I am not out to prove they are creating illegitimate games. I am only out to keep the discussion open. There are some that want to close it and erase distinctions, there are others that ask for some critical reflection and the space to form opinions. Those are the only real "sides," as you put it.

You say that you don't think we owe you anything, but in every post you mention all that you feel you have done for us. That speaks for itself.

You are correct, homebrewing is very personal for me. I care about the community, what it has done over the years, and what it will become. My goal is for the community to dictate what it becomes, and not one or two people with a vested interest in a certain project, NESMaker or otherwise.

In summary, no one is asking that NESMaker projects be viewed a certain way, only that we be given the awareness that they are what they are. You are the one who brought up things like legitimate or illegitimate. If you see no distinction, that is fine, but that is not the case for everyone. No one is arguing that they are invalid games, only that the process of making something with NESMaker involves a different sort of activity on the part of the dev. That is the only distinction worth discussing.

Those are my final thoughts at the moment. As you asked via email, I will take our discussion there. I am always open to genuine dialog, and I hope that I find it waiting.

"in every post you mention all that you feel you have done for us. That speaks for itself."

...done for the community. I am PART of said community. Sure, I think my contributions to the community should count as much as yours. Or Memblers's. Or Tepples's. Or Brian Parkers's. Or Kasumi's. Or Kevtris's. Or Shiru's. We are all part of driving the thing, and I wouldn't slight any of their contributions to the thing. The community doesn't owe me anything. I'm just also surprised, at the same time, that there are parts of the community that WOULD slight anyone's contributions to it. Which you have, right here in this very thread, suggesting that my contributions are only in my own mind...say it again for clarity if that's legitimately how you feel. That for the past five years of involvement in this community, my contributions to it are a sum zero, and only exist in my mind...is that really your perspective?

If you think that NESMaker is in the service of the homebrew community, then your perspective is already decided. If, however, you see a vital distinction between homebrews and the products of NESMaker, then there is much to wonder about and question. What you have created is inherently different than any of the tools and resources that others have made. It is a major change in the post-NES landscape, both greater and different than all that has come before it. That it aligns and meshes with what has come before it is in no way certain or decided.

...you consider "NESmaker" to be my only valid contribution or service to the homebrew community in the last five years (despite it existing for about only the last 8 months)? That's...I mean I guess that says everything I need to know about your perspective on things.

But speaking to your assessment of NESmaker itself - there have been constant "major changes" to homebrew development resources over the years. NESdev wiki itself was a major shift for homebrewing compared to what came before it. Flash carts were another. GUI based nametable editors were another. Famitracker was another. The various assemblers was another. You're speaking about the thing from when you entered and how you created, but dismissing how you had many more tools at your disposal than those who came before you, too. Anyone who tinkered with it around the time of the first emulators would look at all the benefits you had creating it and think you were completely spoiled with all of the assets and resources you had...they would cite the obvious distinction for what they did and what you created. But what would you say if they condescendingly asserted that you should make the distinction obvious, because some developers aren't interested in any chiptune music that uses famitracker or graphics not painstakingly built in straight hex while referencing graph paper?

If you DON'T think an avenue for an ASM teaching tool is valuable, and you DON'T think increased interest in NES games or development is a service for the community, I guess you and I have sincerely different views on the point of this whole thing. All this time I've spent considering the purpose of the community to be to to foster interest in developing new NES games. It's ok if you disagree, but if so, then I guess we're talking about two different things which is why we can't find common ground here. I'll continue to presume the point of further NES development is to foster interest in the NES in a new generation of players and developers, and proceed with that as my mantra. You keep presuming it's for whatever thing you feel that it's for.

From my perspective, if a tool exists which is the difference between a person making a game at all and not, then I welcome that tool. Some people simply don't have the time or the type of mind for programming, but maybe they're a great storyteller, or an artist.

I appreciate that people can go in and code a game "from scratch". Even then though, you all have different ideas of what that even means. I've found that a few people have said almost within the same breath "Whatever works for you!" and then followed that with "just not NESMaker".

Question for your, 8bit, as you seem to be around and answering to things in general. I don't know the backstory of this, but maybe now is a good time to get your side - I have been told that people don't appreciate your creating this tool and seemingly going all-in on it, despite having not finished a previous project. I don't know if this is a project people have paid money for already, or if they're just bummed it never happened. I BELIEVE it is the game that you feature as your desktop background in some of the tutorials for NESMaker - this in itself may well be salt in a wound if people have paid for something they've not received. Can you speak to this, maybe clear the air if it indeed needs clearing? Do you plan to finish that game? What's the progress if so? Do I have my understanding of the situation all bogged up?

