Metroid NES in Uzebox

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LuisaacDogames
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Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2015 1:15 am

Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by LuisaacDogames »

Hi there!
Well I'm new in Uzebox and I want to learn more about this system, I bought it in June and I want to make many games in there.
One of this games is one of the biggest games on the Nintendo Entretaiment System, Metroid but I want to learn more about Uzebox and I need some help to make this possible :)
Thank you.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Welcome to the forums, always nice to have a new member interested in making games :D

I think Metroid is quite possible on Uzebox. It would be a huge undertaking, but because of that, it would be a huge accomplishment.

Sound effects and music can be converted from Metroid(FDS).nsf. There are 12 songs(none sound too hard), there are 20 sound effects(sound easy), and maybe 2-3 sound effects that can be done but will take some work. If you get some playable demo and are serious about finishing the game I will contribute the sound since it wouldn't take too long on this game; could do it in a dedicated afternoon or two.

The game can fit on the SD card, though it would be complex to make a good system to stream what's needed into ram. If you had that much done, the other difficult part is handling graphics but it could be done also. There is a metroid disassembly with great comments on all details that explains every last nuance of the game mechanics, enemies, and the data formats. If you can read 6502 assembly or were willing to learn that would be a useful document to check out as well.
LuisaacDogames
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by LuisaacDogames »

Sorry for not answering for 6 years hehe I was very occupated this years and now gives me some many curiosity to back with Uzebox, I read your comment and I think is possible but I not very familiar to programming videogames, I programming in the past but it turns me very difficult that is why I forget the project to make Metroid on Uzebox D: but it will be a great achievement if I can make it possible.
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nicksen782
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by nicksen782 »

The map for Metroid is huge. You'll need to stream from SD or SPIRAM if you want to store it all. You won't likely get the same resolution as the NES but if you can adapt the maps you could make it work.

https://nicksen782.net/UAM/APP_gconvert is a web app I built for graphics conversions. The tiles will need to be in FLASH so you will have to reduce the unique tiles used by the maps. You have some editing ahead of you but it is possible. If you need some help with the app you can message me.

Want to work on this together? D3thAdd3r has already offered support for sound and music. I know about converting graphics and some streaming stuff.
LuisaacDogames
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by LuisaacDogames »

That sounds interesting and it will be a really good achivement create Metroid for Uzebox, i wanna learn more about programming about videogames to make it real D: to be honest I don't where to begin, or what program I need to make test or anything else D:
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nicksen782
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by nicksen782 »

Well, you'll need to know C. Learn about structs and memory management. My first Uzebox experiments was just moving Luigi on the screen (I decided to be different.) Move him and make sure the correct tilemap is drawn for each frame of movement. I use simple counters. Something like every gameloop increment a variable and use that to determine which frame to draw.

Try getting the hello world program running first. Then move the text. After that, convert some graphics assets and get them to draw. Then you get them to animate. I learned quite a bit through trial and error.

https://github.com/nicksen782/uzebox_mariobros . Take a look and poke around. The game is missing sounds but I comment often. Look for the main loop. You'll see things like "updategraphics", "getmovement", that sort of thing. You break out the parts of your game into functions and call them repeatedly in a loop.
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D3thAdd3r
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by D3thAdd3r »

Metroid 1 would be cool, and I think it would be possible to do a quite faithful port with the SD card and SPI ram. Realistically, that would be an insanely enormous project even for an experienced Uzebox programmer.

Best I think is to read the tutorials and look at some of Nicksens stuff. Get it to compile and build the game, then start modifying it to learn more. It is surprisingly difficult to finish even a "simple" game from scratch, so don't set yourself up to fail, take smaller steps first and ask questions.

Glad you came back to the forums :geek:
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nicksen782
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by nicksen782 »

Start more small and simple. Try making a Pong clone. For fun, make the ball a smiley-face which looks in whichever direction the ball is going.

Make one screen on Zelda 1 with enemies. That would teach you SO much. You can figure out scrolling and other stuff later.
LuisaacDogames
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Re: Metroid NES in Uzebox

Post by LuisaacDogames »

Ohh thank you I really want to learn to make this, and later creat Metroid for Uzebox, I think it could be a good start for me beginning something like pong.
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