Orab Games

But will it work on the NES?

When I first learned to program for the NES in 2014, I searched for a tool much like NESMaker. If that would have been available then, I totally would have bought it! However, it wasn't and I discovered NA and the Nerdy Nights instead. At that time, I really didn't want to learn to program to make something on the NES. Looking back, I'm very happy NESMaker wasn't available so I had the experience I did. However, I am glad that the tool is now available for others to get into the homebrew scene. Some will dabble in it and really make nothing out of it and that's great. These people will gain some understanding of how difficult it is to make a game. Others, like Mugi, are going to use it as a springboard to delve deep into assembly and learn how the NES works and that is great, too! I really see NESMaker just becoming another tool for them to use on portions of the of the program where the tool is useful. The cool thing is, these developers learned the language as well and sort of outgrew NESMaker! I know some fear that NESMaker will flood the market with crapware, burn buyers, and kill the NES homebrew scene. Personally, I see some of these projects moving us further and further away from the era where some people were just pushing out crapware to cash in on the homebrew craze! There were a few games I regret buying being caught up in that mess... At that time, thankfully there was no NESMaker for DOZENS of people to pump out many games! Fortunately, I think the community has learned from that experience and now expects homebrews to be a certain quality and caliber, regardless how they were made. I'm 100% for better games and more people making them. It's a hobby and more than likely one day in my lifetime, it's going to come to an end anyhow. Will people still be making games for the NES in 50 years? It would be pretty cool, but I just don't see it happening. But, I am thankful for being apart of this and all that I have been able to experience! So, to add to the actual topic of the thread, I really don't care either way. I try to support effort where I can. Would I buy a game 100% made with NESMaker? I can't say no I wouldn't because I really don't know what will be released. Will I buy all games made from "scratch"? Most definitely no! Would I buy a game that was a combination of both? Of course! In the end, each person will do their own thing and that's ok, too!

Hi Mugi! Care to give Dimension Shift it's own thread so it's not lost in here? This looks really good! I'm interested in hearing more about the process.

Best of luck! Also, I learned that WinAmp is still a thing from your image. Going to have to look that back up after 15 or so years!

@RH pretty much nailed this down.

That has to be it, but I have no idea what the code it looking at to decide which pixels are erased.

Haha, I still haven't dove into Meta-Sprites. I was ambitious back then!

I apologize again that this hasn't worked out as planned. I am really disappointed about this. I am very excited about the other projects you working on! I never did figure out how to pass character objects behind background objects, but once that hurdle to cleared, I think the rest shouldn't be hard to figure out. I still can't figure out how they did it in Solstice.

I added the concept art that @FrankenGraphics did to the main post. What a wonderful talent!

