With over $17,000 over the Kickstarter goal and with less than 27 days left for the campaign, NES lovers will have the chance to create their very own Nintendo game without knowing one line of code. NESmaker, launched by Joe Granato will literally be the game changer for 2018. The following information is from the Kickstarter campaign:
NESmaker is a software tool for creating brand new, hardware playable, cartridge based games for the Nintendo Entertainment System…without having to write a single line of code.
A few years ago, while developing our NES game engine in the archaic 6502 Assembly language, our team (made up of mostly non-programmers) realized that we needed a much more efficient method for rapid prototyping and testing. Instead of digging into the assembly every time we needed to make changes, we conceptualized wysiwyg tools for common tasks that would output, reorganize, and manipulate the underlying code; developing screens, building animations, altering AI…things like that. We recruited Josh Fallon, tool developer extraordinaire, to help realize these tools.
Before we knew it, we had inadvertently created NESmaker.
Currently, what can you do with NESmaker?
- Design sprite graphics and color palettes that are automatically constrained to the NES limitations.
- Create assets with properties and behaviors to give developing for the NES an object-oriented feel, similar to modern tools such as GameMaker and Unity.
- Use a text editor to create text strings for NPCs or other narrative devices your game might have.
- Create *special screens* like start screens, end screens, menus, maps, and more.
- Customize AI
- Set initialization parameters (items obtained, player strength/defense, starting screen, etc) for easy testing.
- Use the base engine to create adventure games, basic RPGs, basic platformers, basic brawlers, and several other types of games.
- Assemble with one click for testing in an emulator.
- Flash to cartridge in one click for play on actual hardware.
So why do we need Kickstarter?
- NESmaker is currently a little rough around the edges. It was originally designed to meet our needs, but now that we’re attempting to expand it, it needs some UI work and a bit of streamlining. This will require a joint effort between our artist/designer, Josh our tool developer, and myself (the ASM programmer).
- We want to build upon the tool to expand its current capabilities. One of the core ways we intend to do this is by building genre modules, which will optimize the tool and the core ASM for that style of game. We will use stretch goals to work on adding optimization for each genre.
Estimated delivery for the tiers of contributions are set for March and also August of 2018. For more information about the project, check this out!
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