thanks, although I'm already well aware what the future holds me.... bug fixing, random typos in code, incoherent behavior that cannot be explained, a broken flashcart, frustration, chain smoking, dubious amounts of coffee, lack of sleep... such things.
isn't that why you guys do what you do ? I mean, i totally see the charm atleast  

@Khromak: thanks. If you watched the video from the first post in this thread, around 10 minute mark you'll understand why im suddenly willing to actually share material out of it  
I'll admit it, i like how it looks graphically, it turned out quite beyond my expectations, regardless of my concern of being stuck with 16x16 tilesystem (for the time being.)
 

I think I'm still interested in seeing a distinction between NESMaker and non-NESMaker projects. The reason is that I enjoy creating from a blank slate. Naturally, I enjoy creations of others which also feel like they were created from a blank slate. PICO-8 games feel this way as well, almost like written correspondence from a friend...something crafted by one person from the heart with very little or no help. There's a palpable intimacy to it, and I treasure this.

Obviously there's complexity and nuance there; "blank slate" may really mean: "I used a sound engine" or "I re-used some code from a past project." So it is clearly a matter of degree, but for whatever irrational reason, I *would* prefer supporting projects created the way I create----even though I readily acknowledge NESMaker is one available avenue to creating quality games.

I do actually agree with you.
Dimension Shift is actually an accident that wasn't supposed to even become a game.
It's literally a chance sum of things I started putting together to familiarize myself with the software and 6502 in general, but as it grew a little, well.... you see what it turned into, I dont really want to turn back now.

THAT SAID, I have lots of gripes with NESMaker, and Joe knows this, we have discussed various things through email and whatnot and he's well aware that Im not pleased with several design choices he made and continues to vigorously enforce with it.
as such, it is as stated, I am merely using NESMaker to turn myself into a homebrewer, and god forbids I continue to develop things after this game, it is almost a certainty, that at the very least I'm going to attempt to build a module that is dealing with an entirely different mapper, instead of reusing the engine again, if not going completely "from scratch."
Im an extremely visual type of person (as some people have said DS's graphics bring out) and the mere fact that I can't currently implement or attempt to implement things like parallax scrolling or use 4-screen mirroring are already driving me nuts.
I dont like limitations (right, lets dev for the most limited console you could find then!) and nesmaker has some, some come from the mapper, some come simply from the tools design choices. where they come from is really irrelevant for me, I dont like them.

While this is my first game, it's by far not the first game related project im doing, and not the first thing im spending tons of time with, as such I can completely relate to the feeling of creating your own things instead of using a template.
Im just not ready for that quite yet... Small steps.

what my first post here tried to point out really was that while nesmaker games do use a template, and have "shortcuts" for getting a playable game running, it really isn't a workless process, if it was, my game would be ready by now  

@Mugi

After seeing the video of the nesmaker competition, Dimension Shift was on my list of games that had potential once polished. I only tried the rom of the competition but from what I can see in the attached videos, it is getting better and better so thumbs up for the progress on your project. You're a natsume fan, aren't you  

So in every automated tools similar like nesmaker, you will have users that will just play with it and lose interest and people like you that will break the mould and use it as a stepping stone to achieve their goal. If you can now have an opinion of what is good of the tool and what lacks (there is no tool perfect, programming language/compilers included), this means you reached a point of self growth were you're understanding (to some degree) what you're doing and will be able to move forward with it.

As for the the limitation (parallax, mapper etc), since you're project is already half-way through, I would suggest against moving out of the tool (I'm sure the code can be ported to some degree) since you will need to understand the inner of nesmaker to be able to achieve and it is not worth it. For your next project, you can start to test with compilers and since a lot of the code is in assembler anyway, you should be able to re-use it too.

As for the nesdev community, well... We're a bunch of specialized people of different background and a lot of them are introverts which makes the communication "difficult" (laugh). It is better to use that forum once you have technical questions since they thrive on the technical stuff. I'm not the most knowledgable of the bunch (I only program once in a while these days) but if you're afraid to ask something you can always ask me directly and I can see if the information is available or known  

Continue with your good work!

Oh, I definitely have no plans to fully move dimension shift out of nesmaker, nor change it's mapper or any of that sort of stuff...
Im already breaking NESmaker a lot with this game (chr bankswitching, scrolling, menu system, extra chr files, my entire chr configuration) are already being done with notepad outside of the nesmaker's UI because it cannot in its current state flex to the ways
im using the sourcecode below it. That said, I'm also entirely reliant on it as far as screen management, object management and various other things go, so moving this project out of the mold would just be plain silly at this point. It will be finished as a nesmaker game as it began.

