SoleGoose - I will respond here as we've been discussing on email, with a bit more brevity. As we've been discussing...you did not create a music engine for your game. You did not create an your assembler. You did not create the graphics tools that you used to create your graphics. I do not expect you to have to qualify what tools that you used when you create a new game. You certainly didn't mention the tools that you used in your Kickstarter for Spook-a-tron. While others that came before you create with straight raw code, you used tools that dramatically simplified your development process. But you didn't clarify that designation. You didn't advertise your game or categorize it as different from games that wrote thousands of lines of music engine code, and developers who really had to dig into understand how to write NES instrument envelopes and generate music playback engines from scratch. So...why obstruct the truth? Why hide if there is nothing to hide?

This is the exact thing that you are asking. The long and short of the response is "well...that's different...", but I've yet to figure out why. Also "created with NESmaker" has a lot of layers to it. A person who writes an entire engine with the aide of NESmaker's organizational structure...is that "a NESmaker game" that doesn't rise to the expectations your subjective definition of "homebrew", even though they have done the majority of the programming for the thing? It's the same question that can be asked of someone who creates NES music using famitracker, and FamiTone scripts they did not write to play it back...if they use famitracker to make the music, but never took a glimpse at the code, just whittled through the GUI tracker, shouldn't they (by your own metric) stamp a big old disclaimer sticker that their music was "famitracker" music, to be transparent that it used a WYSIWYG and separate it from true homebrewers who program their own music code and engines from scratch?

I think it's a fantastic topic of discussion and analysis. Just don't be hypocritical about it. If we want to make a categorical separation for "raw coders" and "tool users", awesome. But there will have to be a MUCH more defined metric for that...almost all NES homebrewers use a host of tools to get the job done that didn't always exist...they came into being so that developers didn't have to do the ugly work or even learn more challenging parts of development that took away from the creative part of their development cycle. So why would, say, using a music GUI interface that looks like a piano to easily spit out the ASM for code for music be more or less "authentic" homebrewing than using a GUI interface that looks like a dpad to easily spit out the ASM for code for input? What are the rules that one must follow to properly join the club where it is not expected for them to categorize their project differently? Specifically, what things must they code, and which things are they allowed to utilize a GUI for, and why? And beyond that, if someone DOES use NESmaker, but DOES code those things inside of it that you might determine must be coded to be considered homebrew, then why would that not be a homebrew? On the basis that it uses a front end for organization? Because hell...nes devs use things like version control all the time for organization and code iteration.

So again - why did you not make a list of all the tools that you used for your last project when you launched it on Kickstarter? I didn't see any mention of the music engine or creator that you used, which saved you from having to write thousands of lines of code and saved you from having to do the ugly business of dealing with how the NES plays music. I didn't see any mention of the graphic tools, which saved you from having to actually create graphics at the pixel level in code, like developers that came before you had to do. I didn't see any nods to the person who wrote the compiler that you used, even though your game really wouldn't have existed without it. And so on and so forth. Why obstruct the truth about what you used to create your game? Why hide it if there is nothing to hide?....

I'm cool with that as a topic of conversation, so long as you can turn the evaluation inward, too.  If you say, "well what I do is immune to that, because reasons" even though the same questions apply, then I don't think it's a valid argument to make.  But I'm open to the disccsion.

I'm not exactly sure why or what I'm responding to here, but reading through this thread is leaving me with the urge to say something. I'm just going to start typing and see what comes out.

I've been in the nesdev "community" for 10+ years.  I always wanted to make games since I was a kid, I told my parents that is what I wanted to do when I grew up. I lost sight of that, headed towards an engineering degree, miserable, so I quit. Headed back to computer science and reignited my passion with nesdev. Quite obviously I've never released anything (pm me for a list of excuses), but continue to learn every day by reading the forums and chatting with like-minded nesdev folk.

I too was excited by all the new stuff being made for the NES, but in 2010ish we barely were seeing any actual games being completed. A cool scrolling demo here, a few screenshots or some animation, but that's it.  So I helped get the NESDev competition off the ground, with the intent to see some games actually finished. Since then, I feel like things have literally exploded exponentially, along with many games getting full releases and said people now working full-time creating games for the NES. It's like a dream come true. I'd love to make NES games for a living.

Where I think the hostility you may be sensing is from, is people who are extremely passionate about development for the NES.  Sure, we are all part of the "community", but to think that everyone in a community has the same values and opinions is obsurd. It's quite possible that the majority of people in the nesdev community have no interest in NESMaker. That really isn't a problem since it hasn't been marketed to them. They acknowledge it's existence then move on. Why do they move on? Why are they not as interested in NESMaker games?

I will give you my answer, not only in solidarity with Beau, but to maybe reduce hostility and show another developers perspective. There are millions of programmers in the world. There are a million f--ing "8-bit" "retro" "pixel-art" games in the world.  What sets those games apart from NES games is the complexity and restrictions interacting with the hardware (plus it's way cooler to make a game on the NES).  Programming NES games in assembly is an ART. Yes we use tools, and would be foolish not to. Artists use tools. What artists don't do, is start with a Rembrandt and change it into a Da Vinci. We also don't start with The Last Supper and turn it into the Mona Lisa. Our tools are specific to the individual games we make.

