REPOST - Initial Impressions of NESMaker - ?s and Suggestions

SuperNatetendo

New member
( REPOST - This was originally in the Beta Suggestions. Moved it to the proper board for it. )

Hey guys!

To start off, after spending a good full day or so just messing around with NESmaker, I'm am blown away by the potential of this. If you guys haven't realized it, this is going to be a very very powerful tool in reference to developing for the NES. I'm excited for it to grow and become more powerful as the year goes on.

I've decided to make a thread of my initial impressions - be aware I don't come from a place of knowledge and am very ignorant to why and how some decisions were made for NESMaker. I'll keep updating this the more I learn and the more I explore. Joe and the team, if you're reading this, it is NOT a list of demands, alot of them are just quality of life things. I don't want to seem ungrateful at all.

INITIAL THOUGHTS

OVERWORLD -

Probably the most straightforward part of the tool. The visual feedback for everything you're doing is intuitive and you don't really even need tutorials for most of it.

One frustration I had was when I held down the mouse key, the tiles would not "paint" if that makes sense. I had to click per tile, which got very tedious. Having a Rectangle type tool for painting tiles might be nice as well, but not necessary really.

I'd love the ability to zoom in and out. Just from a graphical stand-point if I'm trying to build a good looking scene I kinda like using the "squint" technique to see if it reads well.

Is there a more visible way to place paths instead of pressing number keys?

Would love a function to have tiles be viewed as path tiles for things like bushes behind trees, paths that lead into doors, etc.

HUD -

Haven't had a chance to do much with this yet. Minor thought - should monster spawn be behind text/hud boxes? I feel like the (generally) larger boxes should be drawn behind the smaller/dialogue boxes.

GRAPHIC ASSETS -

Another really polished part of the tool. I found I had imported all my tiles and had them ready to try within minutes. Amazing. Some thoughts here:

The "Edit" button's corresponding box that follows seems a little limited. Having some of the drawing options from the Pixel Editor might be great. Honestly, Pencil, Fill, and Rectangle might be enough.

Also, paths seem broken. Get some odd error when I try and edit an existing one.

PALETTES -

Not really much to say here. Had no problems using it.

I think I understand the difference between "Palettes" and "Monster Palettes" is that one is for Backgrounds and one for Sprites, so I feel the name "Monster Palettes" is a bit of a misnomer.

I mentioned this on the FB group - but the NES doesn't have set RGB values. I think a neat feature that could be in the preferences for the tool would be the ability to import a palette file. That being said, I believe a handful of emulators can do this as well. Just a thought.

PIXEL EDITOR -

Probably still much better than redrawing or editing the BMP by hand. I think the pixel editor could use a little work.

A big problem I was having was using the selection tool to copy artwork. Using the pointer was not ideal and since there is no padding in the box it was easy to not get all the pixels at all. Pasting them into mouse position isn't really ideal either. Being able to move it would be great.

Being able to paste from clipboard would also be the bomb!

For now I've been copying and pasting my artwork into a BMP and then giving the RGB values in the tool.

GAME OBJECTS -

I feel like I'm missing a lot here. The checkboxes, sliders, and object states don't quite gel in my head. I think I may have to take a look at the tutorials again to figure this out.

Are we limited to 8 animations? A 8-directional player character seems impossible. I feel like there's something I'm missing here. Also, is the player always limited to being a certain size? That kinda messes with animations as well.

OVERALL -

I think the tool is awesome. I really love it. I stayed up til 3 am last night just messing with it all. Safe to say I'm obsessed. I'm wildly impatient for what's next, but at the same time the release schedule seems crazy ambitious. Once again, my ignorance is showing, but seriously, the team is nuts. I'm beyond excited to see what they have in store.

For the future I'd love to see:

More MACROS for idiots like me who just can't wrap their head around coding.
Less daunting folder structure for code/something that briefly describes what each .asm file does in there.
Melee Weapons
Animated Tiles
Mystic Searches ;P

Anyway, the more I learn, the less problems I'll have I'm sure. If the team finds this helpful, I'll keep writing my thoughts. Feel free to inform me on things you guys know that I don't as well. I'm excited to see what can happen.
 

SuperNatetendo

New member
Some more random thoughts. Some of what's above is not relevant anymore. Specifically, I can somewhat figure out the animation editor.

INPUT EDITOR

Being able to put your scripts in subfolders would be great - just to help organize it all. i.e. one could create a thing called "Movement" or "Start Screen" etc.

OBJECTS

Can there be an option in which the end state of an action runs a user script? I think that'd open things up quite a bit for some real cool customization.

EDIT: I realized this totally already exists and I feel stupid. Haha.

I'm getting better and better with the tool. It's so gratifying to be able to work for literally an hour or so and already have something running. And the more you add the better it all gets. Thank you so much guys. :))
 
Top Bottom