Hey guys,

I have got a game in mind that I want to start developing but I can't find any tools or programmes to help me.  I've been to this website http://bobrost.com/nes/... which is really really helpful but alot of the tools that he says to use do not work on my computer.  If anyone has any links to sites where I can download them that would be great.

Jack

same here man,

can make really good sprites/characters and now everything about nes screens and grapichs
on paper

just the tools and programming is a bitch

Never seen this page before, but it's interesting... I have seen that Painguin game demo in video form before. Apparently it was an actual college student's project.

www.nesdev.com... is the repository for NES homebrew.
http://www.nesdevwiki.org/... is the wiki where most of the NES homebrewers update with info, toos, etc..

I use CA65 as my assembler.
I use Nintendulator and FCEU as my emulators.
I actually havent used any tools other than what I have written, which is why my music sucks.

Al

This is great, thanks Al, if Ineed any more help I know who to ask.

I'm just trying to work everything out, I'll get there in the end!

So, I'm trying to download this assembler NESHLA I've ded it, but have no idea how to open it, does anybody know if I have to add the files to a different folder as it has no explanation on the website?

As a starter, you might check into nesasm instead of NESHLA. I actually dont know anyone who uses NESHLA, so getting help with setup or with bugs in your code might be tricky.
The only reason I suggest nesasm is because of the nerdy nights tutorials on here by bunnyboy.
CA65 is also a popular choice but is intimidating to get setup.
Al

OK great Al I'll check them out.

I currently use nesasm, which has served me quite well. For drawing tiles I use YY-CHR and for drawing full nametables (backgrounds) I've also used "name" by p8nes. Read up on Bunnyboy's tutorials to get started, then read through the forums at nesdev. There's a lot of useful information out there, it can take a while to piece it all together though!

although the Bob Rost stuff is neat, I'd avoid it for development. All his things are in his own language, Nbasic, which is very glitchy in emulators and won't work on real hardware. Stick to nesdev and asm language.

Some may ridicule the use of nesasm. I've made two games with the thing, so it certainly can get the job done. One of the big things involves the use of labels. Some assemblers let you have nameless labels and that's one feature I'd love. You'll have tons of need for labels in your program and having to assign unique names to ALL of them can get tedious. Though I've developed a system that works, it's still tedious. I may look into another assembler, though I haven't decided on that yet.

My first program was a simple palette tester. It drew a background and changed things on input. Nothing to it. My game Geminim was a tough program as I learned things as I went. Siamond, however, was very, very easy to do. Just do things and see what you can do.

I'm with Sivak, nesasm is quite useful, and not as bad as people make out.

I've recently discovered that nesasm will let you use local labels, which can be handy to have more generic, shorter labels between main labels. Any label that begins with a full stop (.) is a local label thats context is only between the labels that don't have full stops. For example, the below code reuses the label .Loop, but the assembler understands which one you're talking about.

MainGame:
Do Stuff
.Loop:
Do more stuff
JMP .Loop
JMP MainGame

NMI:
Stuff
.Loop:

JMP Loop


Nesasm will also allow the use of macros which could be quite powerful if I could work out the best way to use them

Wow. I just changed my vblank wait routine to having


.:
  BIT $2002
  BPL .


I think game #3 will be even easier now! Nameless labels exist!

cool I guess you can only have the one nameless label like that defined between main labels, whereas the other assemblers will allow multiple, but that's still a tidy way to do those small loops

Like nesasm, nbasic itself isn't a problem. Its that Bob Rost just didn't fully understand how the NES works and was using inaccurate emulators like Nesticle, so the code written was bad. Some of the games there have been hacked to work better but they did things that just don't work on real hardware or accurate emulators like FCEUXDSP and Nintendulator.

NESHLA sounds like a good idea, but there are really no docs on how to use it and nobody available to help. I was never able to get anything that actually worked out of it. Best options for absolute beginners are still nesasm and asm6 because they need no initial configuration. Once you learn the basics then you can check out other assemblers like ca65, p65, or wla-dx.

Thanks guys, I think I'm going to stick with the basics and see what happens, I've managed to download nesasm now, plus I've found some great tutorials so this should get me started.