I'm not saying that NESMakers aren't artists, or creative, or whatever. There have been some freaking amazing stuff coming from the NESMaker community. What I'm saying is that they will always be constrained by the template of NESMaker.  Whether it be the mapper, the art tools, etc.  Look at micromages for example. It just couldn't be done in NESMaker.  People will never be scrounging for bytes in NESMaker. Well, they will be, but for different reasons. Did they have to make it fit in 40kb? No, but it was a design choice that shaped the entire project. All NESMaker projects will be shaped around mapper 30.  There isn't anything wrong with it, but there are some really freaking cool things you can do with other mappers.

I guess at the end of the day, what really gets me excited about new NES games, is seeing the challenges and the choices made by the developers. Seeing how every last byte was optimized and organized to reach their goal. I can remember when JoeGTake2 was getting his sea legs in the nesdev forums 5 years ago, and it's awesome that things have gone so far. You've made a great product, and I can't wait to see the flagship project of Mystic Searches.  But for me, NESMaker isn't a tool. If you can hit New Project and then hit assemble/compile/execute/run and it spits out a working rom in 10 seconds it is MUCH MORE than a tool. It's a game engine. A NESMaker game. That is why I think there should be a distinction.

There is a small subsection of what I consider the nesdev community who will be a part of the NESMaker community, and vice versa. But I don't think they are one and the same. So I'll defend Beau on the "us" vs "them". The same goes for from scratch purpose built homebrews vs NESMaker games. There is a distinct difference, and I don't think anyone should be offended by that difference. It doesn't need to be defended, it just needs to be defined as what it is.


tl;dr
Love all you guys, don't fight, don't judge each other. Call a spade a spade.

PS. I'd love to hear an unedited 5hr podcast episode with Beau and Joe duking it out   *runs away*

Brad - no need to run and hide. I have no problem with respectful discussion on the topic. I'll throw up counter points, no doubt, but I don't consider it duking it out. I'll generally respond in the tone of the response given. The only problem was when the earlier conversation inexplicably turned into personal slights and ad hominem. That's usually demonstrative of emotional reaction, not logic, and often is associated with a weak argument being made. So if there was escalation to what appeared to be any hostility, that's where it derived from, which is exactly why Beau and I moved the conversation to email. Your response was perfectly respectful and reasonable, and I'll be happy to respond in turn, for your consideration. :-)

So, as you know, I've been chronicling this community for a long time. You accurately reference my horrible, clumsy beginnings on the NESdev forums, and you probably know the dozens of folks I profiled through the film...I got to see a LOT of workflows from old school NESdevs and ones that were just getting started. So here's where your analysis gets fuzzy for me, and I think derives (on the part of a lot of people) from confirmation bias, already having decided on the matter, rather than logical assessment.

If someone goes to the Nerdy Nights page, downloads the assembler, one of the screen tools suggested, and copies the body of an ASM example into notepad, and then runs that through an assembler, they're pretty much "executing and running a working rom in 10 seconds". Yet that IS legitimately a first step in creating a homebrew? THAT person gets to be part of the exclusive club? Because that's where a LOT of people started. Nerdy Nights, or with Patater's tutorial scripts, or Pin 8's template, or Mikejmoffitt's template, or the "empty NES project" on the VB Forums...all of those are examples of resources that exist that could, as you said, have someone executing a working rom in about a minute or so, but someone who builds a game with that foundation isn't the subject of this need for categorization. They are "real homebrewers", where as someone who does effectively the same in NESmaker needs to qualify that they did pretty much the same thing, just in a more collected and organized environment. I don't understand that logic. But...I don't consider EITHER people at that point actual "homebrewers" or "game developers". That's not what game development is, homebrew or otherwise.

I also don't think that someone who follows something like Nerdy Nights tutorials to the letter, just copies over the code into their own notepad and runs the compile button, is all that much different from someone who loads in a module into NESmaker. Pretty much the same method of development has taken place at that point. They single difference is with NESmaker, it's in a collected, organized environment, where as with Nerdy Nights, you might be building graphics in Shiru's tool, and assembling through a batch file, rather than having a built in dedicated graphics tool and a single button push to run the batch file. I'd argue at that point, NEITHER developer is a homebewer, or game developer. They are learners, at best learning how to reskin. Yet the former is how most homebrewers got their start, and in your mind you're probably creating some distinction between those two things. I'm not sure I understand how it's different at that point. But hopefully you agree that at that point, neither is really creating a game. They are both just tinkering. It's safe to say neither are homebrew NES game developers (which I'm presuming is what we really mean when we say "homebrewers").

So then let's jump forward a bit. A person at that level, on each side of the equation. Person A starts to modify the Nerdy Nights scripts and sees the result. Person B starts to modify the code base of the NESmaker modules and sees the result. The difference being Person A is doing it with stray files opened in notepad, while Person B is doing it with organized files, either in notepad or in the script editor that come inside NESmaker (to my knowledge, most people on both sides are using something like Notepad++). At that point, what are you arguing is the fundamental difference between the two people? I'm just not seeing the process as much different. They're both working in and learning ASM. They're both making modifications and tweaking and testing in order to gauge results and produce a desired effect in a game being created. At that point, I don't see any fundamental difference in anything except, again, literally the environment where things are organized...but since every developer has different organizational structures, and plenty use things like Git or Mercurial (which they did not build) for higher level organization, I'm not sure that is enough to denote some dramatic difference in process. At that point, whatever level "legitimate homebrewer" one of those individual is, the other has effectively done the same thing. Would you disagree?

