What programs do you need....

[Amini]

What Programs are required to make an NES game? For Example, Coding, Map Layout, etc.

Also What products do you need to burn these (or extract) to an NES circuit board?

I've seen tutorials on these, but I am still very confused.

[Shiru]

The only certain thing is that you'll need an assembler or a C compiler for code. For graphics, sound, map etc there are many ways and approaches to the things, it is all up to you. You may use some existing tools, or create your own. You can convert graphics from a picture, or use a tile editor, or type it as a series of HEX values. You can use FamiTracker or MuseTracker with existing players for music, however, many prefer to make everything in this area from scratch, and type music data as HEX values. There are universal map editors, but you'll need a converter tool to use these. There are other ways to create maps as well.

[tepples]

Once you have something working in an emulator, the easiest way to try your program on an NES is with a PowerPak. Replication of a finished product on cartridges can come later.

[Amini]

Thanks guys, what I'm still a bit confused about is the map making. How do you make one from Scratch? Sorry for the questions, but this is a newbie help center, right?

[Shiru]

You can draw it as a huge image and make a tool that will split it into the tileset, map, etc.

You can use a general purpose map editor such as Mappy and make a tool that will convert its output.

You can manually type in the map data as a number of hex values.

You can draw map in NES Screen Tool or other nametable editor screen by screen, then connect them in code, or make a tool that will assemble the screens into a map.


The thing is that there is no standart map format. Every game has its own format, it is up to programmer to decide how the data will be stored, so there is no ready made solution.

[Bregalad]

You can manually type in the map data as a number of hex values.

That's the way to go if you ask me. You can use defintes to make this process much more friendly, and if you use metatiles, your maps shouldn't be that huge anyway.

[Shiru]

Forgot to mention another popular option for map making: write a map editor by yourself. When it is for a certain game and does not have to be very advanced, it isn't too difficult - much easier than to write a game.

[Amini]

Thanks You all!

(Nice Grammar me)

[tokumaru]

Thanks guys, what I'm still a bit confused about is the map making. How do you make one from Scratch?

Most people just come up with their simple map formats and type hex values directly into the code.

There's no consolidated map format because each game's needs are different, so even if a tool will help you with part of the process there will still be a lot to adjust until the maps can be used by your game engine. Most people are not up to coding a lot of tools and scripts to handle these conversions, so they just come up with their own formats that can be easily typed by hand.

A full uncompressed screen on the NES is 1KB large, so you obviously can't store maps that way if you plan on having more than a handful of screens. What you do is you start reusing tiles. The first thing most games do is use metatiles instead of tiles: they define a set of blocks that are made from 4 tiles and the maps point to those blocks instead of tiles. This makes screens occupy only 25% of the space an uncompressed screen does! From there, other kinds of compression can be used to further decrease the space each screen takes. You can use RLE or LZ compression on the raw map data, or you can creating screens by placing objects on them (SMB1 does this) rather than defining one block for each space in the grid. Like I said, each game has different requirements.

[tepples]

If you post a mock screenshot of what you want a typical level to look like, we might be able to help you design a map format.

[Amini]

If you post a mock screenshot of what you want a typical level to look like, we might be able to help you design a map format.

Alright, I might Be able to do that.

EDIT: I made some tiles which are 8x8 and fit into the NES palette (i think), I also added a new character, which I really should be putting in my Pixel Art Thread, But it's too late now...

[Amini]

I made a typical map.



What do you think?

Obviously, it would be much longer, but this is just a demo.

[Shiru]

How much time you've spent to make it?

[Amini]

How much time you've spent to make it?

To make what? The Map demo, or something else?

[Shiru]

The map demo.