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/vr/ - Retro Games


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File: 106 KB, 1028x788, metroid.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5375294 No.5375294 [Reply] [Original]

A while back some dude on Lemon64 was working on a port of Metroid to the C64 and...yeah, he didn't have the coding skills or the time along with his day job+family so he gave up.

Lesson learned: Don't take on retro projects that are over your head, especially considering back in the day that games of this scale were usually coded by a couple of people instead of just one guy.

Failing that, try doing a smaller, less complex NES conversion like Hydlide or some other NROM game first.

>> No.5375430

k

>> No.5375469

I don't get it. Why not give out the source code so other people could contribute if you can't do it all by yourself?

>> No.5375478

>>5375294
>Don't take on retro projects
>retro projects

>> No.5375497 [DELETED] 

Metroid is alright but I could think of better projects to work on.

>> No.5375524

>>5375469
Autism

>> No.5375543

>>5375478
>being this autistic over phrasing

>> No.5375575

I didn't know anyone involved in the retro community actually managed to get a female to have sex with them and reproduce.

>> No.5375595

BTW you should read up on the really clever stuff NES games did to fit everything in 40k of ROM space.

>> No.5375604

>>5375294
ok

>> No.5375613

>>5375575
AVGN is married and has a kid.

>> No.5375617

>>5375469
He wasn't trying to make something cool, he just wanted to say "Look what I did!". Little wonder he never finished. Most people who want to get into game design or rom hacking have the same issue. They don't want to actually make something, they just want the praise for making something. The actual work is viewed as an obstacle between them and that goal.

Protip for anyone with the same thought: If you don't enjoy the work, you don't actually WANT to be a game dev/rom hacker. If poking around at something to see how it works isn't your idea of fun, then you aren't likely to have fun. This is what the job/hobby is all about.

>> No.5375619

>>5375613
He's not real though. All that shit is just a persona for money/entertainment purposes.

>> No.5375621

>>5375294
A couple hours ago some aspie posted about another aspie who posted about a fantasy somwhere

He then reddit spaced and gave same sage wise advice

Everyone laughed at him

>>5375543
>using autistic phrasing

>> No.5375632

>>5375617
You know some people did a remastered Super Pitfall for the NES a while back. They weren't quitters though.

>> No.5375654

Designing a game engine is the most fun part though.

>> No.5375671

>>5375632
>some people
One guy did most of the work, the other just did music. And you can tell that guy enjoys it, due to his numerous posts in his blog about small technical details he discovered in the rom.

>> No.5375690

>>5375294
Did you really need to make a thread about this? Maybe hmmmm nah you're not worth it.
*looks at katana*
Sorry father I promise to find a worthy opponent someday...

>> No.5376196

>>5375632
>>5375671
Ok although keep in mind that most of the work just involved improving the audiovisuals and cleaning up the game engine to run better and faster and fix bugs. Little different from porting a game to a completely different system where everything has to be rewritten from the ground up.

>> No.5376247

>>5376196
>and cleaning up the game engine to run better and faster

For some reason, all of Micronics's games take a stupidly long amount of time to set up the graphics. There's a 1 to 1.3 second pause every time you switch to a different screen.

>> No.5376262

>>5375294
>Failing that, try doing a smaller, less complex NES conversion like Hydlide or some other NROM game first

Metroid isn't one of the bigger or more technically sophisticated NES games to be honest, it's only 128k and uses the MMC1. This isn't Kirby's Adventure we're talking here.

>> No.5376281

>>5375294
how about not doing useless projects for obsolete technology no one cares about at all
get a freelance job

>> No.5376297

>>5376281
>>5375690
>>5375621
How many more times are you going to keep samefagging this?

>> No.5376298

>>5376196
>cleaning up the game engine to run better and faster and fix bugs. Little different from porting a game to a completely different system where everything has to be rewritten from the ground up.
So, recreating a game from scratch is that much harder than reverse engineering already compiled code to the point where you can modify the game engine to be better? You don't honestly believe that, do you?

>> No.5376304

>>5376281
What is this anon even doing on this board if he doesn't like retro games and hardware?

>> No.5376312

>>5376262
Even so, if you were going to try a NES -> C64 conversion, it would be better to practice on a simpler game with no banking like Hydlide or Battle City. Especially because those games don't have any scrolling which cuts way down on the amount of work you have to do.

>> No.5376338

>>5376312
Hydlide with SID music could only be an improvement over that bleepshit it has on the NES.

>> No.5376383

>>5375613
He's a reasonably good looking guy who doesn't have a huge beer gut.