So it's the next part that must be what we're actually talking about. Things like memory management. Asset creation. Building a physics engine. Etc. That's the thing that we must be arguing separates a NESmaker user from a "from scratch" homebrewer, since a NESmaker has some predefined scripts that handle these sorts of things, where the homebrewer has to create them. But let's really take a look at that. If a "real homebrewer" needs to figure out how to do object collision detection, and effectively copies and pasts the Mario's Right Nut examples from the NA forums as a starting point, tweaking them to fit within the needs of the game, and a NESmaker user pulls in one of the NESmaker object collision routines as a starting point, tweaking it to fit within the needs of the game...again, what is the fundamental difference between those things? If you pull in one of the NESmaker physics scripts and then alter it to fit your game's needs, versus if you follow along with Michael Chiaramonte's youtube video about creating physics, copy it in as he goes, and then alter it to fit your game's needs, what is the fundamental difference between those things? This is where I'm having a difficult time understanding the argument. Having seen so many peoples' workflow, so many tools they've used to do so many tasks, and having created a game from scratch, rebuilding it's engine 5 times over, I'd like to think I'm pretty well versed into what goes into NES development. And I say this, not as someone just trying to defend NESmaker but from the objective metric I'm using right here in this reply, I'm not sure I understand the fundamental difference for those that are just getting into it. In either case, the developer is looking at examples, tweaking them, futzing around to figure out how things work, making changes to see if they can get desired effects, employing a host of tools and resources they themselves did not create...I guess I'm not sure why having those resources together in one spot is fundamentally different that web crawls through google and forums to collect them all fundamentally alters the process.

Lastly, the conversation really needs to pivot away from "tools" versus "from scratch". As you, and Beau, have already conceded, those who ARE invited to the club, and DON'T need to vocally express their game used the crutch of a pre-built engine as is suggested here, use plenty of tools that ease their development process. As expressed in the response above (to which I still haven't heard a logical counter from anyone), almost all of the homebrewers I met used tools to do a significant portion of the heavy lifting. Let's put all the homebrewers that use famitracker and famitone in a room and give them 48 hours to construct a music engine. Who among them could do it? I'm guessing very few. Because music engines, and all that goes into them, are incredibly difficult and complex. Fortunately, there is no need to spend months diving into that complexity, because there are simple GUI tools that exist that can help a NES developer bypass the chaos that would be writing that engine. They have access to a nice GUI interface that looks like a piano and spreadsheet, they create complex instrument envolopes in seconds. They just point and click their way to a song, setting up tempos and lengths and pattern definitions, and then they spit it out with the click of a button. Literally, I could have a functional song in under a minute, copy the FamiTone scripts into my project, and have it playing back in my NES ROM in the next minute, using a GUI interface to spit out a complex run of data that would've taken most homebrewers months to R&D themselves, if they were even capable at all. But THAT is a part of "real homebrewing". Using a GUI interface that looks like a piano to shave months of development time and knowledge of how sound works on the NES and the endless complexities that go into creating a music engine, and utilizing someone else's thousands of lines of code to make it work...that's acceptable. Change music GUI to input GUI, change FamiTracker to NESmaker, and all the sudden "Well hold on, there is a big difference between from scratch development and using tools!". That's a weak and hypocritical argument. The only people who should be able to say those words are the people who use no pre-existing tools in their development...no pre-existing assemblers, no pre-existing sound tools, no pre-existing graphics tools, no tutorial examples, no project templates, no emulators with debugging features, no cart flashing software, no nametable generators...those are the only people who really have any legitimate case when it comes to arguing "from scratch" versus "tool based" development. There was a time when those tools didn't exist, and homebrewers had to make games the longhand way. What happened? Tools were created to simplify the process. Now homebrewers use them. Generally, what it seems to me is that whatever tools were present when a homebrewer began creating are the ones that person is willing to accept as acceptable...most likely because they themselves used them and don't like the idea of having to categorize themselves as someone who needed the crutch of tools to complete their game. That's that confirmation bias I was talking about. "There is a huge difference between from scratch development and someone who uses tools" seems to be a chosen mantra by a lot of people who make regular use of tools, and always have, as part of their workflow, but they're condescendingly lumping themselves in the "from scratch" club, while saying other tool use is prohibited to receive that proverbial badge. To me, that's...well...mind numbing, I guess.

So if we want to have a conversation on whether or not there is a distinction between from scratch development versus reliance on tools for development, it's a topic worthy of discussion. If we're talking about employing some sort of categorical differentiation, then anyone who uses any tools in development to ease their process are part of that group, with NESmaker just being a multi-pronged tool rather than the single scattered tools that other developers are using. If they start to get defensive about it, the question simply is "Did you create everything for your game from scratch?" If the answer is no, then why doesn't the same logic apply?

