#snes demake

[jakei95]

SEG_FAULT

SNES demake by NyxTheShield

[gilamasan]

I know I was late for the 10yr anniversary. Didn't think I could add much with nothing new to post. Then I remembered I have a lot of old art I made when the first game was new and I still had a deviantart account. Yes that is an OC of mine in a couple of them.

[jellonator]

Been working an a demake of the binding of Isaac for the SNES. Just got a very basic enemy + tear collision working!

[kittycatblast]

i'm not much of a collector or anything but i love grabbing as many physical copies of games for series i love

i own almost all of these games in far more accessible forms on through steam or emulation and the like but there is a part of me that really likes getting particularly obtuse releases of some of my favorites like the silent hill hd collection and the old pc version of ffvii, copies that are functionally inaccessible like my childhood copy of the orange box and that physical ffxiv disc, or even releases i straight up can't play right now because i lack their required hardware like final fantasy on nes and ffvi on snes/sfc

i think the reason i'm so fascinated by the oddball releases and ports of any franchise is because some of the first video games i ever played were donkey kong land 2, a game boy demake of dkc2, and the game boy color version of donkey kong country

[blazehedgehog]

Y'know, instead of that Final Fantasy VII mobile game (Evercrisis) that remakes/remasters FF7 but also fills it full of a bunch of worthless gacha garbage, Square could have kept the ball rolling and did a Final Fantasy VII Pixel Remaster that reimagined the entire game as a SNES era Final Fantasy

And just roll on through. FF8 Pixel remaster. FF9. 10. All of them. Demake the entire franchise.

"But what about the ones with more action-y combat" I don't care. Keep them classic and turn based. Lean into it. Get weird with it. Don't be a coward!

[sl33py-g4m3r]

[2A03+N16X]Battle! Sada/Turo 戦闘！オーリム＆フトゥー Pokemon Scarlet & Violet Famit...

Awesome remix I found and had to share~~

It’d honestly be cool to see a demake of these games on the SNES/Super Famicom/Nintendo 64/etc... It’d be so neat~~

Maybe merge it with OG SMT gameplay and have gyms and other areas like titan/team star spots dungeons with enemies?

idk, lol. Demakes would be fun~~

Area Zero would be neat as an SMT dungeon maybe....

[wjbminecraft]

A track-by-track thoughts post on the "Minecraft: Pixel Genesis" remix album, like what I did with the Minecraft Tetris album.

Also for the record, I listened to parts of of the original unremixed ones to get the gist before listening to their remixes (with the exceptions of Creator and Precipice, which I listen to a lot).

Featherfall (Hyper Potions Remix) - How is this the same song? I mean I guess I kinda hear it, but like. The original one is slow and ambient, meanwhile the remix feels almost like a track from an RPG. Very nice, though! I'm not too fond of the weird voice clips or whatever.

Watcher (Synthion Remix) - I like that the intro is sort of a chiptune demake of the original track, and then it kinda sounds more like something from an SNES game, before doing the sort of "bwawawawawawa" sound some music uses. You'd know it if you heard it. Also random out-of-nowhere pop at like 1:40. I like how it gets a bit more chiptuney in the background towards the end. Pretty good, even if it's the kind of music I don't normally listen to.

Puzzlebox (AIKA Remix) - The original kinda sounds ominous but calm. This remix is kinda. Not that. Honestly I don't really like this one much. Especially the random mob noises in the background.

komorebi (AIKA Remix) - I really like the unremixed version. It feels like a classic Minecraft track, all calm and piano-y, with nice ambient windchime noises as well. I am starting to cry a little bit. The remix has a nice intro that's, like, synthy and melancholic, but then it goes kinda a bit more intense and yeah I like this one!

pokopoko (Synthion Remix) - Going from the calm and slightly melancholic original version to this remix is kinda interesting. It has a kind of "end credits" feel to it that I really like. Also the chiptune aspect is fun!

yakusoku (leon chang Remix) - Damn, Kumi Tanioka's Minecraft tracks are really nice. I want to cry again. Waaah. The remix is. Fine? It kinda feels generic maybe??? Don't have much to say. Next track!

Infinite Amethyst (Snail's House Remix) - Why is Minecraft music so nice? Uhhhh anyway getting distracted. This one feels the most like what I think of when I hear the word "remix", like at the start it still sounds a bit like the original track, and then the actual remixy bit sets in and it's pretty good! Yeah.