For what it's worth, I fiddled with NESMaker and I enjoyed my time with it. I did the tutorials and I managed to make a game where a little dude stabbed enemies (glorified rocks). My goal was to make a shmup, and then I got busy and had to put it aside. I plan to revisit it eventually.

You're putting a lot of words into my mouth. This was the FB thing I mentioned above that I wanted to avoid. I don't have much patience for straw man arguments.

SoleGoose - this is why I preferred email for this. The exact reason. But I'm not sure what words I put into your mouth.

Gloves - it's a complicated answer. Five years ago, I began creating Mystic Searches...at that time, I knew very little about NES development. We launched a successful crowdfunding campaign, but it was more than for just the game. It was for three things - a film that chronicled the homebrew community and what it was like to be a developer for a console (actually, the primary deliverable - focusing on the human side of developing for one of these games), the game itself, and resources that we knew we'd inevitably have to create along the way so that others could follow in what they did to see their ideas come to life too (and hopefully with less R&D). This is noted right from the start, the first 10 seconds of our pitch video, that these were the deliverables. We began building our base level of tools almost instantly...just like any developer creating in depth projects. No deeply developed homebrews were created without creating or using some sort of data-mining tool, whether it be Shiru's screen tool or FamiTracker or custom in house built things to make some level GUI management of the HEX data. Well, after working on this all for about 18 months, we had effectively a finished film. It showcased the efforts of the NESdev community...SoleGoose, Derek Andrews, Memblers, Tepples, Khan, Sly Dog, the collectivision crew, Sivak, Brad Smith, a bunch of others, working them into the narrative intended to show that these aren't novelty projects, but that a lot of personal passion goes into them. We were also at a "finished" point with an engine and were mostly just world building at that point. But by that point a few things happened. One, while touring with the film to festivals and conventions, many more people were excited about our tools than they were about the game. But more importantly, we had learned so much that we realized what we could do if we invested more time in the tool itself. So at that point, we tapered where we were, built a small scale game out of it (still beyond our anticipation when we'd started the project!), and released it as Mystic Origins...at first as a bonus prequel, and soon after as an optional fulfillment of the reward, as it was a full NES adventure game as promised in the original Kickstarter, and was ostensibly what we had set out to create when we launched two years earlier. This would allow us to build a much more intricate and involved final game as the result of this passion project while still delivering on the promises of the Kickstarter, AND it would allow the promised tools to be that much cooler than we'd ever anticipated. Some people were upset at this. That's the source of the animosity that you're referring to above. The thing is, development of "NESmaker" (originally called the Mystic Searches Screen Tool and Game Engine" IS development of Mystic Searches, just like how Brad Smith's development environment that he built WAS development on Lizard. The only difference is that we're making ours available for others to use, which was always the intent, right from the start of the project. But it is inextricably connected to the development of Mystic Searches, AND the hopes of making NES development more accessible to more people.

Hope that helps with clarification on that! And we have a lot of new fun things in the next version to be excited about, I hope!

SoleGooseProductions' logic regarding NESMaker is obviously extremely flawed, and comes across as nothing but butthurt snobbery; as he seems to be the only one that really has his panties in a bunch over this, I'd just let him go and keep on keepin' on, Mr. NESMaker. You've just helped a lot of creative people to bring their homebrew dreams to fruition. Yep, I said it, H-O-M-E-B-R-E-W. When it comes right down to it, it's the resulting games that matter. If it's the process that matters, something went wrong somewhere. I really don't think we need gatekeeping homebrew dictators.

Extremely eloquently put.  That sums it all up rather nicely.

 

WaverBoy - I actually really like Mr. Holland (SoleGoose). I like what he does. I like his support for NES development. I had a great experience meeting him when I worked on the film, and the times I've met him at conventions. I'm legitimately surprised to find that there is underlying contempt for what we've been working on. But just wanted to be sure to put it out there - he's a great dude, and I've never known him to be a snob of any type. Just passionate about this stuff. We're actually continuing the dialog OFF of public forum, and I have a feeling the weird animosity that seems to be inherent here will turn out to be a bad read of inflection. At least, I hope that's the case. That said, he has worked hard on the projects he's created, and I'd not slight them in the least. The community is too small for that level of nonsense, ya know? But I do appreciate the vote of confidence and encouragement, for sure.

For me, I think it will come down to quality of content. People generally can tell when a game is at least passable by viewing some gameplay footage. And hey, if someone releases a shit game and is a Dick about it, nobody will buy their future games. From what I've seen so far, shovel ware doesn't seem to have been an issue at all.

Even with nesmaker being available, how many games have actually been released for sale from it so far, do you have those numbers? To my knowledge not a whole lot. The games being shown look great, but are still in progress, and from what I've seen with using it myself I can tell you it's not drag and drop some sprites BOOM you have a game; it will still take serious time and effort.