Lastly, though, we really have to talk about the people ACTUALLY developing fully fleshed out projects. People working in NESmaker who fall into that category are writing an awful lot of their own code, learning how ASM works, learning how the NES architecture works...if a NESmaker user is learning PPU tricks and how to handle the NMI and how to deconstruct a physics engine and writes 30,000 lines of custom code and code modifications to make his game, and a "from scratch" homebrewer, starting with the Nerdy Nights tutorials, writes 30,000 lines of custom code and code modifications to make his game...what is the practical defining thing that is differentiating those two people? One is doing it in an organized work flow, and one is not? One has resources collected in one place and the other has them scattered around the web? Because that's REALLY what we're talking about.

All this said, I love the discussion. I had the very same type of discussion with someone not long ago about what defines a NES game - if a full on Retro Pi is stuffed into a cart, and can push an emulation of Twilight Princess through the AV components of the NES, is it a NES game? I said absolutely not, where he said of course it is. To me, I argued all the processing was done on the outside device, not the NES, and the NES was a throughput. He argued that all NES games processed things on the cart and built things to get around hardware limits, and all a user knew was whether it could be pushed into a cart and run when the power light came on. We still have a fundamental disagreement on this, but we're not out to undermine or sabotage or personally attack each other on the topic. If this conversation was relegated to that level of mature and respectful debate, I'd be all about it. But understand - we've had malicious hackers with a pretty regular attack on our site and forums, and we have a pretty good idea where they've come form. I've personally received threats against myself and my family (and I know they're just dumb internet trolling nonsense, but still...). By Beau's own admission, this project has been met with all out hostility by some of the members of the community. Here we have a tool that is drawing new interest in NES development, a passion for the system, new games...that COULD really benefit from the community, and one they could help shape into something that they feel is better suited for what they'd like to see from the community. Instead, hostility, sabotage, and death threats? For what, exactly? For helping be a bridge for new people to embrace this passion? It's wild, man. I guess that's 2019 for ya. I don't have any expectation that this tool would be used by anyone who is an old-head in the NESdev community, except maybe as an experiment or for rapid prototyping...just like I don't expect anyone who has already established a workflow for creating nametables to use Shiru's NES Screen Tool to make nametables. I enjoy the dialog, and the debate on the topic. But I don't think I'm being overly sensitive when it turns personal or strays from the topic at hand into character attacks or even condescension.

Anyhow, feel free to keep the dialog going. I'm curious if any of that spoke to you, or you feel were worthy points for consideration on the topic. Thanks for weighing in. :-)

I'm definitely in Joe's camp on this one. After NESmaker started gaining traction, I was pretty sure such a result would follow as what has happened, and I wasn't disappointed. When Beau started demanding a new game posted on this forum be listed as NESMaker, then I was without a doubt certain what was happening.

As someone who has followed the development of homebrew NES games since the beginning, I have seen the landscape change quite drastically since the early days of Covell's Solar Wars, the amazing (for the time) - looking Time Conquest demo, and Garage Cart. A year or two back there was even a huge debate as to whether games should be referred to as homebrew or indie, and likewise a game that was historically classified as homebrew (Bomb Sweeper, the Snow Bro port) was then recently considered not a homebrew at all, by some mods here. So definitions and ideas are changing since the earliest days of playing the TMNT theme song or getting a dude to wander across the screen, as some sort of tech demo.

My issue though is that the end product is what we should be examining. Mapper 30 limitations? How many homebrew games used mapper 30, wasn't it designed for homebrew games as a whole, with some like Battle Kid utilizing this? Game quality concerns? Well I seem to remember a thread on here where someone had posted a demo, made the grounds up, and Beau was more than estatic that someone was getting involved in the game, no matter how crappy the product was.

As some here probably know, from 1998 until now, I have had mixed feelings towards the homebrew / indie game scene. I've stated it before and I'll state it again now, a clone of Sokoban, Lawn Mower Man, or some other popular puzzle game just isn't going to impress me, when I've seen it all before, multiple times. Then since the majority of the homebrew games being made here aren't released on Famicom, that's ultimately two strikes against the product.

With NESMaker though, I've been seeing a lot of great-looking games coming in production. Maybe they are tutorial-based mediocre platformers, but would you prefer mediocre tutorial-based platformers or puzzle games built from the grounds up, of which the NES/Famicom has already had three or four of that same game? I'll take the first set any day, please.

For me it is sort of like this: two guitarists at an open mic. One uses a capo, the other barres all the chords, but they all are playing the same chords. The one might be more skilled than the other, more talented, or maybe just more experienced; however, it doesn't necessarily mean that the guy using the capo is inferior, i've learnt not to judge on this sort of thing long ago. If we want to take the analogy with music even further, there are a lot of talented singers who can't write their own material. Likewise, there are a lot of talented musicians who just aren't good performers. So NESMaker is sort of like being a singer and having other guys write your songs? No shame in that, imo.

It's definitely a snobbery thing imo, or perhaps a worry about financial loss as NESMaker games start competing against some of the crappy from scratch games.

That seems pretty unassailable to me.  I'd very much like to see a logical counter to that, but I don't think I will.

 

I don't really want to throw myself into this discussion because I don't think visible debates that come off in a negative light is a good look for the community, but I wanted to ask about this. Are you saying you have reason to believe this stuff has come from people inside the community? Because that is definitely not OK, and anyone doing that kind of thing needs to be outed and ostracized immediately.

