nesdev.com

Yeah, it is a virtual machine I wrote running my game ROM. It is not an emulator because it only works with my games. For instance it has no APU emulation, all sound engine calls are mapped to playing mp3 assets. There is no real PPU emulation either. Raster effects must be coded on a game specific basis, at a higher level possibly with shaders. There is a 6502 core. End result is I have 100% ownership of the code and need to exert only modest effort to adapt the VM to a specific game. It is written in Java using the libgdx framework, so it is deployable on Windows, Mac, Linux, android, iOS and web without modification.
It's also nice because I don't want to fully rewrite my games, I'd rather focus on new titles for the nes... I just like 6502 better than anything else in terms of pure coding enjoyment.

As a bonus, no logic is in place to simulate nes clock speed. So the CPU is way way over clocked. No slowdown or sprite scan line limit. Amusingly, the running rom must be very cleanly coded to work well. I had to fix a couple of bugs in nomolos which did not appear on the nes due to reliance on timing. I haven't found any such bugs in owlia yet so I guess I improved between the two games haha!

Thanks for the info. I guess your games had a lot of asm then?

Yeah, I code my games in pure asm with some macros of my own in ca65. I tried C for a few months and just don't enjoy using it. Nor does it seem to save time in the end.

The Legends of Owlia has been greenlit! Thanks to any fellow nesdevers who voted!

This game was lots of fun

Thanks!

Owlia's now available on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/569590

The Legends of Owlia has been released as a Free ROM download. Op updated as well.

Nice!

Thanks for sharing!

So I wonder why you decided to make 2 of your nes games free. I'm assuming its free to download, but if you still want the cart you have to pay for it.

The interesting thing about this approach is that sometimes when people play your game and they like it then they might be more inclined to get a cart. I would get a cart if anyone of these games won my heart.

No matter what though, when you release your game for free, at least the rom, your game will get a lot more exposure. More people will be playing it.

Even though I've played some of your demos, now I can really get into the game.

I'm noticing this is "Rev-B". I'm curious how this is different from that one on my cartridge copy...

At least one cart sale happened from the ROM release.

Yes indeed! Was that you?



Just a few bugfixes. In particular, there was a bug on the password screen which would actually execute garbage code. A fellow on NA actually exploited this bug to mess up settings in RAM and get various cheatcodes out of it. I fixed the bug and all the passwords that guy shared are now properly invalidated and just beep with an error. The same passwords you wrote down will work with the previous revision just as well as this one, so it really only affects people who are trying to break the game lol.



Yes, I'm basically looking for more exposure. I'm happy with the money I made on the cartridges and after nearly 10 years I think I can safely say my lifestyle isn't going to suddenly turn into running all over the country trying to make a killing on this hobby, I'm happy with it being a hobby. Honestly what brings me the most joy is knowing other people are playing and enjoying the game. So going forward I'm probably going to release each game as a kickstarter with a ROM download as a lower tier, cartridge and CIB as higher tiers, and then release the rom for free roughly a year or so after the KS.

Thank you for sharing both of them. I can't wait to see how it is compared to the demo