Yeah, I don't think I ever completed geometry, lol. I saw numbers and immediately assumed I had to be some math science expert or something. A whole lot of 0011000101010101000101110 stuff. It's intimidating. However, I do also think these lessons in very detailed videos would be even more helpful.

Originally posted by: GradualGames


If you have the time and motivation to make videos like that, I'd be happy to take a look.

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These were the nods I was hoping for. I will get a rough gameplan together (always keeping in mind (1) time (2) fun (3) informative) for videos, etc. I won't spend too much time worrying about the specifics of how the videos will work or content, but focusing on getting an actual video up (that is where real critques can happen). I'll stay in touch guys.

Thanks,
Jarrod

I had a nice member of NA send me a 400 page pdf on programming the 6502, i made it to page 10 and started getting confused.
Still have not given up yet, lol, but i have to say the wind in my sail has let up a bit.

Seems very overwhelming without someone to talk to about it.

Be great if some of the vets just opened up a video chat sometime, and newbies could simply just ask obvious questions.

I'd be happy to do something like a video chat or whatever with anyone 1 on 1. I always feel like I have time for 1 on 1, one-off question answering. I always find I personally learn best from a friendly mentor, myself. That's part of why I keep reccommending that book (Assembly Language: Step by Step), it reads like a friendly mentor is talking to you, not a dry text author.

If and when it's presented in a more approchable manner, I'll try and hop on it again. Every art does have a learning curve to get better, that is true, but unlike most other art out there, it's harder to get into.

I would like to see something like this, but for NES programming (But a lot more simpler) :

I had no idea they had a program to make atari games so easy.  Nothing quite so simple for NES programming!

Yeah, I would bet if something like this that can simplify and make things easier for us was made, a whole lot of people would jump in on it. All the core concepts are there (as unapproachable to some as they may be), they just need to be organized and made to complie everything for the ones who get stuck, don't have time, or simply rage quit when things get too confusing. Basically, the same idea why the calculator was made. "Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish" argument may apply, but we just need more people making some games, and we can't do that if we scare them off.

It could make people make a "me too" type of game without any originality, because it might be too approachable (look at the common game makers out there, or SMW hacks) but you will get more people interested, and that's the key thing here. Perhaps overtime some artists who find this kind of thing more of the same would try and step outside the boundries of that and make somthing really unique.

The only major thing I see that was explained before is the man-hours it takes to create such a program. I've seen it done, and it can be done, but you probably would need someone with a skill set beyond that of ASM to even make such a program for the masses.

If you want something highly abstracted like that, check out Family Basic in an emulator that supports the Famicom keyboard. Other than that there are no high level tools for the NES (or any other console platform I know of). Atari has enough fixed restrictions to make that reasonable.

I didnt watch the Atari video,

But sounds like you guys are kinda thinking what i was thinking. Sorta a "NES Programming tool" to take some of the rocket science out of it.

But as it would bring more people in to trying to make games, it would also cripple everyone for knowing how to truly program"
If thats important to you.

^^^This.

I know for you guys that  have done this many times, this excuse probably comes off as being lazy.

Personally, I just figured out how to post pictures online... and felt like a genius.

Undertaking a project like creating an operating game seems like building a space shuttle in your backyard.
Guys who do repros/hacks/homebrews are like magicians to me. Taking a game from inside your brain and then having it exist on a television is almost incomprehensible to a dude like me.

I am so glad there are people out there creating cool stuff like this. It just seems unthinkable for aperson with no training.

Yeah I know there's no high level tools (or one good consolidated tool) for NES stuff, but I know that it's not impossible. Heck, I'm sure there's some people that make their own projects using their own proprietary software they made up, but it's probably only something that'd work for them-- not game creation for the masses.

I think programmers who can make a program that can simplify NES programming shares some of the same reasons why everyone else has trouble making a simple NES game. Everyone has the ability to learn, that's not the problem, it's the overall intimidation factor because of the steep learning curve plus handling that with the overall time investment you put into the project.

