Nova the Squirrel

I got into NES development and furry at roughly the same time, and I've wanted to make big sidescrolling platformer game starring my fursona, Nova, for a very long time (like 6 or 7 years?) and I'm finally getting around to it here after completing like three games and having learned a lot more.

The gameplay's intended to take after Kirby (but with more creative abilities to copy, like one that shoots Conway's Life gliders diagonally) but with Mario-like levels and probably puzzle elements. The scrolling code can handle up to 8 pixels per frame so if I want to make levels that focus on going fast that's doable too. Oh, and the whole second world is probably going to take a pretty strong inspiration from Chip's Challenge. I'm going to have to figure out a plot that can tie all the gameplay I want together.

When I'm done it's going to be released with all the source code (GPL licensed) and all the tools I've written to help and I hope other people can use it as an alternative to SMB1 hacks that can be shared freely. I'm keeping future expansion in mind for most important parts of the project.

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And after a long 3 year journey the game is finally complete! Check it out! I'm still going to be updating this, but it's ready for streaming and being shown off to the world, I think!
itch.io page.
Source code.

Looks promising as I dig the idea of kirby inspired gameplay.
I know this is in early stage of development, but turning around cofuses me.

It's supposed to give you a bigger view in the direction you're going, but yeah, it feels weird and I'll probably want to slow down the turning a lot, not do anything when you just turn in place, or just disable that and just target having the player in the middle of the screen. Probably just going to go with the last one out of those unless I can find a better solution.

A lot of games just lock the character to the centre of the screen. It can be a good choice, depending on what your game needs.

A simple way to implement look-ahead is to offset the camera position by adding a multiple of the player's velocity to their position. This places the camera a bit forward when running, and smoothly returns to centre when you stop, or turn around. This works best if your player acceleration is relatively slow.

Another alternative is to delay the look-ahead and gradually move into it. Wait for the player to move some amount in the opposite direction before you switch the direction of focus, and then gradually slide to it as they continue moving in the new direction.

There's lots of things you can do. Try a few things out and see how they feel. If they feel good or bad, ask yourself why.


Also, I notice it is very easy to jump into or through the blocks hanging in the air. Keep working on your collision stuff.

I added music and sound effects (that I will probably redo or replace) using the Famitone2 engine. I also redid player collision to be a little better and I added interaction with level objects (you can break bricks and get coins and stuff but there's no animations for it). I also have a coin counter that appears above the player when they get coins.

I made the camera just keep the player in the center for now. I might try something more complicated later.

I really like the overall concept and color scheme and music...and the camera is much better.
A few things I noticed - if you hold R or L and try to jump (when you're next to a wall), it is either very short or not at all.
-it would be nice if the acceleration didn't ramp up so quickly. It's hard to fine tune movements. I want to move 1-2 pixels to the right, and end up moving 4-8. I do like the overall speed, though.
-also, the squirrel seems to run over short gaps, rather than fall into them. The only short gap I found was if you stand on the spikes and press right. Maybe this is on purpose, I don't know.
-I like the little trampoline thing. Add more of those. It's fun to bounce on.

Not jumping at all when you're holding against a wall is a bug. Jumping a little bit is probably either a bug (still working on collision, aaaa) or from walking into a rounded ground tile, which I'm trying to treat like stairs and have the player automatically climb over as a substitute for slopes.

I'm going to play with altering the acceleration and deacceleration while keeping the same top speed since they're just two constants, and maybe change the behavior for turning around. When I use acceleration instead of having a run button, but still want the player to go fast, they're pretty much already running; maybe I should have two quick taps in a given direction start running instead?

Oh! I was wondering when I'd get to see these graphics in action! Very cool game, so far!
Can't wait to see what kind of enemies you come up with!


What's interesting, is that the player's jumping collision seems to behave *very* similarly to the character in Layla. What with the short jump/not jumping at all, issue.

Since the last time I added enemies (that can't be killed yet and still have sorta buggy collision), switched sounds engines to the one used in RHDE and I made a lot of progress on the level editor. The collision with the level is still just as broken as before.

Oh, and you can do attacks now though they have no effect, and select switches between different powers. I still need to make it load in the new graphics without blanking the screen and I need to fix the projectiles. You can walk and run too instead of just running.


Basically the editor is a crappy version of Tiled that uses rectangles instead and pretends it's Lunar Magic.

I was wondering if you were still working on this game. Can't wait to see it finished.

I fully intend on finishing this no matter how long it takes. I just don't have a lot of time to devote to it during a college semester.

Whoa, Mario + Kirby? Sounds interesting. Keep going !!

keep it up. i support this!

Yeah, I really like Kirby's copy ability stuff and how you'd sometimes use the abilities to interact with the environment (pressing down switches, cutting ropes, lighting fuses) but these seem mostly used for finding secrets rather than solving puzzles. I think I could come up with some interesting interactions to make puzzles with.

I think it'd be nice to have it alongside Mario's running and jumping that usually characterizes platformers. Kirby feels like it really relies a lot more on enemies than the level layout for the difficulty.

One thing I really want to do that neither of these games did is have an ongoing plot through the game and some adventurey aspects, with an inventory and cutscenes. I'll have to come up with a plot I feel more confident about though, and it's a little hard when I'm just designing it around the gameplay I already know I want. I also don't know if this is too ambitious for 256 KB?

Thanks for the encouragement; I'm actually getting pretty close to having the level editor at a point where I can load, save and export levels and it'll be enough for most of the game and I can get back to actually doing assembly.

I've been messing with the palettes ($28 looked icky in some palettes) and editing graphics to make them a little less Mario-y. For the background I actually have clouds, and recently I've been working on code for displaying enemy sprites more flexibly. Most of the new graphics I've drawn are for later on in the game so they aren't used yet.

I'm actually going to have enemies with sizes like 16x32 and 32x24 and I've been working on a routine for displaying them, though I feel like it's really inefficient. Aside from having the metasprite's tile data in columns, are there any good tips for efficiency?

The level editor is currently public though I don't have any pre-built versions available, and the code is awful.

I probably won't be able to work on this as much for awhile because of college.

Repeating clouds (like the cloudbush/hill layer in SMB1) or individually placed?


Haunted uses 8x16 sprites and stores each metasprite as a set of horizontal strips (Y, starting tile number, palette/width/flip, leftmost X). A 16x32 pixel sprite like Donny or the zombie is two strips of two sprites, plus extra strips for the extra color layer. The separate engine used for cut scenes uses a similar technique with 8x8 sprites.

Currently they're randomly placed with a minimum and maximum on the space between clouds. I have ground decorations drawn (bushes, fences, flowers, etc) but not implemented yet. I think they'll have to be manually placed if I want them to look nice at all, haha.

I thought about some more complicated metasprite formats but I ended up just going with this for now since it was easy to code and worked well for the enemies I have drawn:

Tiles are listed in columns, so that partially offscreen sprites can simply adjust their width and starting index.
In the header, width can be ANDed directly to get the width in pixels, though I'm not taking advantage of that. I also positioned the X and Y flip so that they could be ORed directly into the palette used for the sprite to get the attributes. A lot of my metasprites use flipping to conserve tiles.

I've had the project on GitHub for awhile now, if anyone wants to actually look at the source or keep up with any updates.

I've been on spring break and I've actually finally had a chance to work on the game a lot.

Some minor changes:

• Made the project assemble on the latest ca65 instead of the ancient version I was on
• Actually uses exported levels from the level editor
• Bricks that contain things
• Ladder climbing
• Limited camera scroll speed so that it will no longer glitch out from going faster than the engine can handle
• Worked on collision a bit

I have a title screen now, based on the art I originally had commissioned for an avatar:

I could make it fancier later with the remaining tiles but not sure what I want to do with it yet. I was thinking of having some animation.


Enemy interaction with projectiles is now in, which means you can now stun, attack and actually copy enemy abilities now, though there's only one copyable enemy in the intro level.


I've been working on level compression more. I added a new command that creates a series of rectangles sharing the same starting height. I have the details documented for this and the rest of the compression commands in the repository. I think it can cut the bytes used for level terrain down to a third?

Somehow my sprite/background collision is still awful and I'm probably just going to have to do a complete rewrite or something and figure this out. That'll probably be where I go next when I get back to working on this. It's somehow possible to get stuck in blocks forever and that's really not good.

EDIT: OH I almost forgot, I also did a lot of work on getting levels with non-horizontal shapes working. There can be scrolling barriers between screens and screens can specify that they're linking to another screen on the top and bottom sides. With this, you can fake that the level is taller than it really is.

Very naiss update ~

Collision should now be fully fixed. There was a bug involving the fact that the player is 24 pixels tall, and it was snapping to a block in the ground as if the player had landed on it, dragging them into the ground.


I added an inventory screen (accessed via Start), using a variable-width font like the rest of the game. Because of how little space this takes, I have a fancy background around the menu that looks like FHBG's backgrounds. Right now you can use items and swap their positions with Select, though using an item doesn't delete it or anything yet.

I also added dying. Right now it plays a DPCM sample of CDi Ganon saying "die" which I'll probably replace with an imitation of it that I can freely use. I'll also move it away from being DPCM so it's not eating up fixed bank space. My puzzle-style stages will have a clip of someone saying "bummer" instead.

I've been working on the scripting system a lot though I haven't gotten the cutscene engine to the point where it can actually run scripts. From here I'll probably keep working on the cutscene engine and maybe get that working so I can make signs readable.

Not really liking my palette that much. I went back to a $31 background for now and I wanna change how the ground looks.
In DABG I had a brown ground with black dots in it for texture. I don't think I could make a good texture for these colors with green as the only other palette colors.

But, in this game, I'm going for more a stylized art style with colored outlines, and I went with pink originally because it was the closest I could find to Super Mario World's cream colored ground in the NES palette. This pink looks pretty bad on my TV and most places that aren't FCEUX's palette.

I did a bunch of screenshots with differently colored grounds with Firebrandx's palette and most of the people I showed it to favored #3 while I think it's too bright. Orange looked good to me (though I already have an orange palette, which would look too similar) while brown seems like it'd only be okay if I removed the ground texture, but even then there's little contrast with the outline.