11/10/2019 - This project is dead, but I wanted to port it over. This was the first game I tried to make after the Nerdy Nights tutorials. happyhourbeta.1.nes Happy Hour was my first attempt at writing an NES game back in the spring of 2014, March to be more precise. I wrote this as I worked through the Nerdy Nights and MRN's tutorials. As I learned more, the more features I added to the game. I worked on this pretty steadily up until about June when life got super busy. In November, I tried to return to it and start a new project, a Power Pad game some of you may remember, but by December 2014, I realized that life was just too busy and ultimately in February of 2015, I ended life on Happy Hour. I did this for a few reasons. 1. The game play is fun for about 20 seconds, then it gets old. 2. I had come to realize that this was a great starter project, but it wouldn't be anymore than a learning platform. 3. Other opportunities in the Homebrew Community 4. Life With that said, you can follow the progress of the game below to its death (Start at the bottom for day 1), if you care to read that much. If not, then just grab the beta ROM and give it a go! I have also posted The Instructions below. One day, I may decide to post the programming as well, I'm just not ready, yet. I have no issues sharing parts of the code with anyone that asks if you want to know how I programmed a particular part. Thanks to all the helped me with this code. I can't even remember everyone that had input, but you know who you are. Without you guys, I would not have made it this far! ------------ Instructions Controls: D-Pad - Change Beer Flavor Start - Pause\Unpause or Start Game or Start Level A - Hold to Fill Mug\Release to Stop Fill B - Serve Order After Filling Mug Object: Fill the beer order requested by the Patron. Levels increase in difficulty by cutting time and requiring more beer to be served. Fill speeds will change each level. To advance the level, you must fill the equivalent of the following: Levels 1-3: 10 beers in 60 seconds. Levels 4-6: 11 beers in 55 seconds. Levels 7-8: 12 beers in 50 seconds. Levels 9+: 13 beers in 45 seconds. (I think around 9-10, it becomes impossible). The number of beers depends on how well you fill the order based on what fill level the mug is at: Mug Level 1: 1/5 of a beer Mug Level 2: 2/5 of a beer Mug Level 3: 3/5 of a beer Mug Level 4: 4/5 of a beer Mug Level 5: 1 Beer! Mug Level 6: 0 Beers So to quickly advance to the next level, it is in your best interest to fill the beer to the top! In the Beta Version, you are blind to this. Plan was to implement a meter to indicate how close you are to advance to the next level. Never made it that far... Scoring: Scoring is based on how well you fill the order. You earn "Tips" for better fills. 2x bonus starts with 3 successful fills in a row. You cannot fill a mug if you are on the wrong beer. If you try and you have a bonus, your bonus is lost. Fail to fill the mug to the top, lose your bonus. Mug Level 1: $0.20 Mug Level 2: $0.40 Mug Level 3: $0.60 Mug Level 4: $0.80 Mug Level 5: $1.00 ($2.00 with Bonus) Mug Level 6: $0.00 (overfilled mug) Game Over: Game ends when you cannot pass a level. ------------ Game Progress 6/2/14 - NEW ROM UPLOADED! New Title Screen with animation! So, it's been nearly a month since my last update, but it is a cool one! Thanks to some help, my code it running great and the bug I had is gone! You will find a nice flashing title on the title screen with this version! I failed to add any sort of meter or number to indicate how close you are to a level up. I also failed in tweaking the level difficulties. Life has become very busy as of late and I have been checking NA on my phone quite a bit, so my time for coding has suffered. Another feature you may or may not notice is that you now score bonus points for time left in the level. As of right now, it just adds the lump sum to the score immediately after the level is complete. I would like to animate it like Super Mario Bros. You should get 10 points per second left in the level. Maybe the next update will have the animated feature. That's about it for this level. The bug (thanks to thefox for the fix) set me back a bit as well as the making graphics. Enjoy the ROM! Some features I would like to add: -A screen that shows the point totals for each mug level, think how the Pac-Man arcade does this with the ghosts. I want to make a screen that mimics that. -Implement some sort of count down or meter that shows you how close you are to a level up. -Work with the level difficulties and try to fing a nice place on the screen to show what level you are on during game play. -Music and sound effects. I haven't looked at how to do this yet. I am scared! -Come up with more ideas to make this a better over all game instead of the same level over and over with more difficulty. You know, some polish! 5/9/14 - NEW ROM UPLOADED! Now with graphic to show when you are in a x2 bonus and you score 10 points per second left in the level I figured I better upload a new rom since it has been awhile since my last upload. Sorry for the delay, bad week for coding. Both new features were very easy to implement, but life gets in the way. 11 month old daughter is suffering from cutting teeth and hives, so nights have not been very kid to me and I have been sleepy. Anyways, you will notice a 'x2' graphic next to the score when you are in bonus mode. Very handy to let you know when you screwed up. Also, when the level is complete, you will notice your score will increase 10 points per second you have left and the score clock will go to 0. Right now, that is not animated, but have contemplated actually animating it. I haven't tested this very much, so if you notice a bug (score is not correctly applied or the wrong points), please post here and let me know. I didn't have time to implement a "Drunk Meter". That is the goal for the next ROM release. After this, I will be very close to being complete with the gameplay portion of the game. I will then start to work on better game over and title screens and maybe some extra screens. I am thinking of a screen that interrupts the title screen and shows what points are scored per mug stage. Maybe animate it like the Pac-Man Arcade screen when they show the points of the ghosts. Goals for next update: 1. Add a Drunk Meter. 2.Tweak Level Difficulty variables and complete the 13 and beyond variables. 3. Work on some graphics for the Title and Home Screens. 4. Clean up code and maybe some other graphics. Thanks for following the thread, I hope you are enjoying it! 5/5/14 - NEW ROM UPLOADED! Includes Bonus Points & New Scoring Code! So, this was a slow going update being busy with life and writing a new way to add my score, but here it is! I didn't tweak any of the level difficulties, but I did add a double bonus if you get a streak of 3 or more correct! The streak is broken in 3 ways: 1. Try to send an Empty Mug. 2. Send any mug that is not filled 100%. 3. Try to fill a mug with the wrong beer order. Ex: order was ale and you tried to fill it with lager. NOTE: The bonus carries over to the next level! The new scoring is pretty cool and it actually exposed my code for how poorly it was written. The score code worked first try, but created a bunch bugs. I just finished fixing those tonight! Thanks again to MRN for helping me with bugs and talking me into the new scoring code. Goals for next ROM release: 1. Show 'X2' on the screen when you are scoring double bonus. 2. Add points to the score for time left in the level (thinking 10 cents per second) 3. If I have time, add a "Drunk Meter" so you know how close you are to the next level up. Enjoy the ROM until next time! 4/30/14 - NEW ROM UPLOADED! Level Increases Difficulty, Mug Slides!, and you are forced to change beer flavors starting in level 4. What a crazy last few days. I accomplished more goals that I thought possible! Thanks to Mario's Right Nut, I fixed a very simple bug that broke my code that I was stuck at for a couple of days. This playable ROM is nearly a full game without all of the bells and whistles! I have a lot of tweaking to do as the game is pretty simple for levels 1-6, a bit harder at levels 7-9 and then I think impossible at level 10. I was nearly perfect on level 10 and I still didn't have enough time. You will find a very noticeable bug in this ROM, but it won't hurt game play. You will play the game once just fine, but if you hit start at the Game Over screen and then start a second game, there will be a slight 3-5 second delay before the game starts. Your time will be ticking down, but you don't have a beer order and you can't press A. My guess is that I have a flag running wild that didn't reset from the previous game and its waiting to roll back over to the trigger number. I would troubleshoot it tonight and fix it, but I'm tired, so you get a buggy game. Also, if you can make it that far (somehow), the game caps at level 12. Levels 13 and beyond are just level 12 over and over. My goals for the next ROM release are fix buggy code, tweak the level difficulties, and try to implement a bonus if you get 3 perfects in a row! Should be a fun challenge. If I complete these 3 tasks, I pretty much have all my game mechanics down. I may try to play with some other ideas I have, but I don't know. My code is already ridiculously long and very tough to follow and trouble shoot. Have FUN! And please, if you have any comments or criticism, let me know. You guys are pretty much my unofficial ALPHA testers! 4/24/14 - NEW ROM UPLOADED! Now with levels for every $10.00 AND a new game play layout. HUGE progress made. I now provide you with infinite levels! I also changed the look of the game play layout to allow for future mug sliding animations! So, now you can play an actual game. You can advance levels when the counter I implemented hits 50 (1 point per $0.20). Eventually, I when to depict this 50 as a Drunk Meter. The more you fill the mug, the more the drunk meter fills up. Basically, if you get 10 perfect fills, you pass the level. I upped your time to :30 to make this really easy to do. I do not have a limit on levels, yet (if ever). Either I will cap it or eventually just make gameplay impossible once you hit later levels. Also implemented, you have to unlock beer flavors by advancing levels. Levels 1-3, you can only pour lager. Go ahead, use the D-Pad, you can't change the color! Level 4 unlocks Ale, Level 7 unlocks Wheat, and level 10 unlocks stout. Pretty damn cool!! Other than that, I fixed some bugs. The most confusing was a point increment bug I had where I was getting phantom points. That should now be fixed. Next up, I want to implement the orders being yelled out (LAGER, ALE, WHEAT, STOUT) and force the player to have to change to that color. This should be a pretty cool challenge! After that, I will work on mug sliding graphics, and finally, I think I will be able to add variables to increase game play difficulty as the levels advance! Until next time, enjoy the new ROM! 4/22/14 - NEW ROM UPLOADED! Complete with Title and Game Over Screens! I have learned a BOAT LOAD over the last couple of days. Wow, my mind is in complete overload and I'm so excited to have as much done as I do. When I went to bed last night, my code was junk, nothing would load or work, and I was completely lost. Now, I have a fully functional game where you always lose in 20 seconds! 3 of the 4 bugs below are gone! Only bug #4 remains, but I really don't care about him at this point and I don't know if I will ever solve him or not. Ok, so what was accomplished. I completely rewote my Game State Upate process from Nerdy Nights, to Mario's Right Nut's #2 tutorial. After doing this, my code was broke and I had no clue what most of it was doing. After many hours of pounding through it, I finally have a grasp on it. I have also learned much more about the NMI and the Forever Loop. I think I have everything correct, but I may not. All I know is that my code is functioning the way I think it should by looking at my code. I also learned a lot about pointers. The LOW# and HIGH# codes had me completely lost (see here for details). But thanks to the many fine folks at NA, I have a great understanding of it and rewrote my background code to take advantage of it. My first attempt at pointers was to find an efficient way to write text to the background, such as Pause and other future ideas. I wanted to recycle the code I was already using instead of wasting space writing the same process each time I wanted to write something on the screen. My next goal is to work on a delay when the game starts so it doesn't just start running. I'm not sure what I am going to do for that yet. Either Press A to start filling which would start the timer or have a "Ready!, Set!, Fill! and then start the timer. After this, I think I may work on redrawing the Game Playing background. I'm not really happy with it and I really think adding a Patron for ordering drinks would be cool (complete with sliding beer mug). After that, I think I am going to jump into working on a random generator that will have the Patron bark out beer orders. Then I will probably have to work on beer sliding and then adjusting the scoring for that. WHEW! I have a lot left still! Until then, enjoy the 20 second ROM and marvel in the wonderful art of the Title and Background Screens! 