Color Dreams NES ROM hacking help, newbie

[nesmaster14]

Hey everyone, for quite some time now I've been wanting to do some detailed hacks of Color Dreams games. I'm a huge fan of the company and its "kung fu" engine and would like to create my own. My question for you guys is where would I start?

I would like to change character sprites, text, backgrounds, and perhaps even music.

I have FCEUX for emulator (debugger?)
Tile Layer Pro for graphics editing
I use a Windows 7 PC, so I will need programs that are compatible with this OS

What do you guys recommend? Am I missing any necessary programs, and/or are there better ones out there? Any resources and/or help is immensely appreciated!

Thanks

[slobu]

The Color Dreams development kit seems kinda old and stanky. They were reverse engineering things and didn't always guess right.
You may consider following the coursework from Bob Rosts class on NES development
http://bobrost.com/nes/

He has this tool called nBasic which shields you from some assembly headaches. I wouldn't called it truly BASIC though

Also, if you can handle C, use NESICIDE!
http://www.nesicide.com/

UPDATE: The people who actually know what they be do have spoken!

[tokumaru]

You may consider following the coursework from Bob Rosts class on NES development
http://bobrost.com/nes/

Aren't Bob Rost's games known to have problems on hardware?

[infiniteneslives]

You may consider following the coursework from Bob Rosts class on NES development
http://bobrost.com/nes/

Aren't Bob Rost's games known to have problems on hardware?

Yeah they run but everything is pretty much broken. He noted about this, I think it's because of improper MMC3 scanline counter emulation.

I read through his notes/slides when trying to program the NES for the first time. Honestly they weren't much good for anything technical, a decent motivator that was about it. I felt like I was able to make sense of some stuff only because I already knew a lot about the NES hardware. I'm sure it was different sitting in his lectures, but notes(talking points outline really) and slides alone arent very useful.

[MottZilla]

One of the nbasic games didn't properly abide by VRAM write rules. It would write data to $2007 during rendering and mess up the display if I recall. It was the Sack of Flour game.

Honestly 6502 ASM isn't that daunting. But if it is too much for you then using the resources about writing NES games in C is the best option. That NBASIC isn't worth it.