timefor
New member
Background
I got married on September 8th a few weeks ago and I made my first NES game as a gift for my groomsmen. I had the idea about 10 months beforehand. Imagined having a physical game cart with their names in the game somewhere could be a unique and fun gift. I knew there was a homebrew NES community and I have a background in web development. However I have never made any type of game before or worked with assembly. I got looking into how to do this and found the NesMaker community. Starting from zero experience the game was worked on 1-2 nights a week between wedding planning and my other projects. I managed to put this crude alpha build together, get it on a physical cart, and gave the surprise to my groomsmen the morning of the wedding. Introducing: Super Groomsmen Bros.
The Game Concept
You play as one of my five groomsmen searching for items needed for the wedding. Find and buy 5 suits, 2 rings, booze, balloons, and hats. There is limited time and money. Cash is a resource to get items as well as a weapon to fend off enemies. Balance cash, time, health, and go for a high score while you traverse 1 of 3 maze like levels. Its what happened in real life but now in Nintend~ish form. Relive the adventure as a Super Groomsmen Bro!
Game Items
Levels
Each of the planned levels were based on where we actually went but only Downtown has been coded.
NesMaker & Coding
I started with the Adventure Base Module and followed all the 4.5.x tutorials I could find. I got the basic game mechanics and character down before doing the level design or art work. @kevin81 was a tremendous help creating all the music and sfx. I couldn't have done the music without his help. Its far better than I ever expected it to be. @dale_coop & @JamesNES and others here on the forum helped me with a lot of little coding issues.
I made a few pixels myself but a lot was recycled from the demo assets. I had wished to create all my own pixels but simply ran out of time and ended up using a lot of the tutorial demo assets in the first level design. The pixel art just took way longer than I thought but it's one area I'd still like to go back and redo. Its never going to be a commercial game so hope you can understand the concept and forgive reused pixels.
Mechanics Not Completed
Learning
A big part of the gift for me was giving the guys a physical cart to play. I got the NesMaker license easy enough but had to rebuy another one as a kit so I could get my hands on a hardware programmer. That kit included only 1 cart and PCB but I was able to get more from Broke Studio. Those programers and PCBs had been out of stock for awhile but I'm not sure if the situation ever improved. I also bought a NES and 12" CRT TV for this project. I had front cart labels professionally printed and made my own back labels. Overall I'm in about $400 on this project and I was happy with that as a gift for my groomsmen.
Two days before the wedding I still didn't have a working build on a cart. Had all kinds of issues getting the rom to burn to a cart and it was extra stressful because there was a lot more non-game wedding stuff I needed to get done. My machine is a MacBook Pro M1 running Windows 11 ARM in parallels. If this is your setup, you're simply not going to get the programer to work. Being everything else I own is Apple, I borrowed a Windows ME laptop with USB 1.0 just hours before I had to travel to the wedding venue and miraculously it all worked. I did have to reset the region code on the PCBs to US but after figuring that out, the programer worked great.
The plan was to only ever make six physical carts as gifts. Otherwise when I figure out how I can release the rom, I hope to share the alpha build I ended up with. Recording sound wasn't working between the Mac -> Windows parallels thing, here's a crappy demo video I took with my phone:
I got married on September 8th a few weeks ago and I made my first NES game as a gift for my groomsmen. I had the idea about 10 months beforehand. Imagined having a physical game cart with their names in the game somewhere could be a unique and fun gift. I knew there was a homebrew NES community and I have a background in web development. However I have never made any type of game before or worked with assembly. I got looking into how to do this and found the NesMaker community. Starting from zero experience the game was worked on 1-2 nights a week between wedding planning and my other projects. I managed to put this crude alpha build together, get it on a physical cart, and gave the surprise to my groomsmen the morning of the wedding. Introducing: Super Groomsmen Bros.
The Game Concept
You play as one of my five groomsmen searching for items needed for the wedding. Find and buy 5 suits, 2 rings, booze, balloons, and hats. There is limited time and money. Cash is a resource to get items as well as a weapon to fend off enemies. Balance cash, time, health, and go for a high score while you traverse 1 of 3 maze like levels. Its what happened in real life but now in Nintend~ish form. Relive the adventure as a Super Groomsmen Bro!