4/21/14 Just a quick update on progress. I have been working on getting the gamestates to transition nicely. In doing so, I had a TON of code rewrite to do and learn a TON! For the most part, it is working, however, I have created a few bugs to workout. I have 4 gamestates, Title, Playing, Pause, Game Over. I can transition to each state just fine with the start button. However, I don't think I am doing it correctly because I get a "flicker" between screens. What I mean by this is for about a frame of time, I see all of the graphics in the wrong position during transition. Basically my go is nothing special. If Start Pressed Disable PPU Load New Background Enable PPU (with or without sprites) DO OTHER STUFF (reset variables, etc) Continue Code Bug #2: When I include my code in the DO OTHER STUFF that changes my color palette back to default (I change beer color by changing the color at the Palette during NMI), between the Game Over and Title sceens, my title screen fails to load and I get all Zero's. I have a feeling the NMI ChangeColor Subroutine is messing with the background loading. Maybe it is taking to long? I could avoid the issue by using the other 3 sprite color sets but I am now just avoiding the issue instead of learning how to fix the issue. Bug #3: When my Title Screen loads at the game start, it looks fine (well, actually it looks pretty boring right now because I haven't done anything to it), however, when I go from the Game Over Screen (Sprites Disabled) to the Title Screen (Sprites Enabled) my Playing Game sprites (mug and handle) are on the screen. I could just avoid the issue and disable sprites on the title screen, but that sucks. Outside of setting all of the sprites off the screen, is there a way to just clear out PPU Register $0200 and up when I load new screens? It has to be pretty easy. Bug #4: I sort of broke Pause when I setup the Game Over and Title gamestates. If works great unless the A button is being pressed to fill the mug. It used to work, now it's broke. That is all for now. I think the next ROM I post will be a fully functional Title and Game Over Screen. 4/19/14 - Updated playable Demo ROM - With working time and Game Over Screen! Lots of work was done. I think I have fixed all of the controller bugs. Multiple buttons pressed don't mess up the fill. Pause and Game Over are also working! However, when you press start at the Game Over screen, it only does a full game reset instead of a game state switch. I am currently working on getting gamestates setup with separate backgrounds for each game state. This is going to take a lot of code rewrite and be a huge learning curve for me. Once this step is completed, there will be a functional Title Screen, Main Playing Screen, and a Game Over screen that will display your score. When you push start from the Game Over screen, you will go back to the title screen. Once this step is complete, I can then start working levels and advancing to the next level. I come so far and learned so much, but I still have a ton left to do! Enjoy the playable ROM! 4/16/14 - NEW ROM ATTACHED WITH WORKING SCORE!!! (Sort of working) The score is now mostly working. When you press be to reset the mug to empty, the score is than calculated based on fill stage of the mug. I simply created a loop around my IncrementScore subroutine and decremented the counter that kept track of the Mug Fill Stage. 20 points is scored for each time the IncrementScore Subroutine loops. Here is the code for when the B Button is pressed. The Updated Score is then Drawn to the screen during the NMI Routine. ReadB: LDA buttons1 ; player 1 - B AND #%01000000 BEQ ReadBDone LDA #$00 ;Reset Mug to Empty STA mug_RAM+1 LDA #$01 STA mug_RAM+5 LDA #$02 STA mug_RAM+9 LDA #$03 STA mug_RAM+13 IncrementScoreLoop: LDA MugCheckCounter2 CMP #$06 ;Check if Mug is Overfilled, if yes, then 0 points scored BEQ IncrementScoreLoopDone LDA MugCheckCounter2 ;Check if Mug is Empty, if yes, then 0 points scored BEQ IncrementScoreLoopDone JSR IncrementScore ;Jump to the IncrementScore routine and add the score LDA MugCheckCounter2 SEC SBC #$01 STA MugCheckCounter2 ;Decrement the Mug Fill Stage until 0, then jump out of the loop BNE IncrementScoreLoop IncrementScoreLoopDone: LDA #$00 STA MugCheckNotFillingFlag ;Reset the Flag to show sprites not filling STA MugCheckNotFillingFlag2 ;Reset the Flag to enable A Button STA MugCheckCounter STA MugCheckCounter2 ReadBDone: This created an interesting bug that if A and B are pressed simultaneously, then the score goes crazy (increments 20 each frame), the mug stops filling, the handle stays tapped and the beer sprite stays on the screen. My next 2 goals are to figure out to avoid this bug and start working on the time 4/15/14 Update 2 - Updated ROM attached! Cleaned up some of the code and fixed a bug. The bug fixed would keep the beer filling sprite on the screen after the mug would overfill. It just looks silly, so I got it to go away when the overfill mug loads on the screen. Enjoy the ROM and comment your thoughts and ideas, good or bad. 4/15/14 - Demo ROM attached to this post for your enjoyment. PROGRESS! PROGRESS PROGRESS! I am really getting to know my code and getting much more comfortable with NES 6502. Great progress has been made the last couple of days with working on slowing down the animation. I was able to utilize my existing BNE opcodes and added a second variable to keep track of the stage the filling of the mug is at to control the speed of the animation. Much more simple than I thought it would be. I should now be able to create a variable or two to increase the speed of the mug filling in different stages. Later stages can have faster filling mugs to make it much more difficult to get a perfect pour. After I work out a couple of small bugs, I hope to have the mug animation behind me and begin work on the score and time. Once I get the last couple of bugs worked out, I will attach a new ROM for you all to enjoy! 4/13/14 Small victories this weekend! I have a fully functional tap handle, the beer turns on and off with the tapping of the handle, and I have learned a fun way to change the colors of the beer with the D-Pad. My first challenge was changing the beer colors. Initially, I was using all 4 attributes of the 16 color palette and just changing the attribute number. All 4 sets of colors were identical except the 2nd color. Instead, I decided to use just one attribute and change the color in the palette during the NMI. Thanks to KHAN's help, I got this working! This frees up the 3 other set of colors for other sprites if I need them. Fun note, if I ran this subroutine after the DrawScore subroutine, my background would screw up. So, I had to place it before DrawScore. My second challenge was to get the handle to tap and start filling the beer while the A Button was pressed and then when to untap the handle and stop filling the beer when it when A was no longer being pressed. I figured this out by making a buttons1_old variable that would store the last known state of the controller when Button A is pressed (10000000). Then right before I checked the buttons the next frame, I added a subroutine that would be triggered if it saw the controller status was not equal (00000000) by comparing buttons1 to buttons1old. This routine would set the tap handle back to the starting position and shut off the beer flow. That's it for new victories. My next set of challenges includes troubleshooting the color changing for the beer flow (still not quite right for that one sprite) and trying to get the mug sprite to "fill" (change sprites) while a is being pressed but switch to another set of sprites when A is let go. This will be the toughest part of the code here. Once the is done, the basic game function will be done and it will be on to other animations and adding the score. 4/10/14 Thanks to KHAN Games, I now have a better understanding of getting my sprites to load and do something on the screen. At this time, they are not 100% functional, but I can change the attributes, tap the handle (kind of), and change the mug once. Still have a long ways to go, but it is nice to finally see sprites changing. 4/7/14 Nothing new to report. Spoke with a few members here on some pointers and have decided that for this game, I am not going to use meta-sprites. I now need to go back and rewrite a bunch of code to get my sprites working again. I may try to work with meta-sprites in my next game. Once the sprite are coded, then it will be on to working with the animations! 4/4/14 Morning Update So, meta-sprites are kicking my ass!! Between the pointers and loops, I get lost in the shuffle. I have probably started Mario Right Nut's tutorial at least 5 times and I get confused on the update constants section. Pointers have always been my weakness in any programming language, so I hope to bust the hump on this one. As of right now, no major update on the game, just more frustrations learning the code. One last update for 4/1/14 Made great progress on the controller. I have setup Button A and Button B to increase the score. This also created my first bug in the IncrementScore section of my code. The maximum my score can show is 99980. I wanted to see what would happen if it went past that and it started incrementing the 10,000th's digit with the letters of the alphabet, which are located right after the numbers in my data. So, my score after 99980, looks like A0000. My goal is to make sure no one will score that high anyways, so it may not be an issue anyways. 4/1/14--------------Done with Nerdy Nights 9, onto some advanced tutorials by Mario's Right Nut------------- I have made it through Nerdy Nights 9. I have a pretty basic program set up with no animation but I do have the score writing to the background, just 000.00 as of right now but a small victory. I still find myself going back to previous Nerdy Nights to look up some of the basics I have forgotten along the way. I have started on Mario's Right Nut tutorials because I want to setup the A Button to increment the score to make sure my score is working properly. Trying to figure out this controller programming is frustrating. I had a good handle on it until I got into subroutines, not I am lost again. When I look at sample code, I can't really follow what is going on with everything else muddying up the waters. The controls are not as easy as I first thought they were going to be and have me second guessing some of the original mechanic ideas I have for this game. That is all for now. Once I get a good grasp of the controller, I think I will dive into meta-sprites. 3/31/14 ------------------------------Thread Started ------------------------------------------------------- Welcome to my Journey in writing my first NES game, Happy Hour. Don't expect updates to be very often as I am learning along side coding the game. Here is a screenshot of the background . Here are some sprites: Game Mechanics: 1 Player. I have thought of a 2 player battle if it seems easy enough to do. Fill the mug and push it along to fill the next mug. The mug will fill in 7 stages at a pretty quick pace while holding the A button. Empty, Start filling, 1/3 Filled, 2/3 Filled, Full, Topped Off, and Overfilled. When you release the A button, you will not be allowed to continue to fill the glass. You must press B to advance to the next mug and begin filling again. Each stage of filling will be worth a set amount of points, calculated in tips. In later stages, different styles of beer will be ordered and you must switch the tap to fill the order correctly. Empty = $ .00 Start filling = $ .20 1/3 Filled = $ .40 2/3 Filled = $ .60 Full = $ .80 Topped Off = $1.00 Overfilled = $ .50 (may decide to go lower) Wrong Beer Type = $ .00 Each stage will be timed (time to be determined). You must fill as many mugs as possible in that time limit. To advance to the next stage, you must score a set amount of points based on the stage difficulty. As each stage advances, difficulty will increase by a decrease in time, an increase in points required to pass, and increasing the different types of beer to fill. There are 4 beer types that can be ordered. The order with appear in a speech bubble. You will know what style you have currently selected by looking at the tap handle as it will change colors. In the early stages, there will only be 1 type and the 3 other buttons on the D-Pad will be disabled. As the levels increase, a new flavor will be added. The exact number of stages between adding beer styles is yet to be determined. I have thrown around the idea of adding time back to the clock if you successfully Top Off a beer or implementing a bonus in tips for streaks such as 3 or 5 in a row will double your tips. I have no other ideas of factors to add and may look to you guys for help. The last idea is tossing in a bonus stages between levels that add another style of beer. Ideas have been a beer filling contest against the computer or a drinking contest where you have to alternate A and B to out drink the computer. That's all I have for ideas at the moment. I have been spending the last couple of days building sprites and background data. Thoughts, ideas and criticism is all welcome. Thanks and enjoy the ride!