Deeper (Elliot Hsu Remix) - Oooh, another chiptuney one! It almost feels like. You know how there are like "Smash remixes", like remixes of game music that's put in Smash Bros.? Yeah this feels like it could be one of those, like if Steve appears in Smash 6 I can totally imagine this track being in there.

Eld Unknown (Elliot Hsu Remix) - Very nice! A tiny bit closer to the kind of stuff I usually listen to. Also has a very epic feel to it!

Endless (Anamanaguchi Remix) - The original version makes me cry. That's unrelated to the topic at hand but I just wanted to say that. The remix is great! It kinda reminds me of like. Tyrian 2000. Like with the bouncy synth and adventurous tone.

Creator (leon chang Remix) - Creator is my second-favourite track on the 1.21 soundtrack! And I love the remix starting out as the actual intro before getting bitcrushed and transitioning into a more electronic version. If the original version of Creator sounds like the theme for a friendly but eccentric inventor, then this version sounds like the theme for a friendly but slightly-unethical mad scientist. Also zombie jumpscare. 10/10 remix!

Precipice (Hyper Potions Remix) - I love Precipice. It feels like JRPG final boss music. But this remix is just kinda. Fine? Like it sounds more like music that would play in a high-tech city in Pokémon or something.

[nerdiertides]

Creative fans have reimagined 'Warframe' as a SNES game in a new YouTube video!

(Featured Image Source: 64 Bits YouTube Channel) We have talked about the creative demakes made by the YouTube Channel 64 Bits. A fun and well thought reimagining of modern games for classic consoles, the latest game to get the treatment is Warframe. A fun video showing the action-RPG third-person shooter embracing several gameplay types and visual stylings of classic SNES games. 64 Bits is a…

[misscaptainbear]

A while back I wrote a blog on how I'd make a soulslike using retro hardware, I'm gonna repost it here :D

I suffer from an affliction many programmers and game developers can sympathize with: We tend to have so, so many ideas and nowhere near enough time to execute them. I'm toying with the idea of making a blog talking about random ass concepts of the above variety, while merging design, programming, and rendering topics. If anyone wants to implement this scatterbrained mess, may god have mercy on their souls. At the very least, I hope it's a fun read.

This idea came from a remark from a designer friend of mine while we were discussing the soulslike games, something to the effect of "Y'know what? Souls games have the gameplay of a Playstation 2 game with better graphics". He was more right than he thought, having said that a year or two before the release of the Bloodborne PS1 Demake, (shoutout to @b0tster!!!) which I will always take the opportunity to share.

But, both the above planted a brain worm that I couldn't shake; what might happen if you pushed it even further? Is a soulslike game even possible on earlier hardware? Say, the SNES?

What is a Soulslike?

Obviously seminal genres mean different things to different people, so I'm going to oversimplify here as a way to define the goals for this thought experiment. I think genres are composed of tropes, so I’ll list a few important ones here that I think any soulslike game would require.

Combat that rewards skill, rhythm, and spatial understanding

Complex world maps that allow progress to unlock shortcuts or alternate routes

Misanthropic lore that puts the players struggle into a larger context

Core game loop of attempting to progress to a checkpoint, either failing, returning, or unlocking the next stepping stone.

What can the SNES do?

Not much, honestly. That’s kind of the fun of the thought experiment. It’s specifically designed for 2D sprite-based games. For example, the background rendering hardware takes a map of tiles and the locations they map to, and draws them on screen using a palette.

There are some additional tricks that aren’t apparent in the system. You can set the hardware to several modes, Mode 7 being the most infamous and directly related to what we’re talking about today. Simply put, it allows the linear transformations of the background [1]. By changing settings for every scanline, it also allows affine transformations, like those in camera projection transformations [2]. This allows for a crude simulation of a 3d plane, similar to Mario Kart or Pilot Wings.

Mode 7 in F-Zero

In addition to background layers, the SNES hardware is also designed to support drawing sprites to the screen. These are also drawn from a table using a palette, and given several attributes, like position and priority [3].

Pixel data and palette data combine to form the final sprite

The SNES can show up to 128 sprites on screen. Those sprites can have up to 15 colors + transparent, and they can be up to 64x64 pixels. There can only be 32 sprites shown on a horizontal scanline at a time.

What Does our Souls Game Look Like?

Since I think it’s important to retain the three dimensionality of both the combat and the world exploration, I feel the game should at least attempt to break out of the 2d hardware a little. Another important part of the games is the situational awareness that the third-person camera affords.

