NovaSquirrel

That's fair; I usually look at everything from the perspective of just doing it all myself and learning how to do whatever I need, since that's how I do projects. And my work is all noncommercial, so my time doesn't have a price on it. I added a minimal HUD showing how many items you need to collect for the goal (and later: what items you have) and I added a fan animation so the fans actually look recognizable. I think the minimal look is kind of nice.

Yup, what I do is keep code in the upper half of each bank and execute it out of the $80-$BF mirrors. My script looks at all of the segments that are used in the game but not defined to be in a specific bank, and then finds banks where they will fit (by using od65 to figure out how big each segment is), and it creates memory areas that split banks into data sections and code sections like this: ROM1: start = $c10000, type = ro, size = $fca7, fill = yes; ROM1_code: start = $81fca7, type = ro, size = $359, fill = yes; ROM2: start = $c20000, type = ro, size = $9574, fill = yes; ROM2_code: start = $829574, type = ro, size = $6a8c, fill = yes; ROM3: start = $c30000, type = ro, size = $8837, fill = yes; ROM3_code: start = $838837, type = ro, size = $77c9, fill = yes; So if I mark segments as "put me in a LoROM area mirror" it really is like I'm programming LoROM. I'm using a technique to reduce how much CPU time that take up a little bit (have a second 512-byte buffer that can be written to with the same indexes, then combine bits afterward, skipping unused sprites), but yeah, the SNES sprite system is the biggest thing I would redo if I had the opportunity to. I'm imagining a world where they gave each sprite a whole extra byte instead of two bits, and then in addition to avoiding shifting it could contain more size bits, more tile number bits, a "affected by color math or not" bit...

That's surprising, since I would expect that you'd be able to make a DSP-1 clone for a few dollars with a cheap microcontroller, since all it does is take math commands from a hardcoded list of options and give results. I wrote a script that automatically manages the ld65 config for me, so there's no convenience downside whatsoever to using HiROM so I might as well. The main benefit I like is that, for data that can't cross bank boundaries (like anything I send through DMA) there are fewer boundaries to avoid, so things can be packed down tighter. The main problem I ran into is that building the HDMA table and calculating sprite screen positions from tilemap positions are both very expensive without DSP-1 and it's hard to have both. With the Dizworld code, you lose 60 fps the moment you combine generating the table with calculating the position for more than two sprites. So I have to make game design compromises due to that, but that's fine with me - creatively solving problems imposed by limitations is part of what makes retro console dev fun, for me. I kinda view most uses of SA-1 as a band-aid for making code run faster when you're not willing to rewrite the code or change the game design to allow for faster code. I'm sure Super Mario World's code is also a mess from what I've heard about it, especially with all the clunky stuff people have done to it to add features without rewriting chunks of the game. My game's in a different situation since I am actually writing everything with speed and my desired features in mind from the start, and I have profilers and such to help me find where I can improve things. I'm hoping that I can show that you can do cool stuff without a coprocessor, and that the SNES is plenty fast on its own. Glad you like how it looks! In earlier versions of the mode 7 levels I wasn't sure if people would like it much because it was slower paced and grid based, but I think this newer game design is a much better fit alongside the fast paced 2D platformer gameplay.

Yeah the gifs are recorded from an emulator, so they're representative of the gameplay I currently have, though this is a side thing in what's mostly a 2D platformer. I'm not using a DSP chip; I considered it, but I really want people to play my game on flash carts, and there's a big price difference between ones that don't support coprocessors and ones that do. I also just want to explore what the SNES can do on its own. That means I'm more CPU-limited than I would've been with a DSP-1, and the camera is a little more janky (due to having to use lower precision math), but it feels worth it to me. I did improve it a lot by using precalculated data for the effect when you're on the ground. I'm just planning on having the game be free, like all my other games, and I hope lots of people try it out. I also can't take credit for the perspective effect itself because that borrows a lot of code from dizworld.

There's been a whole lot of graphical improvement on the mode 7 levels! I gave the player character a lot more animation than she had before, and I added a lot of decorations, which make it feel a lot more like an actual world. Decorations always end up doing that and it's a great way to improve things without much work. From here I would like to add some sort of notice about how many items you need to collect before you can go through the goal, and I'll probably give them a more creative design than just hearts I added the ability to take blocks and slide them somewhere, which I think is how attacking enemies will work, though the focus is a lot more on platforming and exploration than on combat. On Twitter I posted a video of a good amount of gameplay with the new animations and decorations.