How about making a master thread for all homebrews and then have links to thread for each category (Currently Available, Kickstarter, No Longer Available, etc)? Similar to the Nerdy Nights master thread that was on NA and acted more like a table of contents and linked to each weekly tutorial.

I am super excited for this game!

We're asking now.

@neodolphino @K3VBOT

A lot. All at Midwest Gaming Classic and Portland Retro Gaming Classic.

I was able to also save every post from the private development thread. It's all in a Word document and looks like crap, but it's all there. Post by post.

I'm a diehard Husker fan and I love college football. I've run a 20 team keeper league that has been going for 9 years with a traveling trophy. Life has been busy this season and the Huskers are not very good, so I haven't watched as much football as I would like to. Normally, we have about 10 tvs running games from 11am until whenever Hawaii is done. This way, everyone gets to see their fantasy players play. Not an OSU fan as well. So, you can lump me in with that group. GO BIG RED!

ppgames.nes 12/15/14 Just as a nice little teaser to keep everyone excited, I have attached a picture showing concept art of one of the playing screens. Remember, this is a very early concept and I pretty much suck at art. But, you can get a feel for what I envision the layout looking like. Picture being held hostage by NintendoAge. I will have to create a new one. Enjoy! OLD STUFF First off, thanks again to the testers. They seemed to enjoyed it. As promised, I am releasing the demo ROM for my next game idea. Don't expect too much out of the ROM, it was designed to test my idea only and will be the basis of my next game (sorry, my first game sucks and I have no drive to finish it). The inspiration behind my next game is the yard game, Cornhole. Basically, I will be using the Power Pad mat as a landing pad for bean bags. The tests included using actual bean bags in various ways to see how the Power Pad would react as the bean bags landed on the pad. I was very pleased with the results and they were all consistent. My vision for the game is to have 6-8 mini-games that will be multiplayer (2-4) with varying degrees options and difficulties. Single player modes will be my greatest challenge as I have little experience in programming a computer to imitate a human throwing a bean bag. I have a couple of ideas for this, but I will need to thorourghly test them. The other challange will be to conform some of these game to be played with a Power Pad and still make them as interesting as they would be with original hardware. For example, in Cornhole, if you land on the board, that's a point. On a Power Pad, there is a lot of real estate that won't register a hit. Thus, you will only be able to score by landing on a sensor. Thus, I must morph the rules of Cornhole to work with the Power Pad. Here are a few ideas I have for games. Most or all will make the cut, but I hold the right to cut any game I want from the final version because I don't want to release a poor product. (NOTE, I am calling the games by a name that most are familiar with. Chances are, I would change the names to be unique to my game) Cornhole (with modified rules for the Power Pad) Whack-A-Mole (Critter pops out of a hole for random amounts of time and you must hit him with a bean bag. Definitely single player mode. Battle mode with 2 power pads?) Battleship (Each player places 4 targets and 4 bombs by using the Power Pad, the you win when you clear your Opponets 4 targets or your opponent hits 3 of your bombs) 3-in-a-row (Like Tic-Tac-Toe bag toss, but you can steal dots like Hollywood Squares) Reversi (think Tic-Tac-Toe bag toss game but with reversi) Ladderball (Not sure on game mechanics yet, but the Power Pad rows would serve as rungs on a ladder. Maybe some logic code where you could fall down the rungs at random?) Beer Pong (Stepped up a notch to 12 Cups for the Power Pad, cause that's how we role! Will include options for reracks maybe some code to let your opponents "distract" or "blow" the ball out. We'll see how ambitious I feel) That's all I have for now. Feel free to download the test ROM and try it out. This will work in an Emulator, Power Pak and Everdrive as demonstrated by the testers. Some emulators have an option for Power Pad and you can use keyboard buttons. Not so fun, but at least you can try it. For other's that may be interesting in seeing how this was made, I am thinking of releasing the code for the demo ROM. Special thanks goes out to: Ferris Bueller - Tester NESMASTER14 - Tester neodolphino - Tester Jon Solo - Tester Proveaux - Tester bunnyboy - Nerdy Nights, Possible Tester Mario's Right Nut - NES coding Tutorials, Tips, Advice Galore! has fixed my code a few times (Most of the code is derived from both of their tutorials. If you made it through all of them, you can read my code) KHAN Games - Tips and Advice Galore!, has fixed my code a few times And many others that have helped me along the way! +++++++++++ORIGINAL POST BELOW+++++++++++ EDIT 2: If you are interested but only lack the bags, you can use a standard 7x8 zip lock bags and fill it with about 1 pound of dried corn, dried beans, or small cat or dog food. Then, tap down the excess baggie to get about a 6x6 square. This worked for NESMASTER14. EDIT: The demo ROM is ready. Please PM me or message this thread to be approved. I would like 5-10 if possible. I am looking for 5-10 people to help me test a demo ROM I am building. To qualify, you must meet these requirements. A. Have a powerpak or the ability to use your Power Pad on an emulator (at the current moment, I lack both) B. Have standard weight corn bags for a game similar to Corn Hole. Don't know what Corn Hole is? Then you probably don't qualify. Each bag should weigh 1 lb. WARNING! This test has the potential to damage you Power Pad, however very unlikely. Do not ask to participate if you are worried about it hurting your Power Pad. Remember, the Power Pad was built to have a Human Being running on it. In my opinion, tossing a 1 lb bag on it should have little effect. I hope to have a working demo finished today and can send it along with details. If the tests are successful, I will turn this thread into an update thread for the homebrew game. Thanks! Confirmed Testers: 1. Ferris Bueller - Test Completed 2. bunnyboy 3. NESMASTER14 - Test Completed 4. neodolphino - Test Completed 5. Jon Solo - Test Completed 6. Proveaux - Test Completed Possible Testers:

