How about a tutorial about Coding?

[SkipDrake]

I've futzed around with many game makers on the PC. There are a ton of options that anyone can make a decent game with little to no coding knowledge. The NESmaker on the other hand is a different beast. Because if you want to make a decent game you have to know how to do some coding. Hell, writing a pause script was a absolute pain in the rear and you'd think that'd be easy.

I just write everything gamedev on PC from total scratch, cept of course on PC one needs to make use of some good libraries for drawing, sound, input and the like, and there are some really good ones.

The NES is indeed a whole other thing. I'm certain that big game companies had to make their own nesmaker like tools, as doing it all blind would be very difficult,
and a game company would want to simplify the types of things NESmaker does.

and as evident when i saw as a kid dragon warrior 3 maps in a guide showing as if Enix at the time was using their own map editor for the game to make the pics for the guide as i saw wierd map editor like options in the picture! I forget where I saw that .....maybe even in the manual. I have 1 and 4 CIB, but still need 2 and 3 so no way to look for that.

It is good that nesmaker isn't just a point and click, because one would definitely want the ability to improve/customize it with their own code and have it do the gfx/map/tool like stuff. (this is where the gameboy one falls hard)

Now if only I had somewhere to start doing that. Once I know where to put my stuff I could make some of my own modules that people could use if they want.

Wasn't there any nesmaker tutorials on modules/customization for people who code?? I may be wrong but i thought i might have seen there was such and then forgot.....

 

[PasseGaming]

Not really, the idea was the tutorials would get us started and we were supposed to run with it but I don't think that was enough. Many of us got the general idea but we still struggle with coding while others managed to get it down fairly quick. I think they should have been more explaining how to go about making your own modules and all that.

 

[TolerantX]

I find myself asking for help a lot. I don't know much about coding other then tiny bits and pieces I've picked up over the years. The concept is something I've always struggled with. An I feel like there are a solid chunk of us that would appreciate a mini-tutorial series that deals with just scripting. What each command is and the flow of code and all that. I understand some is spattered across the many tutorials, but I figured it'd be helpful having a basics tutorial so I can understand what I am doing. Anyhow, it's just a suggestion. I've managed to pick up on what some of this code does but I cant quite get the complete picture cause I don't know what BEQ is, for example.

As far as BEQ goes I have a funny way I use to use to remember it... BEQ is ask if it "Be Equal to" and BNE to me is "Be not equal to" I know it's not exact but I find it funny I remember it this way. (I don't use improper English at all nor ebonics so yeah lol for me.)

 

[Paul]

Not sure if this helps anyone, but... there are quote a few good YouTube channels and videos out there who dive in at various levels. I'm sure a number of people are already aware, but I figure it won't hurt to have it on the forum.

NesHacker starts with the basics and works his way up, with several playlists that give a good overview of architecture and assembly. Seemed like a good place to start for folks who want to start wading in but haven't gone too far yet.

Michael Chiaramonte has a playlist called The Zero Pages which also gets you to a nice "Hello Mario" state, as well as a long NES programming playlist that... well, it really gives you the scope of building one of these things from scratch, and I think you'll quickly realize and gain appreciation for all of the challenges that NESMaker contends with, and all the challenges it solves for you.

And lastly, I'll call out Displaced Gamers who does deep dives into interesting code in some episodes, particularly worth calling out is examination of optimizations in Blaster Master.

Oh, and this link is helpful too: https://skilldrick.github.io/easy6502/ a little webpage with an emulator and explanation and whatnot. Not NES directly but it culminates in a Snake game and presents a ton of key concepts.