Since my game's supposed to take place in a virtual world and there's little reason to try to make everything realistic, I played with some more creative colors to see how they looked and I actually really like how fully green ground looks, which looks somewhat like Kirby's Adventure. My game is mostly monochrome and bright and cartoony like Kirby is, so I feel like the same kinda aesthetics could work.

So yeah, anyone that actually know what they're doing graphics-wise have any suggestions?

Looks good! I'm going to play it. If I like it, I might make a Let's Play video of it. May I do that?

Why are you licensing this by GPL? If I would fork code from you, I wouldn't be able to license it with another license because GPL forces me to use GPL because of its terms and conditions. If you want to go open-source, you might want to use the 2-clause BSD license.

Could we not recap the GPL vs BSD argument for the ten millionth time?

GPL preserves the "rights" of the end user.
BSD preserves the "rights" of the middleman.

ANYWAY, ON TOPIC:

I can't art, so I can't really say anything useful. But I'd want to try this on an actual CRT to be able to even begin to form an opinion.

I agree that #3 is the best...the light brown one.

Don't like orange.

You could texture or shadow the light brown with dark brown or dark green, if you think it's too light.

I think it would make more sense to play DABG or Sliding Blaster which are actually fully completed games that don't have very much exposure. In contrast, this demo has like one minute of gameplay and it would be very silly to use for anything past giving suggestions.

As for why I'm using GPL, I don't want people to use my engine to create closed source games. If I'm going to be spending years developing this and then releasing it for free, I want others to give something back if they use it.


I'll go see how #3 looks on my CRT later then and see what I can do with the textures, then.

I've still been playing with the looks of things, especially since the engine has most of the big parts taken care of already. I played with textures (Waffle's Revenge looks awful on a CRT) and after lots of experimentation I just went to the dots. Oh, and I gave Nova hair in-game since that's how she's usually drawn and how she's drawn on the title screen. I also changed the question mark blocks to have a pawprint on them instead to look less Mario-ey. I'm trying to really make my own aesthetic.


Dialogs are mostly coded though there aren't any accessible in-game yet.


It's surprising how much of a difference little decorations can make on the level. I added grass and flowers and trees. I'm also playing with more creative level designs.

Looks good. I'm looking forward to seeing this game made. Cart worthy.

I see you're using my VWF library (or my font through another VWF library), which means you're using CHR RAM. How are you arranging video memory? Are you reserving 1/4 of VRAM for a speech balloon like Faxanadu and Super Bat Puncher?

And do you plan for signs like the one between the flowers in the second screenshot to be readable?

I'll have to think about how the GPL might affect mods of your game, especially in an industry where non-code assets are less likely to be freely licensed than code, and on a platform where a clean technical separation of code and non-code assets is more difficult to achieve than it is on PC, where one can separate Doom.exe from its WADs or StepMania.exe from its SMZIPs.

In-game: Dialog:

I originally had 1/4th of the background CHR reserved for text but plans changed and now it's on a separate screen and I don't have to share CHR at all. Signs will be readable and will just start a short dialog with the sign.

The engine's pretty much done aside from all the extra content I want.


I have a circular level select screen. The icons for the levels will be different for different types of levels, and they're magenta to show an available level, green to show a cleared level and gray for a locked one.


I'm going to have a balloon item that triggers when you fall into pits and lifts you out of them, so you don't die and start over at the beginning of the level. Like McDonalds Treasureland Adventure. Maybe let people use balloons whenever? It'd kill some of the challenge if you could just fly over obstacles though.


Some Frozen Volcano mockup stuff, with lava and minecart tracks. I'm playing around with actually seeing what my tiles look like when put into use, and seeing what else I need to have drawn. Feels kinda bare though, possibly because volcanoes are kinda hard to do scenery for.

In addition to this stuff I've also got checkpoints, working doors, a mostly finished script, and I've been working on implementing more enemy types and doing more level design. I'm currently saving like 40-45% with dictionary compression on the script text.

I now officially have no responsibilities until late August so I'm going to be able to work on this game full time. I hope to have it done this year.

Did you get the ring idea from Secret of Mana? I'd recommend making the icons different in addition to the colors.


It worked for Hello Kitty World.


Is the lava heating the air?


How are you organizing that?

I never really played much of that game, I was really just trying to think of a cool, easy way to have the level list take up a lot of the screen space while standing out from most/all current NES games.
Yeah, I should have the icons different in some way. At the moment the plan is to have a "!" for action levels and a "?" for puzzle levels but I feel like I should come up with something more graphical. Just nothing comes to mind yet. I tried drawing a puzzle piece but it came out crappy.

I'm not attempting to make my game realistic at all. I'm just trying to make something fun that's a blend of a lot of games from when I was little, so I'm going to just use whatever tropes I think are fun.

The dialog engine already keeps a buffer of the current line and builds onto it before drawing it because of the variable width font, so it wasn't much more effort to make $80 to $ff have special treatment and use one of 128 "words" to paste multiple characters onto the end instead. I used a list of common English words and kept count of how many times each word was used and how much savings each dictionary entry got me until I wound up with this list.

In the dictionary table, the words are just one word after another with bit 7 set for the last character of each word, for maximum savings. When the dialog engine starts, it parses the whole table and builds a table of 128 pointers in RAM. If I wanted to use an extra 256 bytes I could just have a pointer premade in the ROM but RAM is less precious to me for this project.

When I read tepples's comment, the first thing that came to mind was an icon to show what the level will be, like a forest, volcano, etc. An outline for the type of level, like a puzzle piece shape, would be really cool, especially if there was a little graphic inside.

I was mostly referring to completed vs. not completed vs. locked levels currently just being palette swaps. I'd recommend against relying exclusively on color for three reasons:

• In the early NES era, some people still had black-and-white TVs. (On a black-and-white TV, $11-$1C looks like $00 and $21-$2C looks like $10.)
• About one in every 12 men has some level of color blindness. Color-blind men can see through camouflage better but have a harder time telling green from red in a video game.
• With the Z80 skills you learned on the TI-83, you may eventually want to port something to the Game Boy, which just has $0B, $1A, $29, and $38.

Unavailable levels are shaded out with a dither pattern and when the level you've selected has already been completed there's a checkmark by the player. Probably should have different icons for completed/available but I'll still have to make icons I like first before I see how I'll differentiate them.

Try these on for size

I've mostly been adding new enemies. Here we have the King from my SMB1 hack from 8 years ago, and Ronald, both taking the place Lakitu usually does.

I included a demo with the first four levels. I think they might be getting too hard (like while making level 4 I had to make a health restore block and add some before it felt fair-ish) and I think I should do something about the fast enemy so it doesn't feel super cheap. I recommend just copying a fire ability and just keeping it the whole demo, lol.

Honestly most of the game is done at this point aside from needing to design levels and other things, and minor work on other things like the dialog.

Looks good. A bit hard in a few places.

I like it when Nova says "Super M-" and the other guy says "Shh". I also like this enemy copying mechanism.
Sometimes the firing won't work and I don't like how I have to walk slowly not to run into an enemy because I "duy". Can you program that the player can copy the running enemy's running ability which defeats all enemies the player runs into?

After I copied the flame enemy's attack, I found that my attack destroyed all enemies, so I was disappointed that I could not try to stun + copy any other enemies. This ability persisted after death and even after a reset?

Right now, Down+Select removes the current ability (as the sign says, but I should probably reword it to specify exactly what it resets), but I should probably change it to just Select to be more intuitive for people who have played Kirby's Adventure. Most of the enemies in the early levels aren't copyable though, aside from the fire enemies and the volcano.

I've been trying to figure out if getting hurt should remove the ability like in Kirby or if the player should just hold onto it because the levels were already hard enough as it is. I went with the latter, but I think I should just make the levels easier, especially for world 1.

There's a limit to the number of projectiles you can have active at once, and any past that limit just won't spawn. It might be a good idea to just skip the animation for that if it's not going to work. I should probably also try to always leave room for some projectiles in the objects array.

I don't have problems with the running speed myself, though I'm probably just really used to the game.

Ah, I missed the text about down + select. Also it was unclear to me which enemies I could take powers from; maybe the text should explain that it only applies if the enemy is throwing projectiles? Possibly the "capture" ability could be trying to capture an in-flight projectile, rather than having to stun the enemy? (I catch your hammer and throw it back at you!)

The blue enemies that throw water bottles are very tough, especially because there is no pattern to their throws. The stun attack does not stop the bottles (shouldn't it?), and the fire attack falls too quickly to effectively hit them (the water bottles have a lot more range). The only effective attack seems to be using their own weapon against them.

(I later noticed your GIF where you were throwing the fire upwards and realized the fire can be thrown up too. That kinda changes everything, but at the same time it makes the water bottle ability redundant to the fire, since the fire can now do everything it does.)

Running squirrel can cross gaps that are 2 blocks wide without jumping. (Is this intentional? Looks and feels iffy.)

There are parts of levels where you have to stand near the top of the screen, but the squirrel is invisible there.


I can break bricks simply by pushing horizontally against them and jumping. Is this intentional? If I can do this it feels like I should be able to just punch bricks straight-on, but I can't.


Might be good if instead of PLZ WAIT you showed the level's number so I know how far I've gone. Might also be nice if there was some way to return to the level select screen other than resetting the NES (maybe an "exit level" option from the pause menu? What is the "inventory" for anyway?).

Why can't I stop the king? (Throwing water bottles at him does not stop him!)

I never saw Ronald. Was he supposed to be flying on a burger somewhere? Is he in this ROM?

Squirrel animates constantly on a ladder even if I'm not moving.

Can jump on "goomba" enemies, but nothing else? Kind of confusing inconsistency.

It seems strange that current weapon gets saved at checkpoints, so if you die you have to recollect it ONLY if you're still on the same level. Kind of unintuitive that you retain your weapon after dying only in some cases, especially since I don't really know what level I'm on while playing (the transitions are kind of immediate, and there's not level indicator). Per my earlier confusion about how to discard a weapon, it might be best if you just lose it when you die or reset the game.

