NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

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Oziphantom
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by Oziphantom »

rainwarrior wrote:I don't think it was a misinterpretation, really, but people are saying a lot of different things about it at once. Looking back in the thread, the specific suggestion seems to have started as "engines like Unity and Gamemaker do this..." but everyone's got a slightly different angle on it. Maybe nobody was saying that specifically...

I just think it's absurd if you try to think about Unity forcing a splash screen on their users if they thought it was supposed to mark low quality games. That would be insane. Conversely it seems equally absurd to me to request that NES Maker have a splash screen for that purpose.

Unity puts splash screens on their games to advertise their product. Also their engine is free to try, and you can buy a license to be able to replace that splash screen. (Costs a lot more than $30, BTW.) I think the advertisement is a good reason for NES Maker to have one by default. Someone who feels that they are a brand worth supporting may want to leave it in. This can also cultivate a sense of community around it. I think a splash screen is a good idea, here.

On the other hand, if you believe NES Maker will only produce crap games that need to be marked and identified, you're clearly not interested in buying or using it, and catering to you isn't going to help their project or community, as far as I can tell. At least, that's how I'd view such a request if it were me.

(So maybe the splash screen issue itself is a red herring, but this thought applies to any similar request.)
You kind of point out the issue and reason in your post.
So Unity is Free, with a Splash Screen. This means that for the "free" you "advertise" the product.
For a fee you remove the splash, this makes people want to buy your product, so you get more money.
If you think your game is not worth paying the money to remove the splash then it means you know your game sucks. Hence its shovel wear . By paying to remove the splash it shows you think you game is good enough to sell to cover the cost of the engine. Having the Splash seen as bad, is good for Unity because it means no game maker who wants to sell something will actually sell their game on the "Free" version and Unity get more money.
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rainwarrior
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by rainwarrior »

Well, I don't agree, but I don't really want to argue about it further.

Presuming that premise was true, though, it doesn't seem relevant to NES Maker, which has no free version.
tepples
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by tepples »

Perhaps it's more relevant to The Games Factory, which has (had?) a paid edition for hobbyists (with a noncommercial license and a splash screen on exit stating so) and a more expensive professional version (with a commercial license and no splash).
8bitMicroGuy
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by 8bitMicroGuy »

rainwarrior wrote:Well, I don't agree, but I don't really want to argue about it further.

Presuming that premise was true, though, it doesn't seem relevant to NES Maker, which has no free version.
Wait. NESmaker will have a splash screen AND it won't be free!? Ouch... That's the most unfortunate combination.
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by infiniteneslives »

No one here knows if there will be a splash screen... The creators NEVER mentioned anything about there being one.

We've just got on this silly side tangent for probably too long now discussing how we think there should or shouldn't be one present. It's obviously completely up to the NESmaker creators..
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by nesrocks »

The games made with NESmaker are fully editable by ASM, Joe said it many times, so I don't think a forced splash screen would make sense. Not to mention that it would be easy to hack your own game to remove it.
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lidnariq
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by lidnariq »

I do think that pre-providing a splash screen would be a nice thing to let people opt in to. Sorta like the various middleware splash screens you get on some games (although there it was clearly a term of the licensing).

Get something that looks nice and let people's works choose to wear it as a badge of pride, if they want.
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by FrankenGraphics »

Seconding what lidnariq said.

If it's there but easy to omit even for someone with limited or no prior programming experience, it might even be a rallying point for the nesmaker community.
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by Bananmos »

So I tried the HiDef NES, and it *mostly* runs ok when using the usb tool.

And it seems to work fine. Oddly enough, it did freeze on me once after I died. But I couldn't reproduce this, so for the moment I assume it's buggy code, or some intermittent connector glitch.

So no clues as to why it doesn't work on the AVS. MistSonata: Did you have success trying the newer firmware for the AVS? I don't have any direct plans to buy an AVS in the near future, so there's not much I can do to test it. But it would be nice if we could figure out what the problem is.
vasovez
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by vasovez »

Hello, I'm a complete newbie to NES Dev (my first post here), and it was with excitement I found out about NesMaker. As the entry level to development is much easier. Thank you, Joe, for your efforts and great set of tools.

I was a bit surprised, after getting such a overwhelming support from the community ($250k through KickStarter), that the tool wasn't made free (for non commercial projects at least), even when the campaign got more than 2x what it pledged for -- we all have to pay our bills though. Releasing it as open source, some might argue, be even better to it's development and spread usage across devs. We have to respect the creator's decisions and be grateful that such a tool exist. Although, I saw it's real strength in the hardware kit (burn your own cartridge) and I was tempted to buy it.

