nesdev.com

I have been interested in NESMaker, yet I didn't feel like buying it after looking into the files, which is kind of preused.

Can anyone recommend me the best software to start off? Obviously, Bunnyboy seems best by people's standard, and I am wondering if there's the best tool list to do, so I made a list if anyone could help me out:

-Writing : Notepad ++

-Music : Famitracker

- Graphic : YY-CHR or Aseprite

I am not sure if there is more, so helping me find more tools would be nice.

And NES Screen Tool. and it's RLE compression system.

And I prefer asm6 to NESASM3. Some use ca65.

And famitone2 to convert famitracker to a more game friendly music format.

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nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES

Another program for graphics is Damian Yerrick's "8ted" and "8Name" programs. There is also my own Farbfeld Utilities programs "ffbit" which can convert graphics into NES/Famicom format (and "ff-uniq" if you want to get rid of duplicate tiles).

For text editing I use vim, although you can use any text editor.

Another program for using is ppMCK, although that is intended for writing .NSF files rather than music for the game. Another program for music is Pently, which I believe is suitable to make music for a game, as well as for NSF.

For assembler many prefer ca65 or asm6, although I still like NESASM.

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I don't see NESASM recommended much these days. Everyone has moved to ca65 and asm6.

Also, it's very common to write your own tools, even if they're just little 10-line scripts.

I have to remind you that for nesmaker you probably don't want to use CHR graphics. Nesmaker uses its own base files.

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https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios <- Follow me on twitter! Thanks!

So what is the difference between ca65 and ASM6? Is there ever will be ASM7?

I look over Bunnyboy, and I am not so sure if they support both assembly.

The Bunnyboy Nerdy Nights tutorials are intended to be used with NESASM. Version 2.x and 3.x are different. I cannot remember what version was used in his tutorials.

asm6 is the name of the assembler/program; it's just a name, it is not a version or version number.

NESASM, ca65, and asm6 are different assemblers. ca65 is generally for experienced programmers; you will spend days trying to configure it to assemble/link a program.

Please do not ask people to do long write-ups comparing assemblers; nobody here knows what your existing experience level is, or if you're even familiar with programming (and how low level).

Respectfully, please so some research on your own now that people have given you more information than you had before. You'd better get in the habit of researching stuff if you truly plan on doing nesdev stuff. You're gonna spend a lot of time reading + studying. Download them, read READMEs/documentation, see what you think.

Here's my post in another topic: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16761&p=209020&hilit=credits#p209020 (But also read everyone else's posts in said other topic)

I still use nesasm, but I recommend asm6.

Edit 2: Here's my post in that topic's sister topic: viewtopic.php?f=21&t=16642&p=207068&hilit=credits#p207068 (But also read everyone else's posts in said other topic)

Edit: Why not, I'll post my own program I-CHR: https://kasumi.itch.io/ichr

It requires a bit less manual prep for image->NES graphics. (NES Screen Tool lets you massage the data better once you've got it in, though.) I need to make it export some more (and padded) data for better interoperability with NES Screen Tool... I hope to update it soon, it has gotten a lot of neat stuff since the public version.

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https://kasumi.itch.io/indivisible

Alright.. I am not sure if that feels..aggresive or offensive.

Ah, thanks!

It's realistic. There's a lot of information out there. If you want to use nesmaker you need to wait for its release. If you want to program on your own you can look at tutorials such as dougeff's https://nesdoug.com/

Either way it's going to take a while. Get to work and when you have a technical question that you can't solve you can ask here for clarification. But be ready to get responses like this if it's clear that you haven't been reading enough. This is a rewarding hobby that takes a lot of time from reading and trying things out yourself.

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https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios <- Follow me on twitter! Thanks!

I think Koitsu's point is that even though we are a helpful community, there are no private teachers here. We will gladly help beginners make sense of all the stuff that's out there, but we expect them to do some research and show that they're putting effort into learning all this new stuff, so we know that the effort we put into explaining things isn't going to waste.

You might want to try out NESICIDE. It's a whole IDE with editor, emulator, debugging tools. It includes ca65/cc65, you can develop in assembly or C. There are example sources for it, so you could base your program on that if you don't want to mess with setting up ca65.

NESICIDE looks good and professional to me, but I am not sure which tutorial is the best for NESICIDE. I don't know if bunnyboy would cover NESICIDE tutorial.

Personally I think ca65 is just fine for beginners too, especially if you have an example to work from.

...which is why I created this example:
http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?t=11151