Why no SNES homebrew scene?

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Oziphantom
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Oziphantom »

lidnariq wrote:
Oziphantom wrote:want it because they don't know 65816 and they don't know the SNES. So hooking up a C compiler from something else that then needs you to potentially modify images formats, make modifications to the output in ASM to make it work on the SNES due to its hardware quirks.
That set of requirements is not really any different from where the NES toolchain is right now...

From experience watching people come here using C on the NES, people don't seem to be too badly chagrined about having to look at the generated asm. They just want to program C first and foremost.

It's true that it'd be nice to have something like NESst; I don't know of an analog off the top of my head.

People don't need to write their own SPC700 drivers; they just need something similar to Famitone, that can play a soundtrack and sound effects.
Took me a while but I think I've worked it out...
IMG format as in for the disks, like a D64, ADF but whatever the Apple //gs emulators use, not as in PNG, BMP, IFF

You're talking about another issue ;)
dougeff wrote:
It's true that it'd be nice to have something like NESst [for the SNES]
It's on my TODO list to make one.
I would make a plugin for Pro Motion NG, its already got a tile engine, drawing engine, animation system and basically everything in Deluxe Paint V cranked to 15. It also has the abilty to set and enforce colour limits and pallete formats. It already has the SNES limits built in. It does export GB and GBA natively but not SNES as it post dates the SNES era. It has a plugin load/save system that could be used to convert its internal data into what ever external format one needs. For me it would be the 'Pro' way to do it.
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by tepples »

93143
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by 93143 »

I've been playing a bit of New Super Mario World 2: Around The World, and it strikes me that a lot of the reason for the lack of a homebrew scene could be the Super Mario World hacking scene sucking up all the air in the room. People really did love that game that much, and the tools are just on another planet from what we have here.

Sure, the Mega Drive is easier to program and was popular in regions where more people had Amigas... but it may also be important that none of its games were quite up to the level of SMW and FFVI and Super Metroid. The NES library was less intimidating too (with the exception of SMB3, but that's one game, and it came at the end of the system's life, so it didn't define the NES in the minds of its fans). Perhaps prospective homebrewers feel more freedom to innovate on those platforms. While on the SNES side, a lot more energy goes into hacking those top-level games, because (a) more people are obsessed with them, and (b) they're hard to imagine matching or beating from scratch, so why not piggyback off one of them? (When I was considering making an RPG, the first thing that occurred to me was hacking FFVI.)

Could that be part of it? Or am I just being a fanboy?
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NOOPr
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by NOOPr »

93143 wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 6:42 am While on the SNES side, a lot more energy goes into hacking those top-level games
For my point of view, a homebrew game and a rom hacking are different beasts.
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Señor Ventura
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Señor Ventura »

93143 wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 6:42 amWhile on the SNES side, a lot more energy goes into hacking those top-level games, because (a) more people are obsessed with them, and (b) they're hard to imagine matching or beating from scratch, so why not piggyback off one of them?
Exactly this.

How can a snes BEAT this?...

Image


...from this?:

Image



All of those who had a snes know how much we desired to see games that reach the "arcade level". Probably is a kind of karma that the people who had a megadrive doesn't even think about (maybe they had their own frustations with the color or the lack of the mode 7), but in the snes side, the reaching of that "arcade thing" was the finish line.

So, yes, we all wanted top tier games, and all of this has transformed in some kind of feeling of rematch. We want a second chance!! XD
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Nikku4211
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Nikku4211 »

Yeah, it's a shame so many people want to match high SNES game expectations and thus expect other SNES homebrew games to match said expectations no matter what the homebrew developer's intention actually was.

I think we really need to think more about intention, purpose, and subtlety more than just trying to make the next big hit if we want to do more than just changing up the levels of a game we like.

I mean, I used to hack SMW myself. The reason I wanted to do so rather than making a SNES game from scratch is not because I wanted my games to actually be similar to SMW, since I actually wanted my games to be quite different.

The real reason was because SMW hacking has more helpful tools, and I was too afraid of having to do all of the dirty work of setting things up on a SNES ROM. Back in 2013 when I started making my own hacks, LibSFX didn't exist yet, so making a new SNES game from scratch was harder.

Eventually, I started getting ideas way too ambitious for a typical SMW hack. One of these ideas I actually released in 2014 to SMW(I was under the SanTsun alias at the time). The name was Patsy, it was based on a book that took place in a controversial period of US history in the 1800s, and the demo was extremely unfinished. It was so bad, someone actually reviewed it.

That's why I left SMWCentral by the time I started to learn how to make SNES demos using LibSFX, because I started to have faith in modern SNES development tools becoming more user-friendly and newproof in the near future.

While I still can't make a new game now, I at least know which track to take.

And don't ask me to remake Patsy using a custom homebrew SNES engine, please. I'm ashamed of that game and I think even the idea of it was pretty stupid.
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Señor Ventura
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Señor Ventura »

Nikku4211 wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:36 pmAnd don't ask me to remake Patsy using a custom homebrew SNES engine, please. I'm ashamed of that game and I think even the idea of it was pretty stupid.
Well, is a beginning xD

My first game was a numeric tetris, and i had to cheat with the code, THAT was a shame :lol:


I have an eye with the AoF2, is easier to improve a game already done than starting one from the beginning, but i'm stucked right now... until the whole next year probably i will can't to start learning deeply to entry in projects like that.