To make it easy and fair to everyone, I would stick with the video idea for now, because like what's been said, some people are more visual learners than others. I bet if I had a roommate who showed me how to program a NES game personally on a 1:1 level, I'd get into it more than reading documents and getting stuck.

If that doesn't work, then there has to be some sort of compromise on how we can get someone (or some people) to create something that would help out everyone. Yes, the honor and integrity is lost since there's no basic history on the root idea on how the stuff works since everything's all simplified, plus all the same ol' shovelware me-too games, but at least people would get on board more.

That's the problem I think we're at.

Everyone that knows how to program NES games know how do-able it is, so we see no point in making tools any easier. Everything is already there.

Everyone that doesn't know how to program thinks that everything is super confusing and impossible, so you people keep asking for something to make things easier.

There's a bridge that needs to be crossed, but I don't think any tools are ever going to be made to simplify any process. Hell, there isn't really much to it as it is.

Graphics: I do everything in MS Paint and then import it directly into Tile Layer Pro. Couldn't be easier.
Music/Sound FX: Done in Famitracker. Super easy. Export from there.
Code: All written in Notepad.  All basic code is talked about in Nerdy Nights. Enough to get a basic game off the ground.
Compiler: All done in a batch file.

There really is no way to combine anything else. Everything is already so simple.

I think there's a big stigma that NES is impossible to learn. But that stigma is put there by people who don't know how to program for it.

All the programmers are saying, "Come on! Let's all do this!"

It's seriously doable, guys.

Yeah, to reiterate, I'm gonna try and re-dabble with it again. But I might get to a point where stuff's gonna be too overwhelming, and I'll have to quit again. What's simple for some people isn't simple for others. Not many people know the restrictions of the graphics needed for the NES to display, not many people are gonna understand the whole lingo, not many people are musicians to relearn a whole musical scale for the NES to export, and not many people can retain all the information on how to code, what the values mean or how they're structured to be used properly.

Not saying programming is impossible (there's proof that it's not!), but teaching it and learning can be pretty difficult. It's mostly the code. Why write and remember a bunch of lines of code when you can drag and drop everything? In paint, do I have to write a line of code with a color value and where it's position is for one pixel of red or do I use the pencil tool and draw freely? Why try to figure out what 123932472305 x 397539 is on a piece of paper and pen-- yes it's there, and we can write it down and figure it out, but the calculator is so much more easier to get a hold of to figure out.

Look at FighterMaker, Gamemaker or RPG maker. Not the best game making tools, but it gets the job done without any knowledge of trying to understand the lingo and all it's defining properties of coding. But there is a separate option to code if need be. So anyone can do it-- all in one organized program.

Doable is one thing, approachable is another. It's gotta be both in order for people to have interest and for us to want to invest more time into. Everything invented has been made not only to make things easier, but more hands-on due to new advances in GUIs with overall one combined setting that can do the hard stuff for us.

With regards to making a GUI-based drag&drop tool to build NES games, there are a few sidenotes.

Knowing how to program for the NES is one thing. However, building a GUI-based tool to make games is a totally different field altogether. Say you were able to draw your characters in a GUI editor and were able to directly drop those into a 'playing field'. How is the developer behind said tool to know what your goal is with this sprite? How is the tool supposed to generate the code you need to build your game?

That stuff all has to happen in the background, because god-forbid, code needs to be verified. Automatic code generation is tricky enough as it is. There could be pre-written things inserted in an overall source file, sure. However, who is to say this code would actually function as expected? Not to mention the probable loss of performance by using automatically generated code.

There are just a lot of things a developer needs to take into account before writing a tool such as this. I don't think that anyone would consider this kind of tool a fun project to work on. Because, let's face it, this whole homebrew scene is supposed to be fun, not aggrivating and stressfull.

