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2 minutes ago, Gloves said:

If you're going to add such distinction, for interests' sake, I'd say let's toss on the tools used for as many games as possible

Well, I'd be totally down with that if the information was available. That said, there's a big difference between the tool used, and the content included.  An audio engine, or shiru's neslib is a much closer comparison -- those end up as part of your game.  NESmaker is both a tool and an engine.  Nesmaker the engine is like neslib or famitone.  NESMaker the tool is like vim, sublime, or Mesen.   Mixing tools and content is confusing and not as helpful.
 

2 minutes ago, SoleGoose said:

As for Mugi's game, we have hacks that have been completely recoded. At the end of the day, they are still hacks, it's no different (not calling it a hack either, before that gets taken out of context). Pyronaut anyone?

See, that's interesting, because I  almost mentioned that I'm just as interested in a romhack that includes a huge re-code overhaul. Sure, it's still a romhack, but as a programmer, I find Pyronaut every bit as interesting as a new homebrew.  Because I care about the programming process. Re-skin romhacks or using a level editor to rearrange the levels isn't interesting to me in the same way.

2 minutes ago, Raftronaut said:

If developed using Nesmaker code base, Graphic or audio assets then YES. 

If the developer uses Nesmaker as a spring board tool for coding a game from the ground up then NO

I somewhat agree. Longer explanation:

For a buyer/player, I don't think any distinction matters. Who cares what engine they used if the game is good?

But for me, who is interested in the development community, a distinction does matter, although I somewhat disagree with some of the arguments expressed by both Beau and Joe.

Game programming and game design are two very different things. Both are important to a good game. As a programmer, when I read about a new game,  I'm interested in the programming aspects of that game (as well as game design aspects).  Your average NESmaker game involves a lot of design, but very little game-specific programming (Sure, a lot of people copy/paste a few fixes or tweaks, but I disagree with Joe that this is the exact same thing as pulling in an audio engine.) This isn't to say that the game is worth less, or is bad. But I (as someone interested in game programming community) won't find that community engagement in the development of the game. The essence of the vast majority of NESmaker games is just game design with only minor tweaks from the standard nesmaker engine(s).

The design aspect (in contrast to the programming) can use all sorts of tools -- famitracker, screen tool, Tiled, custom tools, or NESmaker. I don't care what you use. I don't think that using NESmaker for design is what the proposed labeling is about. We all use all sorts of tools, and NESmaker is a valid choice.  Valid game design discussion and community shouldn't care about which tool was used.

So in @Mugi case, I'd suggest that leaving off the NESmaker label for this particular game is a reasonable idea. Sure, NESmaker was involved. But the game has its own significant programming involved, which interests me. But your average NESmaker game, with only small code tweaks, while still quite interesting from a game design perspective, isn't interesting from a programming perspective. And that is what the labeling would reflect to me.

So in the end, it comes down to the question: "who is this list for?"  If it's only about players or collectors, then sure, drop the label. If it's only about game design, drop it. But if it's also about nes programming community, then I appreciate knowing which games were programmed by their development team.

As an aside: Joe suggested that part of the problem is the question of where is the line between tweaking nesmaker vs developing your own engine but including bits of other code? I'm not interested in arguing about exactly where that line lies. But the fact that there's a spectrum of where it could lie does not mean that it's impossible for there to be a line.

9 minutes ago, Deadeye said:

I think this discussion is worth having, but it is growing larger than the purpose of this thread.  Can we move over to another thread topic if needed?

Agreed. I have a few thoughts also, but would rather have them in a different thread instead of derailing this one.

On 11/7/2019 at 9:44 PM, Scrobins said:

With help, we might expand to other consoles of that time period: Virtual Boy, Neo Geo, Atari Jaguar, PS1, and even the Game Gear. More daunting might be expanding to other generations to include the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision of the 2nd generation, and the Dreamcast of the 6th.

Expanding to Atari would be tons of work -- because of the ease of which bAtari Basic lets people crank out games (and the average smaller scope of an Atari game), you'd have a ton to keep up with.  New homebrews get released like crazy over there.

On 11/9/2019 at 10:00 PM, KHAN Games said:

I don't have any extra adapters, sadly. I actually have one less than I am supposed to have. Not sure what I'm going to do when that last person fills out the Kickstarter survey.

If anyone needs one, this guy sells them. They aren't super cheap, but not terrible.

https://www.raphnet-tech.com/products/snes_to_nes_cable/index.php

That's a good idea. I'll put it into my brain and let it simmer a bit.

On 11/8/2019 at 2:05 PM, SoleGoose said:

getting our stuff to a new audience will tell whether they care about what we're doing or not.

Yeah, and I don't want to sound too negative. I think it's really cool that they got published, and when it came down to it, I'd probably wish that I could do the same if I ever release a game. It just doesn't tickle my fancy the way real NES games do.

12 hours ago, WaverBoy said:

Will you be releasing a demo sometime soon?

There's a very early demo on my Bite the Chili Sampler cartridge that I mostly just sell at conventions. Beyond that, I'm not opposed to releasing a demo, although I haven't figured out quite what to do with it.  The game starts fairly slowly (with no weapons or vehicle, you have to explore to get them), so the demo would be more fun if it skipped some of that. But without the context of that initial section, I haven't figured out what would make a compelling demo.