I find that concept of a screenshot really help communicate the intent of what the game might look like.

As far as tone and mood, obviously it should be dark and brooding. For fun and just to pick something, I’ve settled on a biblical, angels-and-demons theme, set in a world destroyed by their war. More on the lore later. The souls games do a really good job at dividing the game into iconic, recognizable sections. Castle corridors, dripping caves, haunted moors, and barren wastelands are all on the table. Here’s some concept doodles illustrating some of the locations.

How the Hell do we Render These?

So, the SNES doesn't have native 3D support, but we’re circling around the concept of a 3D game - we’re in trouble, right? Well, only sort of.

Before 3D acceleration hardware (e.g graphics cards) became common, games such as Wolfenstein 3D and Ultima Underworld made do with limited processors, rendering the game directly using software. We’re going to adapt the concepts they used for those games - and we know these things are totally possible, because we’re able to see them in action with SNES Doom [4]. However, this uses the Super FX chip, and I’d like to avoid (hypothetically) using that if possible, so we’ll focus on techniques that aren’t reliant on rendering lots of polygons.

StarFox uses shaded polygons and on occasion texture mapped polygons, but requires the use of the Super FX chip on the cartridge.

We’ll start by talking about the techniques used in Wolfenstein 3D and Super 3D Noah’s Ark [5]. They use a grid-based raycasting renderer. The algorithm for drawing the screen is fairly simple, as follows [6].

Consider a map that is a grid of either floor or wall blocks. For each horizontal pixel in the game, shoot out a ray line into the world, and calculate how far it travels before hitting a wall. Save that distance number and also where along the wall it hits. 

Next, draw a vertical strip of pixels, the height of which is a multiple of the distance the ray for that column traveled. For example, a far away wall should draw a short vertical bar of pixels, and a nearby wall would draw taller. 

You can enhance this by using which wall was hit to look up which texture should be drawn, and by changing the color to draw based on the distance, giving a fog or fade to black looking effect.

Intersection calculations only need to be done on grid boundaries

This technique is possible on the SNES as demonstrated with Super 3D Noah’s Ark, but it also produces uninteresting, repetitive square maps. With just a little bit of adjustment, I think we can tweak it to still be performant, and to display more interesting maps.

First, let’s add a conceptual height to each box. This is a value that adds to the vertical strip of pixels in addition to the distance-height scaling mentioned previously. However, it’s important to only consider this for the upper half of the screen, and to clip the vertical strip when it touches the “ground plane”.

This would stretch the pixels vertically by 2, but I don’t think it’s a big deal for this sort of aesthetic.

This technique works fine as long as the player can’t get above or below the pseudo-polygons enough to look at them obliquely, but since our player and camera are going to be glued to a constant height, this is not a problem.

The other issue is that of the grid. As mentioned, this produces uniformly similar maps that are uninteresting, and since souls games are sustained by complex map design, we need to break that grid. 

Doom uses a technique called Binary Space Partitioning, where the walls to render are pre-calculated per each room (‘sector’), and the walls of the room the player is standing in are drawn first. Then, any doors or windows that link this room to another are filled in recursively, as long as the camera has a view of them [7]. The drawback of this technique is that it is both memory intensive (having to store the pre-calculate sectors and connections), and it is computationally intensive, requiring the use of the Super FX chip onboard the cartridge.

We’re going to use a lower-fidelity version of this approach. Consider a room that can be represented as a list of lines that forms a convex polygon. Each line can either be a wall or a portal to another room.

We’ll assume we know what room the player is in, and the direction they’re facing. To draw a room, we cast a whisker ray from the left-most pixel of the virtual camera, and iterate all of the room’s lines to find an intersection. Do this again for the right-most pixel. This gives us the bound indices, and the lines between those bounds are the only ones to raycast against in order to draw them to the screen. In fact, the line the previous ray hit and the immediate left and right lines are the only ones needed to test for each new collision.

As we iterate the vertical bars, I would also go from the edges of the screen inward - drawing the right and left most pixels first, and ending at the center of the screen. This will become apparent why in a moment.

Portals present a unique case. If we cast a ray that intersects a portal, we re-cast a whisker ray using that new room as the list of lines. If we draw from the screen edge, inward, we can pause this side of the image and wait until the other side “finds” the same portal as we do, and cast another whisker ray on the other side to re-establish the bounds to iterate. Note that this will work if and only if the portals are a single line flanked by two walls, enforcing the case where a portal strictly connects only two sectors. Also, limiting this portal depth to only one would be prudent. Drawing the fog-color for the portals in connecting rooms would probably look fine.

