NES VRAM - Animations on Demand

Memory Mappers on the NES cartridge allows us to store huge amounts of graphics data compared to early NROM games. However, having the memory on the cart doesn't help much when the NES can only access 512 graphics tiles at a time.
To get around this limitation, we swap out what is in NES video card (PPU) sees on the fly, based on the player actions. In this video you can see the video memory "window" starts with the "small" version of the player, then swaps out the "big" version when the player grows. The big version is too big to fit all the move sets into memory at the same time, so those also swap out when the player goes down the pipe to an alternate set.

[@Mireneye]

You are doing some really cool stuff with this one! Fucking love it!

[@turboemerald9228]

i dunno if it would be possible but... do you plan on making the source code open source? i think some amazing mario fan-brews could be made with this game's engine

[@MattHughson]

I'm hoping to do something along those lines. Release the level editor workflow etc. Not sure exactly how it will all come together yet though.

[@violator1017]

Absolutely delightful ! ^^ Do you plan to release it as a "commercial game" or this is just for fun ?

[@MattHughson]

Commercial release with physical cart.

[@violator1017]

@@MattHughson That's great but aren't you afraid that nintendo could screw you and block the release ? It looks very very very "Super Marioish"... 😬😬😬

[@MattHughson]

@Violator 101 these are just test levels. The final game will not have any of the original layouts from mario.

[@violator1017]

@@MattHughson Gonna follow your tremendous project with care ! 🤩

[@MaxOakland]

Does that require a specific mapper?

[@MattHughson]

Well, technically you need a mapper to swap out the graphics. But you could do similar on NROM by just turning off sprite completely with a sprite 0 hit.

[@MaxOakland]

@@MattHughson what mapper are you using for this game?

[@MattHughson]

@@MaxOakland mmc3