cornhole_demo.nes The Development of Tailgate Party Now that Tailgate Party is released and arriving into the hands of many buyers today, I would like to share some of my thoughts and stories about the game as the developer. This game is super fun and corny (oh the puns in this game)! I had a lot of fun making it, testing it, playing it, and showing it off to friends, family, and strangers. With most games, the developers are pretty sick of playing their game and they can play it blindfolded. Not with this game. I still enjoy firing it up and slinging bags at my Power Pad, especailly when friends come over. It is a unique challenge each and every time you play it, even when playing the computer in Single Player Mode. Each character has their own special logic and two difficulty modes. These are a few of the reasons why Tailgate Party is still entertaining for myself even though I have spent countless hours playing it. I still lose to people that are playing it for the first time! Early in the development process, most of the time was spent with testers experimenting with corn bags and the Power Pad. I wanted to know its limits before even attempting to write a game. What would be the point of writing the game if concept was flawed from the start? From day one, the goal has always been quality of play. I really enjoy quality when it comes to NES Homebrews, so I wanted anything that I wrote to meet my expectations. These early tests were pretty rudimentary considering most didn't have actual corn bags. One tester used a sealable bag full of cat food, another filled a bag with corn. At the 2016 NESathon, they even made use of plastic water bottles to play the game! I do not condone the use of water bottles, things got a bit messy... You can check out the Power Pad Test ROM in my signature below. It's a great ROM to have on your flash cart if you ever need to test Power Pad buttons. Once initial tests proved that this project could be successful, I started the process of writing the game. I had no idea where I was going with this and no vision of what the end product would look like. I honestly thought I would write a 2-player party game on NROM and be done in less than a year. Boy was I wrong. I started work on the 2 player mode before anything else and started to develop ideas for different games. The first 5 were developed pretty quick and I was feeling like a rockstar. I soon ran out of space on NROM and had to switch to a new mapper and learn bankswitching. I experimented with MMC1 and UNROM and in the end, UNROM won out. Soon I started developing a title screen, pause screen, credits screen, and a character select\game select screen. As soon as I finished all of this and had five different game modes up and running, I gutted everything I just worked on and overhauled every screen! The reason for this was I was starting to test on real hardware and I was not happy with how everything looked. Testing on real hardware also allowed me to discover flaws in the game, such as accidental throws recorded. This was excellent feeback and I developed a process to undo errant throws but only in two player mode as this was this most likely to have mistakes happen. Once I had all of this in place, I had thought of my final two games and implemented them into the game as well. At this time, spring of 2016, I decided that I now had a ton of space and this game needed much more. Enter single-player mode! Initially, this was just going to be a Mega Man style menu screen where you picked your opponent and the game you wanted to play. Each opponent would have different AI logic and difficulty. However, I was fresh off of testing The Incident for KHAN Games and was inspired by his story development in a puzzle game. It was at this time that I came up with the idea for the protagonist to attend his first game day and work his way through the parking lot as the story culminates to the main antagonist. Again, I had no vision for the script or character development. I had already developed the characters, the script sort of morphed around each character as I got to each of them. I probably wrote the dialog script in about a week. Also during this time, each and every one of the characters got a much needed facelift to match their personality and the character graphics were improved ten fold. I also took advantage of the script to incorporate an additional character. After a few weeks, I had a functional cut scene with the script fully written into the game. Again, I ran into limitations with the mapper I was using, UNROM, and had to upgrade to UNROM-512. This opened the door for Tailgate Party to be played on Membler Industry's GT-ROM board with just some slight code changes. I was finally starting to feel that this game was becoming something special. Also around this time, I worked on developing the rules screens for each game. I next turned my efforts towards the character AI. A lot of thought and attention went into writing this script. It is fairly long and complicated and has a number of randomized tables to randomly pull throw data from. I spent a lot of time thinking of situations and how a real player would react to that situation. Did Player 1 bust? Yup, throw misses. Is the CPU within 4 points of winning the game? Yup, start throwing conservative to reduce the chance of busting. Since there are 7 different game modes, the logic for each character is unique to each of their respective games. I also built almost 2 dozen randomized tables that have different percentages of hitting each button on the Power Pad or missed throws. The one thing that I wanted to make sure was to incorporate all four possible outcomes on each throwing attempt, miss, 1 points, 2 points, or 3 points. Depending on the situation in the game, the CPU will randomly pull from the selected randomized table to produce the artificial throw. That's right, double random! The script will pull at random number between 0 and 15 (or 0 and 31 if it is Battle Bags and Lucky 13) and then that number pulls a value from a randomized table. That value is either a miss or one of the numbers on the Power Pad. Then the value is ran through the normal point scoring routines and the result is output to the screen. Pretty friggin' cool, huh? Once I was happy with both the Single Player and Multiplayer mode, I started to polish the game and adding the bells and whistles around December of 2016. Game save and erase feature, unlockables, achievements, screen transitions, a coin flip for starting honors, I rewrote the credits screen to be animated, I added some Play Again screens, more graphics and animations, more music and a jukebox function, etc. This is when I realized that this game was actually going to get a proper release. Around January of 2017, I began work on the starting a business and drawing up the printed materials. My testers were in full debug mode as my ROM was nearing final version. We spent next 3-4 month working out all of the bugs and pounding out all of the details and spelling errors on the printed materials. Finally, around the first of April, most everything was finished just in time for the debut at the Midwest Gaming Classic! Being done before then was a huge goal mine and to accomplish that was a giant weight lifted from my shoulders. I certainly had my ups and downs while developing Tailgate Party but the ups completely made up for the downs. I really tried to focus a lot of attention into the small details of the game. Truth be told, this game was 100% playable and could have been sold last year about this time, it just wouldn't have been polished and missing a ton of extra features that it has today. I wouldn't have been happy with it. To me, making this game perfect was more important than getting it to market. I truly wanted a game that I could be proud of and a game that you would be proud to have in your collection. I sought out some of the best in the biz when it came to hardware, materials, technical assistance, and music to ensure quality from beginning to end. I also wanted this game to feel and play like an interactive video game and not just some novelty electronic scoreboard. I feel that this goal was accomplished and I think that anyone that has seen the end product would agree with that statement. Features such as the single-player CPU AI, unlockable characters and music, a built in rules screen, achievements, undo errant throws, and even the ability to save or delete your progress really gives this game a ton of replayability. It's a very innovative use for the Power Pad that doesn't involve collapsing on the floor huffing and puffing with legs of fire! I also wanted to make a unique and usable Limited Edition. Since the game is interactive, it only felt right to make the LE interactive as well. This is evident from the corn bags to the playable cornhole game right on the physical cartridge! Many hours were spent and a few carts and boxes didn't survive the modification process but the end result was totally worth the effort! The custom character idea came to me probably around May 1st. I really felt that the LE needed more for those that love having something very unique. What better way than personalizing their LE. To pull this off, I had to rewrite a lot more of code than I had planned and I had move some code to other banks to free up the space that I needed. I spent around 3 or 4 days rewriting and testing this code, twice! Why twice? Well, as soon as I finished the custom character code, I lost my flash drive before I could back up the data. I spent the next couple days rewriting the code I lost from a backup copy only to find my drive buried at the bottom of the center console in my car. I thought I had lost it while running errands out of town. Oh well, it all worked out! I also recommend to use waterproof flash drives as mine also took a trip through the washing machine during this project... Just a few more things that I will mention about Tailgate Party. I tried to put a few things about my life into the game. First off, the names of the 2 protagonists, Andy Jones and Ellie Mays. Andy Jones is a play off of mine and my wife's middle names. Ellie Mays is a play off of my kids' middle names. Ellie's image is base off of my beautiful wife. Ace Cornado's, the main antagonist, real name is based of a nickname of a friend. You'll learn it later in the game, no spoilers. I am a huge Nebraska Cornhusker fan, I literally bleed red! The Shuckers are a play off the word Huskers. I also make a couple jabs at Husker rivals. The weakest opponent in the game is from Iowa, Granny Schott. Boo Haweyes! And in the manual, another opponent played for the Miami....well, you'll have to read the manual to figure out the mascot. Speaking of Granny, she does make an awesome potato salad, just like my grandma. That's all I can think of at the moment. I probably forgot something. That's the story of the development of Tailgate Party. I'm very happy to be able to share this with everyone. I'm excited to hear people's reactions and stories from Tailgate Party! 6/1/2017 - Tailgate Party Is Released! SALE POST - http://nintendoage.com/forum/mess... Watch for the sales post in the Seller's Forum later today. Some of you know this by solving the cryptic message in the Coming Soon screenshot that I posted directly below this message. This also coincides with the Homebrew calendar game of the month of June! This is mostly a coincidence, but as it got closer to June, I started to get the idea of just releasing the game on June 1. A couple of notes that I would like to make before the start of the sales thread. 