Disclaimer: Since I haven’t actually done the legwork of implementing this on hardware, I have no idea exactly how (non) performant this would be. My guess is that it’d probably be possible on hardware with some compromises, maybe having to sacrifice texture mapping, fog effects, or walls having different heights. Possibly all three. We would probably also consider halving the vertical and horizontal resolution of the 3D effects, which would speed up rendering significantly. For the sake of having fun graphics in the mockups, I’m just going to assume we get to keep those features, and can render at full resolution, and proceed onward.

From there we can start to have some fun. It’s nigh impossible to draw things like round cylinders and spheres, so I’d recommend the tried-and-true method of using camera-facing sprites to enhance low-poly graphics. Things like the caps of castle towers and roofs of huts, can be added with this method. Other world objects like the player, enemies, trees, and items will also be drawn to the screen this way. (Note: All of the mockups of the game in this blog were rendered in Unity, but strictly followed the rules of the SNES and the limitations described above)

Note that the tree and spire sprites are rendered in world-space, and are therefore much lower resolution. The player sprite would be rendered in screen-space using the hardware supported sprites, allowing it to be much higher resolution.

We can also pull some other interesting tricks. For the floor, we can render out a tilemap using the Mode 7 technique described above. For an exterior, we can scroll the background tiles to line up forming a horizon skybox. For interior scenes, like for castles and caves, we can mirror the floor technique to create a ‘ceiling’. We will have to keep the wall heights all the same for this perspective trickery to work, however.

The pixel art for the player sprite turned out really good and took a while, so you’re going to be seeing it a lot.

Combat Design

To figure out our design needs here, we’re going to start with how Soulslike games play, and work back from there. 

First, to pay off the player’s timing skills, they have long windup and cooldown animations when attacks happen - both for the player and the enemies. This presents a problem for our imaginary console; long animations means lots of frames, and as depicted in the mockups above, we also have a relatively large player sprite (78 px by 88 px). To mitigate these limitations, we’re again going to have to cut back and approach it strategically.

There’s probably a more optimal division, but this was by hand.

For the animations, to store them, we can use a lower bit depth for the images than the SNES natively uses. The console hardware natively uses a 4 bits per pixel, giving 15 colors + alpha. If we reduce the color down to use at most 8 colors per sprite, we can use 3 bits per pixel, and convert when writing to the sprite memory. This does potentially waste the other 8 colors of that sprites palette, but this can be recycled as a different sprites palette. In fact, this can also give us more palettes to work with. Heck, if we were to push it to 4 colors per sprite (2 bits per pixel), we could get 4x the sprites in ROM with 4x the palettes. However, this might result in bad looking graphics, so all the sprites in the example mockups use at most 7 colors + alpha.

There are also some more tricks that can give us more visuals for our memory. We could write tools that identify exact and very close sub-sprites (8 px by 8 px tiles), and simply reuse those when drawing new images to the screen. Again, having fewer colors means these are more likely to occur. This is similar to how the wide array of animations were implemented in Aladdin [9] and by hand in a smaller scale for the NES game Micro Mages [10]. I haven’t found anything confirming this, but I suspect it’s also how large sprite games like Street Fighter 2 manage to fit on the console.

Giving the match algorithm a threshold rather than requiring a perfect match would probably look good enough, too.

Combat design would also have to contribute to saving resources. We would limit the player to fighting one, rarely two enemies at a given time for a location. Fortunately, the structure of the souls games readily lends itself to this, which would reinforce the deadliness of each encounter. We would also probably have to limit the total number of enemies in the game, to further save on memory. To mitigate the feeling of reuse, the enemy’s AI would have to be a primary focus of the programming for the game, so that each would feel like a unique and difficult challenge every time they were encountered.

The other aspect of souls games that needs to be respected is the 3-dimensionality of the combat. Dodging, ducking, and simply moving allows the player to gain tactical advantage. Calculating 3D collisions can be extremely computationally expensive, but I think it can be done in such a way that can easily run on hardware.

The first advantage we have is that we’re likely fighting only 1 or two enemies, so our sword/spear/axe need only check if it’s colliding with those, and nothing else. We can express the collision test as a single point, defined as 3 numbers representing the x, y, and z elements, and the collider as a axis-aligned rectangle defined by 2 points, each with an x, y, and z.