Khan - yep. Just due to the pattern, it appears to be targeted and deliberate, and always seems to coincide with fake / spam accounts blowing up out emails, writing barely coherent reviews or comments under fake profiles on Youtube, FB, and the Kickstarter site...

I'm not saying Nintendo Age specifically at all, but Joe Alonzo who runs the forums, was the first to point it out. It is what it is, and it's unfortunate - but in 2019, that's generally the ultimate result of critical analysis when it turns to petulant ad hominem. See any contemporary fanbase for examples.

I'd never suspect that level of petulance or malice from anyone I've met personally. But just like in pop culture right now, tempered criticism ends up yielding that sort of nonsense as it grows outward. In this very thread, an ideological conversation grew that exact way, for reasons I'm still not clear on...and as stated by beau himself, he's got a 'indifferent' attitude about it compared to some in the community's odd vitriol.

I'm of the mind that it's too small a community for that sort of nonsense. If it can't exist without echoing the behavior of toxic fandoms, then it loses all the luster of that sense of community that attracted me to it in the first place, ya know?

Do you have more information? You mention a pattern, but I'm not quite sure how you relate it to the community. Do you know where the attacks were coming from, geographically?

I hate to derail the thread, but I can't really sit by knowing you're going through life dealing with this kind of shit and you have reason to suspect it's coming from people I possibly know. It's one thing to not agree on ideology when it comes to what constitutes a homebrew, but it's certainly another to know people are threatening you personally.

edit: And I wonder if this is why Alonzo seemingly ignores everything I do, while living less than 20 minutes away from me. I hope he doesn't think I am in some way responsible.

People wanting to critically evaluate what you have done, and what that has done to the community, how it might change it and such, and how they feel about it should not be confused with any personal thoughts of you as a person. An ideological conversation that wants to jump the gun on those factors will move some from indifference to asking some critical questions publicly. That is not a personal attack, but questions about a project and community. We should be allowed to explore things, particularly when it is our community (yourself, other devs, buyers, and fans included) which is not something that many seem to understand. I guess that that is elitist, toxic, and hostile (not saying that you have entirely said those things Joe, but that is how it is perceived by many I would imagine).

I'll go back to my ivory tower and let you all carry on with deciding what we are to become, and how we are to all perceive the products of NESMaker (which is the actual topic at hand, under all of the rest of the constantly shifting forum chatter). That is the only part of this conversation that I feel warrants a discussion, other than your safety and clearing that up, but it seems that my time has passed to be a part of the greater conversation here on NA.

Sorry, that safety remark sounds flippant, but you mentioning it the other day was the first I had heard of it. It is certainly not.

Khan - I'll give you generalities in short here, but would gladly give you more info OFF here. I feel pretty confident you'd never be involved with anything like that, and would condemn it heavily. You're a stand up guy, from my experience, having talked to and having met you. But there was an incident in particular a while back where it seemed multi-pronged all at once over the span of about 3 days, across all of our media outlets (twitter, FB, youtube, the forums, email, Kickstarter, instagram...all front facing accounts, effectively). Fortunately, one of my very good friends does cybersecurity for a living, and a personal threat made was enough to prompt him to informally have a look for me...because even though it was just standard internet dumbness, with a two year old at home I'm a bit more paranoid about such things than i was five years ago. All of the activity that was traceable came from one or two IPs...all from fictitious accounts that were subsequently erased, one even impersonating another person in the gaming world. It was right around then that some people connected to the project also let me in on some of the vitriol by members of the (greater NESdev) community towards the project, which apparently turned into passive aggressive character attacks. Since, about once every other month, similar nonsense pops up in a concentrated spread across our social media, never quite to the degree, and simultaneously I've continued to get some...what's the word..."shade thrown my way" as the kids say these days, from people in the scene. I have sincere doubts that anyone I have met would be that childish. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that whoever is having fun with their cute attempts at sabotaging the thing are in the larger community that I have not met, and/or are less emotional stable folks responding to that same unfortunate wave of animosity.

Like I said, I take it all with a grain of salt. I have been doing creative projects for decades...when one is successful, I know that sometimes this sort of nonsense is the fallout. But it's leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth for a community that I honestly felt was more or less a creative family. Disappointing, you know? Anyhow, I'm also disappointed for people that I've come to know very well, like CutterCross or Mugi or Dale Coop, who are all rock stars and doing mind blowing things from inside the tool, who now will be ostracized by that elitist attitude that because they created a thing with NESmaker, they're not a true homebrewer and don't get to join the proverbial party. Never mind how much ASM they've learned, have written, how well they've come to understand the NES architecture, the high level of quality of the output, their embrace of this newfound passion for them, their support and appreciation for other NES developers...they and their projects will be condescended to and dismissed outright and not "invited to the club" because of preconceived confirmation bias attitude of what NESmaker is? Yeah...screw that. Why would I want to be part of that community anyway? Does that make sense?

Anyhow...you're right. We've derailed. If you want to hit me up in a PM (or email?) I can give you more specific details. As it is, it's just something we're kind of accepting as a reality.

Thanks for the detailed response. It really hurts me to know someone would put time and effort into something so terrible as that and I'm sorry you're having to deal with it. I can't imagine what it must be like having a child at home and not feel 100% safe.

