"Zniggy!" and the future of /vr/

[Anonymous No.6688873]

>/vr/ developed a game

Can homebrew collab save this board?

[Anonymous No.6689138]

this looks cool, does it have good beeper music?

[Anonymous No.6689156]

This was really exciting when it was happening, I really hope people complete this

[Anonymous No.6689556]

>>6688873
where can i dowload it or is it vaporware¿

[Anonymous No.6689601]

>>6689556
vaporware it is then

[Anonymous No.6689764]

>>6689556
>>6689601
>doesn't get an answer instantly
>vaporware it is then
zoom zoom
Also, lrn2google zoomie

[Anonymous No.6689771]

>triforce reference
australia-kun is probably seething hard about that, kek

[Anonymous No.6689989]

I fucked up a lot developing levels for it. Tiles being slightly offset, missing items, didn't understand how the enemy movement worked. Resulted in unnecessary work on the part of the programmer.

[Anonymous No.6690758]

>>6689556
You can get it here:
https://github.com/Tamamoball/Zniggy

>>6689989
I wouldn't feel bad about it. From what I've read in the archives it seemed like the anon was just happy to have contributions

Okay, so nobody really answered the question I was kind of posing: is this type of collab project something that /vr/ can do more regularly? In the long term I'd really like to see /vr/ develop its own unique style of homebrew development.
For zniggy, anons were contributing levels, which is probably a good baseline since it doesn't require programming knowledge on the part of most contributors.

What sounds best? E.g.
Atari 2600 (MOS 6507, 6502 assembly) -- Probably hard to crowdsource levels for in the zniggy format, but the system imposes lots of technical constraints that help to remove analysis paralysis from the overall design process. Good for simple arcade-like games that can be finished in a reasonable amount of time. Very easy to emulate in browser and has one of the best debugging emulators of any system.
Sinclair ZX (Zilog Z80) -- I don't know much about it to be honest. But this is the home of Zniggy! so maybe at this point /vr/ should just commit to developing only speccy games? I dunno
Commodore 64 (MOS 6502) -- the best selling personal computer of all time. extremely iconic and has large demoscene and homebrew community. browser emulation is also very good

[Anonymous No.6690796]

(cont.)

the other area of obvious interest are Nintendo consoles. particularly, I've thought either Gameboy or NES might be good systems for this. Especially the GB, since it is limited to very simple graphics and so making things look decent doesn't require too much skill or time. I really just want something that encourages /vr/ anons to start contributing games as a form of content, instead of just posts.

and btw, pic related is what started it all

[Anonymous No.6690808]

>>6690758
>is this type of collab project something that /vr/ can do more regularly?
They collab in the Doom threads all the time, they are currently working on a /vr/ community megawad and tons of anons are contributing maps to it and posting their progress and completed maps in the threads.

[Anonymous No.6690809]

>>6690758
Neat, I followed the threads for a litle while but I didn't realize it actually got finished. Congrats everyone!

[Anonymous No.6690835]

the problem with 4chan collabs is they lack any cohesive vision so they just end up being a pile of trash held together with memes

I thought about doing a SMB3 collab since new modding tools came out this year but it would just be filled with dumb crap like the SMW collab on /v/

[Anonymous No.6690849]

>noooooo it’s vaporware! it’s not the first result on google!

[Anonymous No.6690878]

>>6690835
Do it. make a shitty SMB3 kaizo meme rom hack. I'd play it.

[Anonymous No.6690917]

>>6688873
Funny, about 2 weeks ago I was thinking "was that ever finished" and looking it up I found the github, downloaded it and played for a few hours. Had a lot of fun, its spot on like other euro trash like Jet Set Willy

[Anonymous No.6690995]

>>6688873
Homebrew general ?

[Anonymous No.6691089]

The real joke fun would be making a virtual boy homebrew. The system has great hardware and planetVB has resources and even an IDE. Plus /vr/ probably has enough anon with vb and flash cart to actually test on real hardware.

[Anonymous No.6691283]

Still needs a few bug fixes - the Crystal Forest room is a mess, some ladders in between platforms don't work as intended, the way the game bounces you back if you enter a room with a higher elevation is annoying. But right now it's probably as good as it deserves to be.