>> No.5376429

>>5375294
It doesn't take much skill to make C64 games, anon. There are plenty of resources, even a person with 0 programming experience can do it, given sufficient IQ. Chances are the guy didn't quit because he couldn't do it, he quit because he wasn't motivated, as is usually the case with wannabe game developers.

>> No.5376431 [DELETED] 

>>5376429
>It doesn't take much skill to make C64 games, anon
It's easier to code for than the NES, in fact it's possibly the easiest retro system to write a game on.

>> No.5376439

Funny that because the Atari 2600 has one of the best homebrew scenes and there are few systems more difficult to code for because there's literally nothing there.

>> No.5376451

>>5376429
>It doesn't take much skill to make C64 games, anon
It's easier to code for than the NES, in fact it's possibly the easiest 8-bit system to write a game on.

>> No.5376479

>>5375617
>>5376429
I thought the dude said he couldn't find time between his day job and family?

>> No.5376534

>>5375619
Jews.

>> No.5376556

Some guys did an RTS for the C64 and 8086 PCs which was done from the ground up (as opposed to Metroid where the game assets are already there and just need to be converted) and this guy couldn't pull it off?

>> No.5376717

>>5376297
How many times are you going to get buttblasted and blame it on le samefag?

>> No.5376767

>>5375478
>retro
Retro in this context is actually correct

>> No.5376795

The point of this thread is? You think I care about a tech demo fan project that never amounted to anything? That I wanted to discuss this? I think you made this thread because you wanted to shit on the creator.

>> No.5377424

>>5376717
>>5376795
The IP count in the thread proves you keep samefagging butthurt, dude.

The eternal question remains: If I am not interested in a thread topic, why do I choose to post in it?

>> No.5377460
File: 55 KB, 775x339, Untitled.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5377460

>>5377424
uh huh.....

>> No.5377512

Wish I could code something more complicated than changing the screen color or writing text to the screen.

>> No.5377535

>>5375613
Her children were from a previous relationship.

>> No.5377624

>>5375543
>thinking this is even a thread worth posting

>> No.5377632

>>5376439
Atari 2600 games are also tiny, so they can be written fast. A typical game was 4-8k which is about equivalent to a couple paragraphs of text.

>> No.5377707

>>5377535
oh shit? so avgn has no kids of his own?

>> No.5377776
File: 4 KB, 315x136, dq1 sprites.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5377776

>>5376262
>>5376312
Important difference: The NES can flip sprites in the H or V axis while the C64 can't, also NES sprites only take 16 bytes to store while C64 sprites take 64 bytes.

Take a look at this chart of DQ1 sprites. Each sprite would require a separate pattern on the C64, and as there are 116 sprites, that would add up to 7424 bytes while on the NES it would be maybe 2k, noting that you don't need separate patterns for some of these since you can just H flip them.

>> No.5377791

>>5375595
Compressing text with RLE runs and making tilemaps out of metatiles isn't that impressive, it's actually really easy to do. The actual impressive thing is making something with the same quality as Super Mario Bros., which many other games failed to do in the NES life even with much more ROM memory, RAM character chips, mappers, etc.

>> No.5377848

>>5377424
>my retardation proves i'm retarded
It does indeed

>> No.5377889

>>5377776
Easy. You just do like on the Japanese DQ1 and only have characters facing one direction. Saves you a ton of sprites. :^)

>> No.5377931

The Famicom DQ1 is 64k in size and it doesn't bank the PRG at all, just the graphics data. Also the CHR ROM is 32k, but only 12k of that is actually tile/sprite data and the rest is the map data. DW1 is 80k in size, the PRG ROM is 64k and the CHR only 16k. I guess it has separate PRG banks for the town, overworld, and dungeons kind of like how Ultima on the Apple II would ask you to switch disks when you went into a town or overworld.

>> No.5378046
File: 2 KB, 183x93, dw1 sprites.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5378046

>>5377776
Just a few I did as an experiment. The Slimes are cake and only require one sprite, some of the enemies are tough to recreate using the C64's sprite system and require a lot of sprite stacking. The Wizards for example took all eight sprites.

>> No.5378527

>>5378046
Neat.

>> No.5378567

i tried to figure out the SID a while back and it fucking drove me mad

how did they do it, /vr/

>> No.5378573

>>5378567
90% of US C64 games just stuck to the default envelopes, it was mostly all Euros who did the crazy SID tricks starting with Ron Hubbard in Monty on the Run.

>> No.5378625

>>5377707
Theyre his kids
You're being bamboozled on the internet

>> No.5379831

>>/vr/thread/S5339478#p5341915

I checked the FDS original and it loads from the disk whenever you go into towns or palaces.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpJCGf6-9k

>> No.5380057

Some guy in that old thread mentioned that NES games are full of scroll glitches. Can anyone explain the technical reasons for it?

