NintendoAge

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Little Samson — 2007-12-06T01:10:45 -05.00

It's also why you'd see games that are very similar (Home Alone 2 and Bart vs the Space Mutants) because code modules would be isolated and reused. In-house libraries were most certainly developed and passed on as developers changed jobs. I can imagine at some point some code was decompiled and "ripped" as well by other companies.

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Little Samson — 2007-12-06T01:08:32 -05.00

Almost every game was programmed from nothing in 6502 assembly. The only known exceptions are some really crappy games that were written in plain C. It is likely big companies like Nintendo and Konami had some standard libraries of asm code for things like sound engines, but usually games are different enough that everything is rewritten. It is a ton of work, but so it writing a full top game now using high level languages.

For things like creating graphics and level editors, there were computer programs written in C. Generally that is still done today, using whatever language the person is comfortable with (basic, c, java, etc). Maybe albailey can note what he has done here, I haven't written the level editor for my game yet.

Today we have it even easier, because accurate emulators with full debuggers are freely available. Back in the NES era everything had to be run on the real NES with very limited debuggers. That is why there are still so many prototype boards with UV eproms in sockets around.

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Little Samson — 2007-12-05T23:33:53 -05.00

I'm pretty sure they didn't have much, hense why teams of people worked on them and they took months if not years to develop.

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Little Samson — 2007-12-05T21:12:32 -05.00

bunnyboy, you said there was no game making software. Are you saying that all NES games were written out from scratch, no programs, or did they have programs that you do not have access to? That seems like a TON of work.

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Little Samson — 2007-12-04T19:20:22 -05.00

Originally posted by: bunnyboy
I think I will start weekly tutorial threads tonight or tomorrow, with the absolute most basic stuff first. If you already understand binary/hex/processors then you will have to wait a few weeks to get new info.

been waiting for something like this for some time

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Little Samson — 2007-12-04T18:57:21 -05.00

Awesome, I can't wait.
~~NGD

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Little Samson — 2007-12-04T18:39:14 -05.00

Originally posted by: bunnyboy

I think I will start weekly tutorial threads tonight or tomorrow, with the absolute most basic stuff first. If you already understand binary/hex/processors then you will have to wait a few weeks to get new info.

I'm looking forward to this!

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Little Samson — 2007-12-04T17:41:34 -05.00

Now I just need to figure out how to make money from it because I am a greedy bastard

I think I will start weekly tutorial threads tonight or tomorrow, with the absolute most basic stuff first. If you already understand binary/hex/processors then you will have to wait a few weeks to get new info.

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Little Samson — 2007-12-04T13:33:50 -05.00

Originally posted by: bunnyboy

Originally posted by: Little Samson
what software do you recommend?

Notepad, and yes that is serious. To write a game you need to use 6502 assembly language, there is no game making software. My unfinished programming guide is athttp://www.nespowerpak.com/nesasm.pdf. Eventually I will start a real tutorial in this forum...

I would love if you started a tutorial like that. I'd like to be the first one to enroll.

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Little Samson — 2007-12-04T12:24:40 -05.00

Theres lots of demos and a couple full games with source at http://www.nesdev.com/#NESPrograms but it may not be commented well! Just to see programs running you can use a good emulator with debugger like FCEUXD SP and step through the code one line at a time. It also has graphics and color palette viewers to give you a better idea of what it takes to make the backgrounds. Having the debugger makes everything far easier than it was in the NES era!