[Anonymous No.6691857]

>>6690796
I'm fond of Game Boy because there's so much different Game Boy hardware that can run it (GB, GB Pocket, GB Color, GBA, GBA SP, Super Game Boy, Game Boy Player)

[Anonymous No.6691871]

>>6690758
There are tons of possible choices:

>Atari 2600
>Colecovision
>NES
>Master System
>Mega Drive
>Gameboy
>C64
>VIC-20
>Apple II
>PCs
>TRS-80 CoCo
>Amstrad CPC
>ZX Spectrum
>Amiga
>Atari ST
And each one has its own unique features and quirks you have to work around all of which affect the design of the game.

[Anonymous No.6692045]

>>6689771
Why would I get mad over that?

[Anonymous No.6692050]

>>6692045
Nintendo

[Anonymous No.6692791]

>>6690758
If you weren't here for the making of zniggy you can always read the archives to see what happend. But in a nutshell, the reason it happened is because the guy who started it had already made up his mind he was going to make it. Aside from levels nearly every discussion about development devolved into a shitstorm with everyone larping as the assembly language larper. And people only did the levels because some guy made a level editor.
Moral of the story is you can get people to do levels and shit if you give them the tools but actual game development is going to have to be driven by someone who actually knows what they're doing. Zniggyfag used the project as a way to learn Z80 assembly so you can learn as you go but whoever is running the thing needs to know how to code and manage and finish a project.

[Anonymous No.6692926]

>>6691871
Four completely different CPUs between them.

[Anonymous No.6693206]

>>6690758
They could do it more regularly, but you need someone to spearhead it who can do the bulk of the work. If you know how to program Atari 2600 games and want to make one with /vr/ contributing sprites, by all means go for it.

[Anonymous No.6695378]

>>6692926
What is that, three unique, and the rest being 6502s?

[Anonymous No.6695392]

>>6695378
Five CPUs. 6502, x86, 68k, Z80 and 6809.

[Anonymous No.6695989]

Simply "making a game" for old computers is relatively easy if you don't need it to be fast-paced, 'cause you can whip up something in BASIC without even knowing assembly.
I wrote multiple games for Atari 800 in BASIC when I was a kid, using graph paper to plan redefine-character sets and add up the bits; I'm sure other people here did the same sort of thing at the time
Or something more modern like AMOS BASIC on Amiga would be pretty easy

[Anonymous No.6696094]

>>6689138
>beeper music
This game is not for spreadsheet machines.

[Anonymous No.6696168]

>>6691857
i would go for the GB Color, still has every of these platforms except 2 and has colors and a lot more options.

[Anonymous No.6696284]

>>6691871
add the turbografx/PC-Engine to this list. the unconstrained palette and single BG layer is perfect for meme collabs, the super-fast 6502 derivative should appeal to assembly autists and lag is a non-issue, it's great for animation and tech demos because the CPU has so much VRAM access, it plays meme-tier chiptune and plus it has a CD addon. definitely a goofier /vr/ system than the megadrive (though I'd love to contribute 2612 patches to any MD project since I have a bunch of high-quality ones sitting around)

[Anonymous No.6696417]

>>6691871
Atari 8-bit

[Anonymous No.6696778]

>>6695989
Even for console, any tard can shit out a fast paced game in batari basic. Hundreds, if not thousands have.
Amiga would be a great platform for this if people could get their shit together. It's powerful enough to do something good without any fancy tricks but any game could be improved massively with them. Unfortunately there's that whole people getting their shit together thing. You need a lot of assets for a good Amiga game. A zniggy level editor isn't going to cut it.

[Anonymous No.6696859]

>>6688873

This game looks bad. Why would you want more like this?

[Anonymous No.6696869]

>>6696778
Youd have to distribute amiga roms with uae because no one has that shit

[Anonymous No.6697247]

>>6696869
I have 3 Amigas and 0 spectrums. Still managed to download an emulator.

[Anonymous No.6697416]

>>6696859
That's the joke. It's a parody of generic ZX Spectrum games, which generally weren't very good.

[Anonymous No.6698073]

>>6690796
The NES version could probably be cobbled up using NES maker, but I doubt anyone wants to shell out money for a shitpost.

[Anonymous No.6698943]

(forgive me for writing this kind of @all post but I don't want to bump the thread a dozen times.)

>>6690808
This is a good example of the type of collaboration known to be workable already, i.e., contributing maps or levels to a central curator. It will be worth lurking in there sometime to learn their ways in detail.

