nesdev.com

I still want to have an eventual SNES version of Nova the Squirrel for its own sake, and a SNES version of the engine would come out of that as a necessity. The bigger thing is probably how much time gets spent on making it friendly, but no matter what you're going to have to get your hands dirty with assembly if you're not just building new levels. It's definitely not going to be NES Maker to any extent.

One thing that I'll have to figure out if people actually end up using my code is how to keep assets separated from code for GPL reasons, though the preferred situation would just be if everything was as open as my own game is. The most ideal solution would be if there ended up being a repository of block and sprite types, graphics and music, and other modifications/assets, where you could plug those into your game just like in SMW.

Oh, I forgot to add.

Possibly this is why Super Mario World hacking has a big following:

- Super Mario World was a popular game many people played so it has a (fan base)
- It is easy to make and play SMW hacks
- There is a website dedicated to editing the game
- There are lots of free tools and resources that anyone can use
- All of the hacks are free to play


I want to put an emphasis on the FREE aspect of this hacking scene. Everything is essentially FREE. This means that the entry bar so to speak is very low. Anyone can download the tools and get started right away. Even non-hackers can download and enjoy playing the games. Let's say that you have some kids in intermediate school (before high school) and they don't have jobs yet so they don't have much money, SMW hacking might be ideal to them. You don't need a high end computer to run the software and you don't even need to own the actual original hardware or a clone console. You can run it all with an SNES emulator on your laptop.