Streemerz NES port

thefox · Post by **thefox** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 4:03 am

Time for another boring "text only" update.

- All sound effects are now done.
- All songs are mostly done, the drums need work on some of them (like I've said, it's a bitch to translate them based on audio alone).
- On-screen timer (for time attack modes). Still needs a little bit of work.
- Changed mapper to UxROM. I can easily switch between UxROM/MMC1 with compile-time settings.
- Fixed HUD faces to not use more than 8 sprites per scanline, they look perfect now.
- Smoke objects.
- Lots of bug fixes, big and small.
- Started working on the title screen.

It should be smooth sailing from now on. The main things left to do are the title screen and the statistics screen etc when the game ends. I think it's realistic to say that the game will be out in the next couple of months.

tokumaru · Post by **tokumaru** » Mon Sep 10, 2012 6:00 am

It's amazing how you managed to stick to this project and get this far. Your updates give us an idea of how much work goes into finishing a game, and how a lot of seemingly minute things play a big part in the overall scheme of things. Can't wait to see the finished project!

thefox · Post by **thefox** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:02 pm

tokumaru wrote:It's amazing how you managed to stick to this project and get this far. Your updates give us an idea of how much work goes into finishing a game, and how a lot of seemingly minute things play a big part in the overall scheme of things. Can't wait to see the finished project!

Thanks, I'm obviously very happy that I've been able to pull through this project, it hasn't always been easy. In fact, this project has shown me why it's no surprise that so few NES projects of this scale (or bigger) get finished. Making NES games is hard! With this project I of course had the advantage of having clear, precise goals (= the Flash game), so I always knew pretty well how the project was progressing. With projects built from scratch there tends to be a lot of uncertainty, but on the other hand they have the advantage of not having to worry about adapting stuff that may not fit the target system very well (in this specific case, the 320 px horizontal resolution, the way the levels were layered, etc).

Anyway, the game is almost completely done now. All I have left is ~~high score saving~~, credits and possibly adding some logos in there before the title screen. Then I'll take some time to add more polish, and we should be done here.

Nioreh · Post by **Nioreh** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:07 pm

Totally awesome. I have been following this since the start, and enjoyed every update. Looking forward to release, even though I've played the flash game many times. I am sure there are more like me who follow it. I hope the lack of replies hasn't kept you from working on it.

I have been totally swamped at work this whole spring/summer, so I haven't had time to work on my own project. So it's always nice to check in on your progress. It keeps me motivated to finish my own game some day.

infiniteneslives · Post by **infiniteneslives** » Tue Sep 18, 2012 10:59 pm

You've definitely been an inspiration for me as well. Seeing you make solid continual progress shows what's possible in a relatively short amount of time when you keep at it.

thefox wrote: With this project I of course had the advantage of having clear, precise goals (= the Flash game)

I kinda figured this has been beneficial to you with this project. I had been considering holding off on doing much more until I fully defined my project, and your mention of it confirms my thoughts. I also like the todo app you suggested awhile back, unfortunately my lists just keep getting longer instead of things getting done, must be a bug in the app somewhere...

thefox · Post by **thefox** » Fri Sep 21, 2012 6:41 am

Thanks for all the comments.

I added high score saving, a placeholder logo before the title screen and shrunk the ROM from 256 KB (which I had been using for convenience) to 128 KB. I noticed the text scripts in their unpacked form take a lot of space, ~12 KB, but no point in trying to pack them at this point. The only thing left at this point is a credits scroller (and to actually figure out what to put in the credits...).

I also sent Arthur Lee (author of the Flash version) an email, hopefully I can get in contact with him to clear a couple of things up about credits, copyrights, logos and other stuff.

thefox · Post by **thefox** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 8:54 am

I've released a trailer at http://www.fauxgame.com

The game ROM itself will be released later this month.

Denine · Post by **Denine** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:08 am

Looks great!

You are really talented man, you know?
I'm looking forward it.

Bananmos · Post by **Bananmos** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:23 am

Ooh, I never should have watched that video... now I'll be refreshing this thread even more than usual in anticipation!

As for some tiny criticism, the 8 sprites/scanlines limit gets very obvious whenever you are at the same height as the score counters in that trailer. I hope OAM cycling is part of the final polishing? Or you'd probably even prefer to have the score disappear completely rather than the player/obstacles flickering too much...

Other than that, it looks/sounds just as cool as I hoped! Big congrats on sticking with this project!!

Shiru · Post by **Shiru** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:45 am

Looks really good, a serious thing.

infiniteneslives · Post by **infiniteneslives** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 11:54 am

Are there any plans to publish this? I'd like to support the cause and buy a copy if possible. I'm guessing there is some grey area on rights to the material and such though? I just dislike the idea of how all the greedy/pirate reproshops are going to make a killing off your work... Might be a good selling point for the compo carts should they ever get published, but Tepples would have to move away from BNROM I guess.

rainwarrior · Post by **rainwarrior** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 1:28 pm

Looking good!

As far as rights to the material, I think thefox is relatively safe. The ideas taken from the original game are things that likely aren't copyrightable; does it go any farther than rope-shooting gameplay element, and the presence of clowns?

The title itself could be a problem if Active Enterprises was maintaining some sort of trademark on it, but given that they don't seem to have done anything with it in 20 years, that's probably not the case.

Jeroen · Post by **Jeroen** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 4:00 pm

Thefox...all I can say is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XX-QV-bXRc

Really wanna play this and compare it to the flash version.

Post by **tepples** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 4:24 pm

rainwarrior wrote:The ideas taken from the original game are things that likely aren't copyrightable; does it go any farther than rope-shooting gameplay element

Which itself is taken from Konami's Roc'n Rope.

As for the mapper, would it be real hard to convert the code from UNROM (which has a fixed bank) to BNROM (which doesn't)? I can embed a BNROM in a BNROM.

infiniteneslives · Post by **infiniteneslives** » Mon Oct 01, 2012 5:09 pm

tepples wrote:I can embed a BNROM in a BNROM.

I understand the dynamics, did you mean to say BNROM inside a UNROM? Because that was more along the the lines of what i was thinking.

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Streemerz NES port

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