>>6690995
This could be workable with a good OP template, particularly if it's narrowed down to one processor/system. It wouldn't even be competing with the current /vg/ homebrew general ("/hbg/") since that focuses on post-/vr/ consoles. There's also /vg/'s amateur game development general, "/agdg/", but that's mostly post-/vr/ as well.
I'll add doing an Atari 2600 homebrew general to the list of things to try.

>>6690835
>the problem with 4chan collabs is they lack any cohesive vision so they just end up being a pile of trash held together with memes
that's a feature, not a bug :)
But yes, quality control is still important. Later I will discuss ideas for creating some cohesion (but not too much).
>I thought about doing a SMB3 collab since new modding tools came out this year
That would be another good target game for doing a level submission-type collab event.

>>6691089
Interesting. This would also go sort of well with /vr/'s mascot--I mean the doodle guy with 3d glasses (wish I had a picture of him handy).

>>6691283
Are you the real Zniggy-Anon? Just wanted to say thanks if you are. I hope you enjoyed learning Z80 assembly.

>>6691857
>>6696168
Yes. These are high on the list. Even if the GB line doesn't use a normal Z80 chip, I still think it's pedagogically one of the best options.

>>6696284
TurboGrafx would be on the "Good because it's powerful and easy to program for" side of the spectrum, opposed to the "Good because it has constraints which make decision-making easier" side of the spectrum (e.g. the Atari 2600 would be the extreme of this, and the GB/GBC would fall somewhere in the middle).

[Anonymous No.6699070]

(cont.)

>>6696778
>batari basic
Looked into this once but feels like it would trigger people on /vr/ because of the training-wheels vibes. Even for non-experts, my guess anons would just prefer a step-by-step template with real 6502 assembly, which only automates the crazy shit like wiping all RAM, stack, and registers in under 10 bytes.
(...though I could be wrong. non-programmer anons especially, tell me what you think)

>>6698073
Obviously profit margin isn't the point here, and in fact, neither is getting it to run on real hardware (let alone from real cartridges). Still, that's a possibility. I know AtariAge also offers a similar service.

Okay, pics related are of WarioWare as you may know, which is a game composed entirely of separate minigames. Going off wikipedia, each minigame was created by individual programmers working separately. They coordinated using sticky-notes on a central whiteboard to share ideas. I think something like this would be the ideal: quarterly releases with new and updated minigames, with the overworld being programmed by the curator anon. Contributing anons would only need to learn the bare minimum of the assembly for the target system which is needed to get a minigame working. Since there would be lots of shared code, a single template or a group of templates could be created that handle most of the boilerplate--the programmer just needs to fill in the blanks and adapt it. How does something like that sound?

[Anonymous No.6699079]

(cont.)

In the meantime, something less ambitious can be tried. I don't have time myself to be the curator of anything too fancy for at least the next month or so.

[Anonymous No.6699346]

>>6698943
>TurboGrafx would be on the "Good because it's powerful and easy to program for" side of the spectrum, opposed to the "Good because it has constraints which make decision-making easier" side of the spectrum

the beauty of it is that it's both, at least compared to its approximate peer systems like MD and amiga. the single BG layer and soundchip really do impose certain limits, but you can also use its animation resources in unconventional ways.

atari 2600 would be impossible to do any kind of imageboard collab for I think, it's really best for single-person projects. for the kind of setup where you have people contributing pixel art, or even with a level editor or something, PC Engine seems better than most of the alternatives. I think there's a reason it attracted meme games in its heyday like Ai Cho Aniki.

GB and GBC do seem like good choices as well, as well as maybe C64.

[Anonymous No.6699590]

>>6698073
It wouldn't be overly difficult to port Zniggy to the NES, but you'd probably need a mapper because the game has too many different tile sets to fit in NROM.

[Anonymous No.6700092]

While it sounds cool to homebrew ahere on older hardware, it will probably get hung up pretty hard, as the frustration of trying to program anything halfway decent will take weeks worth of dedication just learning. I'm barely a programmer as it is, but I wouldn't mind attempting to make something on an older system at some point in time.

As some others have said, asset creation adhering to an agreed upon style or a level-editor type thing will probably be one of the few avenues anons could consistently tribute without too much shit-flinging.

[Anonymous No.6700267]

The more configurations/models the system has, the worse it will be to decide. If you code a NES game for example there's about 50 different mappers to choose from.

[Anonymous No.6700273]

>>6691871
Note that I explicitly did not include the SNES here because it's a serious PITA to code for and you really don't want to subject yourself to that.

[Anonymous No.6700278]

?