I can see how you might connect the dots with NESdev (personally I've never been crazy about the vibe over there, either) but man, I really hope you're wrong. We can all definitely have differing opinions on how we want to look at things, but to cross the line into that kind of shit... man. No good.

Have a good day everyone. Sorry to hijack the thread!

And still no logical counter.  So I had figured.

 

OP, first off let me say I enjoyed the video. Very well done. It is extremely, extremely rare that I watch anything on youtube all the way through, except for real music videos. But I watched yours all the way through, and it's freakin' half an hour. So, great job on that. And I'm excited to play some of the games people have made with NESmaker. Functionally, to me as a player, there isn't a significant difference between those games and other modern NES games such as those made by SoleGoose and KHAN and others. Hacks, ports/remakes/demakes, translations, demos, and homebrews, all of those I categorize very differently. Not so with homebrews and advanced NESmaker projects. So I at least nominally agree with you.

Now, if I was you, I would let this kind of thing go. I understand that is very tough to do. You've worked long and hard on your tool ( ) and you'll let anybody buy it and use the software that you made over years of work. You have dedicated all of your spare time if not your whole life to the project and, by everything that I can see, made a success out of it. So it's off when somebody, in your view, mischaracterizes it.

Well forget the haters and focus on the fans, users, and potentials. Your opinion, in MY opinion, is well-reasoned. It makes sense, and is internally consistent. However it is just that: an opinion. There cannot really be undeniable fact on the matter. So no matter how much you write, you're highly unlikely to change the minds of people who hold different opinions.

My suggestion, and you of course can take all of this or not, is you have better things to do. Condense your stance to one boilerplate paragraph, maybe two, and use it when you encounter a "hater". If they respond after that... fuck it. 9 times out of 10 you'll be going in circles repeating yourselves anyway. Not that this whole thread hasn't been very interesting to read over the last week or so, but you'd save a lot of time and energy that could be better used promoting stuff, finishing Mystic Searches, or whatever else. Rise above. I think KHAN has a great point about visible debates.

Ridley - thanks for the reply. I spend plenty of time on those things, but I also advocate for people developing for the NES. Whether that be pimpin NEScape's Kickstarter, making a video for 3DSEN's vr nes app launch, making big dumb videos like this, or fighting for validation of young new developers I see entering the passion. If the video wasn't evident, I have a lot of energy to spend ;-)

It's not haters so much that inherently bother me. Troll Burner is a fun steam valve for that. But I'll gladly participate in any debate anyone wants to have on this particular topic. And I am glad you found the thread interesting. I have as well :-)

I dunno why this thread is continuing, I already ended the discussion with a diagram of reality. Haha

There are multiple pathways to becoming a serious game making craftsman. You can start from a blank slate, or start from an engine. These options exist in the broader indie game dev world, and there are successful creators who start with each approach. But what all successful creators have in common is they work their goddamn butts off on their games. Folks who just dash something off with pre-made assets with a tool will always be forgotten quickly or passed over. Yes, game making software has increased the amount of people doing that. But...at the end of the day, it doesn't stop anybody from making quality games, and actually enables many talented individuals who otherwise would not have been empowered, to make games.

I had reservations about NESMaker early on and also felt threatened by it. I really like tiny, obscure communities. I really liked feeling smug every time I told someone that I make games from the ground up in assembly language. Is clinging to this smugness really a good thing? Probably not, and I'm actually rather grateful I've been broken of it.

Remember being 12? Just being happy playing games and wanting to make them? That's what we should all be endeavoring to preserve, all of these debates kind of lose sight of that in my opinion.

Just make games, and work hard at it, because that inner 12 year old refuses to die. Use whatever method works for you, makes you happy and maximizes what talents you were blessed with. The End.

I had some reservations about NESmaker at first as well. I think that, as a programmer, when a tool as marketed as "no programming required!" it's easy to hear that and hear "you are no longer needed". Even if that's not the true message, it's something that the general Joe Schmo may take from it. As someone who recently just started working on NES development full-time, it's even scarier. I've been trying to use that as motivation to create something that truly stands out. Much of the fear that I had when NESmaker was launched has subsided at this point, probably because my confidence in my own work has grown a lot over the past couple of years.

I don't think we've hit a point where people will look at games developed from scratch and say "Why would I pay for that if it could just be made by clicking a few buttons in NESmaker?" Quality games will always gain attention and rise to the top, regardless of whether or not they were created using a pre-made game engine or not. That's my 2 cents anyway.

I think I might know what's going on here.

If you look at the worlds population, its most likely that people who can code in assembly for the NES make up for less than 1% of the total population. So having this ability is like super rare and obscure and niche. Being able to make a new NES game from the ground up is almost like a lost art form, the knowledge and skills you must posses is old tech. If Nintendo themselves asked their current programmers working for them to code a brand new NES game, I'm willing to bet that a lot of them would be scratching their heads because they wouldn't know where to start.

So now this super specialized ability, that only the few know and have mastered is now given to literally everyone [NESmaker]. So of course the hardcore NES coders who have spent countless hours mastering an archaic programming language are going to feel a little off set by this. And it might make them feel as if their craft is not as special anymore. Remember how in Cast Away the movie with Tom Hanks, how he was stuck on the island and how he had to learn to make fire with just sticks and then once he was saved he then picked up a lighter at a dinner party and with "one button" made fire. It just makes you feel strange inside. Making fire the old fashioned way with rubbing two sticks together is a real skill that not anyone can do, but anyone can flick a lighter and get a flame going.