But wait! Players and enemies in dark souls can’t jump! We can probably reduce the collider  hitbox to be expressed as a x and z width and depth, and then a 2d point with a height. And - what if the hitbox is assumed to be square? Then we can remove the depth, leaving us with a 4 byte definition for a box. This might make the collision test inefficient, though, so we might end up wanting to keep the 6 byte hitbox.

So, when the player swings a sword, we look up the pre-authored 3D position of the sword based on the frame of animation, and position it in a world space relative to the enemy hitbox, using as much integer math and cosine table lookups as possible. Then, we test to see if that point is inside the hitbox. If it is, we can tell the player that a hit has occurred, play reaction animations on both the player and the enemy, and deal damage. Since the most expensive part is the transformations, testing multiple points along the swing of the sword to simulate continuous collision detection might be a good idea that would be fairly performant.

A poor man’s continuous collision detection.

From there, we can add in crouching and rolling to the hitbox by lowering the height at runtime, and iframes by marking the player as invulnerable. If we end up using the 6 byte hitbox, we could even implement a jump, raising the lower-bound corner of the hitbox. 

This gives us a relatively expressive combat system - low swings that must be dodged (or jumped), high swings that must be crouched under, and other shapes like slanted or vertical swings that must be identified and moved away from accordingly.

The hard part is making tools to author all the different points to that the weapon would be at.

Controls

Right-bumper and Left-bumper to rotate the camera around the player

D Pad to move the player relative to the screen 

A to interact, and heavy attack

B to light attack

Y to duck, Y + D Pad to roll

X to use equipped item

Start to open the in-game menu

Select to change equipped item

Asset Production

In the era before cgi became cost effective, creating 3d-looking assets was a huge undertaking, especially for large animated sprites. The toolchains for assets were usually custom for each game, and professional tools weren’t widespread, cheap, or accessible.

If I were tasked with directing a game like this, I think my asset pipeline would be very inspired by Doom and Mortal Kombat. Since there would need to be multiple angles of each animation, I would set up an array of cameras around a subject, and then pose them, and take many pictures at the same time to capture the view from each angle.

For humanoid characters, I would probably recommend actual humans with costuming, much like as mentioned previously, Mortal Kombat. The player character could equip armor sets and have their appearance change, but only the entire costume, not each piece individually. This would also allow simple recoloring of the armor by using different palettes, giving even more variation.

Finish him!

For the non-humanoid monsters and possibly even for some of the 2d planar sprites, like trees, I would actually turn to terrain- and miniatures. For Doom, they actually sculpted some of the monsters in clay around wire armatures, and then posed them and captured them on a turntable to digitize them from every angle. However (I haven’t found a source for this) I suspect it wasn’t wildly successful, because about half of the monsters are either drawn from hand or kit-bashed out of other digitized monster parts. Either way, this would give the game non-human demonic characters with flailing limbs and bizarre forms, and provide really detailed props like trees and wells and bushes.

I didn’t have time or the motivation to do the above for this blog post, but this is a really cool way to create assets for old games that might actually be possible. Theoretically, one could also 3D render these back in the day with a Silicon Graphics workstation - much like how Donkey Kong Country was made [11], but that’s not quite as fun, is it.

Lore and Gallery

Look, we all get carried away. Here’s a big lore dump for this imaginary game, both that which would take place before the game, and the events that take place during the game. Peppered in are some mockup screenshots of the game. Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing and imagining it!

Eternal War

In the second age, the Divine War began between the Demona of the Underrealm and the Angels On High. Generations of humanity were born and died not knowing if it would ever end. The cycle churned the earth to mud and tore at the gristle of the world, devastating cities, corrupting rivers, grinding down the very mountains that clawed the darkened skies. The godly strength wielded by both sides gutted the world, cutting dungeons deep into the earth, and raising holy strongholds that pierced the continent like barbs.

Caught in the middle, humanity cowered in the fields and beneath their thatched roofs, praying for the mercy of a quick death at best. None believed the conflict could end; it simply was.

Annihilation

None alive know what tipped the scales of balance, but gradually the Demona gained ground. At the Gilded Keep, during the final battle, the Archangel Cassalia sacrificed herself with a dark magick, annihilating the keep and the surrounding armies. The 6 Demona Kings, greedy and impatient in their impending victory, fell to the fiery inferno. However, the other Archangels, the final bastion of Angels, and scores of the Demona legions were destroyed as well.

