Hi I'm new. My name is Zom...I've been programming for...about 12 years (with some interruptions). I've done some intel assembly language programming, including my own asteroids clone, so I think I'll be able to pick up NES coding.
Introductions aside here is my actual question:
Does anyone pursue their NES gaming/coding hobby just with emulators, or do most of you possess a PowerPAK or similar hardware? I'd like to get one at some point if my recent interest in NES programming persists...however the website that sells them appears to be out of them at the moment
http://www.retrousb.com/index.php?categoryID=86
Welcome, Zom!
I'm in exactly the same boat as you. I'd like to get a PowerPak at some point, and eventually burn my game onto a physical cartridge if all goes well, but alas, I'm an emulator-only kinda guy at present.
Not that it's any guarantee of success on actual hardware, but I try to test my game on as many different emulators as possible, especially Nestopia, which is supposed to be the most accurate AFAIK.
There's a wealth of information here and I'm sure you'll feel right at home. The folks here are pretty cool dudes, not to mention extraordinarily helpful.
Same here, I'm just using emulators at the moment, but I'd like to get a powerpak eventually.
From what I hear if your code works on Nintendulator and Nestopia, chances are it will work on the actualy hardware. Sometimes you can get someone to try out a .nes on an actual NES if you ask around.
I believe it is possible to develop stuff even if you don't have any means of testing on hardware.
If you are confident and completely aware of the things you are doing (as opposed to randomly testing things out to see what works), and you put some effort into making the program work the same in as many good emulators as you can, chances are everything will be OK on hardware.
Don't trust just the "super accurate emulator", because even if your program only works well on it, the other emulators still run 90+% of the games well, and if it's not the case in your game, you must be doing something really weird. Unless you are intentionally relying on an obscure feature most emulators don't implement but you are 100% sure the NES supports it.
In more advanced stages, you should have someone in the forums test your game on hardware, just to make sure everything is OK. And when it's ready, have it tested again before releasing it to the public. Many people here have easy means of testing, and will not bother doing it for you.
Also keep in mind that the PowerPak is not 100% guaranteed when the game uses more complex mappers such as the MMC3, because the mappers are still emulated in it, and there are known glitches in their implementation.
It'd be best to test on real hardware at some point, because when you change scroll midframe it's hard to predict what exactly will happen. Usually I don't have the exact same results in 2 emulators about if there is glitches or not.
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Don't trust just the "super accurate emulator", because even if your program only works well on it, the other emulators still run 90+% of the games well, and if it's not the case in your game, you must be doing something really weird. Unless you are intentionally relying on an obscure feature most emulators don't implement but you are 100% sure the NES supports it.
Like changing the high frequency using instant sweeps, or relying on $2004 reads to sync your raster timing (both things Blargg has discovered rather recently).
Hell, I'd doubt you could trust a lot of stuff to even work on Famiclones. I've seen videos on Youtube of a famiclone which had the wrong duty cycle for the square waves.
I have 2 Yobo famiclones, and it seems they swap the Duty Cycles for some reason, like Duty Cycle 2 is actually 1, and 1 is 2, or something. It does this for all games. Perhaps it just does Duty Cycle + 1.
I'd also love to get a PowerPak, but I just can't afford one right now, and I hear they're not available at the moment. There are things that I really need to test that have really precise timing that do work on the more accurate emulators, but they may not work on the real thing.
Emulators are a lot better now then they were before I started using hardware. None of them are pixel-perfect, but for all but the most advanced tricks it should be OK (as in, any error would be pretty minor and easily fixable).
The more advanced tricks would be things like messing with the PPU mid-scanline (outside of hblank). But hardly anyone even tries that.
Keep your memory cleared, including nametables and everything. Emulators clear it, the real system won't.
Also, testing with the PowerPak would drive me nuts.. all the memory chip swapping. Sure beats individual (E)EPROMs though. I can't offer anything better though, my own devkit isn't really "on the market". Most of my developing when I really need the system involves a lot of brief, rapid tests. Looks unbeatable for finished games though.
Dwedit: Despite the obvious sound problem, all the famiclones I've tried have actually been accurate AFAICT. I'm pretty sure they are literal copies (drawn by hand or such, peeling the chips). Not that I've done any extensive tests though. There are a lot of different ones though. I've got this old one that actually has separate chips for CPU and PPU.
What about the problems famiclones have with DMC samples?
Memblers wrote:
Also, testing with the PowerPak would drive me nuts.. all the memory chip swapping.
Huh? Memory chip swapping? Are we thinking of the same PowerPak?
All you have to do is pull the CF card and copy your ROM to it...it's not that hard, really...
Exactly that, just doing it repeatedly...
It was annoying enough when I was testing GBAMP firmware hacks that way...
Has PowerPak been unavailable for a long time? I thought I saw it just a while ago available. I would absolutely love to have one. I would get a PowerPak Lite, but honestly, the full PowerPak it just so much better!
Celius wrote:
Has PowerPak been unavailable for a long time? I thought I saw it just a while ago available. I would absolutely love to have one. I would get a PowerPak Lite, but honestly, the full PowerPak it just so much better!
Every time the PowerPak comes back in stock, it sells out within a couple days. You have to check the site at least every other day, and buy one the second it comes in stock.
What exactly is the PowerPAK lite? Is it for loading a single game on? It says you need the "CopyNES.." what's that? I haven't quite figured that out from the website.
CopyNES I'm pretty sure came before PowerPak (I could be wrong). It's basically a NES modification that allows you to connect your PC to your NES with which you can copy games to/from your computer. I have one, though I think I screwed something up with it, because it didn't seem to obtain data correctly. I've never tried copying a game to a RAM cartridge with it though.
PowerPak Lite only supports 8 mappers, it says. And it doesn't support the mapper I'm working with (MMC3), so I don't think I'll be picking it up. I think you can only put a single game on it, as you're using CopyNES to put it on. I'd just stick with trying to buy the full version.