Im starting to grasp the basic ideas of how a game is structured in general and expanding from that, but I've still got ways to go  
I also have god-tier programming assistance from FIX94, who's the second developer behind the game. He's done a hell of a job optimizing the engine, fixing bugs and doing all sorts of god-tier things with the scrolling and what not.
this game wouldn't be anywhere without him.

speaking of things, I just started writing an entirely from-scratch menu system to replace the static "press start" screen that nesmaker provides, and as an excercise of frustration, im actually punching in the nametables by hand  
need to try this atleast once i guess, haha

as far as the compo demo goes, it did it's job as a demo, but it also suffers from several more or less severe issues, along with a severe lack of polish resulting in from a lack of time. I had to get something playable for the compo, so things like pause, properly working attack animations and overall cleanup of stupidity are
completely absent from it. same goes for the CHR's, i gave a good cleanup to all my tilesets after the compo and atleast as far as I can tell myself, things like the intro stage etc (the forest) look much nicer now than they did.
I appreciate the kind words but I'm full well aware that while this game looks neat per-se at the moment, it also has long ways to go before it can be called polished by any level.

and yes, i am. Shatterhand is the main inspiration of dimension shift's mechanics. stage select, healt platforms, wall climbing...  

I read briefly your thread on the nesmaker forum and I could see your high and low you got with it. I think nesmasker is a tool to help people introduce to nes programming without complicating things. Although what you are making may seems basic from your current programming experience, what you are developing right now is too advanced for the target users so adding them would add more confusion than anything. So I guess this is why Joe is not in rush to add them yet since it would complicate the flow in general and I can understand that: if you overwhelm people with complicated things they will give up. Maybe there is a plug-in system (? you were talking about c#) and those options could be added later but I guess that's way out of scope of the target users and maybe people with the programming background may be able to add it later.

As for breaking nesmaker, what you are doing is actually quite common once your project reach a certain level of complexity, especially when arts becomes more and more detailed so you would have had to figure a way to do it someday anyway  

As for notepad, are you talking about the one that comes with windows or notepad++? If the windows one, I would suggest that you use a different editor since it will simplify things a lot. These days I would suggest to use visual studio code with the MADS plugin, which allows syntax coloring for 6502 code and allows to manage folder projects, which is quite useful when you need to search content into it.

As for nametable by hand, there must be a way to import .nam files from nesst (which is just 1 to 1 binary version of a name table anyway) so I would try to explore that first since doing it by hand is quite tedious, that's for sure!

As for polish, don't worry, you will get to it eventually. I have been working on my game engine on and off for 10 years so there is no rush (laugh).

As for Shatterhand, yeah, I knew right away because of the select screen and health bar. I always wanted to do a natsume inspired game but I guess you will beat me to it (I suck at art haha)  

One thing that I read in the thread is people didn't realize about the cling functionality (didn't realize either too since I tried the rom only) so one way to make it obvious without people reading the manual would be that if you do a intro with the character, I would make the character move in a stage and cling to something, which would make people want to figure out by themselves if this is possible or not.

There is a plugin system that allows "features" to be added to nesmaker at your own direction (assuming you know C#) A user already made one plugin that provides a highly customizable sprite hud for replacing the tiles based hud nesmaker provides for games.
it's one option sure. As far as advanced things like parallax goes, well, that's simply an issue with mapper 30, you only have sprite0 to deal with (no scanline counter) so its just not really feasible (especially if you go with the standards, the tile hud takes the sprite0, so no parallax)
really my biggest issue at the moment (which is to an extend being rectified in an upcoming version) is the hardcoded setup of the chr, that splits it into background tiles, hud tiles, path tiles and screen-specific tiles.
the system works and it's quite versatile, but there is no real reason to not allow it to be altered (which is coming.) sans that there are some odd-choices like splitting sprite palettes into "player" and "monster" 2 palettes each, and disallowing using all 4 sprite palettes for either.
on a system as limited as the NES, introducing further limitations is a terrible idea.

as far as my notepad goes, everyone EVER tells me to use something else   if i wanted to, i would. I just like notepad.
the whole deal with nametables, yeah, you can just import them, or atleast generate them and copypaste the data instead of doing it by hand. i simply want to try and see how is it done "from scratch" ^^; (the menu system im writing this for also uses a slightly custom format to store nametable info.)

What i really want(ed) to do was shatterhand 2, but ....copyrights. So I'll just do this instead.

the wall climb function is a bit of a 2-edged thing really, i dont want to do the whole "lets color the walls pink so you cant miss it."
I dont really think it was any more obvious in shatterhand either, and no one complained about that. People are just liking handholding more than in the 80's. Although, i did copy shatterhand in the sense that it forced you to use it, in order to make you aware of it's existence.
the difference between my game and shatterhand is though, that my world is a single interconnected stage, so there's no quarantee that you start from "stage A" like shatterhand does.



i'll figure out something for that as time goes on...

anyway, im gonna stop derailing the thread now, if anyone wishes to further discuss the game, feel free to contact me

Regarding the plug-in, I see. So maybe a few interesting things can be added once you understand the interface.

For parallax, there is another trick by using the 8 sprites limit flag as a way to do another split (City Troubles uses that) but that may be a pain to use. I would recommend an mmc3 scanline counter instead, which would allow multiple splits without issue (I uses it often but not for parallax).