Zero so far. None. It's still very new. And we actually posted this to officially address release protocol, for anyone who is curious.

https://thenew8bitheroes.tumblr.c...

The game engine example has been used, but don't companies who utilize them disclose that rather openly? I don't pay a lot of attention to be honest, but I know I've seen the unreal engine logo at startup plenty of times on current gen games.

100% - the original "fear" was the "market" would be flooded with zelda clones and no one would be able to tell the difference between a "real" game and a game built with joe's engine. it hasn't happened yet! quality looks good and Joe seems engaged (are there updates?). so is there a nesmaker thumbprint that makes folks say - ew? from the vid it looks very clean.

like derek said, it takes a lot of work to push through and finish a project, and no matter what the toolset, it's about the person (or team). the struggle is real- if someone's writing code or figuring out the nesmaker UI, there's learning going on in our hobby and that's a positive thing.

There are two NESmaker games that have been funded on Kickstarter:

Dungeons and Doomknights (rom release in October and cart release in December)
Soko Banana (rom and cart release in March 2020)

Enig - yes. Neither are finished, neither have been released yet, and both prompted the above blog post. They are both actively working with me to insure that the projects meet a level of quality control before officially released. :-)

Here's an image I put together to describe visually what I perceive to be the reality of creating games (or any software for that matter).


 

I think the thing to consider most in all of this is that NESmaker, regardless of your opinion, has disrupted our previous understanding of what game development is and can be. And that's a good thing for how it makes development more accessible to noobs like me who aspire to one day create something. After all Joe, your tagline is pretty cool: make your own NES games without learning a single line of code. You're lowering the barrier for entry. And even though you're lowering the barrier, NESmaker is not just a shortcut for programming. I've kept up on your updates to Mystic Searches, and I've seen some of what Frankengraphics has been doing as she digs in and tinkers with the underlying program.

But Beau's cake mix analogy also resonates. My favorite hobby is baking, I bake a lot. Usually I bake from scratch, sometimes I use a mix because I want to experiment with some other aspect of the recipe or what I'm making is so complicated that I want to use the mix so I can focus on the end product, which most of the time is all that matters. However, if I made something from scratch and people kept coming up to me and asking what mix I used because that's all they know, I'd be annoyed. And if you or I entered a competition or a bake sale, you know you'd be telling everyone you made your cake from scratch if you did. You can call it snobbery, but context is king. I can completely understand why NESmaker games (not counting Mystic Searches, which is a homebrew by all standards) maybe merit their own subcategory of homebrew where they rely on a pre-existing game engine. Should this mean some kind of requirement is distinguishing them? I don't know, I haven't programmed anything...yet (I bought NESmaker and I hope to make a game with it soon, and I hope to develop something from scratch eventually as well).

The NESmaker label is not a mark of odium, from what we've seen from the Byte-Off awards, it's a sign of what's possible from a category of team effort and making sure Joe and Austin get the credit for building a foundation for other's ideas. It's also a means for Joe and Austin to maintain a degree of supervision over who uses their product. Dungeons & Doomknights was announced here with a decisive meh. Hell, the guy who posted about it and called it an awesome game in the subtitle walked back his enthusiasm as he took a closer look. Given that it didn’t wow people, the developer’s sporty record of fulfilling past Kickstarters, maybe they shouldn’t have been the first to be crowdfunded. But that doesn’t make it emblematic of all that’s to come.

To circle back to what I said at the beginning, NESmaker changes our understanding of the brewery, and we are long overdue for a symposium that defines homebrews among hacks, repros, translations, etc given the tools that have come into being. Beau and Joe are awesome people who are enthusiastic about their work, and any tension comes from their different understandings of what this community is and how we understand and define the changes to it. No one is a snob, no one is creating a shovelware factory, both want to and ought to feel proud of what they do and feel able to say that what they do is similar in some ways but ultimately a unique project.

NESMaker backwards is "rekaMSEN" which sounds like "Wreck 'em Sen" so I put: "Wreck 'em Sensei" in my PICO-8 project idea backlog


true story. I am still 12

Ha! Nice :-)

Completely ignorant about whatever drama is going on here, but as a kickstarter backer of Mystic Searches (and multiple other projects) I realize that the original scheduled delivery date is almost always double the estimate. I've been trying to learn 6502 machine language for about 10 years (in fits and spurts) and am looking forward to whatever tools can help me make the game I want while balancing a full time job... and a family... and a house... and now a newborn...

I was totally gonna jam out to it, until I learned it required a specific mapper. No choice of mapper is a no deal for me, otherwise, have at it. It's a neat enough tool. Looking forward to seeing new projects.

I think the Game Maker analogy that keeps coming up is very apt. Like any tool every made, if there is enough effort and time put into it, something really cool can be produced from it. I don't think anyone is particularly apposing that viewpoint -- especially here. But that really brings up a much more appropriate discussion; The place we are currently discussing the topic. On NintendoAge's Brewery Forum.