Speaking of reset, shouldn't there be some option to clear the saved game?

I've now hit a level where all I can do is jump into a pit. I presume we can't go further here? (I guess this is level 5? The level menu says ! for 5 and 6-8 are still locked.)

Thanks for all the feedback.


Yeah, I'm changing the blue volcanoes to be less random (always one bottle every 64 frames) and I'm added some information in the tutorial level that has the player throw a fireball upwards to hit an enemy. Them continuing to throw when stunned is a bug. Later on in the game there will be things like using fire to melt ice and using water to put out fire.
There's going to be a big emphasis on using abilities to interact with the level, like Kirby letting you cut ropes or light fuses, but on a bigger scale. I really need to brainstorm what ways I can make abilities stand out from each other though.

Collision detection with blocks and handling for being off the top of the screen are both pretty iffy overall and need fixed.


I actually should probably have some sort of animation before a level starts that shows off the current level number, and covers up that it's even loading at all during that time.
Right now start+select (in that order. yeah, not intuitive) exits levels, but yeah, I should just explicitly add an option to the menu. I should try to minimize the number of button combinations in general.

The will hold health recovery items, items that change the current ability, and things like keys in later levels that introduce those. I haven't really implemented those yet though. Buying these kinds of items will also give coins a use.


I had him unkillable because I figured the level would be too easy if you could just kill him and move on with the level. I made him killable but lowered the level so it wasn't so high.

Ronald is in the ROM but he isn't in any levels yet. Usually when testing out new stuff I just throw it on the intro level and take it out when it's done.

I think I'm just going to take out jumping on enemies altogether to help distance my game from Mario.


Abilities save because I wanted it to be where you could have another shot at the level with the same chances rather than being disadvantaged by losing your weapon. It probably doesn't matter though since it's so easy to just copy another enemy.

Clearing the savegame will come when I add a screen between the title and the level select.

And yeah, the last level is just a platform as a placeholder so that it doesn't go off the end of the selectable level list.

Oh, that reminds me I noticed that down + select is order sensitive as well.

Since I'm showing the game off on SMWCentral I figured I might as well show off the latest build here to show the project's not dead.

Music now plays on lag frames, so there's no more stuttering when moving to another screen vertically.

I've made an options screen, where you can choose faster acceleration (which doesn't really feel right to me) or a slower running speed, or double tapping to run (which lets you attack while walking, which is something I got a LOT of requests for) and finally the ability to reset the save.


I've been drawing more graphics for World 1, going for a tropical theme and a garden/neighborhood theme.

I have lots of graphics for World 2 (Bummer Club) but I don't really have mockups because I need to figure out how to put puzzles together. I should do that soon though since World 1 is nearly done.


You can use bombs as platforms like in Pocket Bomberman but I feel like I reaaally need to nerf this because it's OP right now. Even if I make it so the explosions hurt you, you can still get up pretty high, which is probably okay. I put bombs in the inventory screen so you can play with them. There's also moving platforms, that can either move horizontally or follow a path.

I redid the enemy spawning code, and now there's a priority system where an important sprite like a moving platform can remove a less important sprite to make room if it needs to. Sprites also no longer fail to spawn if they're on the screen you're starting on.

Version numbers would be nice?

I'll edit after I test it out, but I'd think that having bombs explode bombs would make it much harder without removing it entirely. (Sharing the bomb timer or limiting to one bomb would make it require midair bomb-drops on the way up to land on.) What's the current damage radius on a bomb?

Version numbers always felt arbitrary to me, so I'll probably use the number of days since the project started like RHDE.

The radius is about 32 pixels, but it's sort of random. The two particles that randomly move are actually the things that get collided with so I'll have to see how reliable they are at exploding other bombs.

(Not sure why I was expecting bombs to be BG objects.)

The "fast" way I wanted to test, jumping and placing a bomb 3 squares (48px at top…further testing reveals you can get it up to around 56px up with a standing jump and still land on it) up from where you stand, on the way up, so you land on it, is… easier than I expected. You don't even have to move forward, as the bomb already horizontally intersects you when placed. Likewise, it would remain unaffected even if the 32-pixel explosion radius causes bombs to explode.

But it's a decent bit harder than just building-a-staircase-of-bombs like you were doing.

[hr]
Testing notes:

• Not sure I like the auto-popover-one-block-stairs. Kind of want it to not work if pressing down, at least. (I notice that this also works like the Power Grip, catching you on some ledges you'd miss by about a tile.)
  
  • But then it just doesn't work in the cave in level…? not sure what level it is. 5? 6?
  • Something I'm very thankful for is that it doesn't happen walking up against spikes, nor does running into a spike from the side damage Nova.
  • Hmm, it's a function of the left/right boundary ground tiles, isn't it? It doesn't work on gray block tiles either. Or gray ground tiles (late level 7), or the rock. Very much don't like it when it's very arcane about when it'll activate.
• Still absolutely love the idea of a glider gun as a weapon.
• The screen-blank on ability-copy or ability-ditch is rather irksome.
  
  • So's the one on "rearrange inventory".
• Pressing against a wall of breakable bricks and jumping breaks all but the bottom one.

Yeah. You can, in fact, break bricks straight on…but only with the "nothing" power's shot. (I was expecting it to be the tailslap too.)

• Nova (unlike Mario and Mega Man, but like Simon Belmont) suffers from the traditional "Cannot use arms and legs at the same time" syndrome (that is, cannot walk/run and attack). It is particularly nasty as you have to stop or jump to attack, otherwise it only engages the run speed, often the opposite of what you want right in front of an enemy. (Moreover, it's inconsistent: falling off a ledge, one cannot attack.) Speaking of falling off of ledges, you can't pass down through a ledge if you're holding left or right. (Like SMB3 I suppose, as mentioned?)
• Level 2 repeats level 1's (very long) cutscene of announcement of new policy. Thankfully, they're all skippable!
• Nice Faceball 2000 reference. Have a nice day!
• Clipped into a wall (in level 4, right before the Evil Robot-dispensing Santa King showed up) by B-running off the left springboard going left. Was unable to replicate.
• Cannot affect the hamburger cannons. Their shot pattern is a bit random, too- I've seen a volley of four (its bobbing somehow managed to avoid capping sprite limit anywhere). There's not even an invulnerable "tink".
• Stunned hamburgers pass through you, as expected, but this means obtaining a hamburger shot (for all its Long Beam, no-copy power) is difficult and luck-based, as you basically have to shoot before the cannon does, and then manage to get a copyshot off before it reaches you. (alternately, shooting a copy-shot such that the burger runs into your tail to get stunned seems to work??)
• Found a pixel (see attachment) where I could not pass down through a white platform. Replicated a few times. Works in level 1, too. Seems to be on boundary between "end" and "middle" tiles of white-platform. (Left *and* right ends, from what I see.)
  
  • edit: easy way to replicate in level 1 is to drop left of the springboard, then inch forward until you just barely touch the spring, sending you through the white platform: you won't be able to go back down without moving left or right.
• Ladder-climbing into a "goomba"-like from below kills it, damages you, and bounces you out its top like you jumped on it.
• It's not obvious for a lot of moving platforms where they turn around. This is particularly nasty with one that stops one tile short of where you could walk on (see attachment), when all the previous ones went right up to the ledge.
  
  • Moving platforms, if you stand near the edge of a ledge they do reach at the end of their motion, will automatically take you from it. This is true even if it goes down from that ledge, and it'll "suck" you off of the edge. Not sure if bug or feature…? It makes it easy to get on platforms if you know about it.
• Swimming to the top of a water under a ceiling results in continuous "I hit an unbreakable ceiling!" noise, even with no directions pressed.
• Unpausing from inventory (with A) sometimes leaves a garbage line on screen momentarily. Haven't checked if this happens on hardware yet. Couldn't get it to on PowerPak, though it does seem like you're re-enabling rendering before setting the scroll.
• Pizza does nothing? (even when damaged)
• Dying on 1-1 refills your inventory with all the toys. Dying on 1-2 (or later) does not.
  
  • For that matter, noting which checkpoint of a level you're in on the death/load screen might be nice.
  • I'm not particularly enamored of the "plz" there either, but that's just me being old, perhaps…
• Only Nova can stand on bombs. Enemies fall right through.
• Music is right at that forgettable, unobtrusive level. A bassline might be nice.

(some edits to add information)

I have to manually place them in the level editor. They were supposed to be a replacement for slopes but you're right, they're not that helpful and players won't be expecting it to happen. Auto-climb for the player is now taken out, but auto-climbable corners are left in because enemies climbing them is still useful.

It's going to get a lot of focus in puzzle-y levels, with switches that you'll press with a glider, things you can bounce a glider off of, and so on.

I'll rework that to upload over a few frames, shouldn't be too hard.

Making the stunning shots break bricks was not a good solution and I think I'll just check for bricks in front of the player when the tail attack animation is playing.

If you switch it to Kirby-style running ("Tap") in the options you can. Should this be the default considering how Kirby-like a lot of the rest of the game is?

I was trying to make it harder to accidentally fall through platforms, but it would be bad level design to use fall-through platforms in a place where falling would kill you, so I guess that's unnecessary.

I'll look into that. Until recently that cutscene didn't trigger at all because I wasn't clearing a flag when I should have, and cutscenes don't replay when replaying a level, so I'm not surprised there's problems.

The Smiloids in the plot are pretty much directly supposed to be the Smiloids from Faceball 2000.

Stunning isn't actually even necessary, I just recommend that it be done since it makes it a lot easier. I'm getting the idea that enemies using complete randomness when throwing projectiles is not a good idea at all and I should just use a timer instead.

I made it so that burgers stop if they're stunned, and I'll make it so you can stun a cannon to stop it, though probably not destroy it.

Right now moving platforms are either line-guided or have a specific distance they have to travel. I should replace the specific distance ones with line-guided ones or just make them go all the way until they bump into something.

I'll see what I can do, probably just make it so to board a moving platform you can't already be standing on something.