Game Items
Weapon - Middle Finger (Short Range Melee Attack)
Weapon - Bottle Caps (Short Projectile Attack, Requires Ammo)
Weapon - Cash (Dropped Weapon, Decreases Cash by $10)
Weapon - Stripper Pole (Melee Attack)
Heart - Health Restore
Cash - Increases Cash by $10
Bottle Caps - Replenishes Ammo 1x
Rose - Bonus Points
Pineapple - Bonus Points
Suit - Required
Diamonds - Required
Hat - Required Item
Ballon - Required Item
Liquor Bottle - Required Item
Levels
Each of the planned levels were based on where we actually went but only Downtown has been coded.
- Downtown Los Angeles (Easy) - Suit shopping, find 5 suits and get out of there. Enemies are trying to rob and scam you. They take your health and cash.
- Las Vegas (Medium) - Go quick, find two diamond rings, booze, and balloons. Enemies are trying to rob and scam you. Strippers are aggressive and take half your money.
- Themepark (Hard) - We're at the wedding venue and you need to go through a large maze of screens to find me. There is a very very short amount of time and the aggressive park staff are trying to take your booze and every dollar you have.
NesMaker & Coding
I started with the Adventure Base Module and followed all the 4.5.x tutorials I could find. I got the basic game mechanics and character down before doing the level design or art work. @kevin81 was a tremendous help creating all the music and sfx. I couldn't have done the music without his help. Its far better than I ever expected it to be. @dale_coop & @JamesNES and others here on the forum helped me with a lot of little coding issues.
I made a few pixels myself but a lot was recycled from the demo assets. I had wished to create all my own pixels but simply ran out of time and ended up using a lot of the tutorial demo assets in the first level design. The pixel art just took way longer than I thought but it's one area I'd still like to go back and redo. Its never going to be a commercial game so hope you can understand the concept and forgive reused pixels.
Mechanics Not Completed
- No Store - You're suppose to buy items which require having enough cash. Didn't get coded.
- Pickups automatically come back and shouldn't - Cash is not suppose to replenish when you return to the same screen.
- End of level lock isn't working - Exit should check if you have the required items but its not working correctly yet.
- Level 1 is mostly there, but Level 2 (Las Vegas) and Level 3 (Themepark / Wedding Venue) have not been developed.
- The player's score is suppose to be displayed at the end. I got the code mostly working but didn't finish adding it into the alpha build thats on the carts.
Learning
- The hud and some text was made too close to the top and edges of the screen. I needed to respect overscan and the title-safe area. I waited too long to test on physical hardware to see how big of issue this was.
- I underestimated how long little coding issues would take. I lost multiple working nights on this to little issues. It pushed my productivity back and I ran out of time for artwork and finishing mechanics.
A big part of the gift for me was giving the guys a physical cart to play. I got the NesMaker license easy enough but had to rebuy another one as a kit so I could get my hands on a hardware programmer. That kit included only 1 cart and PCB but I was able to get more from Broke Studio. Those programers and PCBs had been out of stock for awhile but I'm not sure if the situation ever improved. I also bought a NES and 12" CRT TV for this project. I had front cart labels professionally printed and made my own back labels. Overall I'm in about $400 on this project and I was happy with that as a gift for my groomsmen.
Two days before the wedding I still didn't have a working build on a cart. Had all kinds of issues getting the rom to burn to a cart and it was extra stressful because there was a lot more non-game wedding stuff I needed to get done. My machine is a MacBook Pro M1 running Windows 11 ARM in parallels. If this is your setup, you're simply not going to get the programer to work. Being everything else I own is Apple, I borrowed a Windows ME laptop with USB 1.0 just hours before I had to travel to the wedding venue and miraculously it all worked. I did have to reset the region code on the PCBs to US but after figuring that out, the programer worked great.
The plan was to only ever make six physical carts as gifts. Otherwise when I figure out how I can release the rom, I hope to share the alpha build I ended up with. Recording sound wasn't working between the Mac -> Windows parallels thing, here's a crappy demo video I took with my phone:
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