NES emulator

[Arkhan]

Oooh, I'm sure the vast majority just don't give a crap about the PCE or want to do this in general. I have no delusions there.

There aren't many people interested in making a game run on a different machine when the original machine is perfectly fine and the end result is going to be the *same f*cking experience*.  
There are even less interested in doing it on the PCE, because the PCE dev scene can be counted on two hands with spare fingers.

I'm sure there are plenty of smart people out there that could follow what's going on in the source code, provided the source with the rom itself (how it's used) and running it through an emulator/debugger. Not to mention I've personally offered to answer any questions or just help outright, to speed things along. Also, hacker types specifically don't have the luxury of comments let alone source code for most of their working environments. They take things apart and figure it out for themselves. My lack of comments in the source would have little to no effect on them.

Yes but when its a commentless environment, it's usually with something they give a shit enough about to figure out.  Not commenting your code and using that as an excuse is poor form.  If you're going to diddle around with stuff and want people to use it, document it.  Expecting people to figure it out is why no one uses things you do.  There's a difference between dismantling a rom dump, and dismantling something you've cooked up.

Like I said, you need to know both the PCE and the NES hardware intimately in detail. Finding someone just for PCE that really know its in and outs, is hard enough by itself. I've been told by quite a few that are very capable low level console coders, RE'rs and such, that this was an incredible feat. So I'm not pulling that assumption out of my ass. At the very least, it makes for a steep learning curve - commented code or not.

*shrug* I don't see how its an incredible feat.  It's neat, sure.  It could turn into something big.  But, like you even mentioned, this was done already around 1993 with a bunch of games including Arkanoid, which is awesome.

It was also done with lesser tools, and far less resources.  That's more of an incredible feat, IMO. TG hacking before TGHack was around.  

This is an incredible feat: http://www.tni.nl/products/gem.html

Gameboy emulated on an MSX. 

I'd say this isn't for beginning or intermediate console coders. But hey, I could be wrong

You probably are.

[Bonknuts]

Curious, was that group responsible for the porting of the original Super Mario Brothers to the PCE? I for one would be interested in getting into programming/hacking again, but I fear my job takes up a good portion of my time these days...

 Yes, they were the group. The colors are off and the music is too fast, but it's been theorized that the Finland group used a PAL modified PCE so that might explain this. It wasn't just SMB, they had 5 other NES games too. All though none of them use any mappers (simple 32k rom games) and they all use chr-rom (no vram for tile/sprite graphics, so you can preload it which saves a ton of work and emulation back end speed). They also did some Vic-20 stuff on the PCE. But I didn't look much into it (to see how much of it was rewritten hardware code or actual emulation). I've also done my own SMB nes rom for the PCE, but the sound emulation needs some more work (the sweep emulation for NES).

 Unless you're specifically into this sort of thing or really want your favorite nes game running on the PCE, I'd personally recommend coding something else for the PCE. Out of all the games NES roms I've worked on for the PCE, Megaman is my favorite. I've logged tons of hours playing it on the PCE (not just testing, but just to play it/beat it). I still play it on the PCE (real system) over busting out the NES system. So for me it was worth the effort and time I put into it - not just for the novelty factor. I also made a hack to the , but I could never find a full replacement sound track that I liked.

 


 

[BigusSchmuck]

  Yes, they were the group. The colors are off and the music is too fast, but it's been theorized that the Finland group used a PAL modified PCE so that might explain this. It wasn't just SMB, they had 5 other NES games too. All though none of them use any mappers (simple 32k rom games) and they all use chr-rom (no vram for tile/sprite graphics, so you can preload it which saves a ton of work and emulation back end speed). They also did some Vic-20 stuff on the PCE. But I didn't look much into it (to see how much of it was rewritten hardware code or actual emulation). I've also done my own SMB nes rom for the PCE, but the sound emulation needs some more work (the sweep emulation for NES).

