1st NES Homebrew - Super Floofy Sheepie

So, here's a lil WIP blog of what was originally meant to be completed for btibitjam, but really not completed at all, Super Floofy Sheepie.

As it's going to be my first game both for the NES and also my introduction to ASM to finish off I've kept things pretty simple, guide the sheep through the mazes, collecting all the floof balls then getting to the level exit without being caught by wolvies. Pretty straightforward but allows me to figure out things on the way through making it. It's going to run off a mapper 0 style cart with 32kb PRG-ROM with 8kb CHR-ROM once It's finished. hopefully


Here's a lil pic of a level running in FCEUX, thankfully it also runs well on my PAL NES which is handy for testing!


aaand a lil level editor I've written up to make things simpler for when it comes to exporting tiles and nametables, etc.


There's lots left for me to learn of course, how to make SFX, export music from famitracker and have it work inside NESASM3 and I'd like to add a password system, level transitions and of course, a nice ending screen / sequence.

I'm aiming for hopefully 50-60 levels in-place, each one only takes ~256 to 320 bytes so there should be plenty of space spare (I hope!)

Thanks again to everyone on the noobie forum who have helped me discover how to get past the limitations involved with NESASM, and the standard teething pains with NMI.

My first thought is that the font with white text and pale blue shadow on a light blue background makes it hard to tell the difference among S, 5, and 8.

Thanks Tepples, I'll have a play with the palette later on, I could switch to a dark blue instead and still have it look fluffy up there

Use the famitone code (available on Shiru's website https://shiru.untergrund.net/code.shtml).

Put all songs in one file. Use MODULE/MODULE_PROPERTIES to add another song. Use the text export from famitracker. Use text2data app to convert it to famitone data. Include the famitone.asm code and the music data asm.

In your init code, add this...

lda #0 ;0 for pal, not 0 for NTSC
ldx #LOW(Song) ;low byte, where Song is a label at the start of music data
ldy #HIGH(Song) ;high byte
jsr FamiToneInit

lda #0 ;play the first song
jsr FamiToneMusicPlay


Then, once per frame call famitone update

jsr FamiToneUpdate

Then, write the sound effects on a separate famitracker file. Again, each as a separate song in the same file. Save as nsf file. Use the nsf2data app to generate data. Include that file.

During init code, do this...
ldx #LOW(SFX) ;low byte, where SFX is a label at the start of music data
ldy #HIGH(SFX) ;high byte
jsr FamiToneSfxInit

And to trigger a sound effect, you call this function...

lda #0 ; the first sound effect
ldx #0 ; the priority of the sound effect, from 0-3. 3 highest
jsr FamiToneSfxPlay

Oh wow, that's amazing! I'm trying this out tomorrow night for certain, thank you so much dougeff!

The other option is Pently, which also allows use of music converted from FamiTracker text export through a third-party tool. Then you can use the score as is or, if you're comfortable with things like MML or LilyPond, edit it to add things like triangle+noise drums and optimization of short loops.

Is it compatible with NTSC as well as PAL?

I honestly don't know, I'm happy to share the ROM when it gets closer to completion though

Just a quick note, this project has been abandoned for the meanwhile, while I get a different NES game underway. Will post details on it's progress later on when I'm back home.