You fuckers can't finish a mario world collab and you want to code a custom engine. Plan on Ending your life.

[Anonymous No.6700285]

ctrl+f dezaemon.

[Anonymous No.6700362]

Whatever. The Spectrum can do just about anything a NES can do unless late period AAA games with advanced mappers. The NES is some unbelievably limited hardware.

[Anonymous No.6700426]

I think a Jet Set Willy style platformer was our best chance of getting a /vr/ game off the ground, just because of how simple the levels were to make.

[Anonymous No.6700631]

>>6700362
Not really. A game like Maniac Mansion would be horrible to implement on the Spectrum because of needing to load in data every time you go in a different room. With cassette storage that would be more torture than it's worth.

[Anonymous No.6700646]

Oh and trying to save your progress to cassette tape. IIRC Spectrum games that had a save feature were quite rare because of how irritating it would be to attempt.

[Anonymous No.6700687]

>>6700362
>this is what bongistani faggots really believe

>>6700646
It was very common on earlier systems where there were no alternatives that cost less than a car

[Anonymous No.6700707]

>>6700687
>this is what bongistani faggots really believe

I don't think you realise how limited the NES is. Just 2k of writable RAM and the only way to generate an IRQ is with a trick that uses one sprite. It can only see 44k of memory at once (40k ROM plus 2k RAM) while even the Spectrum has 48k all of which is rewritable.

[Anonymous No.6700820]

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

Requires a Spectrum 128, but the basic 48k ZX could probably pull it off with sacrificing music. The original game was only 40k in size and Z80 code would also be a bit more compact than 6502 code.

[Anonymous No.6700847]

>>6700820
Yes, I could definitely see how an early NES game would be the best game on the spectrum

[Anonymous No.6700859]

The one thing I hate about 128k games is how dreadfully long they take to load, even with a very common tape fastloader.

[Anonymous No.6702249]

>>6700707
I know exactly how limited both systems are kiddo. If you want to parrot retarded shit you don't understand you should go back to facebook and do it there. 18+

[Anonymous No.6702782]

Sup assembly language LARPer.

[Anonymous No.6703314]

Wut diss shit izz. Looka like dookie up the butt

[Anonymous No.6705335]

blump

[Anonymous No.6706309]

>>6700273
Why's it so hard? Genuinely curious.

[Anonymous No.6706514]

The SNES is just a complicated mess with a ridiculously annoying and hard to set up and use GPU. Also its sound processor relies on samples and has its own retarded assembly language.

[Anonymous No.6707958]

>>6698073
someone did

>>/vr/thread/S6141586#p6141698

[Anonymous No.6708527]

Homebrewing is certainly some next level stuff.

[Anonymous No.6710032]

bump

[Anonymous No.6710087]

>>6688873
This game looks like a pile of turd. Who would even play this? The developing process is a wreck reminiscent of Half-Life's. If you want to flex about how you luv deez urethro gamezz then get a girlfriend.

[Anonymous No.6710281]

What about MSDOS?

you program it in an almost-modern dialect of C instead of assembly, so much easier to get into. the VGA graphics modes (13h, X) are the ancestors of modern graphics programming: it would have some practical use and not just be of historical interest.

[Anonymous No.6710325]

>>6710087
>This game looks like a pile of turd. Who would even play this? The developing process is a wreck reminiscent of Half-Life's.
I see you're starting to catch on.

[Anonymous No.6710625]

>>6710281
Depends on what you mean by "MS-DOS." That can mean anything from text mode to CGA to VGA. And obviously you can code in assembly, although HLLs were commonly used since the earliest days of the IBM PC. Before C compilers were widely available in the late 80s, Pascal and compiled BASIC would have been the most commonly used languages.

[Anonymous No.6711428]

>>6710625
(yeah... sorry for being a noob) specifically I had 320x240 256-color VGA in mind. 60fps should run smooth even for browser embedded dosbox these days. As for HLLs I'd forgotten about Pascal et al (I've only tried TurboC), but the amount of options there is also my point. DOS is already familiar to anyone coming from a windows background, and it has lots of choices for development, even compiled BASIC like you mentioned. That one Finnish youtuber guy even got OpenGL to work on it

>>6705335
>>6710032
hey thanks. I think I've got most of my questions answered now. the next thread will be a lot more concrete... I think I'm going to try making an HTML5 level editor and player for something (maybe another Jet Set Willy clone) and see how /vr/ responds to that

btw pic related (/vr/'s mascot) would be a good protag IMO

[Anonymous No.6711662]

I still don't get this. Some of you want us to make a terrible game together, and have an awkward and frustrating time doing it? Whyyyy?

