4.5 Top down multi-directional scrolling?

CyberC

New member
Hey all, just found nesmaker and have followed along with the 4.5 orientation video, so far so good! I am a professional game developer using Unity, but always wanted to make a NES game so nesmaker seems perfect :) Extremely rusty when it comes to ASM, (I took one semester in college but have forgotten most of it heh) but looking forward to learning more.

But before I even start doing basic designs, I need to wrap my head around some nes/nesmaker limitations. The big one for me is Top down multi-directional scrolling.

Is nesmaker capable of this? In case it isn't clear what I mean, I am talking about movement in games like gauntlet or Crystalis, or are we limited to Zelda 1 single screen style top down gameplay?


Thanks for any info, I appreciate it! I look forward to digging into nesmaker!
 

CutterCross

Active member
It depends on what you mean by "Is NESmaker capable of this". Is it a part of the default codebase and easily doable without coding? No, not currently. Is it able to be implemented with some advanced coding knowledge? Of course, all NESmaker really does is let you manipulate aspects of an underlying ASM codebase.

NESmaker 4.5 is in a sort of beta state right now, being updated as it goes along until its "final" stable release. But the scrolling engine is capable of 4-directional scrolling, just not 2 directions at once (with some extra caveats).

Scrolling is one of the most complex parts of making an NES game, and Mapper#30 (the ROM mapper NESmaker is designed for) doesn't make multi-directional scrolling easy by any means. It can be done, but you have to be pretty proficient with your knowledge of assembly language and NES hardware.

If you just want to move the PPU window without updating the nametable and collision data tables, that's a bit of a different story. That still requires some extra code and knowledge of the PPU registers, but it's not terribly difficult to implement once you get the gist of it. By itself it will only affect the background graphics and not the collision data, but if you just want some cool scrolly effects that's all you really need.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AP-r78wLhfM
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
Joe showed us some months ago that NESmaker 4.5 will have an adventure topdown 4 ways scrolling module.
I guess we just have to wait, that the module is released (after the Summer Camp)
 

CyberC

New member
Ah ok I didn't think it was possible out of the box, just wanted to confirm. Thanks for all the info!

Cuttercross: Thats a cool demo, at least its nice to know we can maybe fake some transitions at least ;)

dale_coop: any other details on this module, any vids or anything? I just barely started with nesmaker (like I haven't even finished the orientation videos yet heh) so I have plenty to do learning about general nes dev stuff, best way to create pixelart, famitracker, etc. so maybe the module will be out before I am even ready to get serious building my game :)
 

dale_coop

Moderator
Staff member
Like this one:
https://www.facebook.com/JoeGranatoIV/videos/1918815588263360
or even that one:
https://www.facebook.com/JoeGranatoIV/videos/1879376958873890
 
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