Men peeked tentatively from their shelters, finding only the battered armor of Angels and mangled corpses of the damned, and cautiously took their first steps into the light of a new era. Crops were planted in earnest, and the sun swept golden hills glowed with new, if wan, light.

Vitality

Centuries after the end of the war, rumors of the return of demon kings or archangels are still exchanged in taverns after too much ale. Humanity struggles and people are starving, but there are more born every year that survive the winters. Occasionally, Demona are sighted skirting towns and haunting roads, feasting on the unwary travelers flesh, but for the most part all is peaceful, if uneasy.

Enlightenment

You are an experienced fighter of demons, and you’ve been summoned to Tarnis, a village near the ruins of the Gilded Keep. You’ve agreed to come after the village scraped together enough gold to convince you to come help. As you arrive, you hear tales of a Demona Prince, a rarer and more devious variant that has a propensity for organizing larger covens and commanding minions.

You delve deep into the ruins of the keep, protecting yourself from the local fauna, ancient Angelic traps, and the occasional lowly demon, until you reach a sanctum far below the loam outside.

You behold the golden body of an Angel - the first seen in living human memory. She has clearly been tortured, and the tormentor, the Demona Prince Z’lek moves quickly to eviscerate your intrusion. Blade flashes against bone and claw, and the creature falls twitching and writhing in it’s own ichor.

You free the Angel, who names herself Ailas, and she tells of the rebirth of the six Demon Kings. She begs of you to slay these reanimated carcasses, and promises the eternal ecstasies of divinity in exchange for your devotion to her. 

King Hunting

Your travels take you to flooded tombs in fetid swamps, to barren desert temples, to deep underground where the air ripples with the heat of the planet’s womb and the ground glows beneath your feet.

Veritas

You limp back to the Gilded Keep, clinging at wounds that refuse to close. Pushing open the door to the throne room, you see Ailas atop her restored place, resplendent and bared in gold. She offers a hand to you, and asks one final question - will you join her? Or will you fight and slay her to take the throne for yourself, and for humanity?

Further Reading

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FVN_Ze7bzw

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7gWmdgXPgk

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57ibhDU2SAI

[4] https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Super_NES

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_3D_Noah%27s_Ark

[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhMMK3QLxSM

[7] https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=822&v=HQYsFshbkYw&feature=youtu.be

[8] https://twobithistory.org/2019/11/06/doom-bsp.html

[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOnUITJqRQQ

[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWQ0591PAxM

[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTBnzCb6jMM

[herosone111]

Bad Apple!! Ultimate NES Demake Download

(此图为NES实际画面，模拟器则需要支持MAPPER128才能运行)

BILIBILI视频地址

https://b23.tv/CZUPr4m

——

https://somethingnerdy.com/downloads_files/bad_apple_ultimate_nes_demake.zip

https://somethingnerdy.com/

你敢信这是在NES实机上不用任何外挂能跑的实机视频？看看开发者是怎么说的吧，节选一小段。有兴趣的可以去看他的博客（https://somethingnerdy.com/blog/）

MXM-1 现在具有完整的、最终确定的扩展音频。它具有以下特点：

8 个 8 位单声道 PCM，最大播放速率为 44.1KHz（4 个用于 SFX，4 个用于音乐）

Sinc 函数插值，黄油般平滑，允许上下重新调整几个八度音高

2 个可配置的回声缓冲区（1 个用于 SFX，1 个用于音乐）

11 位 Δ-Σ DC

简单的波表支持细粒度的、composer 定义的循环

在任何未修改的 Famicom、安装了扩展音频桥的前置加载器 NES 或扩展修改的 toploader NES 上都能完美运行

因此，我们有了勇气，但仍然缺乏创建自己的测绘机的能力，我们推动了尽可能多地发明新技巧——办公室里所谓的“新奇事物”。我们最终创建了不少这样的...如此之多，以至于 MMC3 的 ROM 空间限制似乎确实会阻止我们充分利用它们。MMC5 允许的空间比 MMC3 多一点（大约两倍），但缺少 MMC3 的四元组可命名功能。MMC5 还具有 8×8 属性（即，屏幕着色比 NES 的 16×16 属性所允许的更密集），但该功能被硬连线为仅使用单个名称表。因此，8×8 在 MMC5 中非常糟糕，以至于它无法在硬件滚动时正常工作。整个经典的映射器情况一团糟，无论如何，没有一个现有的 NES 内存映射器允许任何地方有足够的空间来促进充满高级关卡设计、丰富配乐和音效、高帧率精灵动画、复杂背景动画或 SNES/PlayStation JRPG 大量对话的广阔游戏......更不用说像 FMV 这样疯狂的事情了。

