Raftronaut

I also agree that some simple In-game music would help, even a single channel playing a jingle would add something. 

Some sort of CPU challenge would help things along too. Even if only to serve as obstacles like in excitebike.. Just a thought. The presentation is terrific and the title music is great. Very nice work! I especially enjoy the cheerful mood of the music, it really fits the feel of the game. 

18 hours ago, Orab Games said:

You have to go to the Dojo to learn about combat. Go to the 41:15 mark in this video.
 

 

That is helpful! thanks! 

1 hour ago, KHAN Games said:

Weird combat is a staple of Rob's games, but after you take a few minutes to figure it out it feels SO GOOD. Like, you'll want more and more of it. It's really a cool feeling when your brain finally understands and you can function on instinct alone.

Yeah, I don't doubt that at all, which is why I've been wanting to give this one another shot. 

Thanks for the hints, hopefully this will put me on my way

I felt very very confused by the combat system in this game,  I got so frustrated on my first attempt that I set it down and never came back to it. Is there any sort of PDF manual or combat instructions available anywhere? I sure would like to give this game another shot...

7 hours ago, FrankenGraphics said:

Demo splash screen! 75% done.  I've got half a mind to move the copyright notice to pre-title card, which would free up some resources, but even here i've got 30 tiles and 1 colour to spare on the bg layer. The star field will be drawn on the sprite layer, which is currently only used for a few details on the logo

Care to detail how you’ll implement your star field? I assume most nes Star twinkles are simple palette swaps, but I’m curious how you’re planning on scattering the sprites in order to animate. 

Just a quick search led me to this mini disc production company in Minnesota, a run of 100 would be $1.95 per unit. 

https://www.quickturnduplication.com/pricing/mini-cd-and-mini-dvd-pricing

I can ask around for more options too 

6 hours ago, toggle switch said:

The album is just digital files. 

I would love to put it on minidisc in particular, or pressed to vinyl... but i doubt the market for either items would justify the manufacturing cost

CD production is extremely cost effective these days. Especially if you choose to do a simple cardboard sleeve, I imagine mini disc really wouldn’t be much more. If you really want that to happen I would urge you to look into the costs, it may be cheaper than you think  

Vinyl pressings are going to be expensive at the outset because you’ll have to pay for the pressing plates to be made. As well, lp jackets tend to be really expensive In small runs. If you’re doing a limited run of say 100-200 lps it’s cheaper to actually print 500 jackets and sit on the extras than it is to do the 100-200 required. That way, since you have the plates made already, you could do a second pressing using existing jackets for much much cheaper. 

CD’s you can usually order 100-200 shrink wrapped in jackets for maybe $400. Works out to like $1 or $2 per unit. The margin is really high. 

I would think, varying gameplay styles would be more in the spirit of the original competition. Rather than the aforementioned boss rush. I think Nesert Golf would make a fun addition personally 

amazing

3 hours ago, dale_coop said:

Oh wow! Raft.... It's very similar. But of course, I grow up in the middle of all that imagery, of the 80'sand begining of the 90's... used to have those kind of posters in my room when I was adolescent  Best memories.

Haha, so many universal similarities when it comes to Science Fiction! haha

Ah yes, here it is.... This painting was done by an Artist friend of mine, L.Chappelle. 

He did it with puffy paint on canvas, the texture is 3 dimensional. 

Pretty close! ha!

I've never put this together before, but Your title screen reminds me like a painting my friend did 1-2 years ago. 

Let me see if I can find a screen shot, you may find it interesting.....

1 hour ago, dale_coop said:

"KUBO, the story of a cowboy turtle in search of a mysterious crystal hidden in a dangerous world, populated by monsters."

 

Ahhh congrats Dale, I am happy you shared this here! 

I love the tag line! Green cart looks great! 

Cheers! 

OK! looking forward to that!