Granted, I'm not the right person to talk about game dev -- lord knows I can't code to save my life -- but a large group of people here "talk-shop" about NES development. Hell, even outside of forums, if you look at MorphCat's video on developing a 40kb game has done gangbusters. Point being that how the games are made is a point of huge interest, so transparency in how a game is made is very important. Distinguishing between a 40kb game, a game made using C, or a game made using NESMaker is important to a lot of people, and should be done. Just like many modern game devs say which modern engine they are using. A lot of people shit all over Unity games, yet Cuphead, Ori, or even Hearthstone are all made using them. They certainly aren't hiding it either.

I don't think this "drama" or "hate" are to the degree that Joe is making it appear, but there certainly are those who will enjoy using NESMaker, there are those that have no interest in it, and believe it or not, there will be a wide spectrum of interests throughout of varying interest. It just doesn't really hurt to add a little "Made with NESMaker" or [NESMaker] tag to your post or whatever. That's my 2 cents for what it's worth.

I think what some people think is that Nesmaker is like a shortcut of some kind that devalues the practice of coding NES games from scratch. Like as if it were an EASY button or like as if someone were "cheating" the job so that it is somehow easier or something. But like what has been said earlier, if you want to make any quality game it's most likely not going to be easy. As a developer, what you put in is what you get out. What Nesmaker does do is lower the skill set so that a non-programmer can have a chance at making a game where otherwise they would not. And technically this isn't a bad thing. Keep in mind that just because you are a Nes programmer and can make a game from scratch still doesn't mean that you will produce a good game. Making a poor quality game can happen to any developer reguardless of what tools you used.

The fear is that people with no skill will pollute the pool of Nes homebrews to the point that the average person no longer thinks that seeing a newly creating Nes game is special anymore. Maybe as if a Nesmaker game steals the "thunder" away from true Nes homebrewers who have dedicated years of their time to understand the system in ways that most other people do not.

But the thing is, which would you rather have, a new Nes game made in Nesmaker or no new Nes game? Clearly Nesmaker gives people, who wouldn't otherwise, the opportunity to make a Nes game. And this has to be better than nothing at all. I played through all 60 something games submitted to the Nesmaker Byte Off competition and I must say that while some games seemed to be reskins of others, there was also a lot of very original games which gave me completely new experiences on the Nes.

I personally tried to use Nesmaker, but I didn't like it for many reasons. Here are a few: I couldn't even wrap my head around the program at all and I couldn't even understand the most basic things. I didn't like the pixel editor at all, YYCHR is 10,000 times better in my opinion, heck even Microsoft Paint is better than the pixel editor in Nesmaker. I don't like how screens are built and made in the level editors, I want to drag and drop stuff not "paint" in tiles. Also why do you paint in some tiles with the left mouse button but other tiles like paths require you to hit the 1 key. Like it seems as if there was zero logic implemented when designing Nesmaker at all, no offense. Instead of giving me color pallets and pallet groups why not just let me set the color pallets on a per screen basis? Also when I create my up, down, left, right buttons for player movement if you mash the D-pad while playing the actual game you can glitch out your character and get them stuck, pretty janky if you ask me. While I understand that Nesmaker will improve over time, I still have to say that I tried out the program and almost nothing made sense to me. Almost as if the way my brain is wired and the way Nesmaker is programmed are not compatible at all. So while some people think that Nesmaker makes the process easier for you, in my case I couldn't even learn the Nesmaker program, so using Nesmaker isn't exactly easy for everyone.

The standard farmer does not want to see the organic distinction. The big brewery does not want the craft designation. They would love it if they could erase those distinctions. Perhaps they do not see any differences to begin with, perhaps they simply want to be seen in a different light.

No one says that making a game, with or without NESMaker is easy. No one says that the products of NESMaker are not games. All that is asked is a simple distinction be observed. Every show brewers are asked if a project was made in NESMaker, why should NESMaker games themselves be exempt from this question? Another double standard, like that mentioned by enigmog way up above.

There is not much else to say. Consumers want to know the facts and the difference. NESMaker users do not want them to know that, or at least some of them. You have to kind of ask why that would be? At the end of the day a few fiery people who are personally invested in seeing NESMaker products perceived a certain way are going to do what they can to obscure the difference, but I think it is safe to trust that the general person understands that there is in fact a difference. Modern programmers in particular know the difference, at least those that I have talked with. Even if they do not eat organic, they are curious to know that something was grown that way.

Joe G and I will continue our private discussion as to whether things are really different, but there is a host of critical questions that could be raised that folks would rather not. Why obstruct the truth, why hide if there is nothing to hide?