>> No.5380087

>>5380057
Basically, you can store four screens in the NES's video memory at a time. This lets you scroll horizontally or vertically one screen before you have to refill the screen map with the next screen (or else wrap back around). In the process of reloading the map, you can get glitches on the edge of the screen.

It's pretty rare to scroll in more than one axis, for example in SMB3 most of the time the maps are only two screens high (except in vertical scrolling levels like in World 7) to avoid having to refill the vertical tile map.

>> No.5380101

>>5376304
You seem to have missed this, but most people on 4chan are complete casuals just looking to pick a fight about stuff they barely understand.

>> No.5380134

It's hard to do pixel art on the NES because of the shared colors per block of four tiles limitation.

>> No.5380169

>>5380134
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efxMbwL9z4I

0:45

No it's not, you can do pixel art just fine if you understand how to utilize the graphics.

>> No.5380215

>>5380087
You can get glitches in anything if you can't lrn2code

>> No.5380235 [DELETED] 

>>5380169
Man that game has some nice graphics, too bad they're wasted on shovelware of this caliber.

>> No.5380242

>>5380169
Shame to waste such nice graphics on shovelware like this.

>> No.5380268

>>5380169
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyNsXWJBB2k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=li9J1VdnMig

Then again, the NES version of California Games doesn't show the beach people rating your performance in the surfing section. It's just a...stand thing with no people in it. Even the fucking Apple II manages that.

>> No.5380286

>>5380268
Rare developed that port. Go ask them.

>> No.5381226
File: 13 KB, 322x202, scooby doo elite 1986.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5381226

>>5380134
>>5380169
C64 graphics can definitely look nicer and feel more organic and not as flat/blocky as NES graphics despite the much smaller color palette.

>> No.5381372

>>5380268
>Then again, the NES version of California Games doesn't show the beach people rating your performance in the surfing section. It's just a...stand thing with no people in it. Even the fucking Apple II manages that.
california games is pretty large, i presume the some things were cut due to available rom space.

>> No.5382016

>>5381372
I checked and surprisingly it's only 128k while the C64 and Apple versions are on a double sided disk. The Genesis version doesn't have the beach people either, it's also a small ROM (512k).

>> No.5382023

You didn't see too many 128k NES games still coming out in 1989. Surprised they were that cheap.

>> No.5382126
File: 360 KB, 1847x1071, asdf.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5382126

If you are interested in NES development, there are plenty of resources. This should get you started.

Nerdy Nights Tutorial
http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=22&threadid=7155

NESdev wiki / forums
http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/Nesdev_Wiki

MOS 6502 Manual
http://users.telenet.be/kim1-6502/6502/proman.html#2241

YYchr graphics editor
https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/119/

NESdev is difficult and convoluted for a million reasons, but once you understand the limitations, it is certainly possible! You will soon be well on your way to starting and abandoning the project of your dreams! Pic related.

>> No.5382157

>>5382126
ive asked you for this information in /dpt/ and you never responded you fucking cuck.

>> No.5382175

>>5382126
>NESdev is difficult and convoluted for a million reasons

One reason being that there's a million different mappers and you have to decide which one to use.

>> No.5382183

>>5376298
This call can go either way, depending entirely on how fucked the code is.
I come across this dilemma all the time. "Do I even try to figure out what this guy was on when he wrote this, or should I just take the logic and write it myself?"
Of course, the amount of work involved is also a factor.

>> No.5382185

>>5382126
>You will soon be well on your way to starting and abandoning the project of your dreams! Pic related.

You have to wonder how anything got done back in the day and someone didn't just say "Y'know, SMB3 is too fucking hard. I quit."

>> No.5382190

>>5382185
1. They were getting paid to do it
2. There was less stuff to do back then

>> No.5382192

>>5382157
no you didn....

>>>/g/69863318
OSHI my bad dude. Anyway, Read The NESdev Wiki. When you're done, read it again. Good luck!

>> No.5382196

>>5382175
That above all else. What do I use? AOROM? CNROM? MMC1?

>> No.5382212

>>5382196
A lot of mapper choices in NES games were dictated by cost reasons (the more advanced ones like MMC3 weren't cheap) and whether or not the programmers wanted to bother with complicated banking schemes--I'm not kidding. ROM disassemblies of MMC3 games are a nightmare. It seems as if Rare practically always used AOROM (fixed CHR bank, PRG can only be paged in full 32k chunks).

>> No.5382219

>>5382212
>It seems as if Rare practically always used AOROM (fixed CHR bank, PRG can only be paged in full 32k chunks).