1. The LEs will NOT be auctioned. Instead they will be for sale right along side the Regular Edition for a fixed cost. 2. For the LEs only, for an additional $50, I will create 1 additional customized character into your personalized copy of the LE. I will work directly with each buyer on their specific character. This is mostly to use for adding yourself into the game a playable character. This feature was a late addition to the LE and I had to rewite a lot of code just to make it work. (Twice acutally! I lost my jump drive soon after I finished the code! Long story short, it was found the next day in my car after I rewote the code, actually wrote it more effiecient the second time.) Please be patient if you go this route as I will have to draw each photo and personalize each copy of the game. I will bump this thread with a link to the sale when it is posted. COMING SOON!!! 12/7/16 - Save Features Currently working on getting a save feature implemented for the Story Mode so you can save your progress and unlock features in the multiplayer mode! Once this hurdle is cleared, that will blaze a path for a lot of work to get done! Meanwhile, feel free to try the demo in your favorite flash cart! Demo Attached To This Post!!! 6/27/16 - Demo ROM Available! I now have included a demo ROM for all to try in the footer of this post! It uses the UNROM mapper, so it should work on all flash carts and on INL's UNROM 128kb Flashable Board using the Kazoo. In this Demo, you will be able to play the exact game I designed for the Let's Play Gaming Expo. This version of the game will not be on the final release, so this ROM will be truly unique. First, some legal Mumbo Jumbo. This ROM is free to download and use for your own personal use. I do not authorize the sale of this ROM in its current file format, on a cartridge, or in any other form. Feel free to download it, host it, share it, distribute it, whatever, as long as you don't profit from the sale of it. Overview: 2 Player Competition Demo ROM. Every throw scores, the first to reach 21 or more at the end of the round wins. Player 1 - Blue Targets Targets 1 & 2 = 3 Points Targets 5 & 6 = 2 Points Targets 9 & 10 = 1 Point Select Key = Miss Targets (If you do not hit any targets on your throw, hit the Select Key to advance to the next player.) Player 2 - Red Targets Targets 3 & 4 = 3 Points Targets 7 & 8 = 2 Points Targets 11 & 12 = 1 Point Select Key = Miss Targets (If you do not hit any targets on your throw, hit the Select Key to advance to the next player.) The flashing Corn Arrows indicate whose throw it is. In the event you screw up during the game, Pause the game and you can either Undo the throw or Restart the Round. You can Undo as many throws as you wish in a row until you are back to throw #1 of the round. The Power Pad is deactivated when the "Clear Bags" animation is on the screen. At this time, it is safe to touch or walk on the Power Pad without activating the targets. Whoever throws the most points in a round gets the honor to go first in the next round. To make the game more challenging, try moving further away from the Power Pad. For more detailed on the rules, Pause the Game and click on Rules. The Start Button will Exit the Rules Screen and return you to the game in progress. There is no single player mode in this Demo ROM. It is truly ment to be played as a Party Game! Enjoy! 6/21/16 - Bad News at the Expo I just got word that the Let's Play Gaming Expo Tailgate Party Tournament did not have anyone sign up. While I am disappointed to hear this news, it is not unexpected as the game is fairly unfamiliar with almost everyone attending. Although the outcome was not what I had hope, there is still some glimmer of light. Tailgate Party did make the local news in Plano to promote the Expo and in the process of getting the game ready for the expo, I was able to finish a bunch of code for the game that I needed to work on. Also, it did give me a trial run about different ways to promote the game and spread the word a bit. This is by no means a down and out for me, as I still strongly believe this game and it is a ton of fun. I have seen first hand how many people have a blast playing the game, especially on their first experience. I just now know that much more than I knew before about what goes into developing and promoting homebrews. On a lighter note, you can catch Tailgate Party at TooManyGames this weekend thanks to Neodolphino. He just recieved the cart in the mail and will be setting up a demo at his booth to help promote the game. The demo is nearly a full version of the game with only some characters stripped out and the single player mode only featuring the first level (mostly because the rest isn't ready, yet.). So stop by and check it out! 6/10/16 - Shipping! It's starting to get very exciting! I finally have shipped my first batch of games ever for the Let's Play Gaming Expo! 6/7/16 - Labels! Labels have been printed and applied to the competition carts. Just waiting on some final details from the testing phase and then it will be time to flash the ROM and mail the carts to the competition! Great progress has been made on the actual game as well. The story mode is nearly completetion, the credits screen is working like I want it to, I'm implementing some fading transition feature, sound effects have been added, and I just recieved some new tunes from zi!! On top of all of this, I have introduced 1 more character to the story and I have completed all of the CPU throw logic in Tournament Mode (single player)! On top of all of this awesomeness, Tailgate Party made its public debut during the NESathon 2k16, which is for a great cause and lot of fun to join, so I hope you didn't miss out. A few more little nuggets. Tailgate Party will be making its way to Too Many Games this year thanks to neodolphino. Find him and he will let you check out Tailgate Party! I've also been in talks with some production people about materials for the LEs and REs. Not too much to get excited about yet as that is still a ways out. Just getting my feet wet. 5/27/16 - Hardware Mode Shells and boards are in to make the Expo Competition Carts! Competition ROM is now in final testing phase! Enter the Tailgate Party Tournament at the Let's Play Gaming Expo for your chance to win one of these 10 numbered limited releases! Follow us on Facebook for my photos and updates!! 5/15/2016 As promised, I have more exciting news regarding Tailgate Party! First, Orab Games has launched its very own Facebook page where you can get faster updates on the status of our games! Follow the link and Like our page! https://www.facebook.com/orabgame... Second, NA's own Ferris Bueller has asked to feature Tailgate Party as apart of the 2016 Let's play Gaming Expo!!! This will be your chance to play Tailgate Party way ahead of its release and in the fashion I envisioned this game being played, in a Tournament! That's right, Tailgate Party will be a featured Tournament at this year's Expo on June 18-19. If you plan to be at the Expo or live in the Plano, Texas area, you have a great opportunity check this out! We are still in the early stages of planning, but I am working on a special version of the game just for this tournament that will not be on the final release of Tailgate Party! As of right now, we are planning on developing 10 number carts. The Grand Prize for the Tournament will be Cart #1! The page needs some updating (soon to come), but check out the official Tournament Page at the Let's Play Gaming Expo website! Also, I included an exclusive sneak peak of the title screen for the Tournament version of the game! https://www.letsplaygamingexpo.co... 5/13/2016 Happy Friday The 13th! 3/11/2016 Whew, been a while. LOTS done, still a ways to go. But, I just want to show some more teaser screen shots again. Major overhaul of the playing screens. All games are fully functional. Will be working to finish up other screens and single player mode from this point on. 2/11/2016 I wanted to share with everyone some recent progress that has been made, with much thanks to the advice of thefox in the Programming Questions Thread (now you can see what I am trying to accomplish or should I say, did accomplish). Although it has not been put through a solid test and has 1 graphical glitch to still deal with (and now its fixed!), the Final 2 Games are in working order (Battle Bags and Lucky 13). Essentially, they are the same game with 2 different ways to win. Battle Bags, you play for X number of rounds (Chosen by the players before the game). Lucky 13, you play until a player has 13 or more points at the end of the round (there are 24 total points up for grabs, so you play until someone has majority). In each game, the entire board is up for grabs. If you land on a target, you own it and the points associated with. You can also steal targets (and the points) from your opponent. The Blue targets are targets owned by player 1. The Red targets are targets a owned by player 2. The question marked targets have yet to be claimed. The top row of targets are worth 3 points a piece, the middle row is 2 points per target and the bottom row is 1 point per target. Here is a screen shot of Battle Bags with the glitchy corn arrow I discussed above. Fixed Glitch Shortly After Posting This Update!!!! This game was by far the toughest game to code but I think will be one of my favorites to play, especially using Lucky 13 rules! I spent probably as much time on this variation of the game as I have on all of the others combined. There is just so much going on and some much I have to keep track of during the game play. In order for the Undo Throw feature or the Restart Round Feature to work (in case you and your drunk buddy get out of order on throws), I had to store data for each throw in RAM. There are about 90-100 bytes of RAM dedicated to tracking throw data history just so I can undo throws for when you screw up!! You're Welcome! Keep checking The Brewery for updates. This was a pretty big hurdle to jump, so once it is fully cleared, I should be able to move along a bit quicker with some other features I have been putting off. -------------------------------------------------------- Updated 1/31/2016 with more sreenshots! I think I'm finally ready to tease the world with my next homebrew project. For the last few months, I have quietly picked back up my Cornhole-based game featuring the Power Pad. Some of you may remember I released a demo ROM a while ago to test how the Power Pad would respond to Corn sacks landing on it. That test went very well and gave me great hope that this idea could work. Fast forward nearly a year and I was finally able to pick this back up. I would say that the game is roughly 75-80% coded minus final graphics and music. Currently, there are 3 fully functional games with different variations with a 4th game still left to be programmed. Tailgate Party will feature a 1 and 2 player mode, built in Rules Screen, and I hope eventually to have an Auto Save feature. As of right now, there is no tentative release date. My original plan was to take my time and just let this game happen, but I have been challenged to have this finished for a special event. Once I am comfortable with a few more things, I plan to release a demo rom that will feature one of the games fully playable in 2 player mode. My friends and family have spent many hours testing this game with real Cornhole bags and I have to tell you, this is a hit! Everyone loves it and asks to play the latest rom version when they come to visit. This has been great for bug testing! This game has gone through a few title screens and name changes, but this name and design finally won me over. I may make some minor changes to it and I plan on adding some animation to spruce it up, but this will give you a pretty good idea on what the final Title Screen will look like. So, without further ado, I give to you a screenshot of my first attempt at the final title screen. The very first Title Screen I built for this game. It's come a long ways since then. Title Screen Version 2....I'm getting worse at this! This screen will probably change a bit. I don't like the game title at the top. Probably be more like the game select screen in the next screenshot. Colors may not be final as well. Just 2 of the 10 characters to choose from in Exhibition Mode! You will have to buy the game to see the rest. Game Select Screen with 7 different games!!! Some games let you choose the Number of Rounds you want to play!! Screenshot of the Playing Screen for 21 and Battle Bags. This may change as well, I'm experimenting with ideas. For now, this stands out pretty well to indicate what target was hit. Teaser from one of the nearly completed rules screens Your first or 8 Opponents in Tournament Mode!!! This screen is outdated and will undergo some changes. But I wanted to show it anyways! AND what's this? Did I just show a 3rd character???

