snake game demo
- Thread starter wayne Sue
- Start date
Bucket Mouse
Active member
If someone figured out how to do Snake I'd like to know. The limit of 8 sprites per scanline would seem to limit how long a snake can get to an unacceptable and unchallenging length. It could partially be solved by turning stationary parts of the snake bodies into background tiles, but then the snakes would be 16x16 and they'd be too huge for the game to last very long.
In this amateur expert's opinion it's impossible to do Snake on the NES. But maybe I'm wrong and someone else has already figured it out.
In this amateur expert's opinion it's impossible to do Snake on the NES. But maybe I'm wrong and someone else has already figured it out.
@Bucket Mouse Joe (Turtle Time Media) made a snake game included in his 8bit Brix release:
turtlerescuenes.itch.io
8Bit Brix Design Studio & Snake Game (NES) by TurtleRescueNES
FULL GAME! Create! Survive!
turtlerescuenes.itch.io
I am going to use Nes Maker to develop the game Snake. I have a few questions:
1. The snake is the player of the game object
2. Food is the Pickup object.
3. The snake is divided into the head, body and tail. How should this object be defined?
4. When initialized, the snake only has the head and tail.
5. When the snake eats the food, add a section of the body? If you want to use a script, how should you write the code for this script?
Can anyone give some suggestions?
1. The snake is the player of the game object
2. Food is the Pickup object.
3. The snake is divided into the head, body and tail. How should this object be defined?
4. When initialized, the snake only has the head and tail.
5. When the snake eats the food, add a section of the body? If you want to use a script, how should you write the code for this script?
Can anyone give some suggestions?
I'd suggest starting with a less ambitious project and expanding your projects bit by bit.
A snake game is actually quite advanced. Asking all those questions suggests you're not quite ready for it yet. I am sorry.
Did you know there’s NO snake game released on the NES? Why? Because it’s quite challenging to achieve. Joe, who made the Snake 8Brix game, is an advanced NESmaker user and NES developer, he works with NESmaker for years, and like everyday. I doubt anyone here could make one (with the exception of 2 or 3 members I know well).
The most difficult part of this game is the problem of the snake growing longer after eating food, right? Is there any good solution?
Personally, I would use tiles and not sprites for that. when you move, it would replace the tiles accordingly.
Sprites would add limitations (like the 8 sprites per scanline limitation).
Can I understand it this way?
The player of the game is just a snake head, and the others are tiles. The snake head passes through these tiles, and changes these tiles according to the current length and position of the snake. These tiles are divided into two types, one as the background, and the other as the so-called snake body and tail. Each tile is an 8*8 block (including the snake head)
RMiao
New member
With all due respect, actually there were a ton of Snake games released on the NES (and Famicom). The first two are actual commercial releases:
@Bucket Mouse : Tons of snake games on NES.
Fire Dragon (early to mid 90s by Gamtec, released on 72 pin format in Brazil and other regions, 60 pin format in Taiwan, Central Europe, South America, etc):
Edacity Snakes (Waixing, China, 60 pin multicarts 2005):
As for homebrew, there's also quite a few Snake games, such as NESsnake, NESsnake 2, etc. These likely date sometime between 2000 - 2010 if I were to guess:
I'm just throwing this out there as I can be a bit pedantic, and everyone always seems to miss the fact that 72 pin NES did indeed have a snake game released during its lifetime, as well as on Famicom.
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Hmmm... with all due respect, those two games aren't official or licensed releases. They're actually bootleg games ("commercially" available like many bootlegs in China /Russia/Brazil... and severalother countries). As for the homebrew versions, I knew about those and have even played them.
But, whatever, yeah... you're right, there are a few Snake games out there, like the 8Brix Snake game.
RMiao
New member
The thing is though, these aren't bootleg games, and there is no logical explanation to be referring to them as such other than the usage of country of origin as the deciding factor. The games do not contain infringing IP, were developed from the ground up, etc. It's exactly the same situation as the Codemasters Micro Machines game released on the NES, the Tengen games on NES (aside from Tetris, which technically could be considered a pirate or bootleg or something since it actually was an infringing product (albeit not from any fault of Tengen it seems) or even any of the homebrew / indie games we are discussing today. I don't want to get into an argument with you over semantics, but it's a bit unfair to dismiss games just based on their countries of origin.
Anyways, my point is that digging deep into the NES (and Famicom's) rich history, there were Snake games developed and released for sale commercially, back in the day, one being released way before NES homebrew was a thing. No, it's not been done by an official Nintendo developer, but a lot of companies were doing it. I think we can both agree though that despite being such a simple game to play, programming it would be quite complex.
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GermanGarageGames
Member
This is such a powerful tip !
Not just for nesmaker but for all hobby / work projects in general.
If you start to big you will get overwhelmed and lose interest and focus.
Start small and finish a demo or short game and build on that.
Dream big, start small
You're right, it's all about semantics.
During that era, "NES indie games" and "NES homebrew games" weren’t a thing… we talked about bootlegs or unlicensed games.
What I meant is that there were no official NES releases. I’m not familiar with these unofficial games, as they never made it here.
I'm sorry if I upset you in any way. That was not my intention.
I should have been more precise with my words, especially since it seems that it’s important to you. Please accept my sincere apologies.
RMiao
New member
No worries dale_coop, you've been so amazing and friendly to everyone here and in the FB NESmaker community. I'm sorry if it felt as if I were coming off the deep end in my last post. The thing is I personally know some of the people who developed some of those early games, and the Fire Dragon game was even developed only about twenty minutes from where I live; as such, I just feel a bit protective of these games a bit.
No, no, you're right. You can correct me when I'm wrong, and I enjoy learning more. These games look really cool, and I wasn't aware of their existence! (All the Russian/Brazilian/Chinese NES/FC releases are still a whole new world for me to explore)