But their games usually always had a CHR RAM and just copied the graphics data into it.

>> No.5382223

SMB3 was something like $70 at the time. Anything with big ROMs, MMC3, battery save, etc was going to cost you.

>> No.5382235

>>5382196
NROM (0) seems like a good place to start. It has no special hardware.

MMC3 (4) seems top tier; SMB3, Kirby, etc. BUT repro carts cant do it yet. Flash carts can tho.

Battle Kid II, NESmaker games use mapper 30, a 512k UNROM, w some PRG and CHR bankswitching. You can get these carts made, so that is worth considering, if that is your plan.
http://wiki.nesdev.com/w/index.php/UNROM_512

>> No.5382236 [DELETED] 

Like noted above, Rare also did the ports of California Games and they used 128k and UNROM. Those guys were unbelievably cheap.

>> No.5382238

>>5382235
>MMC3 (4) seems top tier; SMB3, Kirby, etc. BUT repro carts cant do it yet. Flash carts can tho.

Actually MMC3 doesn't do anything that special, it just provides an IRQ timer for split screen scrolling and allows paging of the CHR ROM in 1k chunks so you can animate background tiles easily and cheaply. It also can support battery saves without needing to hold Reset down when powering the console off, but due to the expense this feature was seldom used.

>> No.5382246

>>5382235
>NROM (0) seems like a good place to start. It has no special hardware.
NROM would be the equivalent of a single load game on a home computer. After 1985 however, only some unlicensed/bootleg games were NROM.

>> No.5382251

>>5382238
that IRQ scanline counter would be most helpful! It also breaks up PRG banks in smaller chunks too, if i recall correctly

>> No.5382254

MMC3 lets you bank the PRG in 8k chunks. Not all MMC3 games use all of its capabilities either, often it's just used like MMC1 but with animated tiles. The more advanced games do throw in everything but the kitchen sink, for example every time you get a power up in Kirby, it swaps in the code portion for that power up.

>> No.5382265

Like noted above, Rare also did the port of California Games and they used 128k and UNROM. Those guys were unbelievably cheap.

I thought they did Winter Games because that was 128k/UNROM as well but actually it was a Pony Canyon game and a conversion from the FDS.

>> No.5382270

>>5382265
Taboo: The Sixth Sense is MMC1 and only 64k

>> No.5382278

>>5382192
>no you didn....
Yes I did.
Go fuck yourself.

>> No.5382313

>>5382278
............read the rest of the post

>> No.5382328

>>5382175
>One reason being that there's a million different mappers and you have to decide which one to use.
>>5382196
>That above all else. What do I use? AOROM? CNROM? MMC1?
For your first(RE: simple) game, you should just be using base NES hardware, aka NROM, mapper 0. 32k PRG ROM, 8k CHR ROM, 2k PRG RAM. That way you don't have to think about bank switching or anything else beyond learning how to program for the NES. Once you make a simple Snake game or some shit, then think about your target platform, since your choice of mapper should be related.

Do you wanna make a game that can be done through repro carts, flash carts, or just emulation? If it must work on a repro, then use UNROM 512 like >>5382235 said. 512k PRG ROM, 32k CHR ROM. If flash carts are a target, MMC3 is about as good as you are going to get. 512k PRG ROM, 256k CHR ROM, 8k of PRG RAM. If you only care about emulation(or wanna solder it into a donor cart), then go for MMC5 for 1024k of PRG ROM, 1024k CHR ROM, and 128k PRG RAM. Obviously MMC5 is the choice for really big games, but you should start off with something small and simple that will fit on NROM. For the record, I don't know of any official games that used the MMC5 to it's full limit. Even Metal Slader Glory only used half of the space it could handle since those 512k ROM chips were pricey enough as it was.

Odds are, you'll have more space than you'll use. The issue with retro hardware is limitations on how much you can compute in a single frame. And if you get deep enough into making a NROM game that reaches the limits of what NROM can do, then converting over to UNROM 512 or one of the MMC chips won't be a huge undertaking.

>> No.5382330

>>5382175
If you have trouble picking a mapper you're not going be able to write any meaningful code so it's irrelevant

>>5382313
>getting what you deserve for trying to help a dumb cunt

>> No.5382336

>>5382328
>Obviously MMC5 is the choice for really big games

The two largest NES games are Kirby's Adventure and DQ4 which use MMC3 and MMC1 respectively.

>> No.5382348

>>5382336
All true but MMC5 could support ROMs as large as 2MB, even though nothing was actually that big in practice.

