MT Engine MK1 NES / AGNES (or MK1_NES/AGNES for short) is a framework composed by a modular, highly customizable engine and a toolchain designed to make simple games for the NES. MK1_NES/AGNES has been designed to produce games which run in simple discrete logic mappers so they can be easily reproduced using cheap, readily available boards.
So what can you make with this?, you may wonder. Well, many things:
- Flick-screen games (no scroll).
- Top-down view or side view (platformer) games.
- Acceleration/intertia/friction based movement, 100% configurable.
- Several engines for side view games (run and jump, jet pack, diving, etc).
- Several ways to kill enemies (shooting engine and, albeit only for the side view engine, punches and kicks, or jumping over enemies).
- Integrated scripting engine (using a custom, simple language) and / or code injection points to make engine modifications easy.
- Customizable screen renderer for map data.
- Several ways to manage items and inventory which can be used together.
- Interactive elements on screen (for example, NPCs).
- A simple text box implementation.
- Several kinds of enemies, and the ability to code simple behaviours.
- Easy way to configure the actors’ bounding boxes for collision.
- NROM or CNROM directly supported, GNROM easily manageable, UNROM definitely possible without much hassle.
- Possibility of using extra, unused CHR-ROM banks to store binary data, making the most of oversize CN-ROM boards (for example, INL’s CNROM board which offers up to 128Kb of CHR-ROM data!).
- You can always use stuff from our toolchain for things not related to our engine at all.
Little FAQ
- Is this better than NESmaker?
- This is not like NESmaker, not tries to compete against it. I just took our first NES engine and began cleaning it up - but ended rewriting it from scratch and liked the results, so I'm releasing it. It's just a simple engine you can use to create simple yet fun games easily. It targets small, simple discrete logic mappers.
- Do I need to know programming?
- Not really, but surely it helps. The more you can dig in the engine, the more unique your games will be.
- Can I sell the games I create
- Definitely. Just tell us first, we just like to know .
You can check some examples:
Cheril Perils Classic
Cadàveriön
Botèe
Grab it at:
https://github.com/mojontwins/MK1_NES
I've managed to write some documentation, but something like this needs a tutorial which I'm in the process of writing.
I know this isn't the best place to promote something like this as most of you are proficient coders, but I just wanted to show you what I've been up to since January. Cheers!