Nova side game for large CHR RAM mappers

NovaSquirrel · Post by **NovaSquirrel** » Sat Nov 14, 2020 6:14 pm

I wanted a side project that would present some interesting technical challenges while also not requiring as much art effort as my SNES game, so I'm working on a game similar to Nova the Squirrel 1 but without PRG RAM. Instead, I'm taking advantage of the large CHR RAM in the Action 53 mapper, UNROM 512, and GTROM. I decompress the level to CHR RAM instead of PRG RAM, keep a cache in CPU RAM, and update the cache as you scroll.

I'm intending on expanding this out into a game for an Action 53 entry (probably next year, instead of this year?), and seeing how much coolness I can pack into 64KB. It's very early in development but I wanted to show off what I've been doing regardless.

Code repository
Gif of me updating the cache as I scroll through the level