But here is the thing, because of Nesmaker, the whole NES homebrewing community just got bigger and that has to be a good thing. For a community to strive you have to have people who are actively involved in the "scene". The fact that you can actually buy new NES PCB's and new NES shells means that there is actually an infrastructure that exists within this community and this is important. The more NES homebrews that people are making and buying is also a good thing. Even if some new NES games are of poor quality because now "anyone can make one", its still better than no new NES games and plus you can always make fun of poor quality games like how the Angry Video Game Nerd has made fun of Superman 64. Bad games have a place too, ya know.

Even if you don't like NESmaker, you know that someone, somewhere, will eventually crank out a masterpiece with it and produce something that almost everyone in the NES homebrew community will enjoy and praise. So I say that the more the merrier.

@Final Theory: I think the points in your post are spot-on, and it's also well-written.

Kind of off topic and this thread went alot longer than I thought it would so I havnt read every response so I'll just ask.

How's the progress with the New Modules? And any word on the manual/book that backers could choose during the kickstarter?

 

Hey all, mugi here.

I hopped in to this forum after a while of contemplating since my name has popped up more than once regarding nesmaker,
and as the creator of one of the most visible products that came out of nesmaker, I felt appropriate that I'd offer my input as an actual user of the software
instead of being one of the "hardcore" developers that generally visit these boards and converse in threads such as this.

I actually registered in nesdev too but after reading around a bit over there, I never actually dared to post anything regarding my project.

So, I am the designer and main programmer of Dimension shift, dare i say "the most advanced" NESMaker game to date.
This is the first game I have ever (attempted) to create, and the first time I ever aid my eyes on 6502 assembly, and quite frankly, the only reason
it even exists is because of the way NESmaker makes 6502 accessible.

now, im no stranger to videogames, Im a romhacker since over 20 years now, and outside of making Dimenion Shift, my main passtime is producing fantranslations
for PSP games. As such, I am definitely no programmer, hacking things is one thing, but my brain just isn't wired for writing code, it's confusing, frustrating,
slow, boring and generally just drives me nuts, and that's not just assembly, i can't code in C, java, or anything else for that matter either.

now back to nesmaker then, I bought it because I actually want to learn to make NES games, so "OMG NO CODING REQUIRED" sold it to me,
off to the window went that phrase within 20 seconds of opening the tool, lol.

Joe knows i love the software to death and back, but that catch phrase is just a big fat lie  

the fact that dimension shift exists though, is just a testament to the power of what (I believe) nesmaker should be viewed as, instead of a
tool that allows making nes games without programming. it MADE me capable of learning to code in assembly.

I dont know if any of you are aware of the game i am making so here's a quick run down of what has been programmed into it that NESmaker does not provide.

- CHRram bankswitching,
- free-scroll (any direction at any given time, no restrictions)
- palette shifting fades
- color emphasis
- custom physics
- custom physics based mechanics (wall climbing, alternate water physics, conveyor belts)
- complete overhaul of collision engine
- custom tile drawing routine for drawing 8x8 tiles instead of 16x16 metatiles that nesmaker's UI forces you into.
- cursor based menuing system (my game's stage select screen uses this)

now, I work on this game with a friend of mine and as such the above is not all my work but regardless, the game is more or less been torn apart as far
as it's base engine goes.

I wrote the stage selection framework completely from scratch after 2 weeks of assembly, as such the code is terrible, in fact it's so terrible
that even though I barely even understand assembly as it is, even I can see how terrible it is. Regardless of that, the terribleness of it is completely
invisible to the end user.

im just going on an on here, back to the topic at hand. Basically, what nesmaker does to a person is sits them down and accustoms them to extremely simple
pieces of assembly code, take controller input scripts, you define on to a button press and it can be as simple as 5 lines of code. THEN it forces you to
modify it somehow, because the way it is set up, absolutely WILL NOT WORK on your game. The first thing 99% of people who started making a game with nesmaker did
were complete rewrites of controller input assemblies, in order to fix issues with in player animations not working due to conflicting input commands.

from that on I moved on to making more controller scripts, and then dared to venture to making custom tiletype scripts. My wall climbing code is a tiletype that
controls the gravity, has it's own collision checking routine, and is paired to a jump code that is again completely separate from the one provided by the engine.

it went on an on and soon enough (lol, 6 months of work) we started to have things like custom subroutines that combine game objects in order to create complicated boss monster
fights combining several normal simple, boring monster objects into one gigantic 300HP monster that changes it's shape and behavior patterns as you fight it.

a lot of custom code written entirely from scratch has gone into the game, and for me that is exactly what I wanted nesmaker to do for me,
as time goes on, less and less of my game actually functions within nesmaker's UI, as it just keeps doing things nesmaker was not really designed to do.

