Retro Puzzle Maker

Ever want to make your own NES game? Want to make it on an NES too? Check out Retro Puzzle Maker – a quirky little toy I made over my winter break. 

Check it out here!

New Ludum Dare Game: Closing In

Just a quick update: I released another NES game for Ludum Dare. For those unfamiliar, Ludum Dare is a 48/72 hour coding competition. It features a dog trying to escape a collapsing world.

It was built using nes-starter-kit, and served as a bit of a first full-fledged test of it. As a result of making it, I also have a number of improvements for the tool lined up.

Overall I am quite pleased with how it came out.

Check it out on the game’s page!

Closing In: Barney’s Daring Escape

nes-starter-kit: C starter kit for NES games

I’ve been pretty quiet about game dev for a while, but that doesn’t mean it was forgotten. Since I went to MAGFest this year, I’ve been kind of obsessed with the idea of making retro development easier. The people I met made me realize that a lot of people want to get started, but aren’t sure how. While there are a lot of good options out there already, I realized there just might be a space for a code-based starter kit.

So, I made one!

nes-starter-kit is an attempt to make NES homebrew more accessible. It is presented as an intentionally short zelda-esque NES game, combined with a guide to update/change/replace every part of it. (Click above to play the game!) All changes can be done in C – no lower-level coding is required.
* The game uses neslib and some custom extensions written in 6502 assembly, which should cover your needs without modification. If you want to tweak these or write some code in assembly, there is some guidance in the 5th section for this. 

This is still very much a work-in-progress. The game is functional – it has collisions, enemies, and a way to win/lose. There are plenty of features that could be added, and I have a couple queued up, but I want to leave a lot up to creators. I do have some concerns about performance – I am preferring readability and easy editing over everything else. So far I haven’t run into any major issues, but I am worried other developers might. I am also not sure how useful it is with NESMaker on the horizon.

The guide is broken into 5 sections, and is about 25% complete. My current plan is to focus on this for a while, sneaking in some new code changes when I get tired of writing.

Anyway, everything’s available on github: click here!

There’s also a thread about it on NesDev here, if you’d like to discuss!

Let me know what you think if you decide to check it out! Is this something you would use?
Github PRs/issues/etc also always welcome.

Have fun!

Squishy the Turtle on display at MAGFest!

Squishy the Turtle is on display in the Indie Arcade at MAGFest this year! Thanks to the wonderful people at Babycastles, it is being showcased on a Super Gameboy, in a cozy turtle tent! If you’re here, check it out!

Of course, this warranted giving the game a little extra love – I released a special MAGFest edition featuring a high score table for fastest completion times! It also features some minor graphical/movement fixes, as well as some level tweaks to be more fair. The new version is not available on the site yet! I plan to do that after the dust settles post-MAGFest.

Anyway, that’s it; I hope some folks get to play it and enjoy it!

Fluffy Space Escape/Ludum Dare 40 Postmortem

Results just came out for Ludum Dare 40, and I did the best I’ve done so far. I won’t go into numbers here, but you can check them out on the Ludum Dare page if you’re interested. I’m quite happy with the game I created, and it’s definitely reassuring to see others scored it well.

I thought I’d post a postmortem before I forget anything more about it. I might try to do this more with game jams; will see how it goes. It’s a bit long and rambly, so click in if you’re interested.

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