As for color limitation, yeah, I can see why it can be troublesome. I guess it was set for simplicity but now this is an issue for your project. With the mmc3 I would usually define 1k "slots" where the main character is in slot 0, slot 1 shares for items and 2~3 for enemies.

As for the editor, sure, you use what you like but I dare you to try another one   You won't regret it once you know the basic features. Compared the editors I remember using under dos in the 90, we went a long way and features like auto-complete, which list the symbols in your files (yes, it can find them) is very, very useful. I can show an example someday if you want.

As for Shaterhand 2, well, yes, there is the copyrights issues but if you just make a fan game without the intention to sell it, they could be lenient about it. Still, making your own original one will be hopefully more rewarding in the end  

For the cling thing, yes, people now like to be shown how things are done so it's something to get used to ^^;;;

As for derailing the thread, that's a nesdev "tradition" so you would fit right in (laugh). Jokes aside, you didn't derail it at all and you just proved a point: nesmaker users once they reach a certain point are as much "homebrewers" as anybody else so your contribution to this thread was important.

edit:
included a screenshot with vscode inside the John Wick project. It uses a mix of c code and asm and the dropdown show a list of symbols in that file starting with zp  

i've tried notepad++ and whatnots, i just dont like them, syntax highlighting and all the unndecessary buttons for doing things i dont want to do are just confusing.
i love notepad because it's so dumb. it writes text, and it erases text. that is literally everything i want it to do.  

That said, a lot of what I do with the sourcefiles I do also use nesmaker for, its script editor has built-in syntax highlight and a macro manager and whatnot. Does the job pretty well if you miss that kinda things.
NEmaker sourcecode is also linked to the UI in a way that the UI itself has pages to keep track of zp, variables, and constants.

as far as getting used to people wanting to get things shown how to do, well, they better get used to reading manuals if they intend to play games i make, because that ain't happening  
im deving for an 80's system and in going to dev it like it would have been on the 80's ^^;;
im just gonna go and but hard back into nintendohard  

mmc3 is a pretty safe pick for a mapper, but im not really bothering my head with that just yet anyway. it'll be long ways before I get to write my own engine.


btw iI saw screenshots of the john wick thing over at nesdev, please continue that, it looks incredible lol

Notepad++ was good ~11 years ago since there was nothing else free with syntax highlighting but today I don't have much use of it since I have to work on multiple platform (mac, win, linux). I now use visual studio code at the office and home and it became quite useful compared to something heavy like visual studio which is on windows only. Makes it handy to have a common editor for each os. End of discussion (laugh).

So nesmaker as syntax highlighting too? Didn't know since I never had the chance to try it yet. If most of the time you are working with nesmaker I can understand why that notepad is more than enough for extra editing. I do use it too for quick edit   Once you write your own engine, trying editors will be useful but now you don't need to waste time on that.

As for nintendohard game, I'm all for that and love it that way  

For mmc3, sure, don't waste time on that now (laugh). It's a nice once and very common so worth trying someday.

For the John Wick project, the goal is to convert the fake nes level on the real thing and the map/basic movements are now converted. I used my current WIP engine from an undisclosed project and it went quite fast but I'm stuck at the same point in both: there is no entity management yet (laugh). This is one reason I started to work on that project, to help me try new ideas on how to create that part since I don't have much restriction on what they are supposed to do compared to the other one I'm working on. If it goes well, the original author (Danilo from Joymasher/Blazing chrome) is ready to design a few extra stages so I need to hurry up and figure out something. Just too busy these days and cannot code on it.

yep, there is syntax highlight in NESmaker. You can't change it to your preference but it works like 95% of the time! Just a few odd cases standing out a little to me. Works fine. It's more convenient to use a dedicated editor, but if you're doing a quick edit, it's a neat thing to have something built into the interface.

i'm very happy with using sublime for all my codem, but visual studio code seems pretty similar interface-wise (and is free).
I still use np++, last to separate "my own" projects from my nesmaker project... i kept all nesmaker related text files in np++.

oh, and i also use either np++ and sublime for notes, instead of notepad.

you can actually edit the syntax highlighting of nesmaker from the asmlang.xml that is located in the root folder,
includes colors and styling and a list of known opcodes (it's missing a few, the first thing i did was added those)
 

@FrankenGraphics

One reason I went with vscode is more the price than anything. Since I'm using it at work and home and like a common editor, it was more than enough for my needs (the remove debugging for chrome helped put it in it favor too). 4~5 years ago it was barely acceptable but now it became quite good. I would have preferred if they could have make it with something else than electron since the memory footprint is not so great but that something that we have to live with it with the latest "trends". What I liked about sublime was lighter but that was not enough to convince me (I can't afford to easily buying all my tools like I used to 20 years ago).

@Mugi

Well, even though you mentioned that you were not a dev, you have the same habit as them to figure out how to adjust the settings to be your own  

well, like i said, im no dev (as in i've never programmed stuff before, even less games) but im no newcomer to romhacking, and im badly OCD'd so i have a tendency to overorganize my things