Mario Maker exists and is good. People are already making what you want except in a good form. Cramming it into an aulden-tymey format so that it can only be played via DOSBox or whatever doesn't change much. And if you focus so much on programming, which most people don't understand or are terrible at, then you shut out almost everybody who could help.

People here universally know how to do one thing halfway decently: writing. Plenty of people have okay ideas about game design too I'm sure. And finally, we can all use semi-sophisticated editing software of whatever sort, as long as it isn't too unfriendly. We cannot generally be relied on to be good at anything else that's relevant to game development. Not drawing, not 3D modeling, not programming.

So what you really want is to find an old game that already accepts new game scenarios and set up a team to write a "game" for it in the form of a mod. I guess the people in the Doom thread are already doing that? So there you go, that's the way. If you want it to really be one game and yet you also want to accept input from all comers, then you need to craft the fundamental story setting so that it supports arbitrary additions without falling apart.

Porn can manage this; look to how many fan-written walls of text Corruption of Champions has unfortunately accumulated over the years. If you want high quality then you just need one strong editor/manager around who is also civil and kind enough to avoid making the more inept contributors feel like they're being cruelly shut out.

Planning to write your own game engine and production tools AND manage a team of 4chan goofballs is asking for failure. Why are you too good to make a new Neverwinter Nights mod or whatever?

[Anonymous No.6712323]

>>6711662
You don't need a whole team. How many 8-bit games were written by one guy?

[Anonymous No.6712964]

If you need something piss-easy to program that's on-topic on /vr/, this is always an option.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160721004826/http://www.wilmunder.com/Arics_World/Games_files/SCUMM%20Tutorial%200.1.pdf

[Anonymous No.6712990]

>>6711428
But VGA is 70Hz.

[Anonymous No.6712997]

>>6712990
The 320x240 mode (mode X) is 60 Hz. 320x200 (mode 13h), which is what most games actually used, is 70 Hz.

[Anonymous No.6713768]

>>6711662
>Why are you too good to make a new Neverwinter Nights mod or whatever?
Because Neverwinter Nights isn't /vr/, for starters.

[Anonymous No.6713996]

>>6711662
Speak ye any English?

[Anonymous No.6714445]

in all seriousness, why would you want to limit yourself to actual vintage hardware when the smart thing is to just code a retro-style game that runs natively on modern hardware

[Anonymous No.6714541]

>>6714445
Because that would be off-topic.

[Anonymous No.6714732]

>>6712964
Point-and-click are not games just like VNs.

[Anonymous No.6714942]

>>6714445
Where's the challenge in that? Coding an actual NES game is a challenge and that's why it's fun.

[Anonymous No.6715056]

>>6714942
No it's not fun. It's having to content with the arbitrary limitations of 35 year old hardware when you could just code a retro-style game on a modern OS using modern tools and never have to worry about sprite scanline limits or counting clock cycles.

[Anonymous No.6715304]

>>6715056
You'll never port Doom to a printer with that attitude

[Anonymous No.6715603]

>>6715304
https://youtu.be/KnPBWru2Ecg
*printing intensifies*

[Anonymous No.6716010]

Ok so Zniggy on the NES. As someone else said, you'd probably need a mapper because it uses enough diversity of tile sets that you can't fit it in a single 8k CHR ROM. Probably something like CNROM where the PRG bank is fixed and you just swap in different CHR sets as needed.

[Anonymous No.6716141]

>>6711662
I do think this can work (/vr/ making a game), but it needs to meet several criteria:
1) it needs only one or two competent programmers to work on it at most
2) the majority of the contributions from /vr/ have to come in terms of level design or writing
3) the artstyle of the game has to be set consistently lo-fi and simple (monochrome, NES, SNES level graphics at most, low-poly, blocky voxels, etc) so that it puts the barrier of entry as low as humanly possible
and everyone can contribute

Even a talentless hack can create a passable 1bit 8x8 sprite

Those restrictions is what makes something like Zniggy feasible

It does put the brunt of the effort on the back of the programmer, but if you're the kind of programmer who's not good at art and dislikes creating levels, sprites and all that shit, but still wants to do a game, this might be a way to do it.

[Anonymous No.6717615]

blump