@gauauu Are you planning to release this on GTROM boards as well? That seems like a natural fit for this project. I am still learning about this mapper, which features of the board did you find most appealing to your project? 

@FrankenGraphics Any chance we'll get an Audio teaser for this anytime in the near future? I've been dying to hear what this alien world sounds like  Being myself both a fan of Alien worlds and ...well....Sound...lol

Looking forward to seeing this thread blossom. I've greatly enjoyed the window provided into development thus far. 

But does it conveyor much tho? 

52 minutes ago, FrankenGraphics said:

A lot of it probably has to do with the efforts of high quality homebrews and high quality campaigns like NEScape, Twin Dragons, Nebs n Debs and Micro Mages. But it wouldn't surprise me at all if NESmaker added a considerable chunk to that awareness cloud as well. 
 

I will attest that this is 100% true of my situation 

Ahhh I see. 

Well, I think leaving it up to the developer is a fine stance to take personally. Devs that program their games from the ground up wil automatically bake that into the narrative their game is attached to. I think all of us here are sincerely interested in the development narrative of any homebrew, as well I think the greater homebrew buying public is as well (not just the devs) as proven spectacularly by the Micro Mages KS launch video...

Seriously? A 5 minute tech video? Hell Yes! That video was a brilliant move that wrangled people's attention, mainly because it created the narrative of a passion for game creation, ingenuity and craftsmanship. I've shared that video with more people who couldn't care less about NES games who found it highly fascinating from a design perspective or technical narrative perspective. Animator's, Arists, filmmakers, musicians, doesn't matter, people find that creation process interesting. 

I think if a Dev takes the time to properly learned to code in ASM and how to deal appropriately with the other swath of limitations necessary to release a NES game, that fact should be displayed proudly if the dev chooses. We should all celebrate that in fact, but is it relevant to whether or not the game is good? NO, absolutely not, but we love to have these narratives because we love the stories behind their creation. I for one am a sucker on the deeper details of NES homebrew development. I listen to Beau's podcast religiously and highly respect his contributions to the scene and his efforts have fundamentally cemented my interest in the homebrew scene as a whole. I listen to his show (and Kevin's) for exactly these types of stories. In Mugi's case, Nesmaker is very much a part of Dimension Shift's story, yet Dimension shift should not be defined by nesmaker if the tool is no longer being used in it's development. The seeds of DS were planted with Nesmaker sure, that's a part of DS's narrative now, and a huge inspiration to many of us in the NM' scene as we continue to finish our projects. If Mugi feels that his game is no longer a nesmaker game, we should all listen to him I feel...

That being said, my project  proudly flies the flag for Nesmaker, I'll make no misconceptions about my current training-wheel status in the community. I've received a lot of help and support from fellow nesmakers and have made many good friends along the way. Yes, many of us are just getting our feet wet, some in programming, some in assets, some in design but we're all hungry and ready to get involved. Most, if not all of us look up to Beau's wave of homebrewers with awe, not one of us would take away how much blood/sweat/(tears maybe?) went into the games that were programmed from the ground up in ASM. Since i've gotten invested in Nesmaker I also started buying homebrews as well in order to support the community I am inspired by (many of your own games out there) which is true of many Nesmakers as well. Many of us (myself included) are late comers to the scene and are more than happy to pick up the new KS campaigns or pre orders from the greater community, discuss them on our threads, provide encouragement or outreach where we can.  If I can simply point out that insisting on the distinction creates an atmosphere of US vs. THEM however unintentional it may be to it's initial implications. We all certainly feel it on the NM side, that is for certain. Mugi pointed this out earlier as well..Many of us (myself included) are understanding of the context given the circumstances of the greater world of NES homebrew, but at the end of day....literally everyone on the NM side is just trying to make NES games the people that frequent this site would enjoy... 

Final point, if ANYONE tried to release a Nesmaker-made game telling people they coded it themselves that should be met with clear derision and disdain, not only would that be incredibly easy to prove, it would be entirely disingenuous on their part and dealt with accordingly. Though cases like that I ASSURE YOU ALL will be in the extreme minority if at all. 

