New to NES development and stumped

Discuss technical or other issues relating to programming the Nintendo Entertainment System, Famicom, or compatible systems. See the NESdev wiki for more information.

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Memblers
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by Memblers »

AiNaKa wrote:
Memblers wrote:Welcome. Have you viewed this thread? It's not totally comprehensive, but might help you get started.
https://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=3783

ANSI C is fully supported by the cc65 compiler. Other languages seem to be pretty much experimental. Quite a few games were made with the NBASIC compiler as well, but not anything recently AFAIK.

I would recommend trying NESICIDE. It will work for assembly or C. If you can get it to build one of the example projects, you can start from there.
I may just stick with cc65/ca65. I just want to know how it's supposed to work though? Like how do I get it to compile code I've written? How do I write the code?
NESICIDE is pretty much an IDE for cc65/ca65. But with stuff like NES emulation, being able to step through execution of the source code, stuff like that. In that case, there is a command in the UI to compile it.
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by Pokun »

I also recommend to follow the Nerdy Nights tutorials so you learn the basics, and don't worry too much about the assembler at this time. Learning some nesasm doesn't hurt at all and the Nerdy Nights examples are available in an asm6 version if you dig around Nesdev forums. That should help you to convert to the much more popular asm6 if you want. I also recommend Tokumaru's asm6 templates in that case. This is the way I learned NES assembly, and I didn't have much programming knowledge either when I started.

As for ca65, it will take some more work as it's a bit less newbie-friendly than nesasm and asm6. But if you are interested once you are more advanced I recommend Rainwarrior's example.
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by toggle switch »

i strongly strongly suggest NESICIDE. you'll still be coding in CA65, but - it has a code editor, a compiler, and an emulator built into one program.

soo, you just write your code, press the compile button, then press another button to load the program into your emulator, and then you can test your code, all in the same program. additionally you can places stops in your code and examine the various register values and so forth at any point in your program.

i was ready to give up trying to program NES games when i found it. and now i'm close to releasing a full-length game.

the one issue i have with it is that the documentation is pretty poor, but you can ask any questions about it here and get help, so not a huge deal. when our game is finished i am thinking about doing a few video tutorials on it.
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cpow
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by cpow »

toggle switch wrote:the one issue i have with it is that the documentation is pretty poor, but you can ask any questions about it here and get help, so not a huge deal. when our game is finished i am thinking about doing a few video tutorials on it.
My main problem with documentation, and why mine is so poor, is I never feel I'm at a point where stopping to take screenshots of the UI to explain things is going to be representative of the actual state one sees when running the program. I *hate* documentation showing outdated screenshots of a UI that you are forced to assume "Blend the flibulator" checkbox is equivalent to "Mix" option in a "Flibulator" combo box. This has been a gravity well for me for decades, not just with nesicide.

Video tutorials would be awesome...if I had *any* confidence in my own video production or narration skills. I would *love* to do some ElectroBoom-ish nesicide videos...ha.
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by pwnskar »

cpow wrote:
toggle switch wrote:the one issue i have with it is that the documentation is pretty poor, but you can ask any questions about it here and get help, so not a huge deal. when our game is finished i am thinking about doing a few video tutorials on it.
My main problem with documentation, and why mine is so poor, is I never feel I'm at a point where stopping to take screenshots of the UI to explain things is going to be representative of the actual state one sees when running the program. I *hate* documentation showing outdated screenshots of a UI that you are forced to assume "Blend the flibulator" checkbox is equivalent to "Mix" option in a "Flibulator" combo box. This has been a gravity well for me for decades, not just with nesicide.

Video tutorials would be awesome...if I had *any* confidence in my own video production or narration skills. I would *love* to do some ElectroBoom-ish nesicide videos...ha.
You would have to keep the documentation updated anyway, screenshot/videos or not, right? Also, an outdated picture is better than none, as long as you state what version of the software the documentation is for. :)

Btw, I've never tried NESICIDE but hearing about the ability to set breakpoints in code and not just the compiled result makes me very interested to check it out! :beer:
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by cpow »

pwnskar wrote:You would have to keep the documentation updated anyway, screenshot/videos or not, right? Also, an outdated picture is better than none, as long as you state what version of the software the documentation is for. :)
Right. Like I said, it's a gravity well. I can't even gather energy to get started on it. Updating it is a distant nightmare. I realize this is not user friendly behavior and likely driving people to other tools like NES Maker. I can't compete with their production quality / promotion skillz. But I also don't want to charge $36 a copy either...I have two day jobs already!
pwnskar wrote:Btw, I've never tried NESICIDE but hearing about the ability to set breakpoints in code and not just the compiled result makes me very interested to check it out! :beer:
I am trying to make it easier to try...by providing builds...but even that has its own 'YMMV' caveat. :beer:
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by Mugi »

AiNaKa wrote:
Banshaku wrote: I'm not interested in nes maker. I don't know how it actually works, but I just saw "no coding required", so I'm assuming I can't actually do a lot of the things I actually want to do.
I'd like to point out the thing about nesmaker is that the whole "no coding required" is just a phrase, which, while true, is not really the full story.

NESmaker is basically an UI Tool that manages the game engine below it, which is written in assembly, and while you CAN make a game just by creating graphics and arranging the premade pieces
of assembly provided by the engine, this is something that is entirely optional.

the assemblies of nesmaker's engine are plain .asm files and they are modifyable and compilable just fine without nesmaker itself.
It's a really good tool to act as a stepping stone in learning assembly as you can simply use the engine and then start slowly modifying the scripts it provides to make the engine do things you
wish it to do.

Nesmaker was my first touch to 6502 (started couple months ago) and at this point i have almost completely abandoned the tool in favor of continuing to develop my game, as the limitations of the
tool came hard against me. As such, i set the tool aside and continued to write the code in notepad.

I highly recommend that you take a little deeper look into it before completely disregarding it as an option to get into nes development.
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Re: New to NES development and stumped

Post by pwnskar »

cpow wrote:I have two day jobs already!
Sorry to hear about it, man! Sounds rough.
I hope my comment didn't come across as arrogant or anything. I'm super grateful for people like you who create and share tools like this and I don't want to give any other impression than that. :)
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