State of the snes homebrew scene

declan · Post by **declan** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 6:27 am

Hi all

I know we all hear about r0m hacking and the work dejap does.

But does anybody knows what's been happening with snes homebrew.

A few weeks ago, i stumbled across this forum (i forgot to check when these posts where made, and i can't find the side on google anymore either), where this PIC hobbiest/n00b started a thread saying he wanted to start polygon programming with the Super FX chip.

Anyway, people were coming and tossing in their 2c, and then this one guy basicaly said that "the most complex snes homebrew games, are just variations of Pong...."

Is that still the case? I not speaking about game hacks or mods, but games from scratch! Are there yet homebrew game take advantage of the snes' capabilties, or are homebrewers unable to do any better than the 6507 style software?

Rashidi · Post by **Rashidi** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:28 am

..homebrew ..., thats somehin that goodxxx labeled as (PD), right?

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:38 am

Rashidi wrote:..homebrew ..., thats somehin that goodxxx labeled as (PD), right?

Nope.

Anything that wasn't sold at retail or hacked from a retail game is designated PD by GoodSNES, regardless of it's actual copyright status.

blackmyst · Post by **blackmyst** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 9:39 am

I've always wanted to make a SNES game.... I can pixel, but I don't have the skills for SNES ASM programming.

I wonder whatever happened to that SNES C compiler...

Post by **badinsults** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:50 am

http://www.snesdev.net/

TheUndisbeliever actually has made up a couple of demos, and is working on a more complex game engine that should be useable for people wanting to make a variety of games.

declan · Post by **declan** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:19 pm

uh,huh.

So the snes homebrew team have made progress.
_______

Just tested the game out (elevator madness that is).... I recon it could almost be made into a game&watch!!

Johan_H · Post by **Johan_H** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 12:41 pm

OT:

blackmyst wrote:I've always wanted to make a SNES game.... I can pixel, but I don't have the skills for SNES ASM programming.

Do you by any chance have a pixeljoint account or some other kind of gallery? :)

PHoNyMiKe · Post by **PHoNyMiKe** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 7:51 pm

there is no snes homebrew scene, if you want some 16 bit graphics, do the gba or ds dev scene. it's a lot easier and better overall.

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Mon Jun 16, 2008 10:38 pm

Figure I'll post a demo I wrote about 10 years ago, with updated pictures. Shows several 256-color pictures with an interesting unroll/roll effect. I don't think anyone's tested on hardware though, sorry. picroll.smc.zip

Aaron · Post by **Aaron** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 12:43 am

blargg wrote:Figure I'll post a demo I wrote about 10 years ago, with updated pictures. Shows several 256-color pictures with an interesting unroll/roll effect. I don't think anyone's tested on hardware though, sorry. picroll.smc.zip

Huh. Really neat, blargg.

Rashidi · Post by **Rashidi** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:19 am

waw that really cool rolling demo
*thus i named the .smc into "blargg's awesome roll demo.smc"*

that demo really works great on zsnes

declan · Post by **declan** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 2:51 am

Impressive blagg!

Is that coded entirly in asm?

casualsax3 · Post by **casualsax3** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 3:45 am

Very cool blargg!

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Tue Jun 17, 2008 6:04 pm

Yes, written in assembly.

Abstract graphics effect:
* Top n lines of picture shown normally
* Dark to light and back to dark transition on roll, then black below roll
* Slight horizontal shift to left in middle of roll
* Vertical flipping and slight stretching of image in roll

Implementation:
* Three HDMA channels used
* One controls brightness
* One controls vertical background scroll position
* One controls horizontal background scroll position
* All three tables follow the same pattern, and have the same number of entries
* The first two entries show the image normally, and are used to show the top part of the image, before the roll begins. two are needed because the HDMA repeat count can't hold a large enough value for the image when the roll is near the bottom.

Details:
* When the roll is coming on from top of screen, or leaving off top of screen, we just set the HDMA table start addresses into the middle of the tables.
* When the roll is unrolling at the bottom, we change the successive beginning entries in the tables to be normal (full brightness, normal scroll pos).
* When the roll is rolling back up at the bottom, to go up, we slowly restore the table.

(sorry, didn't realize this would hijack the thread; mods: split before my previous post if desired)
Evil god edit: it doesn't hijack by much, really. Proceed, citizen.

Jaton222 · Post by **Jaton222** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 1:27 am

Would you be willing to post any source code you have???

