nesdev.com

Figured I'd post some of the stuff I've been doing here periodically.



This is from Isolation, a homebrew NES point-and-click adventure that I'm working on with KHAN Games. (Short in-progress video of gameplay here.

In it, the player guides Taewon, a South Korean teenager who awakens to his city mysteriously abandoned.

I'll post some more work here as time goes by, including, hopefully, some Pyronaut updates soon.

In the meantime, you can check some of my other graphics work at: http://www.mteegfx.com/tagged/graphics

_________________
www.mteegfx.com

Looks good.

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

Will the point-and-click adventure feature SNES mouse support?

Dunno, mate. Not my call. I'll chime in if I hear one way or another.

@dougeff
Thanks. Put a lot of work into establishing the exact style and layout for the graphics.

As for process, I start on custom-designed graph paper, build in Photoshop, import to NES Screen Tool to generate nametables and attribute tables (used to do it by hand using Photoshop actions, this program saves so much of that work) l use yy-chr to manage my CHR files, and use Photoshop actions to build sprite charts that are passed along for coding.

_________________
www.mteegfx.com

I'm always surprised how often people bring up SNES mouse support for NES games. How many people actually have these, and why? Has anyone besides tepples ever written NES software that can use it? Does a commercially available SNES to NES adapter even exist?

SNES mouse came with Mario Paint. One website says a million copies of Mario Paint were sold. There are a million mouses [mice ?] out there. I have one.

SNES to NES adapter? I don't know.

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

Sliding Blaster by NovaSquirrel, but that might not count because we're cousins.


The adapter I received from Paul at Infinite NES Lives was a one-off. But the FC Twin famiclone can use the mouse.


Yet I see copies of Mario Paint at pawn shops and other classic game shops with no mouse.

tpw_rules was working on an adapter to translate PS/2 mouse protocol to Super NES Mouse protocol, allowing use of the PS/2 mice that are plentiful in Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. But he got sidetracked by other features to be added (especially PS/2 keyboard support) plus a killer app for that feature (a Z-machine interpreter) plus real life (college).

My brother and I got Mario Paint back when it came out. It was a lot of fun. In the US, Macintoshes and Amigas were not common in homes at the time, so the most complex graphic program I'd used before Mario Paint was Paintbrush on Windows 3.1. Mario Paint mixed in animation and music and had preset stamps for all kinds of Nintendo characters.

There's probably not much reason to go back and play it now, but at the time it was great.

I'd say there have got to be more copies of Mario Paint that have survived than the mice. You see a copy of Mario Paint thrown in with every lot of cheap games almost. Without the mouse, you pretty much have to give the game away to get rid of it.

I just hear point-and-click and a mouse obviously comes to mind. I think it's a cool feature that could work well with a lot of games. More games supporting it would make it more likely that emulator authors would support it which would mean more games supporting it in the future.

Mario Paint was a popular game. I had it too. I sold it a long time ago, with mouse.


FCEUX, Nestopia and Nintendulator all have "mouse" input options, though I've never experimented with what they do. Is this SNES mouse support, or some other kind of mouse?

Edit: Tried all three with Thwaite:

1. FCEUX "mouse" isn't detected by Thwaite.
2. Nestopia's "mouse" isn't detected by Thwaite.
3. Nintendulator: works.

I have one because I was making a strategy game that supports it. It's a secondary project, so only a basic engine has been completed and nothing has been publicly released.

I also use it when I play Thwaite.

Other kinds of pointing device for NES:

• Oeka Kids tablet, DA15, supported by two games
• Hori Track trackball, supported by four Famicom games. NES version was defined (and supported in Operation Wolf) but canceled.
• Subor Mouse, supported only by a pseudo-Windows 95 cartridge for an "educational" famiclone
• Power Glove, properly supported only by Super Glove Ball

I'd bet the "mouse" option in some of these emulators emulates the Subor Mouse. Had the Hori Track been released stateside, I probably would have supported it in Thwaite instead of the Super NES Mouse.

I've requested Super NES Mouse support in FCEUX; Zero Mouse has yet to reply after having added Super NES Controller support. (Which reminds me: I need to check for a new SVN build to close that bug.)

Two years ago today, I wrote about attempting to use FCEUX's mouse with Theremin: (updated nocash's domain in quote above)

Subor mouse, eh? Hmm. The "mouse.cpp" code in FCEUX is from before 2006. I looked into its implementation, it wasn't even hooked up correctly (probably hasn't worked in years). Can't tell if it agrees with that "single byte packet" version of the subor mouse in that documentation. It might.

I fixed it while I was in there, but does anyone know where to find a subor mouse test ROM?

Maybe while I'm looking at this I'll see how easy it is to add SNES Mouse.

Cursor movement feels great on the test ROM I was sent. It accelerates and decelerates smoothly, allowing both quick access to the opposite side of the screen as well as precise movement in a small area.

Anyway, here's the next screen with a scooter-in-parts on the side of the road:

_________________
www.mteegfx.com

I made an attempt to add support for it with r3215.

Seems to work fine with Thwaite, though moving the mouse off the window presents a little bit of a problem. FCEUX has no mouse-capture interface at the moment.

I noticed that Thwaite does not seem to cycle the sensitivity settings like the wiki suggests to do?