 Unless you're specifically into this sort of thing or really want your favorite nes game running on the PCE, I'd personally recommend coding something else for the PCE. Out of all the games NES roms I've worked on for the PCE, Megaman is my favorite. I've logged tons of hours playing it on the PCE (not just testing, but just to play it/beat it). I still play it on the PCE (real system) over busting out the NES system. So for me it was worth the effort and time I put into it - not just for the novelty factor. I also made a hack to the Megaman rom to play CD tracks instead of the PSG tracks, but I could never find a full replacement sound track that I liked.
 

Still neat nevertheless. A shame we won't see a public release of this stuff (better than seeing Doom and Halo on an atari 2600 IMO), but I understand why the reasoning behind it. Now redoing some of the sprites and music for NES games on a PCE (as some have stated), that could be pretty cool. Perhaps a near arcade perfect version of Ghosts N Goblins or the like.

[spenoza]

Unless you're specifically into this sort of thing or really want your favorite nes game running on the PCE, I'd personally recommend coding something else for the PCE. Out of all the games NES roms I've worked on for the PCE, Megaman is my favorite. I've logged tons of hours playing it on the PCE (not just testing, but just to play it/beat it). I still play it on the PCE (real system) over busting out the NES system. So for me it was worth the effort and time I put into it - not just for the novelty factor.

Any reason (other than the obligatory legal reason) you haven't released this out to the hobbyist crowd? I think I would have gone after Mega Man 2, personally. That one is my favorite in the series.

I see that you already have. Never mind.

[Arkhan]

Still neat nevertheless. A shame we won't see a public release of this stuff (better than seeing Doom and Halo on an atari 2600 IMO), but I understand why the reasoning behind it. Now redoing some of the sprites and music for NES games on a PCE (as some have stated), that could be pretty cool. Perhaps a near arcade perfect version of Ghosts N Goblins or the like.

See:
The defunct Dragon Quest Remix project.
The probably abandoned like 10 year old Legend of Zelda port

There are not any high hopes here dude.

If I ever port an NES game to the PCE, its going to be Hydlide, and noones going to give a shit except Runinruder,

[Bonknuts]

Still neat nevertheless. A shame we won't see a public release of this stuff (better than seeing Doom and Halo on an atari 2600 IMO), but I understand why the reasoning behind it. Now redoing some of the sprites and music for NES games on a PCE (as some have stated), that could be pretty cool. Perhaps a near arcade perfect version of Ghosts N Goblins or the like.

 I'll still release this kind of stuff to the public when I feel it's in appropriate state or such or whatever; but I'm just not making any official commitments to anyone or scene or community. It's for myself first and foremost. I agree, redoing graphics tiles/sprites and music would be a great thing. Problem is, it requires disassembling the game and understanding all the routines and structure in order to modify it. That's no small task by any stretch of the imagination. It's tedious and very time consuming. But, the game itself is running on the PCE so there's no reason why anyone couldn't hack for upgrades at any point after its release. The problem is finding a capable rom hacker willing to do this for upgraded PCE ports. Finding pixel artists and musicians for such projects is the easy part. Especially if it's a well known title.
 
 Sliver-X did a . I actually had his nes rom up and running on the PCE back in 2007. We talked a little bit about possibly redoing the graphics and music(CDDA) for PCE, but he was busy at the time working on the sequel to his game (running on the Final Fantasy 1 engine of the NES rom).  I had Dragon Warrior up and running then (fully playable/beatable), my first NES rom to run on PCE, and so it was pretty pretty simple to get his hack up and running on the PCE too. Hehe, it was technically a new RPG for the PCE. Would have been nice to play graphic/audio upgraded version of it, though. 


spenoza: Megaman 2 has started WIP since this summer and it requires additional video emulation support; I've just been super busy as of late. MM1 and MM2 are my favorite Megaman games. If no one ends up really caring or downloading/playing it when it's done, then that's fine - it'll still be worth it for me. I'll play the crap out of MM2 on my PCE.

[Arm]

Speaking of nes games, Sivak is finishing programming his last game Battlekid2 for the nes which will be available on real carts. The game is in some way similar to Rockman.
I was in charge of redesigning the characters portrait and creating the manual artworks. Who knows, if Sivak agrees, maybe the game could one day be ported to the PCECD.

