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Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 10:05 am
by KENTUCKYx
Hello everyone. As my topic states I am completely new to this. My interest was peaked at a local anime con where a member of this community (Lucradan) was giving a short class on nes development. Thank you dan for giving the class! I'll PM as well.

I've been hesitant to jump in as there is just sooo much in which to take. I've been lurking a bit since the class, here and on the internet. I guess it's time to just get my feet wet, so, here I am. I'll try to make sure I do a search for info first before I ask questions.

From my class I got a 'list' of things to DL to begin. One of the things I was looking for was a way to put these on an actual cart. In the class I mentioned my reason for coming in was the idea of 'editing' my games (theme change/name changes for friends) and putting them on a cart. Yes, I know, I'm a very long way from needing something like that. I however did find a few flash carts out there but I was really looking for something using actual eproms. If anyone reads this and knows what I'm looking for that would be great.

This was the list I was given to get me started:
Notepad++
ASM6
an image editor
YY-CHR
NES screen tool
FCEUX
Famitracker

Any way, if you made it this far, thanks for reading.
I'm excited at the idea of eventually creating my own game, just like I would talk about with my friends when I was a child playing my nes. I'll be a leach for a good bit but I hope to one day contribute for others.

Thanks,
Kentucky

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 10:50 am
by Kasumi
Welcome!
Infinite NES Lives provides prepopulated boards which are priced better than a supports-most-games flash cart for one off games: http://www.infiniteneslives.com/nessupplies.php
In case that's enough to satisfy your requirements. My only experience with boards of the actual eprom sort have been discontinued. There are others, but I don't want to vouch for some shop I've never bought from.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 11:15 am
by tokumaru
FCEUX is great for development because of its debugging tools, but it's not particularly accurate. Be sure to include other emulators in your toolkit to make sure you're not relying on any of FCEUX's inaccuracies. Nintendulator and Nestopia are among the most accurate, and you can't ignore Mesen, which includes AWESOME debugging tools.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 11:32 am
by KENTUCKYx
Thank you both for the warm welcome.

I’ll be sure to add those tools. I was able DL everything but the ASM6 assembler. I tried the direct link from the nesdev wiki however my anti-virus keeps lighting up like a Christmas tree. Is there a different one you’d recommend or am I being paranoid about the warnings?

All help is greatly appreciated.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 12:07 pm
by Sogona
Try this:
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/674/
ASM6 is probably the best for beginners. I’d at least reccommend waiting a while before trying out CA65 (which has a lot more features.)

Welcome, btw.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 1:04 pm
by koitsu
Heh, anti-virus... You can try https://github.com/freem/asm6f as an alternative if you want (see Releases link for downloads).

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 1:19 pm
by tokumaru
The best place to get ASM6 from is from the author's website (if your antivirus software complains about this one, you can safely ignore it): http://3dscapture.com/NES/

ASM6 is indeed the best for beginners, IMO. It has less quirks than the alternative (NESASM), and the other popular ones like ca65 need some serious setting up and require better understanding of the assembly process.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 2:08 pm
by KENTUCKYx
Thank you all! I’ll try both of those and see how it rolls.

I’m sure I’ll be back for more help at some point. Hopefully not to the point I become bothersome.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Mon May 14, 2018 6:15 am
by Lucradan
Welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the class and am excited you joined us. I've been offline a bunch lately cause pixel art stuff is pissing me off. Since your in the area, give my a buzz sometime and we can meet up so I can show you the ropes in more details. I'd love to get a local homebrew community up an running, especially since we got 3 major metros nearby and an amazing digitial and gaming arts University in DE.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Wed May 16, 2018 10:23 am
by unregistered
Welcome KENTUCKYx! :)
tokumaru wrote:and you can't ignore Mesen, which includes AWESOME debugging tools.
Wow! Mesen's highlighting in the Memory Tools screen is so cool!! :mrgreen: :D

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Fri May 18, 2018 1:16 am
by KENTUCKYx
Lucradan wrote:Welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the class and am excited you joined us. I've been offline a bunch lately cause pixel art stuff is pissing me off. Since your in the area, give my a buzz sometime and we can meet up so I can show you the ropes in more details. I'd love to get a local homebrew community up an running, especially since we got 3 major metros nearby and an amazing digitial and gaming arts University in DE.
That would be great. Thanks! I’ll send you an email, I have your info from the class.

I’ve mostly just been doing hacks of games as most of the tutorials I’ve seen for beginners aren’t really getting me going in a style that’s been conducive to my learning style. I’m more of kinesthetic and auditory in my learning.

I’ve got some library reading coming. So we’ll see how that goes. Finding something that is a step by step for a one screen game as simple as like say a Mario type game would be great to see with annotations like these lines effect jump height by changing this variable or this is what effects blah blah would be great. I’ve just seen here’s code, this is the output. Not now try this, and this, and see the changes it makes. If anyone has something like this, I’d love to check it out.

Of course the assembler download is still giving me issues with a ws.reputation.1 warning and the file keeps getting quarantined.

Unregistered, thank you as well for the welcome.

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Fri May 18, 2018 6:58 am
by tepples
KENTUCKYx wrote:Of course the assembler download is still giving me issues with a ws.reputation.1 warning
"File reputation" warnings mean that not enough other customers of the same antivirus publisher have downloaded the same executable. See Symantec's page about "WS.Reputation.1" in Norton, for example. This is to be expected for niche tools, such as assemblers targeting retro consoles. It's also to be expected soon after a new version of a tool is released. Two possible courses of action are A. download a compiler, such as GCC, install it, and build the assembler from source code; or B. report the download as a false positive to your antivirus publisher.

Today I discovered that three years ago, VirusTotal had started its own centralized false positive database to which software publishers can submit authentic software. But it's available only to "a very large software development company" (boldface in original), and the article gives no guidance for smaller free software projects, such as assemblers targeting retro consoles, to find and choose "a very large software development company" to sponsor their projects. The only way forward I can see is Symantec's own false positive submission page.

KENTUCKYx: When is the "WS.Reputation.1" getting triggered?

A1 - When downloading or uploading a file
A2 - While using an application
A3 - When installing an application
A4 - When browsing the web
A5 - During a scheduled scan, or during a scan I requested
A6 - When sending or receiving email
A7 - While writing or reading files to/from a storage device
A8 - Don't know, am unsure, or the options provided do not apply

Re: Completely new to this, just saying hI.

Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 6:36 am
by KENTUCKYx
tepples, it’s on download when extracting the the .zip. Everything moves to the directory I set however the .exe file comes in at 0kb. Don’t know why I didn’t look up the meaning of the warning message myself, scared I guess. Also being overly cautious. It’s a new rig and until this point haven’t done anything else really but steam. After reading the description you posted I feel much better about it. I mean a lot of you all are using it, downloaded from the same place I am trying to get it.

Thanks for the help! I’ll google how to restore files from quarantine and should be good to go.