Initial Impressions of NESMaker - ?s and Suggestions

MistSonata

Moderator
Yes, each object can only have 8 separate animations. Fortunately it's not IMPOSSIBLE to make an 8-directional player character, but it would be tricky depending on what you want to do. Although, depending on what your animation is, you could possibly have the walking animation speed set to 0 to make it seem idle, but for now all that means is that the animation plays very very slowly. Hopefully soon there'll be a way to stop the animation at the first frame so that there'll be a way to do something like that.

And yeah, game objects are pretty complicated. Same with monster objects. It's quite a big learning curve, but I hope you stick with it.
 

SuperNatetendo

New member
I'm thinking that if I wanted anything beyond standing and walking, it wouldn't really work. Unless I got very very creative with code and using animation frames, I suppose. It may just be something I cannot do. It maybe seems a little too limited, I guess. I feel like a good chunk of most NES games wouldn't be able to fit into those constraints.

I wonder if there's a better way or some workaround I'm missing.
 

MistSonata

Moderator
I don't know if I'd say that a good chunk of NES games wouldn't be able to fit into these constraints, most NES games are pretty simple, but still, it is possible to get more than 8 unique animations for a player character, you just need to use different game objects.

If you've watched the earlier beta tutorials, Joe actually does this in order to have a separate animation for player death, and while that method won't be 1:1 applicable to having a large number of animations available, it should be possible with some custom code.
 

SuperNatetendo

New member
Yeah, I figured I was missing something. I think the big thing that makes it tough is having to have a different animation for each direction.

I guess I could revise that thought, but I don't think the bigger titles - Megaman, Contra, Ducktales, etc. would work with just 8 animations if you factor in directions (unless you get clever).

Anyway, I'd love to hear a response from the team on something like this. I think from an artist side of things, I just want to make a really really pretty game and THESE CONSTRAINTS MAN keep getting in the way! Haha
 

Goaterby

Member
While bothersome at times, constraints like this can be used to augment and accelerate the creative process! Downsize your ideas and concepts until they fit into what you can do with the tools available, then stretch it as far as you can. I think you will eventually find limitations far more fun than if you had unlimited ROM/RAM/animations etc. It just requires a bit of problem solving and compromise.
 

SuperNatetendo

New member
I'm not really even talking about unlimited animations. Just enough to get a decent Megaman clone going without getting too creative.
 

erockbrox

Member
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.

Yes, the single clicking and not painting is annoying. I agree.


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.

I think there is a zoom, but it a hotkey which means if you don't know it then you can't use it. Really there needs to be an icon in the program to click on.


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

I don't want to say anything negative, but that pixel editor that comes with nesmaker is like worse than basic paint from windows 95.


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

Yes, this was one of my biggest complaints. Its almost a deal breaker if I can't paste from one program into nesmaker.



Please note that I haven't played around with the official release of nesmaker so hopefully there have been some improvements.
 
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