No longer triggers the sound effect while swimming and standing still.


The lines are from rewriting the palette. Pushing out all the palette updates and then doing graphics afterwards is on the to-do list.

Pizza now works. I erroneously swapped the values on a LDA and a CMP and expected it to work the same way still.

Originally, a lot of state was going to be saved at checkpoints (the whole inventory, flags, the current ability) because I felt like the player should be able to have another shot at something with the same chances, but I took out the ability since that was unintuitive. I guess I'll take out the inventory saving too.


Changing it to "Loading:". Enemies fall through moving platforms too, and I think most NES and SNES games I've played don't bother to make sprites interact with sprite-based platforms. Forcing them into a grid and putting them in the background seems to work for Pocket Bomberman though.

The platform endpoints being unclear will be less a problem when(/if) you implement acceleration on them that clues the player when they're going to turn.

Oh. I just thought it was an artifact(/failure) of "give all items" debug code. The problem with that sort of checkpoint is that you practically have to include a "start level over with initial items" button, or you can get yourself into trouble and waste. Are you sure it saves "current power"? It doesn't appear to restore such (go to end of 1-1, use bomb, go through door, dive into pit, bomb is gone from both powerslot and inventory).

If I use the bomb during 1-2, it comes back into the inventory, though. So yeah, hmm…just a little unclear. I suppose the sign explaining the inventory isn't in yet.
Swimming right or left shouldn't do so either- I mean, if it's supposed to be in the collision-ejection routine, then it should actually eject Nova so that it doesn't happen again.
It's not bad, just a trifle unexpected (and a little wide, you can stand with no pixels off the side and get taken with your feet like 3 pixels from the platform) and making it not drag a player that's standing on something else will probably be bad and make it so you fall through a platform instead of boarding it.

Almost forgot, diagonal kitty-corner solids can be passed through. (Level 3 near the brick-shut room is the easiest place to do so:)

I wasn't really sure what sort of aesthetic to use for the puzzle world (Bummer Club) I wanted to have in my game. Chip's Challenge certainly doesn't try to create any specific setting, instead just being this abstract world that focuses more on making the puzzle elements easy to recognize.

RollerCoaster Tycoon has an abstract theme that focuses on geometric shapes and glass. Inspired, I tried to make a glassy, neon world even though glass is kinda hard to do without translucency. I kinda like what I ended up making, and it doesn't use up a whole lot of tiles.

Might change the dithering style, since there's the diagonal striping thing on a TV but it doesn't bother me that much.

I love this project. Please do a physical release when your finished!

I played around with more puzzle stuff and I've got keys that open locks, blocks that contain items (that display the item name above the item), blocks that shoot out arrows like in Hannah and the Pirate Caves (that can break blocks you can't break normally, or that set off chain reactions with other arrow-containing blocks) and blocks that turn into a spring temporarily and then disappear.
The spring blocks are really fun to jump on.
Gameplay recording of some features

I have a lot of other ideas for puzzle elements that involve using abilities to change blocks into other blocks and other stuff so I'll get to those sometime. It's going to be a lot of fun to make levels.

I really want to. When I finish I'll see who's willing to manufacture carts despite a free ROM being available, and I'll have to get box art drawn and stuff.

Makes me think of the [in-development?] non-NES game Phantom Block. But, as we're not using a mouse here, it'll be quite different.

Video of two levels in World 2. I really need to figure out how to make better quality videos, maybe not using FCEUX for it. I guess it could be spoilerish since it's puzzle solutions? They're not very hard puzzles though.

I'm gonna really try and get a lot more done on this game. I don't want it to take 5 years to complete, and I want it to be done at the very least by the time the actual 53 game cart is made, so it can be on there.

I've been working on adding a lot more puzzle-oriented stuff and new enemies. I have a lot of enemies drawn and ideas for them thought up that I haven't actually programmed in yet, and I have ideas for boss fights. The first boss fight is in, but it's really just a recreation of how a typical DABG level goes.


Now there's actual enemies you can get the Glider ability from. Yeah, they're not to the same scale, but they at least move correctly.

I have pushable blocks that can be pushed on top of other blocks, though I think I want to add more animation to them. Later I'll add ones you can pick up and put down, too.

Wow that's some nice progress! I like those bouncing arrows.

I see John Conway's game of life in that above screen.

I had the realization that I actually can make levels and worlds out of order, so I've been working on world 3 a bit.
I decided I didn't like the old palette I was using for it after actually seeing it on my TV and deciding the background was way too bright. I'm starting to see why so many games used black so much; there's black, and then there's really vibrant colors and nothing really between.

I went with a black background, but I changed it so that it used a pattern instead of being a boring solid black. Really wishing I had a second background here, though I think it looks okay:


Compared to the old snow tiles I also took out the dithering since it looked terrible on my real TV. I realize I'm using checkerboard dithering in a whole lot of other places but I'm not sure if I'm changing it there too.

World 3 is going to include rideable minecarts, and minecarts are going to have sloped sections, and I evidently don't know how to code slopes but I'll figure it out. It should be a lot easier since the environment is much more controlled, and I can make compromises like making sure a minecart never falls on top of a sloped section. One thing that makes them more complicated is that they're offset from the grid a bit.

---

I realized that for sprites that are ONLY going to appear in cutscenes and nowhere else, I can get another color for free because I can just use transparent anywhere the sprite uses white. I've recolored a few sprites to take advantage of this:


A neat idea: have multiple rooms that look pretty similar to each other, and give the impression that the doors are changing the room, rather than transporting you. My inspiration was Floria from Kirby Super Star but I think that's a trope that's been in all sorts of games.

You could always animate the background tiles to show parallax, like Battletoads, MetalStorm, Gravity Man's stage in Mega Man 5, and a bunch of TG16 games do. Do you need code to do this?


What is it with Floria and [name] the [species] games lately? First Waddles the Duck, now Nova the Squirrel.

Parallax is a pretty good multiple-layer effect, but I think an even better effect is having it so that the background shows through transparent parts of the foreground, instead of having solid areas surrounding any foreground objects that don't quite fill up a whole block.

That's one of the main reasons I decided not to have slopes outside of these minecart tracks, since I would need different slope tiles for every single thing I want to have the slopes overlaid on top of, and palette issues would complicate that a lot even if I did want to spend the tiles on it.

Sprites cover a multitude of sins, right up until sprite overflow. Of course, level design to prevent sprite overflow is also a skill some ROMhackers don't seem to realize exists.

Minecarts mostly work after I found and fixed an out-of-bounds array access. There's still some jitter, as you can tell by the vibrating player. They're rideable, and there's track pieces that cause minecarts to reverse direction, jump into the air, and speed up/slow down. I gave them only one pair of wheels instead of two because it looks less wrong going up and down slopes.

Surprisingly they didn't take up nearly as much space as I thought they would to code the logic for, only about half a kilobyte so far.

There is now an item shop accessible from the level select. I'll probably have it so that it's not accessible immediately and you have to go rescue the shopkeeper in-game or something first.

Also rope is now a usable item. I just need to find a good in-game purpose for lamp oil now.

A cooler gameplay gif showing off minecarts.

Awesome job! Looks great, can't wait to play this

Wow it's getting good! I could do a Let's Play on this with a friend of mine as soon as you make the game available for download.

I followed these steps to clone the source code and build it on my Xubuntu box, which has Python and ca65 installed:

I try to keep the repository in a state where it's always able to build without errors and where the game works, but it's still not even close to done, content-wise (12 levels out of the planned 40+).

You can play it if you want to try it and give feedback (all finished levels should be accessible) but it's still not really in a state to be like, reviewed or anything.

Another build. This one has more levels and world 2 should be complete except for the boss one (level 2-8). I need to know whether or not the puzzles are too hard, like on 2-7. Also concerned about 3-3's difficulty. Can I get some feedback on that?

Ronald finally makes his appearance too in a level all about the burger ability. (2-3)

Nova the Squirrel also now supports a SNES controller. Use X and A for two alternate versions of the ability you have, which are normally up+B and down+B.

Boulders that fall when nothing is supporting them. Actually had Hannah and the Pirate Caves in mind when I added this.

Slightly outdated gif showing off a puzzle mechanic involving placing down blocks and modifying the level. Loosely inspired by Donkey Kong for Game Boy. In the actual game I added key-repeat and it uses the player palette, and there's no glitchy frame.





Some people make NES games that look like they could have come out in the 80s but it looks like I'm set on making mine look like it came out in 2008.

I love the clouds

I dig the overall stille, it looks fresh. The only gripe I have with the shop screen is that text seems to be off-center, but that's my obsesive-compulsive self talking

Typos:
"asume" assume
"Das me" Dat's (…no good way to write that, is there?)

Experience:

"Something cool here later"…okay.

You have the Super Mario World noteblock problem with your red breakable springblock: if you hold run and a direction you won't spring up, you'll just bounce each in turn (destroying them and not going up). Running left at the last segment of 2-1 will do this. [acc: fast, speed: slow]

Boulders instant kill? Well, that's one way to prevent skipping past them. It's not friendly, though.

The push-one-space blocks' instant move doesn't look good. 2-2's three-tall stack-to-push can also be skipped by not pushing any and run-jumping from the top of its initial position.

Ice block [or hamburger] may skip the final segment of 2-2; this seems intentional given the provided platform access.

The cannons that just drip fry-bombs look odd, since they just drop straight down. (or was Ronald stuck in a cannon? not sure)

2-4 the second switch (enables a floor to run over a gap) may be skipped with runspeed fast. Or burger.

in fact, you can phase through the top brick on the screen in 2-4 by jumping and down-B burgering.

You can get in the ceiling with burger down-B. if you have an upper corner you're facing away from. you gradually come out, though; I was unable to actually get stuck. (Burger also lets you bypass pushing that block all the way, but I expect that's intended.) In fact, burger lets you get through 100% of the item placement puzzles in this level, without placing any, if you're good. (Not something you should change, imo.)
…however, that you can just jump over the item-placement section with a jump, down-b, jump is maybe bad?