TL;DR: maybe, I just have to decide how a demo would work.

2 hours ago, Foochie776 said:

@B.A., @doner24, @The Count, @MrClutch, @K3VBOT, @K.Thrower, @captmorgandrinker, @VGD, @SoleGoose, @Sign Collector Guy, @dewisp02, @Ferris Bueller, 

 

I know I missed a few but what a motley crew!

Pretty sure I shared a hotel room with you at MGC this year. Although I was so tired and passed out so early, I don't really know who was in our room....

They're fine. They did that early 2000's post-grunge stuff reasonably well (although I'm not a huge fan of that style).  I've never understand why they're hated though.  Probably the same people that hate Atari E.T.

1 hour ago, Orab Games said:

 I know that was an idea I had for finding a solution on how "pass" spites behind background objects in isometric environments, but that was long ago.

We're still hoping that someday you work on that thing again

I've met a bunch of you at MGC, but I don't have any idea of the mapping between who I met and your screen names. So .... I have no idea.

Excellent. The more tutorials, the better.  (As long as they're not blatantly incorrect)

I see you've asked this on both here on nesdev which means you have to deal with answers in both places

That said, are you sure it's actually running during NMI? (ie that your vblank code didn't take too long and now you're out of vblank?) Having it hit outside of vblank would cause issues similar to what you're seeing (I think)

Thanks for the positive comments, all!

I just wrote up another long rambly blog post trying to describe some of my goals in what I want the game to be like, if anyone is interested.

I think Spook-o-tron would be a good candidate, but I agree with SGP about the Incident not working.  Pure puzzle games wouldn't really be a good fit in my opinion.

Regardless, I'd love to see this happen!

On 10/29/2019 at 5:39 PM, TylerBarnes said:

How does one get the red [Homebrew] tag on topics? 

When creating the topic, there was a field to enter tags.  Then below that, there be an "item prefix" field that you can use to select one of your tags to be the primary prefix tag for the topic.

Edit:

Quote

there be an "item prefix" field

Huh, I sound like a pirate.

10 hours ago, Zezzler said:

Is it hal-see-on? hal-kai-on? hal-shun? I'm super curious.

Hal-see-on or Hal-see-en.  It means a sort of peaceful nostalgia. And it's the name of the planet you're exploring

3 hours ago, Scrobins said:

I was under the impression from Convention Quest this wouldn’t be finished until the 2030s

That gave me a laugh when I saw that in CQ. I'm just hoping he doesn't turn out to be right.

I've posted about this on Twitter a lot, but since I've never made a thread on NA....here's my current project. With art from Frankengraphics, Halcyon is a large metroidvania adventure that's supposed to be sort of a mash-up of concepts from Metroid and Blaster Master. We've been slowly working on this for about 2 years now, hopefully it will be done some time next year.

You can follow along on twitter or occasional longer posts on my blog.

1 hour ago, Code Monkey said:

Every NES game on Kickstarter since 2015 can blame this game as the sole reason I have not backed them. This game killed Kickstarter for me, I just don't trust it anymore.

And Sydney Hunter.

And Mighty No. 9.

It's totally fair not to trust Kickstarter (there isn't any guarantee about what you're going to get), but I'd suggest it makes more sense to trust or distrust a particular person/creator instead of the platform.  When Khan or @SoleGoose or @K3VBOT or @IBtiM kickstarts a game, I have confidence in that person as a member of the community that they'll deliver what they promised. But I wouldn't necessarily back something by somebody I had never heard of, or by somebody who has failed to deliver in the past.

Kickstarter is just the platform.  The people are who you are trusting (or not trusting)

Well, you guys inspired me to actually sit down and write a blog post about how I manage my asset pipeline in Halcyon.

3 hours ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

 In comparison, I do AAA level engine/graphics programming for my job (I'm new though so take this with a grain of salt) and the sheer size of the codebase makes everything more complicated. 

..... I think most of these use a stock engine so that more time can be put into design and art, but there are even exceptions to that. 

That's the trick. Using a stock engine, you could whip out a game like HH pretty quickly. The thing that makes NES games doable with a smaller team is the relative size and fewer assets and game complexity. Making those same games (with same level of expectations) on a modern platform, with an out-of-the-box engine, would be a lot easier.

Quote

Homebrew on the Switch, it's an interesting thing to think about. What are your thoughts?

I'm glad they were able to do it (seeing your game run on other platforms is always fun, and it will mean more sales for them, which is great), but conceptually, NES homebrew on the switch it isn't very interesting to me.  I don't know about this particular case, but the Steam versions of these things are usually just a bundled rom+emulator. That's not inherently any more compelling to me than using my existing emulators. (which is why I'll buy a homebrew ROM for $10 but won't buy the steam version for $10 unless the rom is easily extractable)

Haunted Halloween is a well-made game, but what makes it interesting to me is that it's a NES game. The same game on the switch or xbox doesn't add any appeal for me.

I'll pile on with the question -- are development blogs interesting to people? I used to keep more of a development blog where I'd talk about progress, but I never knew if anyone was reading it, and it was a bit of work to maintain, so I mostly stopped. Is there value in that sort of thing to people?