All of us here on this forum want to know how games are made, why don't we simply push for continued transparency within the community when it comes to relaying our production narratives? This is basically what we are all interested in anyway. 

****3 cups of coffee in today and basically just throwing paint at the wall here... probably TL;DR.... lol ...Happy Friday, looking forward to cracking open my copy of spook-o-tron tonight! 

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

I bought NESMaker. It seemed like a way to make a game without necessarily having to learn a whole new coding language inside out. I get enough of that in my day job as a web developer. I have ideas for some space shooters that I'd have loved to make come to life. It wasn't going to be possible to make my shooter with nesmaker out of the box but it would have been a nice foot in the door, so to say. When I tried to get help and share my progress with people I got shit on pretty hard by a few people. Not real development. LOL NO PROGRAMMING REQUIRED. Learn assembly or don't do it at all. I was pretty fuckin disheartened man. And call me weak, but I gave up. Now nobody gets to play Doug's Cool Space Shooter Game. 

I'm a little confused by this, shit on by the NM community? I feel like i've had the exact opposite experience and have received a lot of community support and assistance. Granted, shmups don't seem to be very popular in that scene, my project is one of the only games currently in development using it for anything remotely shmup-like 

4 minutes ago, Mugi said:

thanks for the interest but im not sure there's much point in making a thread about it.

what would i put there ?

beautiful screenshots, puns about conveyor belts, other creative uses of the Verb "Parallaxing" 

2 minutes ago, Scrobins said:

Our cup runneth over

GOOD problems to have 

I'd just like to waltz back  to comment that the "On the Horizon" List is thick AF and that's Rad.

7 minutes ago, EnigMog said:

https://thenew8bitheroes.tumblr.com/post/184948012074/nesmaker-publishing?fbclid=IwAR1yOzeaLXcKsZL1y_UcSNtjCa-lEWE3TNZXkwkHlKDXdyIO0ECMzb-OljE

That link contains the quote: "you are under no legal obligation to announce that your product was created with NESmaker" . 

*edit,  I should have refreshed in order to avoid this sort of redundancy 

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

Mugi has a valid point concerning Nesmaker for a couple of reasons, anyone attracted to Nesmaker due to what Dimension Shift is able to showcase would be disappointed since all of the default code base has been gutted, optimized and replaced from the ground up. So it would be a disservice for new people coming to Nesmaker fresh.

Mugi is basically utilizing the tool at this point to serve as a screen painter, which is something I understand most from-scratch Homebrewer's use without having to announce that their game is somehow tool assisted.  Most of us in the NM community are more than happy to announce our projects as Nesmaker-made, no one is trying to fool anyone and it would be fairly simple to prove a project was made with nesmaker or not in case anyone tried to get smart and claim credit for source code they didn't write. I think Mugi's case provides an exceptionally large gray area, where a project started with a tool but quickly outgrew it and moved on towards the light. 

I really don't care to get invested in this argument since I'm heavily rooted in the NM community yet see logical conclusions from either angle, my only desired outcome is more cool NES games, method-be-damned. 

All I can really add is please keep up the good work everybody

Wading in here to mention my own Nesmaker project which is currently in development "Space Raft". An Nes game based on my dumb rock band. I just finished a new working demo, which you can be download directly here, or through my thread in the Nesmaker forums... 

This is my very first attempt at any game dev and am receiving some great help from the nesmaker community when it comes to coding, but the music and assets were all created by me specifically for this project. 

http://nesmakers.com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=2867

My eventual plan is to simply release the ROM for free on our record labels website and do a limited run of pre order only carts.. 

I hope this is an appropriate use of this thread, not trying to advertise necessarily, but would like to be more active in the Nes homebrew community since I am so endlessly inspired by what I see here. 

Xoxo Cheers!

Raft3.0.NES