Placed items vary in resulting palette.

exiting the shop puts you on the latest world, rather than where you were.

Dying after buying something means you don't have it? huh.[a: no, your inventory override for 2-5 is why I couldn't. The ice block I bought is back at 2-6]

Being unable to see where Nova is when placing blocks is a handicap when you're trying to place from midair+inventory.

Dropping onto screen 1 of 2-5 can have the sunmask get a cheap hit. In general such screen transitions that aren't ladder-based can yield a cheap hit.

2-5 killed me a lot until I started using the items. Nice secret cache.

2-6: Chips, and suction boots to defeat conveyors? (oh, and green-button alternator blocks?) Very obviously taking from Chip's Challenge. (except suction boots don't make much sense for defeating mid-air force-direction-thingies.)

Did you forget to implement the actual counter for chips remaining? There's a chip by the HUD but no number. (or is that "regular inventory is disallowed"? guess it's the latter.)

Tornadoes don't quite have a consistent carry spot for Nova; was bounced up and down while in one.

Attack-while-climbing lacks animation. Or facing indication other than attack.

2-7: placed items still don't affect the palette of a square. This means that the placed up-arrows (which aren't hinted to be forcibly-inventoried) don't look red as an arrow that WILL go off when headbonked(/touched) should.

Standing up against the side of a boulder as it begins to fall = death

Standing precisely between two pass-through platform squares still means you can't pass down through either.

Ah, finally see the point of the dithered blocks: boulders can't pass through.

2-7's second-to-last enemy placement, with two tracking monkeyfires and two remote bomb turrets, is a bit nasty…frankly, easiest to just tank a hit there.

2-8:uh, whatb oss? known, I guess.

Ice power doesn't have the burger 1/j limit. It's not really possible to abuse this, though. Also, it won't freeze all of a surface if you slide it off the edge normally, only 3 on, 1 off.

I managed to defeat one of your "don't go over the level" bits in world 2, can't remember which, by …going over it. (2-1's first, using an iceblock or burger, and jumping)

Running over the roof at start of 3-1 doesn't hit the money-and-checkpoint platform. Also, you can access this roofrun from that platform or the very beginning.

I managed to beat 3-3 without riding on any minecarts (except to move them out of the way). I suspect I'm not on the usual difficulty curve. It was fun and challenging the first time.

Occasionally checkpoints wouldn't count. I couldn't figure why.

Pressing start in the options menu, even if you reach it by pausing, sends you out to level select. This is bad, if you were expecting to unpause and resume.

edit to add: no guard against using a block on Nova's location, and it only takes one to trap yourself…but there is always that "restart from checkpoint" menu option.

edit to add 2: winning 2-8 fight in mid-air put me in a place I instantly fell to my death, rather than the exit location.

eta3: discovered a roundabout infinite jump. Down-B iceblock, jump, pause, select ice block (using one up), repeat.

Thanks for the big list of comments; looks like I have a lot of things to fix. I was actually curious about difficulty, but I guess that's not an issue? Though the people on this forum are probably going to be awesome at platformers.

"Asume" is a typo but "das" is intentional; the person that character is based off of actually does type like that.

Looks like I need to finally get around to making the ChangeBlock routine update the palette of the changed block too. That shouldn't be too hard since I already have code for that from DABG. Money bags in world 3 also have the same problem where the money palette stays even though it changes to the background tiles.

Boulders being deadly was because I thought the player would get stuck otherwise because of how I've implemented them (invisible solid blocks), but it looks like they just eject the player out of the way, so I've removed damage. If it somehow does cause a player to get stuck I suppose they can reset to the checkpoint.

I noticed that a lot of stuff was skippable via ice or burgers or good jumps when I made the levels, and I decided that's usually fine. I could see someone having fun speedrunning the game and trying to get through the level with practiced jumping and ability use, and other players can take the safer and easier route of going through the level as intended. I'll stop them from bypassing huge chunks of the level though.

The chip symbol was originally supposed to indicate "this is a puzzle level, so the rules are different" but I abandoned all the ideas for how they'd be different except for having a temporary fixed inventory set and ability. I should probably use a different symbol that's more related to what it actually does, and make sure the player knows to look in their inventory when they see it. I intend on marking them on the level select too. Chip collecting does need some sort of counter, I agree.

World 2 is very, very blatant with being Chip's Challenge inspired. I mean, it even says "bummer" when you die. Yeah I guess it doesn't make sense for suction boots to apply to more than just floors, but it makes it more obvious what the function is. Chip's Challenge for Lynx uses a magnet to represent that item and that would probably be even worse.

World 2's boss wasn't even coded yet so it's just World 1's boss again and an obviously unfinished level. Yeah I know you can die after the win text, I need to look into that.

Oh. I've mainly played TileWorld instead, so don't have the same SFX. Were it any more inspired the green key would not be used up by doors

2-5 is, I think, harder than the ones mentioned. 2-7's a bit damage-heavy. Homing Missiles having explosions in addition to being fast and immortal makes them difficult to avoid damage from. Stunning them is mostly bad, too, since they can still turn while stunned (bug?) so that decreases their turning radius.
…I thought that that one was an intentional reference to exactly the same problem in SMB3 undergrounds, especially with the starry BG being similar.

Collision with the top row of blocks is different. You can't always jump off of them. You can act like they're not there in some cases.

Silly thought: 'Ronald' = "Chip Wickedburger"; he shows up in the Chip's Challenge levels (and superficially resembles him in being a 16px normally-proportioned human), throws chips (British), and has a wicked burger to fly around on.

Oh really?
This is amusing enough that I kind of don't want to take this out.

Homing missiles now delay a little bit before exploding, giving you time to get out of the way. I might increase the time if it ends up being too short but it's still way better than just having something immediately explode on you.

As the first gif shows I also made it so changing a block also changes its palette, which was pretty easy since I could just reuse the attribute byte calculation thing from the scrolling code.

Gonna keep working on this a bunch over the summer and maybe by the end I'll have it mostly done except for music.

This is the kind of stuff that makes speedruns fun - as long as it's not so "useful" that the entire game ends up being played like that, and as it's still somewhat difficult to pull off. If you want to convert it into an "intended" feature, maybe you could at least think up a way to make doing it a little more challenging.

So with all the ice blocks, minecarts, lava, and cola ads in world 3, are they to be called the Colava Mines?

Nice. I did my testing back in world 2 in a spot without access to deathpits, so the long time before an iceblock disappears stymied my efforts.

Besides, doing a running jump off of an up-B-placed block to a midair down-B gets you far enough for everything I could find. I suspect the world 1 level showing vertical transitions could be skipped about thusly.

It doesn't work without a deathpit (or lava/water, but either means you can just use icepower to walk across) and iceblock power is mostly unavailable until world 3 (…outside of the shop, hmm. But, at 30-40 a pop, and no currency multipickups, it's not cheap.) On a spike pit, it already acts like Shovel Knight's Mobile Gear, intentionally [as we've had that "something cool" secret behind onesuch] so…

Also, iceblock power doesn't kill enemies, only stuns, which is a surprisingly large drawback!

I've considered making it so that you have to copy an ability before you can buy it, but you can get the ice ability early on world 2, and you don't unlock the shop until you beat world 1 anyway.

I'm actually not sure what good prices for items would be. I probably should go and make statistics for the amount of money in each level so I can get a feel for what the average amount is.

I really like those arrow block puzzles. I'll have to play this again now that I have an N8 everdrive. Really like the art style.

You're probably gonna have to revamp the shop menu anyway, since it's ^{close to} full-up now (once you add more abilities). Probably break into sub-menus.

An addition that currently might make sense: eat-in (that is, immediately applied) riceballs* pizza. Even if you do normally refill health between stages, an eat-in XL would make sense [starting with 8 rather than 4]. Of course, a small discount would apply compared to take-out.

Bug report: You can reorganize the pause menu on page 2 with select, but it doesn't move the actual actions (at least, not Exit Level- I moved it to the bottom, and it did nothing there, but empty slot 1 then would still exit level). It also doesn't save the new positions…unsurprising as I don't think this was quite intended.

hey, the shop menu doesn't wrap horizontally. That would reduce the maximum number of presses to get to any item by 3, y'know.

A buy-multiple (10?) option would be nice?

The shop doesn't tell you "you can't have more of those" when you try to buy more than 99 of an item, though at least it doesn't charge you.

Bug report: fireballs can stick in ground. Bounce a normal shot from an exactly four-block-high drop [there's one in last room of 1-1…but no fire enemy] and it'll stick into the lower ground. (Five doesn't work.)

Huh, world1's music is gone.

*Eat your hamburgers, Apollo.

Ten abilities seems like a good number to me. Kirby's Adventure (for comparison) has about 20 normal ones, with weird duplicates like fire/burning and ice/freeze that I would have combined. You're right that there isn't a lot of space for potential additional items of any sort in the future though.

The eat-in could make sense for fixed-inventory stages, giving you a little help since you can't carry outside items in.

I took out the music a long time ago because a <30 second loop that plays throughout the entire game got a little annoying. I'll probably actually use that theme a bit later in the game.

Nice game. The controls feel a bit too slippery for me, though, even with the slow setting.

I found a bug: if you slow down just before falling off a block and turn back while falling, you "zip" back up. I created an animated GIF. (This bug may already have been mentioned; I didn't read the whole thread.)

Yeah, I'm not sure if I actually want to fix that or not? Since it provides some leniency that might be helpful, but I also get complaints about it.

I'm not sure what I should do about the slipperiness, probably provide a mode that turns off acceleration completely? But I think instantly jumping between speeds of 0, 2 and 4 pixels per frame might not be very good for a game that requires a lot of accuracy. There's the "fast" acceleration mode at the very least, which doubles acceleration and deceleration speeds.

This is the sort of helpful collision bug that often pops up in Nova's games and eventually gets turned into a similar official behavior.

Something similar happened when I remade Nova's Forehead Block Guy in Pygame. The original had a bug allowing sticking to a wall and jumping from it, and I recast it as the ability to grab a ledge and scoot up like in Prince of Persia or Super Smash Bros. My version added a tradeoff between mobility and offense: ledge grabbing can't be used while tossing blocks.