NES 的大多数经典内存映射器都以某种方式插入 PPU。通常是为了提供比微不足道的 8KiB 的 CHR 更多，但有时这样做是为了促进 CHR-ROM 和 CHR-RAM 在同一个墨盒 （MMC3） 上，每帧提供超过 256 个图块 （MMC5），在帧中间自动切换 CHR （MMC2），以及其他原因。我们已经把所有这些都带到了逻辑上的极端;以下是详细信息：

4.1. 每个屏幕 256 个不同的图块 -> 每个屏幕 960 个独特的图块。

由于 CPU（和 PPU）的 8 位特性，NES 的设计中存在许多人为限制。其中之一是，如果没有映射器支持，你不能在单个帧上放置超过 2^8 = 256 个唯一的图块，尽管帧本身需要 960 个图块才能完全覆盖它。MMC5 将此限制取消到最多 16,384 个图块中的 960 个。MXM-0 将其进一步提升到最多 65,536 个图块中的 960 个图块。当每个场景限制为 256 个图块时，艺术家会给艺术家带来沉重的负担，即没有如此严格的限制。这可以通过缩小场景/图像或通过到处重复使用图块来实现。古典 NES 时代的典型结果是非常图案化或简单化的外观，而不是展示更复杂（“熵”）的艺术。目前，我们实现了一个扫描线计数器，它与所有映射器模式完全兼容。这有助于许多栅格技巧，例如人造视差滚动，如果没有它，这些技巧将很困难或不可能。我们还可以实现一个通用的 CPU 周期计数器，类似于 Sunsoft 的 FME-7 内存映射器中的计数器，以创建更高级的光栅技巧。很难以图形方式显示我们的扫描线计数方法的优势，但它相当于能够在牺牲更少 CPU 时间的同时完成更多工作，并以更少的程序员时间和头痛完成它。然后，这些节省下来的钱可以用于制作更好的游戏。如上一篇文章所述，NES 主调色板中的真实颜色数量实际上是 425 种，而不是 54 种。但是访问这些额外的 371 种颜色很难做到，因为天真的方法是一次为整个屏幕着色，以便为整个帧获得不同的 54 种颜色，而不是在更大的色彩空间中混合和匹配它们。不太幼稚的方法是使用扫描线计数器并在帧中间切换 “emphasis bits” 以获得一些额外的颜色。

我们肯定会对 Former Dawn 中的特定特效执行此操作。应该注意的是，425 种颜色使 NES 在色彩空间大小方面接近 TurboGrafx-16 和 Genesis，但在这些系统上，颜色可以自由使用得多（但不是完全）。归根结底，NES 的可用图形功能比人们意识到的要多得多，但释放这种功能需要大量的软件工程工作，或者需要少量的硬件工程工作。我们选择两者兼而有之。我们将需要投入多少时间来充分探索各种可能性，将取决于目前未知的因素。2. DPCM 样本量扩展。（4081 字节 -> 16MiB）NES 的 2A03 CPU 的 APU 部分是硬连线的，最大 DPCM 采样长度为 4081 字节，我们已经做到了，一直到 16MiB。

https://www.timeextension.com/features/interview-how-nes-rpg-former-dawn-is-bringing-cd-rom-power-to-nintendos-8-bit-system

自从我们在 2022 年第一次看到 NES游戏《Former Dawn》项目以来，我们几乎一直盯着其开发商 Something Nerdy Studios的社交媒体，热切等待有关这款有前途的游戏的每一次新更新。

《Former Dawn》使用名为 MXM-1 的定制内存映射器将 NES 推向极限，这包括精美细致且色彩缤纷的角色精灵和背景，以及令人印象深刻的“Mode-7��式地图效果。它目前正在 Kickstarter 上进行众筹，到目前为止，该活动已经达到了 160,000 美元目标中的 115,000 美元，现在仅剩一周。

因此，我们似乎很自然地最终联系了《Former Dawn》项目制作公司Something Nerdy Studios的首席执行官兼创始人Jared Hoag，试图了解更多关于该项目的信息。Hoag 能够告诉我们更多关于为 Former Dawn 提供支持的技术，以及玩家在发布后可以期待什么。