It's hard to crack NesDev and this tool seems to be a great resource.

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Bananmos
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by Bananmos »

Although, I saw it's real strength in the hardware kit (burn your own cartridge)
I find this statement really odd. The "hardware kit" looks like a really slow&painful process to test your stuff on the real thing, and it will obviously only work with Mapper30 games (and perhaps other boards that happen to use FlashROM).

Really, if your main concern is running your code on a real device, you'd be far better off with a Powerpak or Everdrive.

For the Powerpak, TheFox has created the pc2nes program which allows loading you .NES file onto it quickly, as long as you make a USB-joypad cable. (which is a simple soldering job, just cutting up a NES joypad cable and a USB-to-serial cable)

For the Everdrive it's even better: You can get the Everdrive with a USB port on it (though this isn't included on the board by default - I specifically asked Krikzz when ordering mine). Krikzz provides an uploading program for this, which means even faster uploads testing than on the Powerpak for big ROMs.

For repeated testing on a real device, the ability to just run a PC program really helps development. The only annoying thing is having to stretch my arm to reset the NES manually between tests... but that's still nothing compared to having to transfer the cartridge between the kazzoo/NES, and dealing with a possible glitchy connector in the process. :)

Sure, the Powerpak/Everdrive are a bit more expensive than a Kazoo+Mapper30 cartridge, but not unaffordable. And they support loads of mappers and not just one. I backed NESmaker without any of the hardware, since I may only need Mapper30 programming ability when/if I create something with NESmaker worth replicating to multiple carts to sell/give away...
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by tepples »

Bananmos wrote:Really, if your main concern is running your code on a real device, you'd be far better off with a Powerpak or Everdrive.
Up to a point. To my knowledge, the PowerPak doesn't support writing back to flash for save, nor PRG ROM larger than 512 KiB.
Bananmos wrote:For the Powerpak, TheFox has created the pc2nes program which allows loading you .NES file onto it quickly, as long as you make a USB-joypad cable. (which is a simple soldering job, just cutting up a NES joypad cable and a USB-to-serial cable)
For some, the word "soldering job" itself rules out "simple".
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by Bananmos »

Up to a point. To my knowledge, the PowerPak doesn't support writing back to flash for save,
I think this would be doable for the Powerpak, as the source for the S.MAP file is available for patching. But there's not much point in doing this before we have any NES software that supports saving to flash.

For the Everdrive we'd need Krikzz to update the OS. But again, not much point until there's software that writes to flash.
nor PRG ROM larger than 512 KiB.
Neither does the Mapper30 cartridge bundled with NESmaker. You'd need to get some other flash-based cartridge if you need such a large size, and I know of none for sale ATM.
For some, the word "soldering job" itself rules out "simple".
Then you pay someone else to do it for you. Should still come out way cheaper than the $52 the Kazzoo+blank Mapper30 cartridge costs.
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by tepples »

Bananmos wrote:I think this would be doable for the Powerpak, as the source for the S.MAP file is available for patching. But there's not much point in doing this before we have any NES software that supports saving to flash.
Doesn't Study Hall use the self-flashable configuration? Or do you specifically mean free-to-download NES software supporting self-flashable mapper 30? If the latter, then someone's going to have to buy the Kazzo and rewritable cartridge just to be able to test a test ROM.
Bananmos wrote:
nor PRG ROM larger than 512 KiB.
Neither does the Mapper30 cartridge bundled with NESmaker.
Correct. I was momentarily thinking of another project I'm currently attached to, which uses mapper 28 instead of 30.
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rainwarrior
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Re: NESMaker Kickstarter - Make NES games without coding

Post by rainwarrior »

tepples wrote:Doesn't Study Hall use the self-flashable configuration? Or do you specifically mean free-to-download NES software supporting self-flashable mapper 30? If the latter, then someone's going to have to buy the Kazzo and rewritable cartridge just to be able to test a test ROM.
Unless I'm mistaken a kazzo + mapper 30 flash board is cheaper than either an everdrive or powerpak, so I don't know what comparison you're making here. Yes someone has to have some kind of hardware to do a hardware test. What is the complaint for?

The free test option is emulators. (Is relying on a PowerPak or Everdrive emulation of flash ROM behaviour really any better than an emulator? IMO the tricky stuff about flash is things like variable clear times, which you probably should verify on real flash.)

Also re: 512k mapper 30 can't support more than this, the registers are fully packed. That's the limit of the mapper.
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