Lizard Source Code

I've released the full source code to Lizard, along with a build of the Lizard Tool:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/22147056

There's a free version of the source code as well, which is mostly the same but limited to the free demo content.

I put it on GitHub as well, in case that's convenient.

The code itself is licensed CC BY 4.0, so basically you can use it any way you like as long as you give me credit. This license only extends to the code, though. All of the other game data (graphics, music, levels, etc.) remains protected by copyright.

That's pretty awesome!!

That's awesome of you!

Time to find out your secrets.

Be careful with spoilers. I already spoiled few things for myself

Will give it a look! The tools will be interesting to check too since it can give ideas about what is useful or not in the actual editor. When you make one in a vacuum, you ends if with many cases that were not implemented because you never had a clear goal in the first place ^^;; I have many think to fix in mine and after so many years.. who made the code! I can't understand what I was doing

We talked about this before, but are you planning a ps4 or switch version?

I would consider both/either, but only if it starts selling more copies.

Releasing for either of those is going to cost several thousands of dollars up front, and Lizard isn't actually currently earning me any money. Unless I can expect to recover that cost there's not much point.

I'm kinda curious. Are you working on more NES games now or are you going back to hired work?

(sorry if you hate this question!)

I'm doing a bunch of things at the moment, trying to hold out as long as I can, but if I can't get an independent income going I'll eventually look for a job somewhere.

I'll be making more games either way (not necessarily NES but I do think I have more NES games in me). I'm already working on stuff but I'm not going to make public announcements about it yet.

If someone wants to hire me for freelance work I could do that sort of thing as well, but it would depend what's offered.

As a future project, I was thinking we could pool some money and create some sort of publishing unit for nesdev titles for the switch, ps4 xbox.

No idea how viable this would be, or how transparent it would be for the ones involved.

@olddb

It's a nice idea on paper but even though I'm not working in the field these days, I know that it was usually quite expensive and not something that you can easily with the so many conditions to release some work so I'm not sure that it would be viable anyway.

And since Rainwarrior says that it would be expensive and have the real experience about it, I believe him

I don't really think you'd solve the problem of commercial viability by trying to consolidate some of the upfront costs. Like maybe you'd lower the bar from $5000 to $4000 or something, but I doubt it'd be much more than a marginal savings. I don't know, but it's not like you can just sneak into Nintendo's store and set up an internal version of itch.io.

The problem is making the money back. The upfront costs are something I'd gladly pay if I had a reasonable expectation of making them back, but there's otherwise no reason to go through everything required to get something on those platforms just for its own sake.

(...anyhow, this is getting pretty far removed from the topic of Lizard's source code, I think. )

So if I wanted to I can pay for the source code and then change all the music and graphics and make my own NES based off of the Lizard code?

How easy is this? I might be interested.

I don't know how easy it would be, but yes that's the basic idea: replace the music, graphics, and levels, and give me proper attribution, and you can otherwise do what you like with the code. Read the license for more clarification.

This is my opinion, if you made a level editor for your game and it was easy to swap out the music, edit the levels, edit the graphics and you made it easy to use like Lunar Magic with Super Mario World with drag and drop support then you might be able to squeeze some more revenue money out of your lizard project.

I like hacking games because it allows me to easily design and build without coding much of the stuff myself. As long as its user friendly then it could be very appealing as a base to making your own NES game.

I bought NESmaker, and while I like how its made for someone with no NES knowledge to make a game, I don't really like the user interface and you still have to make most of your own enemies and such yourself. Nothing comes pre-setup and ready to go. You have to build everything including character and animation frames and hit-boxes, such a pain when you just want to create something easily.

1. There is a level editor included with the source. Maybe give it a try.

2. Sinking months of development time trying to turn Lizard into something that's easier than NESMaker is not something that I think would result in any reasonable return of income for me. Sorry, but this will never happen.