>> No.5382349

>>5382336
And both are smaller than MSG by about 256k or more. Either way, odds are you'll have more space than you'll use. The point is the bottleneck is the amount of computations you can do in a single frame. Hence why I tell people to start with NROM, so they can find out what that limit is before they attempt to create their own port of AoE2 to the NES or something else retarded.

>> No.5382350

>>5382349
MSG is 1MB, same as DQ4.

>> No.5382356

>>5382350
http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/profile.php?id=1276
Dude, what?

>> No.5382360

>>5382356
http://tuxnes.sourceforge.net/nesmapper.txt

512k PRG, 512k CHR

>> No.5382363

>>5382360
The MAPPER is capable of that, the game ISN'T that size. Just like MSG was capable of 2MB, but it's only 1MB in size. You are asking me to trust random dumbfuck's romlist over the fucking NesCartDB? LOOK!

>> No.5382370

>>5382363
That was exactly what I said though. MMC5 can support 2MB of ROM on paper but in practice nothing actually used a ROM that size.

>> No.5382373
File: 70 KB, 600x450, Dragon Warrior 4.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5382373

>>5382363
Forgot pic. There is the 512k PRG ROM chip, two 8k RAM chips(not 512k), the MMC chip, and the CIC. There isn't 512k CHR ROM on the board, there is no CHR ROM period.

>> No.5382375

>>5382350
>MSG is 1MB, same as DQ4.
>>5382370
>That was exactly what I said though.
Are you ESL? I know you are saying you posted >>5382348, but why would you respond when I said KA and DW4 are SMALLER than MSG by saying it was the SAME SIZE, then say "That's exactly what I said though"?

>> No.5382376

MSG like I mentioned above is split 50/50 between the PRG and CHR while DQ4 is all PRG, there's no CHR ROM because it's one of those games that has a CHR RAM instead and the graphics are stored in the PRG and just copied into the CHR RAM so they could have animated tiles.

>> No.5382381

Because I thought MSG was 512k until I looked it up and remembered it was 1MB. Kirby is 768k so it's less than MSG and DQ4, which both tie for the largest licensed game at 1MB.

>> No.5382389

>>5382381
DQ4 is not 1MB, it's 512k ROM with 16k of RAM. There is no fucking tie. MSG is the largest, Kirby is the largest US release. No other official NES US release was 768k, the next two contenders for US release size would be AD&D Pool of Radiance or Uncharted Waters, both were 640k, which would still be larger than DW4.

>> No.5382391

Isn't Action 52 something like 2MB?

>> No.5382394

>>5382391
Unlicensed though.

>> No.5382395

>>5382391
I think so, but it has nothing on more modern multi-carts like the 23 Plus 222-in-1, which weighs in at 16MB.

>> No.5382413
File: 33 KB, 895x503, picard-facepalm.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5382413

>>5382389
>>5382381
>>5382376
>>5382375
>>5382373
>>5382370
>>5382363
>>5382360
>>5382356
>>5382350
>>5382349
>>5382336
Are you guys still repeating the myth that DQ4 was 1 megabyte? That was due to a bad ROM dump and this myth has been going around the Interwebz for quite a long time.

>> No.5382420

>>5378573
BTW, disassembly of the C64 Castlevania reveals that they just copypasted the NES source code and converted everything to whatever the equivalent on the C64 was. For example the scrolling routines are a clunky attempt at emulating the NES scrolling code in software.

>> No.5382446

>>5382413
it wasn't me it was that other guy

>> No.5382449

>>5382349
>Hence why I tell people to start with NROM, so they can find out what that limit is before they attempt to create their own port of AoE2 to the NES or something else retarded

Or try to port Kirby's Adventure on the C64 or something like that.

>> No.5382459

>>5382420
>>5382449
Also there were a number of 8-bit computer games, mainly RPGs like Ultima V, that went over a megabyte, so huge games like that were more common than on the NES.

>> No.5382467

>>5382459
Well yeah, they were on floppies which were cheap as water compared with a cartridge ROM.

>> No.5382473

>>5382449
A stock C64 can't pull that off, maybe you could do it if you used an REU.

>> No.5382508
File: 255 KB, 598x598, iwata.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5382508

>>5382449
> port Kirby's Adventure on the C64
* Laughs in Iwata *

>> No.5382510

>>5375294
What is the point of your post? Go waste space elsewhere.

>> No.5382535
File: 332 KB, 598x565, kirby development.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5382535

>> No.5382541

>>5382535
So basically he was saved by taking a couple hours every day in a hot spring bath with teenage Japanese girls.

>> No.5382571

>>5382541
>IRL is anime
No.

Besides, if it was during a workweek said girls would be in school anyway.