It doesn't need too much. The graphics are already at its biggest size due to its drawing limit per scanline:

Image


You can put bigger characters, but too many times these will reach the limit, and oftenly will surpass it, so, this size is good.

But then you have a lot of DMA free to animating those scenarios, that besides of that are too empty.

The samples could be redone, the animations could fit the number of frames of the arcade ones, the music (msu1)... and the hard part... that AI is BROKEN, the enemies doesn't jump at all except if a special movement requires it.

All of this is nearly impossible to achieve starting from zero, but hacking the rom is another history... is good that exists roms like that.
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Nikku4211
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Nikku4211 »

Señor Ventura wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:19 pm
Nikku4211 wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:36 pmAnd don't ask me to remake Patsy using a custom homebrew SNES engine, please. I'm ashamed of that game and I think even the idea of it was pretty stupid.
Well, is a beginning xD

My first game was a numeric tetris, and i had to cheat with the code, THAT was a shame :lol:
Yeah, but at least your game isn't based on a certain place and time that is pretty hard to cover properly...
I have an ASD, so empathy is not natural for me. If I hurt you, I apologise.
Oziphantom
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Oziphantom »

93143 wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 6:42 am I've been playing a bit of New Super Mario World 2: Around The World, and it strikes me that a lot of the reason for the lack of a homebrew scene could be the Super Mario World hacking scene sucking up all the air in the room. People really did love that game that much, and the tools are just on another planet from what we have here.

Sure, the Mega Drive is easier to program and was popular in regions where more people had Amigas... but it may also be important that none of its games were quite up to the level of SMW and FFVI and Super Metroid. The NES library was less intimidating too (with the exception of SMB3, but that's one game, and it came at the end of the system's life, so it didn't define the NES in the minds of its fans). Perhaps prospective homebrewers feel more freedom to innovate on those platforms. While on the SNES side, a lot more energy goes into hacking those top-level games, because (a) more people are obsessed with them, and (b) they're hard to imagine matching or beating from scratch, so why not piggyback off one of them? (When I was considering making an RPG, the first thing that occurred to me was hacking FFVI.)

Could that be part of it? Or am I just being a fanboy?
I've said it before, but I think this is a huge part of it. Why make a whole new engine when there are so many engines just sitting around that a lot of people have put a lot of time into hacking already. The SNES library is also so big that people are still translating games from back in the day. Or just fixing them, adding a tweak here and there.
tepples
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by tepples »

Oziphantom wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:19 pmWhy make a whole new engine when there are so many engines just sitting around that a lot of people have put a lot of time into hacking already.
Nintendo has been very active lately in asserting its copyrights. With an original engine, you would own the rights free and clear.
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Nikku4211
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Nikku4211 »

tepples wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:54 pm
Oziphantom wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 10:19 pmWhy make a whole new engine when there are so many engines just sitting around that a lot of people have put a lot of time into hacking already.
Nintendo has been very active lately in asserting its copyrights. With an original engine, you would own the rights free and clear.
Okay, but you can distribute your hack as a patch, so that if people download it, they will not get the original ROM, they will only get the parts that were modified, and it's up to them to find a ROM to add these modifications to.

SMWCentral has a policy that requires hacks to be distributed as patches.
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tepples
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by tepples »

Good luck moving things around in an IPS patch without reproducing substantial portions of the work in the patch.

An original engine also allows distributing your work on cartridge. Even a lock-on cartridge that implements IPS patching in hardware might incur liability under the legal theory of Micro Star v. FormGen Inc.

An original engine and original assets protect you and the players playing your work from a round of ROM hack video takedowns like what Nintendo issued in September 2015 around the release of the first Super Mario Maker.
Oziphantom
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by Oziphantom »

typically you don't move things, rather you expand the cart which since its for an emulator/flash cart is trivial to do(for 99% of games) and just dump stuff into the new area if you need to expand data areas.
psycopathicteen
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by psycopathicteen »

Señor Ventura wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 4:19 pm
Nikku4211 wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 1:36 pmAnd don't ask me to remake Patsy using a custom homebrew SNES engine, please. I'm ashamed of that game and I think even the idea of it was pretty stupid.
Well, is a beginning xD

My first game was a numeric tetris, and i had to cheat with the code, THAT was a shame :lol:


I have an eye with the AoF2, is easier to improve a game already done than starting one from the beginning, but i'm stucked right now... until the whole next year probably i will can't to start learning deeply to entry in projects like that.


It doesn't need too much. The graphics are already at its biggest size due to its drawing limit per scanline:

Image


You can put bigger characters, but too many times these will reach the limit, and oftenly will surpass it, so, this size is good.

But then you have a lot of DMA free to animating those scenarios, that besides of that are too empty.

The samples could be redone, the animations could fit the number of frames of the arcade ones, the music (msu1)... and the hard part... that AI is BROKEN, the enemies doesn't jump at all except if a special movement requires it.

All of this is nearly impossible to achieve starting from zero, but hacking the rom is another history... is good that exists roms like that.
Wait, you're hacking Art of Fighter 2 to make it look more like the original game? That's pretty impressive. How did it do the sprite scaling?
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Why no SNES homebrew scene?

Post by NovaSquirrel »

tepples wrote: Thu Nov 26, 2020 11:17 pm Good luck moving things around in an IPS patch without reproducing substantial portions of the work in the patch.
At least on SMWCentral, IPS is deprecated in favor of BPS which can move things around.
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