11/6/19 Moved to VGS Forums. I have not picked this back up, just porting over threads from NA. 4/6/18 Game Title announced. The Gift Of Discernment - Maybe 2/11/2018 Hey everyone! I have a HUGE update on this project. We are welcoming @FrankenGraphics to the team to do the graphics. We are very excited about this addition to the project and would love to share 2 drawings that have already been mocked up! So please, join us in welcoming FrankenGraphics to the project! I can't wait to get these worked into the game! 1/30/18 Update to the project! You can now change rooms, somewhat. I was planning to wait until it the routine was more complete, but I was too excited not to share right now! 12/19/17 I have implemented a "slide" mechanic when only one of the 2 collision points sees a collision. Other work was done as well to this update, but it was all menu and screen stuff. 12/16/17 It doesn't seem like much of an update, but a lot of code changed in the background to make the character sprite interact properly with the background collision code. -Character object now has a bounding box that checks 4 hit points for background collisions. All done at the Cartesian map level. -Figured out how to do subpixel movement to slow down the charater's movement. This will also allow me to change the speed during game play if I desire that down the road. This was a challenge as I need to move 2 pixeld on every 4th frame. All the example code would only move you 1 pixel per X frames, which would create a "bouncing" effect of our Isometric character instead of the smooth diaganol that you see in the video. -The main character now changes its tiles to appear to be facing in the direction it is moving. -I changed the Cartesian sprite from 2 boxes to 1 box. Original Post https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=512999452433257&... Here is a short video of what I have been working on lately. What you see here is an Isometric (3d) view of the playing area with an 8x2 tile sprite and the Cartesian (2d) view in the upper left corner with a 1x2 tile sprite. The Cartesian view is for display only as I work out sprite movement and background collision detection. Once that is all working, I will take it off the screen and that part will operate completely unseen in the background. All updates to the sprites are done in the Cartesian view and then converted to Isometric view to to show on the screen. As you watch the video, you can see how the X and Y axis lay on the Isometric background compared to the Cartesian map. The lightest squares on the Cartesian map represent 8x8 pixel tiles that cause collision. The checkerboard pattern area represents the playing area when the character can move freely. What you can't see is the upper row of collision tiles as the NES doesn't show the first 8 rows of pixels on NTSC screens. As to what the genre of the game will be, I am going with Survival Horror. The Silent Hill series in one of my favorite, so I want to try to bring that style to the NES. How will I pull it off? I haven't a clue. What is the story line? Up in the air! All I know is that it will be a huge challenge and a lot of fun to make!