I'm revisiting the mode 7 minigame again because I was never really happy with slow-paced puzzles with lots of 90 degree camera turns. I based this attempt off of Rainwarrior's Dizworld demo because it also had an example of how to position sprites within the world (so I could have enemies and other things moving around on top of the plane), but I ended up really liking the way that big floaty jumps look using Dizworld's code for calculating perspective data at runtime, so I'm playing with basing the gameplay around that instead. I still want to have puzzle elements, and there's definitely some Chip's Challenge aspects still there, but I'm exploring gameplay that's more focused on air movement. I think this is actually a much better fit for the rest of the game than something really slow and restricted to a grid.

I don't think I'm really interested in doing cart releases but I appreciate there's interest

Wow, looks like I forgot to post any updates here. Years later, I'm still working on the game. There's been a lot of stuff here and there with other projects that ended up taking a lot of time (like Petal Crash Online was a huge one), but now I'm back to making it my main focus again probably? I keep trying to get back to it and focus on it but it's hard to make that stick. It's hard to summarize a few years of on-and-off game dev but I figured it'd be nice to show off a few things I have done. I spent the past while working on a new hub world map. I want a heavy story focus but I don't want it to feel clunky or forced, and something similar to what Drawn to Life for DS does felt appropriate, where you go to a map between levels with NPCs on it that you can talk to. My map is inspired by the Satellaview map and Pokémon maps primarily. I did an improved camera! It tries to minimize vertical movement by doing stuff that's similar to what Super Mario World does, but with linear interpolation in there, and I've made changes to improve it since I recorded that. I've done a lot of work with just generally adding polish, fixing bugs, adding in new enemy types and new features. There's a sword ability now! And I have an actual plan laid out for how I want the first world to flow, and my current intention is to get the first world really polished and then put out a first world demo that people can play and give feedback on. There's a bunch more changes in the NesDev thread if you want to look at those.

I'm intending on having an in-game level editor for Mode 7 levels, but also those levels are just stored as Tiled maps PC-side, so they're easy to edit.

Yeah it's pretty blatant haha. I'm intending on having a regular top-down view available for it too, for people who prefer that.

I've done a whole lot more work on the Mode 7 levels and I've implemented a lot of the mechanics I'll be needing including block pushing, an inventory, keys/locks and footwear, a free camera mode to compensate for the low screen resolution, I've attached the demo that will appear in SAGE 2020 ahead of time so you can go ahead and try it out if you want. It's a bit more presentable than previous builds I've shared, and there's some actual content to try. On the overworld map, there are three levels from Nova 1 (first row, on the right), three puzzle levels (first row, on the left). On the second row, the first four on the left are attempts at serious levels in progress that I may or may not use, while the next two are test levels that may be interesting to look at anyway. Platformer levels Get to the exit door and press Up to enter it! Same for other doors. B: Jump Y: Run X, A, L, or R: Attack/Use ability Down+Select: Remove current ability Start: Pause/access inventory Up+Attack and Down+Attack may do a variation of your current ability Up+Attack without an ability will shoot a special copying projectile that will give you the ability of the enemy it hits, if there is one. Your inventory contains debug items that will grant access to all of the abilities that are ready to be looked at, too. Mode 7 levels Collect all the green hearts and head to the exit tile! But beware: they turn into red skulls after you collect them, which you may not step on. X: Look around L/R: Strafe Select: Reset to checkpoint nova-the-squirrel-2.sfc

This game will be available as a ROM when it's done, pay-what-you-want (including free). For me, I grew up with an NES and SNES and I only really experienced the Genesis through the Sonic 3 & Knuckles port for Windows, so for me that's the console I've been trying to look into more lately. So the inspirations here are primarily games like Super Mario World, Kirby Super Star, Yoshi's Island and things like that. I definitely wanna get more experiences though and have more to draw from. And yeah, the fact that many people are going to be playing on emulators, FPGA consoles, and LCD TVs has made me cautious about exploring effects a bit since some of them aren't going to work very well on things that aren't a CRT or at least aren't composite video. So far I'm ruling out anything involving switching between 240p and 480i frequently, but keeping myself open to the possibility of doubling the horizontal resolution for color blending. For more progress, check out my new door transition effect and my blocks that can have their solidity toggled like the previous game, but this time with three different colors. In this game I want to never rely solely on color to differentiate things, for accessibility, so they also have different shapes on them.

To try to make everything more colorful I added some new flowers that have their own palette. I also animate grass when it's stepped on, a little bit. Arrows, crates, and boulders from the previous game are in, originally inspired by similar mechanics in Hannah and the Pirate Caves. Here's a mockup of a crystal cave world, with bits from Great Cave Offsensive as well as Cave Story. I'll add a pretty background later.

I've got parallax scrolling with HDMA. Also experimented with a second foreground layer so I can get levels like Super Mario World has. (And here's a clip of an earlier test which was horizontal and was controlled with the L and R buttons) I tried using color math to do a translucency effect with addition - it looked better than averaging the layers together but not sure it's really convincing as colored glass. Maybe colored plastic, I guess.