Honestly this bit of bold text that you wrote, has been the most inspiring and informative information in this entire thread to a newbie like myself LOL. That really gives me hope, even if there is a ton of work behind the scenes, at least you broke it down in "newbie dummy logic" Thats awesome man and thanks for posting that. And please keep posting the Gist of everything and it will give others hope here. Everything i have been reading has been too straightforward and no one is talkin in a language we understand. Nerdy nights was a tough read for me, even the first few lessons. 

That seems to be the problem, everyone is talking about how hard it is, but no one is saying "its easy" and breaking it all down into dummy terms. Everything i have looked at has been "straight forward nesdev talk" and it just confuses the hell outta me. 

And in all honesty even if alot of us had to just take some code suggestions like, a vet would say, to get your level on the screen put this in, and to place objects etc put this code in, i dont think anyone would feel jipped out of being creative. Starting from the ground up is the overwhelming "sounding" part. 

With those game makers I mentioned, they allow you to create certain events and adjust parameters (lift-off, gravity, movement, sound to movent, hit boxes, etc) within simple graphic icons and drop box forms to control the sprites. I've created games with them with no programing know-how what-so-ever. The reason why it works is that what I was telling the graphic icons and the form boxes to do, the program itself was writing everything and putting it where it needs to be. Some programs even have a program editor for debugging, allowing the creator to optimise the already written code for performance. So why can't this be made for NES?

Most web-page creators are like this. You can do it the old fashioned way, OR drag and drop like a maniac. Heck, this very form I'm writing on now has to tools without me having to remember any web-based coding. No probable loss of performance issues here, since the automatic generated code is the same as you were to type it out.

I would consider a tool to be more fun because I can create a game faster with not having to retain or write out any mathmatical code. Lots of people don't want to spend a lot of time on creating something, and learning how to program and understanding what it all means takes time, writing it out takes time... adding all of this to the time you spent already writing out the ideas, then to me, it becomes more of a stressfull chore than a fun project.

It can't be made for NES because it'd need an engine then overlay the games data. I mean, it would be possible, but there's two main restrictions to the NES modern computers don't have:

1. Speed.
2. Size.

Neither matter today for games, basically. We have so much RAM, storage, everything. It doesn't matter to PC's, it eats it up. Yeah, you can make gamees with game maker and even release them as standalone .exe's, but the thing is 500MB big for a game a real programmer working with SDL could have done in 10MB. Plus, the game will even be slow on modern PC's in the idea that...it's not optimized, and will take a better PC (Dual core or better, good drivers, GPU 2D accel. etc.)

A tool might be more fun for some, but NES isn't able to have those. I mean, maybe you could make something to do that and get it to work for smaller things, but pretty much every game needs to be designed 100% from the ground up around the game engine. Limitations needed to maximize the resources we have to work with, it doesn't have anything to waste. And not only does it need to be designed around the engine, on NES and SNES and other consoles: the engine also needs to be designed around the hardware, so it's needed to know how the system works and to optimize it to do any good. It's just too much. I mean, it could be done, but the results would probably be terrible.

I agree. I feel like the max that is really possible would be for a homebrewer to basically release a big rom-hack utility for all his games some day, and customize what is customizable, perhaps. Then the mechanics for the new game would be roughly the same, but you could tell a different story and have different levels or what not. If the homebrewer who provided his games for said rom-hack utility were generous enough he might let people do that without any fear of copyright infringement. That'd be neat. Maybe someday. I don't know if people would like that though....the mechanics would be so similar to the original game it might make potential players lose interest.

*edit* Another thought I had would be to create a game engine that could interpret script-language bytecode compiled from some very minimal script language similar to lua or something like that, and make it run at 30fps or less. That way you could create an entry point for programmers who want to make an NES game without having to wrestle with the hardware too much---at the expense of performance. Not sure how popular that would be either, since anything made in it would be as choppy as ghosts n goblins.

I thought I remembered reading that that old abandoned project, Neotoxin, had a sophisticated scripting engine for all its entities. Maybe it is possible, I don't know. I haven't given it enough thought.

