My first nes game! (DemonDistrict)

[klonoa]

Hey all,

I'd like to share the game I made over the past few months.
It started out as a school project that became quite the passion project.
After I got my grade I and a friend kept working on it to finish it.

It's not completely finished yet but it is finish-able.

Biggest inspirations were the survival horror games of the ps1 and early ps2 era
where you have to collect items and use them to progress through the level.

Feedback is much appreciated!

A few points:

- It's a horror game that contains death, blood and gore.
- Doesn't boot in nestopia for some reason. (maybe someone knows why? Fcuex works.)
Edit: The Ines header was broken! Thx Nocash and lidnariq for spotting this error!
- It's not finished yet so some bugs could be lurking in the dark corners.
- Keep in mind it's our very first nes game.


Edit (2-9-2020):
Thank you all for the amount of attention and feedback these past months! Didn't expect so much attention as a first timer.
I've been working on the game on and off since I made this post and feel like it's time to update it.
I won't list everything I've added in detail since that would ruin the surprise.
But in short, the big thing I've added is weapons and enemies.
I also fixed some bugs, some of which took me quite some time and added some other minor features.

The player can't die yet and is ridiculously overpowered, both things I still need to add and tweak.
Haven't fixed the iffy collisions yet, it's still on my list.

Once again feedback is very much appreciated!

P.s Mr.scarecrow is watching..

[nocash]

What mapper is that? Do you have a version with intect NES header? The size entry(ies) seem to be broken.

[Drozerix]

What mapper is that? Do you have a version with intect NES header? The size entry(ies) seem to be broken.

Looks like it is an MMC1, right?

[lidnariq]

Looks to be marked as having 256KB PRG and 128KB CHR, but has only 56KB CHR. Works fine if I change the header to match.

Lots of padding in the PRG; should be possible to re-link the game into 64/64 without much effort.

[Punch]

I finished it. Pretty neat!

I would maybe tweak the interaction areas and collision detection a bit, and make the menu be exit-able with the A button but this is otherwise pretty cool for a demo.

[klonoa]

Looks to be marked as having 256KB PRG and 128KB CHR, but has only 56KB CHR. Works fine if I change the header to match.

Lots of padding in the PRG; should be possible to re-link the game into 64/64 without much effort.

Oh wow, how could I have missed that..

What do you mean with padding? Unused space?
What's 64/64?

[klonoa]

What mapper is that? Do you have a version with intect NES header? The size entry(ies) seem to be broken.

Looks like it is an MMC1, right?

Yep, It's the MMC1

[klonoa]

I finished it. Pretty neat!

I would maybe tweak the interaction areas and collision detection a bit, and make the menu be exit-able with the A button but this is otherwise pretty cool for a demo.

Thanks for playing and for the feedback!

[lidnariq]

What do you mean with padding? Unused space?

Yeah. You've got a lot of completely unused 16KB pages (#s 6-14) and many of the remainder are less than half full (#s 0,3,4,5)

What's 64/64?

64KB for both PRG and CHR.

[rainwarrior]

I survived!

Congrats on making this.

[nocash]

I've changed the CHR size entry to 07 (=56Kbyte), but my emu (no$nes) still displayed garbage with that, apparently not knowing how to map CHR ROM that isn't a power of two in size. It worked when padding the CHR rom to a power of two. I had never problems with that, so I guess 56Kbyte is extremely uncommon (and unlikely to exist as physical chip size in real hardware).

The NMI handler should push/pop A,X,Y registers (or push/pull, in 6502 language). It's somewhat working without because the main program just sits in an endless loop... but before entering that loop, it does execute a few opcodes that do use the A register (which can be destroyed if the NMI should occur during that time).

The game solved end came a bit abrupt, I am a bit left in the dark about what had happened exactly. I am glad that I have survived, but how? And I am unsure... did I save the world or something?

[calima]

Very nice for a first game. I like games in this style and horror in general.

I didn't play long, so just some polish would be needed for what I noticed:
- button state isn't cleared between stuff (press start to start the game when the chick is shown -> it opens the menu in-game)
- things are jumpy when the menu opens
- scrolling between screens isn't smooth
- sprites not shown during scroll, they snap out and in

[klonoa]

I've changed the CHR size entry to 07 (=56Kbyte), but my emu (no$nes) still displayed garbage with that, apparently not knowing how to map CHR ROM that isn't a power of two in size. It worked when padding the CHR rom to a power of two. I had never problems with that, so I guess 56Kbyte is extremely uncommon (and unlikely to exist as physical chip size in real hardware).

The NMI handler should push/pop A,X,Y registers (or push/pull, in 6502 language). It's somewhat working without because the main program just sits in an endless loop... but before entering that loop, it does execute a few opcodes that do use the A register (which can be destroyed if the NMI should occur during that time).

The game solved end came a bit abrupt, I am a bit left in the dark about what had happened exactly. I am glad that I have survived, but how? And I am unsure... did I save the world or something?

I'm sorry I don't understand at all.
What should I do with the A,X,Y registers? and why?

Still Wanna make a small cutscene where she goes on the bike and jumps the gap at the end of the road.

[klonoa]

Very nice for a first game. I like games in this style and horror in general.

I didn't play long, so just some polish would be needed for what I noticed:
- button state isn't cleared between stuff (press start to start the game when the chick is shown -> it opens the menu in-game)
- things are jumpy when the menu opens
- scrolling between screens isn't smooth
- sprites not shown during scroll, they snap out and in

Thanks!

Could you be more specific?
What do you mean with the button state not being cleared?

With scrolling not being smooth do you mean the screen stalls a bit before scrolling?

The sprites not shown during a scroll was a small sacrifice I made.
Might improve on that later.

[klonoa]

I survived!

Congrats on making this.

Thanks!