Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Discuss emulation of the Nintendo Entertainment System and Famicom.

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Macbee
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Macbee »

Tygerbug wrote:This is a great project. I hope that artists become interested in creating HD remakes, like Marcelo Barbosa has done for Alex Kidd in Miracle World using HiSMS.

The sprite sheets for Super Mario Bros are fairly simple, so it's not an overwhelming project for an artist. Kung Fu and other early NES releases are the same way. And the characters of NES games tend to have very simple animation in general.

I'd love to take a closer look, but I can't get either HDNes or HiSMS working on my Mac using Wine. I believe that HiSMS doesn't work because it uses Direct3D 7 (rather than 8 or so). Not sure about HDNes.

Perhaps you could post a ZIP of graphics from an NES game, as ripped by HDNes, along with any remade graphics you've done?

I can see artists trying graphic packs for Super Mario Bros resembling New Super Mario Bros, Paper Mario or an animated style.

There is a lot of potential for 8-bit remakes. Consider:
Thanks for mentioning my work, Tygerbug!
Last time I tried HDNes it was very complicated to me - but I'm still very interested in making a NES -> HD hack someday.
Tygerbug
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

Your work on Alex Kidd is gorgeous, Marcelo, as is all the other stuff at your blog.

I'd love to see you tackle other games from an art standpoint. Perhaps you could ignore HDNes for now and just work from Spriters Resource sprite sheets, enlarged to 4x. Once the art exists - that's the hard part - mkwong or someone else could implement it.

I've been considering doing some sprite work in Super Mario Bros X format if I can ever find the time. That does allow for 2X detail but that's about it.

An HD remake needs a good artist. I'd be very interested in seeing what people could come up with for SMB1. A New Super Mario Bros style would be fun -

Image

But really I'd love a classic 90s animated style:

Image

Paper Mario would work too - and use existing sprites for the most part.


I wonder which Master System games would be worth remaking. I did have a Game Gear but I'm not familiar with the SMS for the most part. I can think of plenty of NES games though!

Here's someone's SMS list:

http://www.retro-sanctuary.com/TOP%2010 ... e%205.html
http://www.retro-sanctuary.com/TOP%2010 ... e%204.html
http://www.retro-sanctuary.com/TOP%2010 ... e%203.html
http://www.retro-sanctuary.com/TOP%2010 ... e%202.html
http://www.retro-sanctuary.com/TOP%2010 ... e%201.html
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Macbee
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Macbee »

Tygerbug wrote:Your work on Alex Kidd is gorgeous, Marcelo, as is all the other stuff at your blog.
Thank you very much! The majority of my blog entries (NES remakes/demakes) are only possible due to thefox's "Nes Image Converter" program.
Tygerbug wrote:I'd love to see you tackle other games from an art standpoint. Perhaps you could ignore HDNes for now and just work from Spriters Resource sprite sheets, enlarged to 4x. Once the art exists - that's the hard part - mkwong or someone else could implement it.
I also believe that it would be nice to use HD sprites on a brand new game (optimized for modern systems).
I'd like to reuse my Alex Kidd sprites on an improved port (for Android or Windows). But it demands time and hard work - and since I don't have their rights / licenses it would be sort of useless.
Tygerbug wrote:I've been considering doing some sprite work in Super Mario Bros X format if I can ever find the time. That does allow for 2X detail but that's about it.
Nice! If you create these graphics please post them here.
Tygerbug wrote:An HD remake needs a good artist. I'd be very interested in seeing what people could come up with for SMB1. A New Super Mario Bros style would be fun -

But really I'd love a classic 90s animated style:
I also would choose the 80s/early 90s cartoon style. I personally don't like the CG art used since Super Mario 64 to present day.

JinnDEvil created awesome SMB1 pixel art sometime ago. I guess you'll like it: http://jinndevil.tumblr.com/post/542869 ... io-bros-on
Tygerbug wrote: I wonder which Master System games would be worth remaking. I did have a Game Gear but I'm not familiar with the SMS for the most part. I can think of plenty of NES games though!
I'd like to change small, simple games like Teddy Boy and exclusive (for SMS and GG) platformers like Land of Illusion and Deep Duck Trouble. By the way it's possible to change Game Gear games to High Resolution with HiSMS.
Tygerbug
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

Nice. I know that Castle of Illusion for Genesis/Mega Drive was remade in HD / 3D recently at least.

Disney games set the bar pretty high in terms of what the characters absolutely have to look like ...