There is a tool called Arcade Game Designer for ZX Spectrum. It is an editor that allows to create flick screen games with a very limited amount of programming done in a special built-in language. Although the games made with the tool are all kind of similar, they are different enough to be interesting. There is a number of people who use the tool, who are no programmers, but who created nice games with the tool. Something like this is surely could be created for NES as well, however, it is pretty clear that chances for this are low - not by technical reasons, but just because it is significally more difficult than to making a game, so someone who could make the tool, could make a game, thus not needing the tool personally. It couldn't be a commercial success as well, by obvious reasons. So motivation factor for such a project is pretty low.

By the way, AGD not only makes games that run on ZX Spectrum, it runs on the ZX Spectrum itself - all with graphics and map editor and other stuff.

How difficult is it to write something that basically puts all the duckies in a row for us, without all the technobabble to discourage non-programmers who want to create? All a tool does is do the exact same thing you do THE HARD WAY but a lot faster. Like a copy/paste kinda thing. It's been done before. Memory limitations? That can be solved by building the software to not go over those limits. This isn't new territory.

All I'm seeing is a stalemate here. Maybe the same blind thinking on how something like this can easily be made is the same reasoning why programmers and game devs think that the average joe can simply make a game -- the same reasons why most people don't want to venture further into game making is the same reasons why a programmer won't make something that will help someone.

Just try the video thing. And WHEN that doesn't work, seriously there has to be a way we can put our heads together and create something that's approachable that's not hard to create for either parties.

Not sure if this will help, but speaking from the experience of someone who failed many times to make a game, a game-maker didn't help me. I tried RPG Maker XP several years go before I got into NES programming, to help me make Owlia. But what I realized is----with all the pre-made game elements and graphics---unless I re-did almost all of it myself, including re-write a lot of the ruby scripts in the game---it wouldn't really be my game, anyway. What I realized is, a game-maker will not solve the problem of wanting to make your own game. In other words, no matter whether I choose NES, RPG Maker XP, or any other technology on any new or old system---it is going to be a big project. It was a hard reality to accept, but once I did, progress was made.

And, I sincerely believe it is approachable---you just must start small. Everyone starts small. I didn't start out with a big platformer, I began in qbasic with simple things like super breakout, tetris, and even simpler than that with two circles that shoot each other with lines. You have to focus on the journey and enjoying simple things and small steps... sorry if that's not helpful. I'm trying!

It can be done, it's just...we'd have to make a new langauge for scripting, make it assemble to good 6502 program, and then you have to code in the script anyway. You have to make your bounding boxes, metasprites, within the limitations of the engine. Small list of stuff to do, but that's hundreds of hours of work. Why put in 100 hours of work creating something a bunch of dinky games will be made with, instead of making something good? It makes no sense.

Honestly, if you think 6502 and NES assembly is too hard to jump in to, you obviously are right...you don't know much, because it's not. Like said, it just takes a long time. If you can multiply by 2, add numbers, and understand bits, you're well qualified to become a great assembly programmer easily.

I've given up arguing.

To just get would-be game creators invested? That's pretty much where I'm getting at. Quality and uniqueness shouldn't matter if all we want is for more people to just make a dern game, also the fact that starting small at an entry level legit is just gonna spew out non-unique games to begin with.


^The point I was making earlier. When I was making something in RPG Maker, I used my own graphics and tilesets later on because I too felt that I wasn't really making my game, but I just wanted to make SOME kind of game first so I used the presets. I felt that it was the same as starting small to begin with. And that's the topic here-- just to get something out there, I feel that there needs to be something out there to attract people and ease them in without having them stress over the full process. Maybe later when they get the gist of it, they could go deaper in the rabbit hole and come up with something new.

You made some good points, and I truly think what you said is both true and inspiring.

We all gotta put our heads together cuz I really want people to learn more, but without being too intimidated. I wanna learn more.

You made some good points too, and I'm glad you raised this discussion. I'll calm my ignorance down and let you guys try your best to educate us in the matter.

But, we want to make games to. If we put in all the work, why make it an easy way out for others? We want you to do the same thing we did!