nesdev.org

Zack S wrote:I'm looking into the possibility of making an NESHLA editor with intellisense.

Why re-invent the wheel. Do something that will advance the art of NES development instead of creating yet another IDE. Syntax highlighting can easily be added to all of the IDE's out there. Most of those IDE's will support intellisense and jump to tag type functionality.

Think of something more inventive like an integrated sprite/animation tool. Or a tool for organizing your sprite memory into different banks. A general tool for organizing ROMs would be great. Think of it as an interactive iNES builder that lets you take your compiled code bin and your sprite banks and build an iNES out of it.

That would be useful.

Sometimes I feel like people spend too much time making tools... And few games are ever made with those tools. I'd prefer that people were working on more games instead. We have so few good NES homebrews (by good I mean something that will keep people interested for more than a few minutes).

Wookie wrote:Most of those IDE's will support intellisense and jump to tag type functionality.

If you could kindly point me to an IDE that is capable of syntax highlighting and intellisense for NESHLA, I would be happy to abandon my plans for making an editor. Then I could get to work on my nes game.

tokumaru wrote:Sometimes I feel like people spend too much time making tools... And few games are ever made with those tools.

There is not that much tool that I find useful for nes these days. My map editor, even in it's current alpha state, saved me a lot of time to built my map content and test interlaved data. Imagine if I had to remake by hand the map data when I wanted to test normal data or interlaved one.. Converting from one format to the other would have been a pain. Just added a few lines of code in the exporter and I was able to test it with my current map data.

As for Wookie comment, I would like right now to have a tool to make my sprites. But with my current format, that would not be possible to use an existing tool I guess. I'm making them by hand and it takes time. I would like to built one in my editor someday but I don't have much time anymore for hobbies so oh well.

tokumaru wrote:Sometimes I feel like people spend too much time making tools

Tools do not require as much aesthetic creativity as a game does.

Richard Stallman, head of the Free Software Foundation, has drawn a distinction between tools (utilitarian works, like a kernel or CC65 or OpenOffice.org) and aesthetic works (like paintings, sculptures, and most games' data files). Publishers of tools (like Red Hat and Sun) can use the business model of selling associated services; publishers of aesthetic works designed to be enjoyed apart from a network cannot. Stallman would have no problem with a video game that uses proprietary scripts (as long as they're interpreted), proprietary dialogue, proprietary maps, proprietary meshes, proprietary textures, and proprietary audio, as long as the engine is free software.

tepples, sometimes I have no idea what you're talking about...

Then let me put it more simply:

Tools need only code. Games need code, art, and several other skills. So people who feel most comfortable with code concentrate on tools.

tepples wrote:Tools need only code. Games need code, art, and several other skills. So people who feel most comfortable with code concentrate on tools.

I agree. The better the workflow and "WYSIWYG-ness" of a tool, the easier and faster it is for me to get good results with it, at least when it comes to creative work.

It's all about instant feedback, instead of having a detailed picture in mind from the beginning I let the idea evolve during the process of creating art itself. E.g., I've been using MML way longer than FamiTracker, but could never finish any tunes using it. With FamiTracker it's easier, you can hear the results of your input immediately.

However, I can say for sure that, for programming, I'd prefer a simple Notepad-type editor over a complex IDE anytime.

Sorry if that was too much of a rant, but I hope what I said makes sense, maybe other people feel the same.

Yeah long live notepd
Altough more complex programs with improved find features and less crazy tab handling can be better.

And yeah I should definitely get more into programming tools. I've written a few tools in java to generate large binary tables, but that's all. When I had to code a tool to test huffman compression, I did it on the NES because no implementation in high-level languages poped up in my head.

And some tool developpers can end up writing great games when they have free times, like Inteligent systems who did Nintendo Wars and Fire Emblem series.

Zack S wrote:If you could kindly point me to an IDE that is capable of syntax highlighting and intellisense for NESHLA, I would be happy to abandon my plans for making an editor.

http://www.contexteditor.org/

Making a syntax highlighting rule set for context is trivial. You could also try vim, it's easy to do there.

By saying that you *must* have syntax highlighting and intellisense before you can make your game is a bit namby pamby. Just get going on your game.

The tools work I've been doing is to make it possible to use the CopyNES with Linux http://www.bitbucket.org/wookie/libcopynes and to write my games in NESHLA on Linux http://www.bitbucket.org/wookie/neshla. I did this work because I *only* use Linux.

Now I'm working on a game, but it's not for the NES, it's for the Lynx. I have a version of NESHLA that targets the Lynx as well as the NES that I'm currently testing. I plan to use that to write my game for the Lynx. Maybe I'll port it to the NES later.

The ConTEXT editor has a ton of syntax highlighter rules file here: http://www.contexteditor.org/highlighters/ There is even one for 6502 assembler that will get you 90% of the way to NESHLA syntax highlighting. Just add support for the preprocessor directives and simple C function declarations and you'd be 99% there.

tepples wrote:Then let me put it more simply:

Tools need only code. Games need code, art, and several other skills. So people who feel most comfortable with code concentrate on tools.

Exactly why I stumbled into tool land.

As for myself, I like making tools since I have to do sometime at work and like making games because it always interested me to try to do some. So it's hard to put priority on which one to do first. These days, I'm on coding the game but sprite editing by hand... It sucks. When I get too tired I may just add it to my tool.

Banshaku wrote:As for myself, I like making tools since I have to do sometime at work and like making games because it always interested me to try to do some. So it's hard to put priority on which one to do first. These days, I'm on coding the game but sprite editing by hand... It sucks. When I get too tired I may just add it to my tool.

Help me here...what do you mean by sprite editing by hand? I picture you with a pen and paper. Surely there are plenty of tile editing tools that work for sprites?

I'm pretty sure he means ordering the individual sprites to form the actual characters of the game, and possibly their animations as well. I can see why this takes a long time... finding a center point, aligning each sprite, calculating where each one is relative to the others, testing the animations, the timing, and so on.