Awesome. I was wondering if it was just sheer curiosity. Don't get me wrong, there are some functionalities that may call for reading values from the PPU. 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. Good luck, I honestly have no idea as I have never successfully done this on other registers of the PPU.

Finally found it. What a pain to dig through the NA Archive and Wayback Machine. October 20, 2014 - 16 Regular Editions were sold and I believe that was the last time this game was for sale. http://web.archive.org/web/20141022011407/http://www.nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=6&threadid=134803&StartRow=251

Oct 15, 2014 - Posted by zdxplay on page 38 of the Star Keeper Thread in the old NA Brewery. "I said there were 40 copies of regular edition before, but this number was not correct. I had made 140 copies, of which, there were 100 copies of limited edition, 7 copies of gift edition, 11 copies kept and 6 copies had some problems during the welding process which are still under repair. Therefore, actually, there are only 16 copies of normal editions which I shall sell them on ebay. Please pay attention to my ebay online shop and I will sell them in the near future. " Some History I dug up from the old Star Keeper Thread August 2014 - 3 Gift Editions Sold on Ebay Note 1: "The gift editions have the name of the player in the game LOGO image, Within 24 hours after payment, you can send me a PM or e-mail, which writes the name and ID of the ebay buyer you wish to display on the LOGO image, the letters must be uppercase, and less than 16 letters. " - zdxplay Note 2: "the aim of the Gift Editions is to verify the reliability of the postal route" - zdxplay September 10, 2014 - 100 Limited Copies were to be sold on sold on eBay, but he had issues: (What a wild night!) Ebay Email to zdxplay: Attention! In order to maintain a safe trading environment, there is a limit to the item quantity which a seller can specify in one listing. The categories and types of items that are subject to limits and the quantity allowed may vary. You have reached the 30-day selling limit for the type of item you're trying to list. This means that while you can list other types of items, you will need to wait 30 days or until your other listings of this type have ended before you can list this item. Established accounts which demonstrate a history of excellent buyer satisfaction will be automatically subject to higher limits. Sept 12, 2014 - 2 more Gift Editions were sold to test his PayPal Setup September 12, 2014 - The gift transactions were successful. A list was made and sales started. 1 more Gift Edition for Dain was made.

There were 100 LEs and a few "ebay trial selling" copies. In all, about guessing around the 110-115 range.

I'm going to approach this from a different angle. Why are you trying to read the palette from the PPU to put it in RAM? I would approach this by designating 32 bytes in RAM for the palette and then update the palette from that buffer in RAM during the next NMI. This way, the Pal buffer RAM will always match what is in the PPU. I used to only write to the Pal in the PPU when I need to change a color. I found it is much easier and doesn't eat a ton of NMI time to just write the 32 bytes from the Pal RAM buffer every NMI. If I'm way off basis here, I apologize.