TIA,
Jaton

declan · Post by **declan** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:18 am

Yes.

That would great.... teach us all a thing or two about snes proramming

OT:

phOnYmIkE wrote:there is no snes homebrew scene, if you want some 16 bit graphics, do the gba or ds dev scene. it's a lot easier and better overall.

16-bit?

You mean 32-bit right? Or can the ARM7 work in 16-bit mode too?

EDIT:

Wikipedia wrote:The ARM7TDMI processor is a 32-bit RISC CPU.... The processor supports both 32-bit and 16-bit instructions via the ARM and Thumb instruction sets....

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:52 am

phOnYmIkE wrote:16 bit graphics

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 3:20 am

declan wrote:
phOnYmIkE wrote:there is no snes homebrew scene, if you want some 16 bit graphics, do the gba or ds dev scene. it's a lot easier and better overall.
16-bit?

You mean 32-bit right? Or can the ARM7 work in 16-bit mode too?

EDIT:
Wikipedia wrote:The ARM7TDMI processor is a 32-bit RISC CPU.... The processor supports both 32-bit and 16-bit instructions via the ARM and Thumb instruction sets....

I believe what he means is "SNES/Genesis-style graphics"

The Intellivision was a 16-bit system, and it sure as hell didn't look like the GBA.

declan · Post by **declan** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:24 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:The Intellivision was a 16-bit system, and it sure as hell didn't look like the GBA.

VERY OT:

If you ask me, the Genesis is as much a 32-bit system as the snes is a 16-bit.... the 68000 is a 32-bit processor with a 16-bit external data bus, just as the 65816 has a 16-bit data bus internally with an 8-bit external data bus :/

Post by **badinsults** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 9:21 pm

I think all this proves is that the amount of bits are irrelevant.

blargg · Post by **blargg** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 2:05 am

declan wrote:
Jaton222 wrote:Would you be willing to post any source code you have???
That would great.... teach us all a thing or two about snes programming

Or my ignorance of some aspects of it, as I'm not really experienced doing general SNES programming. Really, the source is nothing special and not really clear either. It's mainly an exercise in managing the HDMA lists, so it's almost like doing OpenGL graphics.

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 6:07 am

declan wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:The Intellivision was a 16-bit system, and it sure as hell didn't look like the GBA.
VERY OT:

If you ask me, the Genesis is as much a 32-bit system as the snes is a 16-bit.... the 68000 is a 32-bit processor with a 16-bit external data bus, just as the 65816 has a 16-bit data bus internally with an 8-bit external data bus :/

Jaguar. RAWR!

snkcube · Post by **snkcube** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:04 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:
declan wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:The Intellivision was a 16-bit system, and it sure as hell didn't look like the GBA.
VERY OT:

If you ask me, the Genesis is as much a 32-bit system as the snes is a 16-bit.... the 68000 is a 32-bit processor with a 16-bit external data bus, just as the 65816 has a 16-bit data bus internally with an 8-bit external data bus :/
Jaguar. RAWR!

64 BITS!

Gil_Hamilton · Post by **Gil_Hamilton** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 7:24 am

snkcube wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:
declan wrote:
Gil_Hamilton wrote:The Intellivision was a 16-bit system, and it sure as hell didn't look like the GBA.
VERY OT:

If you ask me, the Genesis is as much a 32-bit system as the snes is a 16-bit.... the 68000 is a 32-bit processor with a 16-bit external data bus, just as the 65816 has a 16-bit data bus internally with an 8-bit external data bus :/
Jaguar. RAWR!
64 BITS!

And there's still flame wars to this day over that.

I prefer to take the SNK approach. Add all the bits together.

1 16-bit(by conventional wisdom, the 68k is such), 2 32-bit, and 2 64-bit processors = the world's only 208-bit system!

Even the Saturn's 112 bits can't match that! (3 32-bit and 1 16-bit proc).

Eat THAT, haters!

declan · Post by **declan** » Sat Jun 21, 2008 8:55 am

Gil_Hamilton wrote:Add all the bits together.

1 16-bit(by conventional wisdom, the 68k is such), 2 32-bit, and 2 64-bit processors = the world's only 208-bit system!

Even the Saturn's 112 bits can't match that! (3 32-bit and 1 16-bit proc).

Eat THAT, haters!

hmm..... *looks around* that sounds like the burninator munching on a jaguar.....
He sounds angry..... I hope the jaguar hasn't been "bit-bangen" him.