I meant the acceleration is too high to my taste, even with the "slow" option. (Now that I think of it, the word "slippery" was probably ambiguous in this context.)

My goodness, it's been a long while since I updated anything on here, hasn't it?

Nova the Squirrel is still being developed. I think I have about 7 levels and 4 bosses to make before I think I'm satisfied with the gameplay aspect of things (for a total of 33 regular levels and 7 boss ones), which I expect to be able to finish this year? Though I continually said that the other years too. Really the hardest part throughout the whole game's development has just been level design which pretty much requires me to solve a puzzle in reverse. The remaining levels are mostly action-oriented so that should help a lot. Aspects that don't require a lot of creativity should also be quick.

I am most likely going to push past 128KB into needing a 256KB cart, but not by much and that'll give me space to play around with just freely adding stuff without caring about size. I have ideas for stuff I'd put in that wouldn't take long, like a level editor, a copy of DABG, concept art, maybe two music banks, etc.

After the gameplay I'm going to want to add a lot more polish and I need to put in a soundtrack and everything. Some of the polish I've been focusing on has been making the game just look better (especially on the first world) so I can convince people to keep playing and get to world 2, where the real fun starts.

I should also think about the eventual cartridge release; I'm gonna have to commission a cartridge label or something at the very least, find a publisher willing to manufacture SNROM carts (and people are insisting on green shells), write a manual...


Level screenshots


I'm adding more tilesets to make the game more visually appealing and I'm trying to add a lot of graphics if I can. These giant trees reuse already existing metatiles which works nicely because I'm not running up against the engine's 256 metatile limit. Though, I have ~50 left anyway, and the game's getting close to done so it won't matter.


A cloud theme for levels that are set up high in the sky.


Animated water. I guess I need to learn how to draw animated water now, preferably with more than two frames of animation. Maybe other things would make sense to animate?

There's fake parallax using sprites in some levels too now.

I've also been adding a lot more mechanics like laser beams that are blocked by obstacles and that act as walls, blocks that can spawn in enemies, and other stuff. There's now a one-per-level collectible that is usually behind some sort of challenge.

Really impressive stuff! How close are you to finished?

I'm getting close. I'm aiming for a summer release of at least the ROM.

For hardware release, why SNROM instead of the A53 mapper?

Anything that's a superset of UNROM with WRAM will work. I guess I say SNROM since it's the most common board with that criteria.

Looks neat.

I'm really looking forward to this game.

I played the latest version of the game and did a video for feedback purposes.

Nova Squirrel Video

Some suggestions and notes:

- I had a hard time understanding how powerups worked. Some instructions on how to gain the enemies power and how to use it would be nice.

- Sometimes when I read those signs, the screen it took me to had messed up graphics on them. FYI, I'm playing on real hardware with N-8 Everdrive.

- I really liked those arrow puzzle mechanics.

- I don't think I ever learned how to use that Pizza thing in the menu.

- I swear that there were some platforms where I could manually drop down from them and then others which looked identical which I couldn't.

- The check point could be a little more fancier. Yes, that single star is okay, but I often confuse it with an enemy or something else. If it had a big letter C or S or something else then it might be more obvious what it is.

When you do beta testing let me know.

Yeah, you're on a very very old ROM (242 days ago!) and the most recent version starts the level select on the first world and first level to make absolutely sure people start on the tutorial level, though I should probably replace it with something like Kirby Super Star has because in my experience people just run past the signs on the tutorial map and then don't know how to do things.

The ROM you played started you on the latest world unlocked, which in this case was world 3, wayyyyy later than I intended the player to start.

Pizza is a health recovery item and if you have full health it will do nothing instead of wasting it.

Because it's such an old ROM (with lots of fixes made in the dialog code since then) and I've never seen graphical problems in dialogues on my PowerPak I don't know whether to investigate that or not.

I still have a long way to go but at least this ROM isn't ancient:

Okay, so I downloaded the latest rom demo that you posted and did another playthrough.

Video of updated Nova

Some notes:

- I can confirm that on the read me signs cut scenes that the graphics are still glitched

- I like how weapons sometimes have different abilities such as pressing up and down to get different effects

- It's actually a very interesting game. Lots of puzzle elements and interesting mechanics such as turning into a block as if it were a literal level editor.

- When I get colored keys, does it ever show on screen what keys I have?

- The sound that the character makes when she hits her head on the ceiling sounds like she is getting hurt and sometimes I think I'm getting hurt when really its just me hitting my head on something. Maybe use a different sound effect for that.

- In the menu sometimes its hard to scroll down the whole inventory list to get something. Maybe if you made it scroll if you hold down on the D-pad or something so that you can scroll quicker down the list.

- I ran across one thing that I think makes no sense. When you are first shown the pushable block mechanic, you then push a block off a ledge and then it falls and lands on something and then you use that as a platform to progress. But when the character falls down in the same spot, she just dies. So what did the pushable block land on is the million dollar question??? (see pic)

Thank you for playing the updated ROM. I'll watch the video soon (almost two hours and only the first two worlds? I have a feeling that the people that are planning on streaming the entire game when it's completed are ready to sit down for a long time, haha).

I guess I'll play through the game on PowerPak and see what I can reproduce, as far as glitched dialog graphics go. Proooobably not a good idea to do most of my testing in FCEUX.

Keys actually go into your inventory, so you'll see entries for "red key", "green key" etc. I don't think I can really display them on the status since the sprite colors are different from the background colors. (Unless I had like, an "R", "G", "B" in place of actual colored keys? Or use the digits that are already in sprite CHR? "1", "2", "3"? In any case it's on the inventory screen.)

I will add auto-repeat on the inventory screen. One thing you can do is use Select to swap the positions of two things, Pokemon-style. Once upon a time I thought about having some key combination automatically use the item at the top of the inventory, but usually there's multiple items you want anyway.

The bump sound is the same one as in my earlier Sliding Blaster game I think? But I can mess with that. It honestly should not play as often as it does.

I have it where pushable blocks are stopped by anything that isn't air (whether or not it's solid), OR the bottom of the level. I can put a background tile down there for the block to be pushed onto, no problem.

I got around to watching the second video (still haven't watched the first) and made lots of little subtle level changes as I went along. Some thoughts:

The block placing mechanic was inspired by Donkey Kong for Game Boy, and I was surprised to see that Gruniożerca 2 has it too, as its main mechanic. I feel like maybe the puzzle of figuring out where to place them might be too hard? But at the same time I want it to be an actual puzzle. I should probably have puzzle solutions available online for the final game.

I don't really make enough of a distinction between the "barrier" arrows and the arrows that just indicate that the top/bottom edge of the screen is linked. I don't really have spare CHR though, and I already feel like I have way too many mechanics to explain. I think this game will reaaaaally benefit from a manual that just has like, a list of everything in picture-form. It could also have a list of all of the copyable enemies and the abilities you get from them.

I noticed none of my cutscenes got played because I wasn't clear enough about how you can move up with the cursor and choose to watch them, maybe I should have the cursor start up there and have you move down, or I should move it down so it looks like a menu option. Probably a good thing though because my plot is super convoluted and silly, but at the same time I wanted to have it.

I think I need to actually replace the per-level inventory thing with something that's actually labeled as a per-level stock that's shown alongside your inventory? And things like keys could go into there, and that would completely avoid the problem where you can't pick up keys because you have too much stuff.

Dialog graphics are not glitched on the PowerPak at all, so I think maybe the Everdrive messes up OAM somehow? It would help if someone else who has an Everdrive could try and verify that?

I think I miiiiiight have put a little too much of a requirement on being familiar with Chip's Challenge, with 2-5 requiring you to know to collect all the chips and with some of 2-6's gameplay. I do put a sign at the start of 2-5 but a lot of signs get skipped, so that'd be better in the pre-level text. On that note, maybe I need to replace the tutorial map entirely with a more direct tutorial like Kirby Super Star has. I think it'd also be cool if I could make text appear on the screen during gameplay with button hints though that'd be tricky. Unless I just make it so that text appears above you when you're standing in a certain area?

I'm surprised you barely ever use springs on 2-5. When I play through it I just use them a whole bunch because it's the easiest way to launch myself up.

The video cuts out at almost the very start of 2-7 so if there was more after that I didn't see it.

Great. I'm trying to play peoples demos and such here to give feedback directly to the developers. I believe that it provides invaluable feedback to the creator of the game.



Wow, I thought that all of these arrow blocks were barrier blocks or one way blocks the whole time.



You mean there are cut scenes? I had no idea that this even existed. Now I want to go try one out.



You could also burn the roms on a cart and see what the result is when played on real hardware.



That was the end of the video. If the game automatically saves I might start again where I left off. Just looking at all of the worlds that you have available in your game... it looks like it could be a really long game. This one was really interesting to play.

Would it be worthwhile to fill the extra banks with a program to display such a digital manual?


Something like the speaker blocks from Super Mario World perhaps?

Yeah but aside from the one on the first level with most of the story it's not great. I still need to replace a lot of cutscenes with fancy illustrated ones. Or maybe even animated ones?



Better than that, the ROM starts out with almost all of the levels unlocked from the start and you can press up/down to switch between worlds in the level select. It IS super long (33 levels and 7 bosses planned, though that's in comparison to SMB3's 90 levels), though if you know what you're doing I imagine you could run through it in like 45 minutes. I noticed a lot of the video length was getting stuck (with things I've now tweaked a little to try and fix that in the future), and a big chunk was being AFK.


I could probably do that. I know a lot of arcade style games have a screen that displays all the elements and what they do, too. I could have some sort of glossary accessible through the pause menu.


That would be functionally equivalent to the signs, which get skipped.

I guess I'll post updates here too instead of just Twitter.


Prelevel screen reworked to have the cutscene/"intro" option included inside the box, which is automatically initially selected if the level has a cutscene and the level has not already been completed.


Now instead of stars slowly dropping down into cannons to show that the cannon is about to fire, I use a much clearer numerical countdown. I dunno if I like it as much so it's just an .if switch to choose either one.


