Game Development for the 8-bit NES
Lecture Notes
January 14 Slides (PDF)
- Introduction
- Making games: overview
- Roms and Emulators
- Assignment 1
- History of Nintendo
January 21 Slides (PDF)
January 21 Notes (PDF)
- Announcements
- Assignment 1 Results
- Recommended Emulators
- Computer graphics
- NES Palettes, Sprites
- How Assignment 1 worked
Sack of Flour Postmortem (PDF)
January 28 Slides (PDF)
January 28 Notes (PDF)
- Postmortem: Sack of Flour, Heart of Gold
- Emulator Image Scaling Overview
- The Game Loop
- NES Registers
- NES Joystick Input
- "A" Demo ROM
- Drawing Sprites
- Background Sprite Demo ROM
- Deconstructulator (demo)
- Assignment 2 Overview
February 4 Slides (PDF)
- Ira's Game Pitch
- NES Music (with nesmus)
- Announcements
- Assignment 2 Group Choosing
- Creating NES Graphics (with Photoshop and sprite tools)
February 11 Slides (PDF)
- Email from the outside
- nesmus corrections
- Sprite drawing tips
- General programming notes
- Practical sprite drawing and memory usage
February 18 Slides (PDF)
- Backgrounds (Name Tables and Attribute Tables)
- PPU Control Registers (reference)
- Memory Mappers, Larger ROMs, MMC3
- Game Programming Tricks
February 25 Slides (PDF)
- Making Levels (broad overview)
- Level graphics compression
- SOF level data
- Slight intro to sound
- Palette cycling
- Sprite 0 Hit
- Types of 2-player gameplay
- "Pop Quiz"
March 3 Slides (PDF)
Supplemental Life Skills Slides (PDF)
- Development tool updates
- Assignment 2 notes
- On teaching a class
- "quiz" results
- After Break
- Supplemental Life Skills: Firebreathing
March 10
March 17
March 24
- no class, Bob at Game Developers Conference
March 31 Slides (PDF)
- Making levels for Tomley Kleene
- Side Scroller game design
April 7 Slides (PDF)
- Assignment 3
- Sound Channels (some details)
- Box and Manual Artwork
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