Image

http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_g ... dimecaper/

Image
mkwong98
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by mkwong98 »

Thanks for sharing! I'm particularly impressed by the first Ninja Gaiden image. If anyone is interested, I can share my works on the two games. But I don't want to post them here because they are not related to making an emulator.
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Macbee »

mkwong98 wrote:Thanks for sharing! I'm particularly impressed by the first Ninja Gaiden image. If anyone is interested, I can share my works on the two games. But I don't want to post them here because they are not related to making an emulator.
Please share your works. Maybe we should create another topic (to talk specifically about HD graphic hacks).
Tygerbug
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

Please do share - here or elsewhere. Since I can't run HDNes on my Mac, I'd love to see what format it rips games in, and what that image data ends up looking like - to see what it would be like to work with that material. How about the Super Mario Bros rip at least?
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

LinkofAwesome's 2x designs:

Image
tepples
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by tepples »

How hard would it be to do either of these?
  1. Watch bytes in RAM to determine a character's state, so that Mario uses different frames in a walk or run.
  2. Watch bytes in RAM and allow expansion of looping sequences, so that a fundamentally nonsensical 3-frame walk cycle repeating the same side over and over can be expanded further to a 6-frame walk: 3 frames for the left foot and 3 frames for the right.
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

More animations from Alexdraws ...
Image
Image
Image
Tygerbug
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

Here's a nice Mario from Yoshi's Cookie on the Gamecube.
http://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/12228/

And Yoshi, plus some enemies and Toad:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/12230/

Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/gamecube/pmttyd/

3D models from Mario Party 8:
http://www.models-resource.com/wii/marioparty8/

Golf:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_b ... eet/12301/

Picross:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/fullview/60524/

Pinball:
http://www.spriters-resource.com/game_b ... heet/8121/



It's nice that people are ripping the actual 3D models from Wii, Gamecube and other systems, and animating with them. An 8-bit remake could look very slick with renders like that! Which could also be taken from the newer-gen games themselves. I spotted models from Bubble Bobble, Adventure Island and so on - since those have been remade.

I did some quick tests trying to rig Birdo and Waluigi in Poser. Not my strong suit!
Tygerbug
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

Yeah, might be best to move a discussion of graphics elsewhere.

http://jinndevil.tumblr.com/post/542869 ... io-bros-on
Last edited by Tygerbug on Fri May 02, 2014 12:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mkwong98
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by mkwong98 »

tepples wrote:How hard would it be to do either of these?
  1. Watch bytes in RAM to determine a character's state, so that Mario uses different frames in a walk or run.
  2. Watch bytes in RAM and allow expansion of looping sequences, so that a fundamentally nonsensical 3-frame walk cycle repeating the same side over and over can be expanded further to a 6-frame walk: 3 frames for the left foot and 3 frames for the right.
It won't be too difficult to do "a" and I think I may do that after I improve the speed of the emulator. Currently it slows down if there are many different tiles on the screen. "b" will be much harder to do because a tile in one frame isn't directly linked to the one in the next frame. Besides that, defining animation frames is not a simple task and so the GUI will need a lot of work too.
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by tepples »

Watch bytes that control animation cycling, and whenever a certain byte (representing frame number) decreases, switch a certain tile range to a different bank of high definition tiles. Thus you'd end up with one bank for "taking a step with the left foot" and another for "taking a step with the right foot".
Tygerbug
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Re: Please try my NES emulator HDNes

Post by Tygerbug »

[Sorry - more graphics discussion - I should start a different thread for this.]

A couple people are interested in having a look at the sprites for Super Mario Bros, as HDNes ripped them.

Posing 3D models correctly to match the NES sprite sheets of certain games would be interesting. There's plenty of material available - The 3D character models from many video games have been ripped, and other 3D models created by artists. I'm on Mac, so my options are often limited, and I'm not a 3D animator but I do know Poser very well, at least. I did some quick tests last night rigging up Waluigi and Birdo - sort of a mess, but just quick tests anyway.

A lot of videogame models are available for XNALara, aka XNA Posing Studio, and they come fully rigged. I tried out an attempted Mac equivalent called GLLara, but it crashed constantly and was difficult to pose with. Even so, I was able to do a little posing with Ryu Hasabusa (DOA5/Ninja Gaiden), The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, various Mario characters, and so on.

At times like this it's a pain to be on a Mac, since so much software (especially indie software) doesn't work on it, or work correctly. Oh well.

I've just drawn some new sprites for an NES game - I'll ink and share those when I can.
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