I have sort of a level ending transition now? I kinda want to rework it using a raster effect and maybe the grayscale bit but that probably wouldn't look very good on some screens.

Reminds me of Kid Chameleon on the Genesis. Is this by any chance inspired by that?

I've never played it. That actually came about because I thought it'd be cool to do a sliding fade-to-white, since the prelevel screen is white, but I didn't bother to change attribute bytes when testing to see how it'd look and I thought it looked neat.

In Kid Chameleon, levels are part of a virtual world, and when you reach the end, the "textures" of the level are removed, revealing the virtual world underneath.

Finally, an answer to the question everyone's been asking, "Where the hell did my inventory go on level 2-5?"


Now if a level gives you a preset list of items to use, it goes on a second page and you can still use items from the first one. Items like keys and suction boots go into the second page too, so it doesn't matter if your first inventory is completely full, you can still complete levels that require you to pick up items just fine!



Tadaa! I guess now that I'm removing the concept of "regular inventory is disallowed" I might as well use that chip icon for its expected purpose.

Please supply the ability to skip cutscenes. I find cutscenes annoying and you can just put everything in the book anyways.

They're already optional. You can move the cursor down from "Show intro" to "Start" and just use that option to start the level instead, which will go right to the level. That'll also prevent any other cutscenes like post-battle ones from showing.

You can also abort out of any dialog (including signs) with Start.

O, OK, that is good then.

Hello,

I tried to modify the source code to have no damage. i find in enemy.s the increment damage counter :

inc ObjectF4,x ; increment damage counter
lda ObjectF4,x
cmp #4

i tried to modify cmp #4 with higher value but it doesn't works. I suppose there are others tests elsewhere, but were ?

You want HurtPlayer in global.s. You can just replace its code with an RTS. What you found was code for an enemy that takes 3 shots to die.

it works fine, thanks

Progress update:


I started on an in-game level editor/sandbox thing, and it will be the very last level in the game.


Platforms that fall down when you step on them. They can actually go in any direction, not just down.


I made a few levels for world 5, which takes on an art style similar to Double Action Blaster Guys. I made a video showing gameplay, and also showing one of the world 4 bosses.


You can fight Forehead Block Guy! He's the new World 2 boss. He walks at you while continuing to throw blocks.


The first world 4 boss is my old Fighter Maker 2 character, and he has three attack phases, where he first attempts to kick you, and then attempts to bodyslam you, and then does this trickier attack where he flies into the sky and stomps. You hurt him a few times to get him to move onto the next phase.


The second World 4 boss is on the background layer, so I think the boss fight will end up involving platforms made of sprites. Not sure past that.

I think I'm actually on track to finish this game this year, probably in June. I only have a few more levels and bosses to make, and I've gotta apply the rest of the polish I wanted to have as well as put the soundtrack in.

I was thinking earlier that it would be pretty fun if there was a boss fight with no floor, but randomly generated platforms moving from the sides of the screen.

A level editor! Awesome!

It's fun to look through this thread and see all the progress you've made with your game. Keep up the great work!

Here it is, a ROM with all 33 levels and all 7 bosses, ready for playtesting purposes.

This ROM is not final and has some known problems that need addressing, and some other polish that I need to add (like there's still no music!), and while it's not ready for full attention from everyone and streaming (especially not reviewing), all of the gameplay should be done and ready for comments.

I still plan to make a few more levels for epilogue purposes, and maybe throw in some more extras.

Thanks for sharing - I look forward to trying this version out! I remember playing an earlier release and it was good fun, although the lack of music was very apparent. Are you doing the music for this yourself?

Yeah, I feel like music contributes a whole bunch to making a game feel polished, and I'm not opening the game up to wide attention until it at least has music. It's being done by za909 on this forum, though he no longer uses that name. He's already composed a bunch and there isn't a lot to go until the soundtrack's done and I put all of it in.

Very good! My only complaint is that I'm having difficulties reading pixelated monospace text with huge spacings. I'd rather prefer some SMB3-ish font which is more like Courier New, but that's a nitpick.

About the gameplay, it's kinda fun, but very slippery. It's fast which is fun, but it's also tantalizing because if I run too fast, I can "DIE!" (as your sound effect says). Could you maybe add something like a glide option or a jetpack powerup which gives you the ability to extend your jump or to increase your Y speed upwards while in mid air?

I like it how there's a level editor at the ending. I'm assuming that Nova figures out it's all a game and tries to do her best to save the day by hacking it and using some level editor tools to finally defeat the final boss. It's a very interesting concept to have a level editor as an unlockable thing near the ending of the game.

I tried to fix some of the slipperiness by making the speed and acceleration configurable, though maybe those options aren't enough? You can buy auto balloons from the shop (once you've unlocked it) to automatically rise up out of any pits you fall into. I'm not sure exactly which traits I should change to make it feel better. I don't think it's really recommended to run most of the time though, especially since you can't see super far ahead.

The level editor is separate from the plot, and mostly because all of my previous NES releases, even the original Forehead Block Guy have one. "You beat all the levels, go ahead and make some of your own", etc.

Too bad the budget isn't big enough to license "Spybreak!" by Propellerheads, the iconic big beat piece that played last time a character realized he was The One in a simulation.

While there are still a few things I want to add and fix (like a reward for 100%ing the game, and a few minor bugs) the game has been ready for at least a few days now, and the soundtrack is completely finished. However, I've been having problems with getting the soundtrack into the game. I fixed a bug in ft2pently regarding vibrato (some missing break; statements caused vibrato to always be full strength), but I get problems that randomly change every time I run pentlyas on the output that don't seem like they'd be caused by anything in the output.

I'm not really sure how I should proceed; I've spent today trying to figure out what's going on, but I haven't really been able to. I think there might be a bug in Pently, as I'm well below its limits so it shouldn't be messing up. Using a different music engine doesn't seem like an easy solution because the soundtrack uses vibrato, arpeggios, the limited volume column, and duty envelopes, and I don't know of any other music engines with those features. I think I remember a version of the Famitracker music engine with sound effects added in, that could probably work as a temporary solution, but I wasn't able to find it.

I hope to get the game out soon. Worst case scenario, I ship the initial version without sound effects, or without music, but I'd really rather not.

If they are random, they probably depend on the hash seed. Anything that uses hash values in Python, such as the dict (unordered map) type, could potentially have different results every time a program is run. Hash randomization, which was introduced in Python 3.3, is a measure to make denial-of-service attacks on unordered maps less likely.

I would like to help you troubleshoot the defect leading to this unpredictable behavior. Can you contact me about providing the problematic score?

I've sent you a copy of all of the relevant files via Discord. The symptoms are that specific, random patterns will play completely incorrectly in a very noticeable way, and every use of the affected patterns sound incorrect. I already checked to see if it's mishandling >128 patterns and it seems to already have a check for that?

I found and fixed the problem myself, and Nova the Squirrel will be released with Pently as planned. I would expect a release within a week or so!

This commit to Pently worked around the hash randomization that mitigates DoS but masked the problem, and this commit fixed the problem itself: a macro was mistakenly truncating pattern ID numbers to 7 bits.

It's done! I'm gonna keep working on it and doing minor changes, but it's ready for the world to look at it!

Congrats!

Congrats for the final version,and thanks for your hard work!

That's great!!
Me and the kids loved it.
They asked if nova is a new squirrel, because in portuguese nova = the feminine of new.

This is good.

Congratulations for releasing such a great game.
Kudos!

Congratulations!

This game is knee deep in cool features. Congratulations!

I particularily like the drive to experiment with absorbing different abilities and try them out on different situations,, and that that the abilities do have variations built into the control scheme. Also that being without an 'extra' ability still gives you a pretty versatile move anyway.

Thanks for all the positive feedback!


I think that name choice actually came from Meteos, but then I later found the Latin meaning (which is also "new") and felt that fit, especially story-wise, since she's an unexpected arrival to the game's world.


Yeah, the stars stun enemies for a lot longer than abilities like Ice or Burger that only stun as a side effect, so it's easy to shoot at enemies and run out of the situation. That's partly why I made sure that shooting after you've maxed out the number of "special" ability projectiles on screen should result in a star, since it's still useful.

Excellent. I have been watching this topic for long time, good to see its finished
I've played First and Second world I noted some good level design and overall relaxing vibe of the game.
I really enjoyed puzzles in Second world, they scale very nicely in difficulty.
I do have very minor complaints like collisions are kinda wonky, some options(such as shooting while running) are OFF by deafult etc.
But these are minor nitpicks in sea of goodness.
Shame I don't have much time to play games lately. I'll make sure to get back to it when I can

btw: how "regular" baloons are different from "automatic" ones?

I'm glad the puzzles were fun. I tried to give puzzles a big focus in my game, and I worried about them being too hard but I've had a bunch of people get through the entire game perfectly fine, so I guess maybe they aren't. I'm still working on some of the wonkiness and other stuff, and I rewrote the wall ejection to actually search for an empty spot to push you. I'll post a new build here later today most likely. I guess. (Edit: posted)

Based on most people turning it on, I made "B always shoots" the default.


Automatic balloons prevent you from dying by falling in a pit by setting themselves off and lifting you out of them. Regular balloons are only used when you directly use them.

Did you finish this? I didn't even beta test the whole thing. lol.

Someone posted this on the NESmaker group page and it looks like its advertised as being done. idk

Yeah, it's done! I'm still making some updates here and there for bug fixes and minor improvements (and the level editor reward at the end needs finishing) but it's done.

I've been playing around with two alternate versions of Nova the Squirrel in the background, which might get more focus if there's interest.

Firstly I want to do a proper PAL version, with game speeds adjusted. In that version, I extended the 12.4 fixed point up to 12.12 so I could increase speeds by 20% more precisely, and I've managed to get jumping very close to NTSC. I would imagine most people in Europe would rather just play the better version, but when I eventually do a cart release I think a proper PAL-fixed version is important.

