It'd probably be interesting to take a look at how my game's engine works compared to SNES games that probably had a lot more planning put in before development started. Since I just figure things out as I go, I try to keep everything especially flexible while trying to keep it efficient too.

Ther...

Tried to figure out a list of some of my favorite licensed NES games earlier for no particular reason, and came up with:

• Super Mario Bros. 3

• Kirby's Adventure

• Wario's Woods (though I prefer it on SNES)

• M.C. Kids

• Little Nemo

• Cocoron

• Hatris

• Tetris 2 + Bo...

I've been feeling nostalgic about TV lately for some reason (probably related to thinking about Defunctland's Disney Channel episode? I like seeing bumpers and stuff!) so I got an antenna which was just some cheap weird flat thing which seems to work much better hidden under a drawer than taped up...

I still think it'd be really fun to putting my virtual pet project on a dedicated device, and that would make it feel more "real". So I figured I'd try getting a 128x64 LCD screen and plugging it into a Raspberry Pi Pico, and have at the very least some sort of cool desk toy that way (like how I u...

I've been feeling like the levels in Nova the Squirrel 2 could look better, even though people tell me they look just fine. So I've been looking at different SNES and Genesis platformer games to see some good examples of how other games decorated their levels. I thought it'd be interesting to share my notes and thoughts here.

During the Scott the Woz charity bonanza last year I got the boxes that had a random SNES or Genesis game in them with a new label and a lot of other goodies. Scott previously did these with NES games, and called it "The Mysterious Game of Crypticism" so these are "The Return of the Mysterious game of Crypticism." These were supposed to ship in January or February but they took until very recently to finally get here.

Because I do game dev as a hobby, that means it's fueled by me wanting something to exist so badly that I put in the time and effort to make it real. So with that in mind I mostly want to make stuff that either doesn't quite exist (either in the form I'd like, or at all) or I want there to be more of something I'm passionate about.

For Nova the Squirrel 1 on the NES I used the MMC1 mapper (by default; you can build it for three other choices) because I wanted wide emulation/flashcart support, and MMC1 seemed like the simplest hardware that was guaranteed to have the emulator provide extra RAM, which my game needed. Unfortunately MMC1 is not great.

I have a bunch of colored blocks in Tilemap Town's default tilesets that are supposed to be used like the wool and concrete in Minecraft (like for pixel art). But the set I have feels like it's missing some useful colors?

Tilemap Town is very permissive with its maps, where anyone can place tiles and delete tiles, whether or not they're logged in. I like that, because someone can hop on without even making an account, wander the world, and leave a mark on it by building something neat.

That obviously means there's a lot of room for vandalism, but in practice I've only had to clean up bad stuff from the map a total of twice. But I'd still feel better about things if there were some tools beyond just restoring from backups (which I make every time I notice something new has been built, or just every so often).