Im fairly confident that (except maybe the screen painter) I will eventually abandon Nesmaker in order to futher break out of the bounds it sets for a nes game,
and hopefully learned enough to put together "a real homebrew" game.


nowadays I use the screen painting tool to create game screens, and the built-in script editor/organizer to keep track of the sourcecode.
graphics I do using paint shop pro, then run them into tilesets using shiru's screen tool, and what nesmaker does is converts a .bmp into a .chr
Music is made with famitracker, and the sound engine is GGsound, which, while included in nesmaker, is by all means not exclusive to it.

well this post turned out to be a mess, so I think i'll stop here, Just felt like it would be nice to write a word or 2.
And for those who have not seen my game, here's a few screenshots/video.

here's what the current build's scroll looks like(does it even scroll, bro?)




here's some footage from an earlier build (bi-directional horizontal scroll only)




and here's a few screenshots from later graphics work, enjoy (?)





best regards
- that scrubby nesmaker "dev"

I can't tell if your self depreciation is genuine, or if you're doing it as as slight to those people who don't take NESmaker seriously. But aside from that, I do appreciate you posting here and giving a different viewpoint.

I am curious though, in what way do you think NESmaker made learning assembly language more accessible than more "traditional" (and I use that in quotes because it's just how a majority of people seemingly learn) means, ie: nerdy nights tutorials, etc.

Regardless, I'm glad you found your way into the homebrew community, no matter what it took to bring you here. Your work is very impressive and I hope you're proud of what you accomplished.

im just giving a hard time to all the doubters, though to be honest, I dont actually consider myself a homebrewer just yet (that's a thing with myself more so, I can't look myself in the mirror and think that im a homebrew nes developer until I throw out something for people to play first.)
for me it's more of a funny joke than anything else to be "the scrubby nesmaker dev"

as far as nesmaker making assembly more accessible, it's a multitude of small factors but ultimately for me it boiled down to the fact that, as someone already pointed out somewhere on this thread, you CAN literally create a rom and have it actually display something in 5 minutes.
Like I mentioned, the first things most people I noticed doing, was modifying the controller input assemblies which allow you to alter things like jump height or movement speed of your character.

someone who's never seen assembly code prior to opening those files has no idea what they're even looking at when they see LDA #$06 STA object_h_speed_lo, but since nesmaker has documentation for every stupid thing ever to stupid extends,
even the dumbest of us managed to read through the code to understand that 06 is a number that controls the movements speed of the character. from there you also began to understand the meaning of LDA or STA, what they do, and how to use them for something else.

it just goes on from there. The fact that you can instantly hit "compile" and the tool literally starts your emulator and your rom for you and gives you your changes to test makes you THINK you did something really hard and awesome, and it makes you WANT to understand it more.
Like I said, I had no idea about 6502, and even less about nes hardware when I started this game, and 2 weeks later I programmed the stage selection you see on the above video. Now, it's not a super elaborate piece of code, but it does involve creating routines to manipulate player object's spawning,
variables for controlling the cursor, drawing sprites to the screen, warp locations and a (really messy) session of CMP commands to set attributes for warping to different stages of the game, loading different graphics, setting up chr ram banks, doing screen fading, restoring player attributes and the hud, et cetera.

the tool in itself doesnt actually do your work for you, it just babysits you and holds your hand at the beginning. Some people just need that extra little holding hands  
I dont really think i speak of myself alone here but it's a general trend you will see on the nesmaker forum with people who are starting up with the software and they pop in to ask something. Suddenly a week later they spit out something so out of the world advanced compared to what they just asked help with
just shows that the willingness to dig in and spend time trying to understand the existing code is there.
For a lot of people, opening an empty txt file in notepad and beginning to code a nes game is just too much. I know I could not do it, not now atleast.

now that I read back what I wrote, I do believe the big factor is that you actually have the "just compile" button that gives you your instant feedback.
even with starting from nerdy nights tutorials or whatnots (i'll admit i never really looked into those much) I believe you will still not achieve the same effect that fast. You'll have to set up a compiler, gather your example scripts, etc etc..
and even then, what you actually get from compiling a nerdy nights tutorial (as far as i understood) are at best far cries from a game.
NESMaker on the other hand, lets you select a platformer module, and press compile, and it spits out a sword-wielding bunny that moves around, jumps and while not much, it is by a definition "a complete game"
there you have your first feeling of "I MADE THIS!"


edit: yes, I am genuinely proud of what I have managed to create so far.

edit2: there is one other thing I've noticed with nes devlopment that for me, coming from playstations, is something different. Thats the quality of homebrew development.
now, on a playstation you have full blown 3d games spanning huge worlds and 80 hours of complex gameplay yadda yadda, and you have a single screen pacman clone homebrew kinda things.
yet homebrewers are really happy about what they do with the system,

enter NES, decades old technology mastered so well by homebrewers that the quality standard is up the roof, where on playstation, homebrews are little mini games to spend a few minutes with, on a NES,
a homebrew rivals and surpasses the systems' commercial releases, and such little minigames like nesmaker's swordwielding bunny are considered trash and showelware simply because the expectation is there.
there's no room for a little game you write in a few weekends and have 20 minutes of fun with..... Or maybe there is, I really am an outsider to this stuff at the moment since I've only very recently taken interest in the hobby,
so take that as the view of someone who looks at the entire "scene" from the outside.

Not to get this topic completely off track but holy crap does dimension shift look great...

Thanks for your thorough response, Mugi.   Really appreciate you taking the time! Love that you found a way to get involved and are loving it as much as you are! Can't wait to see what the future holds for you.