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Secondly, I'm doing a more generic version of the engine (Princess Engine), intended as an "easy" starting point for more open source platformer games, with a level editor ready to go and designed for expansion.

I've been replacing assets with placeholder ones, and I want to do things like replace the level select with a SMB3-style or MC Kids-style world map. It would also be a good idea to make it support more music engines, though I do want Pently to be just as easy to use as Famitone.

I sort of feel like most people would rather do something from scratch or use NES Maker, though. The main advantage my engine has is it's already designed around extra RAM, so levels can be as destructible as you want, with backtracking. You can also flip a switch and convert it to MMC3 if you want scanline interrupts or a 512KB ROM.

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While I haven't started on it, part of me wants to try porting the game and/or engine to SNES. I'd probably want to add SMW features (slopes, two screen tall levels, more block types).

It'd be cool to have it there as an open source SMW alternative, and I would want to enhance the engine to support important SMW features (slopes, two-screen-tall levels). But SMW already has a whole community and years of work and resources put into it, and my only advantages (open source level editor, all game code commented and available, legal to distribute) aren't that much. There would probably still be people who'd want it here, though.

I think it'd be a great idea to have a SNES version just to contribute a new homebrew game to the SNES library, though.

This would be hella cool and I would support this 100%. I think there are plenty of people who would be interested in it. I'm really down for some SNES homebrew because while the SMW hacking scene is big the homebrew scene isn't.

You could model the level editor to be very similar to Lunar Magic this way a SMW hacker would easily be able to pick it up.

The level editor has behaved like LM from day one for my own convenience, but it could definitely be made a lot more user-friendly (mostly better GUI, and so you don't have to open the level in a text editor ever).

I think a SNES version would be pretty cool, since I'd be able to fix all the stuff where I felt like I was held back by the NES a bit. World 2 could be properly translucent and glassy, World 3 could have a proper background that doesn't disappear around the edges of things, etc. It would be a lot less work than making a SNES game from scratch because I'd be able to reuse maybe 90% of the code and all of the game and level design.

It would still be sort of a longterm-ish project though, because lots of things would need to be redone or remade. I think I'm gonna get the NES standalone engine out of the way first.

A minor extra thing would be that everyone would be playing with a SNES controller, instead of just the few people who have adapters or people who know to select a SNES controller in Mesen or FCEUX.

"legal to distribute" is the one big advantage you have. This implies two approaches you could take:

1. Do you have any contacts in the SMW hacking community who wish they could distribute their hacks on cartridge or even as a stand-alone ROM? You could ask them if they want to be the first to provide feedback for an alpha version of Princess on NES or Super NES.
2. When Nintendo releases a port of Super Mario Maker to Nintendo Switch, it's likely to send notices of claimed infringement to YouTube for SMW hack videos, just as it did around the release of Super Mario Maker for Wii U nearly three years ago. This is when you can start promoting your engine. (You can't call it Princess Maker because that's the name of a raising simulation series published by Gainax.)

Byte 15 of NewRisingSun's proposed changes to NES 2.0 can help solve this (viewtopic.php?p=220624#p220624). And this made me realize that it has an entry for the SNES Mouse, but not SNES controllers, should probably add that too.

My own preference would be for the level editor to behave more like vi or ZZTQED. (ZZTQED doesn't support mouse input, although in an editor that does, each of three mouse buttons can have different function from each other, for example left button to mark rectangles, right button to mark individual cells, middle button to remember a copy of the cell clicked, or whatever else is appropriate for the file format in use)

I'm actually unsure if most of those people care about making a game for SNES, or they just want to make a game, period. I've seen at least a few SMW hackers move directly into PC game development, and I think the main draw for SMW is that, like MegaZeux, you have a level editor with a whole bunch of built-in functionality and you can "make a game" out of the premade stuff and get started very easily, but you're not prevented from adding as much custom functionality as you want. While I think standards have been raised, I remember there were people who didn't care if their hack worked on the SNES or non-ZSNES.

I don't think being legal is actually that much of an enticement. I haven't really seen any real repercussions past the YouTube thing.


I think Nova the Squirrel might be the first complete NES game that supports a SNES controller. If that proposal gets accepted and an entry is added for a regular SNES controller I'll set that field whenever the next build is. Still just a minor convenience since my solution with Up+B and Down+B in place of extra face buttons works well in practice.

You would have to specify what exactly the value is supposed to mean --- 1 SNES controller plus 1 normal NES controller, 2 SNES controllers instead of the normal two NES controllers, or NES Four Score with 4 SNES controllers (assuming that such a thing is possible)?

No, the NES four score can only relay 8 bits per controller.

Nova the Squirrel uses a single SNES controller (or NES controller) but "two SNES controllers" would make the most sense. It's not like a mouse or a zapper where you would want a "regular" controller next to it. If player 2 doesn't use the extra buttons, no harm done.

The Super Mario World hacking community is probably one of the biggest SNES hacking communities there is. So the question is, why do people make SMW hacks? Are they wanting to make SNES games or just fans of the original SMW or is it just the "cool" thing to do? Who knows?

Some users make crappy low quality hacks, others make masterpieces. Some hackers don't care if their game runs on original hardware, other hackers do. It's all about the intent of the hacker.

I don't think Nintendo is really going to crack down on hacks, because the hacker does have some rights to their work in the form of the patch. When Nintendo was taking down hack videos on youtube that was because they were going to release their new product, Super Mario Maker and they didn't want the public getting confused between hacks and their own program to make custom levels.

If you have a SNES editor that is 100% legal for people to make legit games out of then people can release their works on Steam and such. Currently you can't release your Super Mario World rom hack on Stream and earn profits off of it as far as I understand.

The only real way to know if people are interested in your SNES homebrew engine is to make it and see if it gains a following. Who knows what the future holds. But I do know one thing........ if you build it......... they will come!!!

I don't think they were targeting hacks specifically, nor do I think it was Super Mario Maker related. They were taking down everything they could (automatically) identify as their games. They had this Nintendo partnership system that was really stupid for whitelisting people who were allowed to stream their games. Hacks were often caught by their content detection methods, but it was difficult in general to upload normal footage of SMB/SMW to YouTube too.

Edit: Though, Nintendo's partnership program does have a policy of no ROMhacks, so maybe you are right to say they have something special against hacks, just it's part of a more general policy of asserting ownership and approval right over all footage of their games in general.

I still want to have an eventual SNES version of Nova the Squirrel for its own sake, and a SNES version of the engine would come out of that as a necessity. The bigger thing is probably how much time gets spent on making it friendly, but no matter what you're going to have to get your hands dirty with assembly if you're not just building new levels. It's definitely not going to be NES Maker to any extent.

One thing that I'll have to figure out if people actually end up using my code is how to keep assets separated from code for GPL reasons, though the preferred situation would just be if everything was as open as my own game is. The most ideal solution would be if there ended up being a repository of block and sprite types, graphics and music, and other modifications/assets, where you could plug those into your game just like in SMW.

Oh, I forgot to add.

Possibly this is why Super Mario World hacking has a big following:

- Super Mario World was a popular game many people played so it has a (fan base)
- It is easy to make and play SMW hacks
- There is a website dedicated to editing the game
- There are lots of free tools and resources that anyone can use
- All of the hacks are free to play


I want to put an emphasis on the FREE aspect of this hacking scene. Everything is essentially FREE. This means that the entry bar so to speak is very low. Anyone can download the tools and get started right away. Even non-hackers can download and enjoy playing the games. Let's say that you have some kids in intermediate school (before high school) and they don't have jobs yet so they don't have much money, SMW hacking might be ideal to them. You don't need a high end computer to run the software and you don't even need to own the actual original hardware or a clone console. You can run it all with an SNES emulator on your laptop.

I'm expanding the level sandbox into a full level editor, which will just launch into the old sandbox if it detects SNROM instead of SXROM. Right now you can save and load four level slots and you can change the level layouts in an environment where you can go from block placing to/from playing immediately.

I'm gonna try to add sprite placement next. I'm trying to think of a way to take advantage of big CHR RAM but I can't think of anything except making unpausing faster, because as-is it has to decompress everything again. Probably not going to pull a SMB2 here.

You mean you're not going to make a sequel that's mostly just harder levels?

Or perhaps you meant use most of the CHR RAM for tile rotation, as SMB2:MM and SMB3 do with their CHR ROM.

What would really be cool in my opinion is to make a Lunar Magic like program to edit your Nova the squirrel game and allow people to use it an order to make new homebrews for the nes. Using Nova as a game engine or some sort.

It could be free or paid, whatever works for you. I got NESmaker, but I don't like making all of my own assets. I just want to drag and drop stuff into a level and play it.

Of course these are just my thoughts.

They already can. The game's source is on GitHub under a GPL license, as well as a second repository that was supposed to end up a more generic base you could start a platformer project from, and the PC level editor is very Lunar Magic inspired.

It just turns out making tools isn't fun for me though, and doing lots of free tech support (if things got popular) sounds significantly less fun than that. Super Mario World's already filling that niche really well and the only thing I'd add if I spent all the necessary time to get things up to that level is just that your game would be legal to distribute which I don't think people care about too much.

Maybe I'll write out a tutorial for using PrincessEdit at least. I'm hoping the in-game editor will be nice for people who just want a Mario Maker-esque experience too.

So far the level layout editor and enemy placement editors seem to be 95% there, probably. Now I need to finish up whatever last bits I want to have in there, test it, and probably figure out what other content I can add (easter eggs and such).

While in the final game you'll have to beat the game to unlock it, here's a copy of Nova the Squirrel where the level studio in "Extra features" on the main menu is unlocked from the start so anyone who wants to try it out can. Requires an emulator supporting NES 2.0 like Mesen, as this game now uses SXROM (but will fallback fine if played as SNROM).

This ROM also has other improvements over the previous build, mostly just adjusting music pitches and speed if played on a PAL console and some minor fixes.

A new build is out, and the list of changes are there.


New title screen! I wanted something more obviously feminine but I'm still not sure about the hair. I need to figure out how to draw good long hair.

New cover art! (Actually not that new but I don't think it's been linked in this thread yet?)