Homebrew complexity

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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rainwarrior
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by rainwarrior »

fishybawb wrote:And to anyone criticising someone else's work - put up, or shut up.
I don't see why these need to be exclusive. A non-artist might have something valuable to say about art, and an artist might have nothing to say. Criticism and art are two completely different acts, and both have their place.

Criticism often comes very cheap, so there's a lot of it, and a lot of it is bad. There's a lot of bad art, too (which might be why we need criticism ;P ) but at least the effort required to make it keeps the volume down.

I don't really see bad criticism as much of a problem. It doesn't carry much weight unless it's meaningful. If idle shitty criticism has the power to stop you from making art, you're not going to get very far as an artist. Maybe it's an annoyance, but making art requires dealing with far more frustration than meaningless chatter should be able to give you.
fishybawb
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by fishybawb »

rainwarrior wrote:I don't really see bad criticism as much of a problem. It doesn't carry much weight unless it's meaningful. If idle shitty criticism has the power to stop you from making art, you're not going to get very far as an artist. Maybe it's an annoyance, but making art requires dealing with far more frustration than meaningless chatter should be able to give you.
That's true, you certainly need some drive as well as tolerance for frustration to achieve pretty much anything. I think that criticisms aimed at things like what assembler is used, whether you do things in the "right way", and how you choose to distribute your game (I can provide links to threads dealing with these topics if you really need them), aren't helpful to most, and certainly not to the newbie who is generally already overwhelmed with information and still struggling to get something on the screen, never mind concern themselves with what are essentially optimisations.

For this hypothetical person just trying to make a basic first game, being told they should immediately jump in to using CC65, structure their program in such-or-such a way, or experienced developers being told flat out that their game is too simplistic given the current technical knowledge available is really discouraging. That the demands/advice frequently come from people who clearly have immense technical knowledge, but apparently haven't actually released a game or even demo themselves strikes me as unhelpful.

I apologise if I'm out of line in any way, I really don't want to be a dick. You are of course free to disagree with that assessment of me :)
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darryl.revok
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by darryl.revok »

Lol. I actually just posted a reference to you in another thread.

I don't necessarily disagree with the general sentiment of your statement. One thing that I'll say is that I don't think steering people away from NESASM is a bad thing. Once you build your code it in, it's hard to change later, and it's no harder to learn a different assembler from the start. Some of the information and tutorials that are available to beginners are outdated, therefore a lot of people find it pertinent to make sure to let a beginner know better options before they begin reinforcing certain habits. NESASM is just peculiar and cumbersome. I've talked to people that use it that say, "Don't start!" It's like cigarettes.

I remember reading a thread one time that said something along the lines of "CA65 is the professional choice!" and maybe that's what you're talking about. That is silly, but probably an extreme example. ASM6 is good, in my opinion. But I am a noob. If somebody who's been here longer than me says CA65 is better, they're probably right. Although I'm pretty sure ASM6 is also a good choice.

As for steering people on program structure, that's a case by case basis. Somebody could be doing something that's essentially wrong for one reason or another. Maybe their current choice is non-optimal or will cause problems down the road. It's hard to see without reading the particular thread, and you don't need to post that for me, I mean, I understand what you're getting at. There are people here who know WAY more about NES than I do, and when these people are sharing ideas, sometimes it's probably easy to tangent away from what the beginner needs. Maybe the OP should bring the thread back on track if he's lost? I dunno.

I love this forum but I think I know what you're getting at. I'd love to see more people coming to the thread and more active involvement that leads to games.
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Myask
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by Myask »

Funny thing, my current project (which I've been too busy for and probably will be until December if I don't "make time") is creating the simplest game possible. [edit:...with hex editing.]
Last edited by Myask on Thu Oct 29, 2015 5:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
tepples
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by tepples »

darryl.revok wrote:I don't think steering people away from NESASM is a bad thing. Once you build your code it in, it's hard to change later
Unless you build a NESASM-to-ca65 translator like I did for a few of the games in Action 53. I think it's in the source archive for the LAN Master/Munchie Attack bank in volume 1.
and it's no harder to learn a different assembler from the start.
Unless you have to learn both the assembler and the linker.
I remember reading a thread one time that said something along the lines of "CA65 is the professional choice!" and maybe that's what you're talking about. That is silly, but probably an extreme example. ASM6 is good, in my opinion. But I am a noob. If somebody who's been here longer than me says CA65 is better, they're probably right. Although I'm pretty sure ASM6 is also a good choice.
Both are good choices, but ca65 has somewhat of an edge on larger scale projects. But I can't speak from firsthand experience on both sides, as I've never used ASM6 for anything as extensive as Haunted: Halloween '85, which incidentally solved the problem of this thread by having a paid artist.
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Drew Sebastino
Formerly Espozo
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by Drew Sebastino »

I don't know about NES assemblers, but for the SNES, I'd wholeheartedly recommend ca65 over anything else.
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dougeff
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by dougeff »

I agree with Espozo. Once i learned to use cc65/ca65 for NES, it was an easy transition to use it for SNES. Granted, I've only made a lousy 'hello world' for SNES so far, but it's not the assembers fault... I would highly recommend ca65 (though i wish the tutorials were better). (I've even toyed with the idea of rewriting Nerdy Nights entirely in cc65 to encourage more people to get into NES programming).

[Note: The project I'm currently working on uses asm6, to be completely honest]
nesdoug.com -- blog/tutorial on programming for the NES
slobu
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Re: Homebrew complexity

Post by slobu »

I've developed over a dozen Atari 2600 homebrew and just finished my first sega genesis title.

I decided to use the same design as a previous 2600 title in my new genesis game. What took me about a month on the 2600 took over 6 months on the genny. There was some learning time involved with a new compiler but most of the work was in sound and graphics.

I can't imagine going with low level tools along side the multimedia expectations of most gamers. It's a minor miracle that tepples was able to pull off a one screen puzzler.
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