更新 【2024 年 10 月 24 日星期四 13：30 BST】：Something Nerdy Studio公司现在发布了上周展示的悬浮靴世界地图移动机制的演示。可以从开发者的网站下载，需要 NES（或 Famicom / TinyNES）、CRT 电视和 EverDrive N8 Pro(OS v2.15 或更高版本)才能正常运行。

我们第一次发布了 Former Dawn 的 MXM-1 演示，这是一款 #NES 新的动作角色扮演游戏。需要：NTSC NES/Famicom/TinyNES、CRT 和 N8 Pro。需要扩展音频才能听到音乐。穿着悬浮靴飞来飞去！

(以下三张图片均为《Former Dawn》项目在任天堂NES上运行的实际画面)

https://t.co/8jJtW5Kh3o #chiptune #8bit pic.twitter.com/thQad4CtBH— Something Nerdy Studios （@SomethinNerdy） 2024 年 10 月 23 日

有关如何安装演示的说明在 .txt 文件中提供，该文件与演示 ROM 和 mxm.rbf 文件一起分发。不过，需要注意的一点是，那些使用未启用增强音频的 NES 控制台的用户目前将无法听到游戏的音乐。因此，Something Nerdy Studio 为那些在基本的未修改的 NES 上玩游戏的人分享了本节中播放的音乐的链接。

https://www.timeextension.com/news/2024/10/think-the-nes-cant-handle-mode-7-think-again

Jared Hoag：

关于MXM-1自定义内存映射器，从项目一开始，我就想创建一个新的内存映射器，能够将 CD-ROM 数量的数据映射到 NES 的微小原生 CPU 和 PPU 地址空间。

我在这方面是受到 SegaCD 和 PC Engine CD-ROM² 扩展的启发，另一些是我在 1993 年为我的 386 PC 获得第一个 CD-ROM 扩展的经历，这是对那台386能力的一次令人兴奋的升级，尽管主板、RAM 和 CPU 没有受到影响，因为对于计算机硬盘大小更重要。

但一开始，参与该项目的人都不知道如何创建自定义映射器。当时也没有任何其他有趣的选择。

据我们所知，MMC5 是有史以来为 NES 制作的最先进的映射器，但它的 ROM/RAM 映射能力显然与我想要的差距太远。。

我凭直觉知道可以做我想做的事，但是我不得不把这个概念放在一边，而我们则研究现有的映射器——主要是MMC3——直到Dominic开始在PowerPak上查看它的Verilog源代码而且从中获得信心相信自己可以进行必要的研发来实现我的想法。

而 EverDrive N8 Pro 提供的开发环境让我们有信心将研发寄托在 Verilog 和 Flash卡上。

MXM-1主要功能有4 类：内存映射、扩展音频、Live质量、 CD-ROM 仿真。

内存映射与 MMC5 类似，但有更多的地址行可用，以获得 8-16 倍的直接内存访问。

图像上我们采用 MMC5 的 8x8 属性模式，并将其扩展到 8x1 属性，这是任天堂NES的图形硬件可以支持的最大值。

扩展音频我们是基于PCM，并受 SNES 和 Amiga 启发的精致的 8 位版本。

Live质量功能包括强大的扫描线计数器和 PPU 毛刺校正技术等。

我们还用卡带上的SD读卡器伪装成CD-ROM，并具有正确的带宽和延迟限制，其实1990年就由Codemasters公司开发任天堂NES的CD-ROM，但上市前放弃了。

[monsterintheballroom]

"64 Bits - Elden Ring Demake for SNES"

[jellonator]

More Isaac for SNES progress! Enemies now have pathfinding towards the player. Algorithm is a little chunky at 77k cpu cycles, but I can reduce its impact by only evaluating every few frames.

Also shown here is tear knockback.

[gameboydemakes]

Singled out sprites from the ClayFighter demake! Sprites glorious sprites, Tiny, Helga, Bad Mr Frosty and a bonus Ickybod Clay and The Blob fill out the roster! Also included that nasty noggin bash from Taffy to Blob! Finally wrapping it up we can have a ganders at the backgrounds free from all that UI and character clutter!  If you liked these sprites, please visit my Patreon. Any amount thrown my way helps and is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[Patreon] [Twitter] [Instagram]  

[nervespike]

Simon S. Andersen | Zelda mockup 

[pen8bits]

Magical Quest Nes n' Game Boy Colors

Mickey, Minnie and Donald from the Magical Quest trilogy, with the color limitations of a Nes and a Game Boy. Mickey, Minnie y Donald de la trilogia de Magical Quest, con las limitaciones de colores de una Nes y una Game Boy.