My First Stab At It

cartlemmy · Post by **cartlemmy** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 9:42 am

I've been at this for the last week or so, and I finally got a .NES file that does something. I've created a map editor and a metatile generator, and a NES rom that shows the first part of a map. I made it so that it can load a column of metatiles in at a time. There's a lot of temporary code in there, and other nonsense, but if anyone wants to give it a look go ahead. And if you feel like it, let me know if I'm doing anything seriously wrong.

http://www.yibbleware.com/nes/cartlemmy-test.zip

EDIT (Oct 14, 2010 @ 10:35AM PDT):
I just realized that I can set the PPU to increment by 32 instead of 1 by writing columns, that would make my code a lot more efficient. I discovered that setting bit 2 of PPU register $2000 will increment it by 32.

Oh, and I know this demo is incredibly boring... I'm just happy that I made something work.

3gengames · Post by **3gengames** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 12:42 pm

I don't look at code much since I am not god enough to read through it yet, but that's impressive! I still can barely get backgrounds on the screen let alone something like that! Keep improving! If it gets too hard, try something simpler, because for this being your first program, it's pretty impressive. Next try to add a box or something that lets your move around. Then maybe, not allow you to hit the ground, and just keep adding on. That's what I'd do!

Looks nice man. Keep it up!

cartlemmy · Post by **cartlemmy** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 12:45 pm

Thanks, good to hear some positive feedback. I've already made some improvements, and am pretty close to continuous (horizontal) scrolling capabilities. I like your idea of implementing a box character to do some physics testing, I think I'll do that next.

Also I need to fix / add more comments

3gengames · Post by **3gengames** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 12:48 pm

Haha yeah, that sounds like an idea.

I don't know how to scroll but I know it's a tad difficult. Lol. I can barely get a single screen game going. Your doing alot better then me so far.

^_^

cartlemmy · Post by **cartlemmy** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 12:51 pm

Cool. I plan on posting the final, well commented code for the scroll engine when I'm done. So maybe it'll be help to some. Assuming that I'm doing things right. Eventually I'd like to test on a real NES. How much does the hardware that allows that sort of thing cost?

Post by **tepples** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 1:17 pm

cartlemmy wrote:Cool. I plan on posting the final, well commented code for the scroll engine when I'm done. So maybe it'll be help to some. Assuming that I'm doing things right. Eventually I'd like to test on a real NES. How much does the hardware that allows that sort of thing cost?

PowerPak costs $135, and you can probably pick up a cheap CompactFlash memory card and USB CF writer on Amazon or something.

cartlemmy · Post by **cartlemmy** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 1:18 pm

tepples wrote:PowerPak costs $135, and you can probably pick up a cheap CompactFlash memory card and USB CF writer on Amazon or something.

Cool, that thing seems awesome

Thanks for the info.

3gengames · Post by **3gengames** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 1:29 pm

Yeah, if your doing small stuff and happen to have an EPROM programmer, I'd just make a NROM cart for experiments. Not expensive if you have a programmer or get one cheap, and if you need bigger carts, there's lots of donors out there. (NOT CRYSTALIS!

)

I made alot (3 or 4) 16K and 32K carts, they work fine for now....but I need to make a 512K cart soon for....."other stuff"

but yeah if you want something that works on nearly everything and have $150 to spare, PowerPak is probably better for 3x the cost, ALOT less time consuming, it's worth it....

cartlemmy · Post by **cartlemmy** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 1:32 pm

Yeah, $150 is actually not bad at all IMO.