[Arkhan]

Speaking of nes games, Sivak is finishing programming his last game Battlekid2 for the nes which will be available on real carts. The game is in some way similar to Rockman.
I was in charge of redesigning the characters portrait and creating the manual artworks. Who knows, if Sivak agrees, maybe the game could one day be ported to the PCECD.

that would be cool.  Battlekid was pretty fun.  Kinda hard, but good.

[Arm]

Yeah, the game isn't very easy or forgiving.

[Arkhan]

Yeah, the game isn't very easy or forgiving.

Something about Mega man is that the people who know how to balance the game out don't work on it anymore...

Mega Man 9 and 10 for digital download are pretty frigging brutal.  Mega Man 3 for example was challenging but not cheap. 

[Keranu]

If any coders are still up to porting/remaking Dragon Warrior to the PCE, I'm still down for finishing up the remaining sprites! I'm sure Paranoia_Dragon would be willing to finish up the soundtrack too. We got a lot of work done on that project, we mostly need someone to remake the tiles and then code it all together.

[BigusSchmuck]

Insert Quote
If any coders are still up to porting/remaking Dragon Warrior to the PCE, I'm still down for finishing up the remaining sprites! I'm sure Paranoia_Dragon would be willing to finish up the soundtrack too. We got a lot of work done on that project, we mostly need someone to remake the tiles and then code it all together.

I would love to help, but I'm not that tech savvy to start on something like that. About the extent of my programming knowledge is creating a scroll demo using HUC. ^^ That and creating annoying programs for the good old Commodore 64.

If I ever port an NES game to the PCE, its going to be Hydlide, and noones going to give a shit except Runinruder, Smile

And I thought I was the only one who liked Hydlide.  Never did play the various sequels, but I do know that Hydlide 2 was on the MSX and there was a translation for it...
 

[Arkhan]

And I thought I was the only one who liked Hydlide.  Never did play the various sequels, but I do know that Hydlide 2 was on the MSX and there was a translation for it...

Hello new best friend.

You don't really need a translation for Hydlide 2.  There is hardly any text in it in the first place. Read an instruction book online and you are basically good to go.  You'll just have to work out the shop menus which is a 50/50 chance of you clicking on "buy/sell" and then "yes or no"..

Other than that, you literally don't read anything really lol 

Hydlide 3 on MSX has english mode built in.  You just toggle it on and enjoy broken english, compliments of T&E!

Hydlide 2 is f*cking great, but there is ALOT of grinding.  There are a few tricks you can do to make it easier, but its still alot.

I like just murdering everyone.  It makes you evil and the shop wont sell you stuff, but once you are buff as hell, you can go back out and murder only bad people and get your FORTH back up, and be a good guy!

Then you play the fighting game in town and get your strength, etc. up. 

[BigusSchmuck]

I like just murdering everyone.  It makes you evil and the shop wont sell you stuff, but once you are buff as hell, you can go back out and murder only bad people and get your FORTH back up, and be a good guy!
 

Sounds like what I used to do in the early Ultima games and the ever ending quest to kill Lord British. http://www.computerandvideogames.com/181917/featuresthe-many-deaths-of-lord-british/
Ahh good times, good times.
Probably should pick up the other Hydlide games, even the Saturn one. Starting to wish I didn't trade off my Japanese Saturn now...
Anyway, I remember the first time I played Hydlide on one of those multi-cart NES demo systems back in the day and convincing my parents to get the game for me. That and Deadly Towers, won't go into details about that one. ^^
Anyway, back on topic, so it sounds to me that if you knew NES code, you basically knew 80% PC engine code as they used similiar cpus?

[Bonknuts]

Anyway, back on topic, so it sounds to me that if you knew NES code, you basically knew 80% PC engine code as they used similiar cpus?

Coming from the NES to the PCE? Yeah. If you've coded with the 2A03 or 6502, you'll have no problem stepping into the 6280. The video hardware isn't the same though. The NES tilemap setup (mirroring options, sub divisions) is convoluted/complex, sprite size to banks and the attribute system too. The PCE video hardware in comparison is pretty straight forward in comparison (much like the Genesis IMO). Though if you're already used to the NES video setup, the PCE will seem pretty easy once you learn all the registers and such.