a retro game, maybe because of lack of devtime, maybe because of lack of knowledge, will, or confidence. Hobbyists have the relative luxury to avoid this trap by trading personal time for getting more experience and knowledge and confidence. I think time is really the key here. To dare to avoid saying 'good enough' too early. Let it grow.

They have a start, and it seems they have a vision (being from Nottingham, doing a robin hood game, on a platform they like). I think it needs work, and i think the feeling of reward is more probable the more labour you put into reflecting why things should look, sound, feel in a certain way.

Judging from the notion of 'lack of documentation', they may be more or less isolated from other homebrewing communities and their repositories, in which case i think it's safe to say that they could benefit a lot from being introduced and getting references on what other peers do for a hobby, more so than opinions like the one i wrote.

It's disappointing that another group of homebrews got stuck.