Programming a 40KB NES Game (in Assembly)

[@soryabuscompany]

I've never seen a more thorough technical explanation of the NES in such a short time

[@gblargg]

Came here to say that as well. It sounds like it will be a quick gloss over, but then covers the important conceptual details of how subtle things like split-screen scrolling work. Well-done.

[@RedTail1-1]

Pretty sure this guy was programming for the NES when it was new lol

[@Arcad3n]

The game boy color has one of my all time favorite visual styles for a retro console. Games like Mina the Hollower demonstrate how great it looks, it’s so appealing! Excited for that episode.

[@JadeLombax]

I got into coding super tiny games a few years ago. I've made scaled-down Mario & Zelda games in about 1KB, working on some ideas for Metroid.

[@InkboxSoftware]

That's sounds way cool, do you have any stuff I can check out?

[@JadeLombax]

​@@InkboxSoftwareI have an Itch page w/ some of my games (Jadelombax is my username there), tried to post a link, but KZbin keeps deleting my responses.

[@themadmallard]

1kb? what platform are they made for?

[@JadeLombax]

​@@themadmallard Been using Pico-8 due to its ease of use and short syntax. It's not assembly, but things can still get crazy cryptic when you're optimizing bytes.

[@s3rverlord]

You can imagine that game in your brain and play it.

[@skylark.kraken]

0:02 I still find it remarkable how Golf on the NES became so popular that people started playing it IRL. They say that kids now adays go crazy over technology fads but they're the ones who created a sport from a game

[@Raderade1-pt3om]

Golf originated from a NES game!?

[@mirabilis]

Never heard this before. Sauce? Ridiculous.

[@skylark.kraken]

@@mirabilis golf simply didn’t exist before the NES invented it and the hype hasn’t died down

[@mirabilis]

@@skylark.krakenI asked for a source. You guys are trolling me. People have been playing golf since at least 14th century.

[@skylark.kraken]

@@mirabilis It's a conspiracy that golf is older, the Ilclubinati changed the date and origin of golf to make it seem more prestigious than simply being based on a NES game. They've been rewriting history books and influencing modern media that is set in the past that mentions golf (if you're watching something based in the 50s and they mention golf it just means they've been paid off). It's crazy how many people have been influenced by the Ilclubinati and have accepted their lies

[@ego-lay_atman-bay]

The end really caught me off guard. It was such a scott the woz ending.

[@itskdog]

*3D Dot Game Heroes

[@ego-lay_atman-bay]

@@itskdog Yeah, I know, but I feel like that song is most commonly associated with scott the woz.

[@Therap3]

​@@itskdogwow I had no idea it was from that game. Thanks!

[@NotSomebodyThatYouUsedToKnow]

A Scott vid was recommended after this lol

[@kirabey8946]

Its the old one too...

[@stefanmilicevic5322]

The amount of effort you put into each programming project is truly inspiring. Keep up the great work!

[@coolbrotherf127]

It's so cool that Nintendo invented golf.

[@KingLich451]

atari invented all sports 😅

[@bassguitarbill]

I love your NES videos, but as I actually have a bit of experience programming on the DMG, I'm looking forward even more to your future projects!

[@StereoMadnessss]

Assembly is just amazing really on how small its code can be when it's compiled

[@williamdrum9899]

6502 in particular is tiny. Most modern cpus use 4 bytes per instruction at all times but we have much more room now so it hardly matters. NES code size is mostly negligible when it comes to file size. It's the data tables that hog the most cartridge space

[@bradallen8909]

Assembly isn’t compiled. It’s assembled.

[@rethardotv5874]

Shouldn’t be C with modern compilers as efficient as writing assembly?

[@rya3190]

​​@@rethardotv5874If you cut out bigger libraries (or go without a standard), and remove the elf file cushions, you can get C down to assembly sized programs. A guy made a QR-based snake game a little while back and was finding his assembly program was larger than his trimmed down C. edit: I should probably note, this is likely due to the optimization for a very common architecture, x86. I'm not sure how efficient one for say the 6502, PowerPC, or Risc-v would be...

[@rusi6219]

​@@rethardotv5874if that was the case you'd never see inline assembly in C code

[@ETK_800]

can't wait to see what you do on the gameboy. Love your videos!

[@Adiee5Priv]

Sidenote: Image data is NOT loaded into vram, PPU reads image data directly from chr rom, that's why image data is stored in a separate chip from program itself

[@ricarleite]

But vram stores the pallet and table name information doesn't it

[@Adiee5Priv]

@@ricarleite yes, but that's something else

[@ricarleite]

@@Adiee5Priv I mean he didn't claim vram stores a bitmap representation of the screen

[@Adiee5Priv]

@@ricarleite ah, yes, i was reffering to a one scene, where it was visualised that way, but it seems like i didn't include the timestamp

[@alexandredecarvalho4357]

We need more of these!! :D thank you for your explanations!

[@famitronic9870]

This is one of the best summarized explanations on how to build an nes game from scratch that I’ve seen! Thanks for the great video. 👍

[@Sinistar1983]

Can't wait to see what game you make on the GBC. Its a personal favorite of mine to code on as well. And with how awesome GB studio is its now more accessible than ever to work with. And in case you're wondering my GBC game is called Eternal Memory.

[@Bobbias]

It's a shame their visual programming interface is awful though. Makes doing anything reasonably complex a nightmare without learning the actual scripting language.

[@Sinistar1983]

@@Bobbias I don't think its that bad honestly plus it's actually really competent at making more complex games. I've managed to create a pseudo real time reflection using just the stock visual scripting.

[@dinaari-vgm]

ive been making a 32kb game for pico-8 and now i appreciate the wizardry that is needed to truly craft something playable within the limitations

[@FloatingSunfish]

The NES will always be my favorite console. It helped save the video game industry!

[@nebularain3338]

Only in the USA. The rest of the world was fine. In fact, the UK had a home computer/bedroom coder boom from 1982-1990 where games made millions.

[@huskenator857]

Love your videos dude, can’t wait to see you unpack the gameboy color. Also Scott The Woz jump scare

[@TheCoolestDylan]

I love how you explain everything. I’ve been trying to learn nes dev and you making it make sense

[@williamdrum9899]

Later games used "bank switching" to fit more code/data than the NES's 64k address space would typically allow

[@lemdixon01]

That sounds a bit like multiplexing which gives more capability to a limited resource by working on one bank or area of the screen at one time, which happens so fast that the person playing the game can't see this.

[@williamdrum9899]

@@lemdixon01 It's more like an HDMI splitter where you can have your Switch, Xbox, and DVD player all plugged in at once but you can only see one at a time

[@IraKane]

I have been programming games for over 10 years now, C#, gdscript and back in the days of the NES I programmend in BASIC using an MSX....but I'm nobody! You are my hero!🤪

[@shinyagumon7015]

My guess is black magic or programming if there's a difference between the two 😂

[@error.delete4945]

a great programmers code is like a master close up magicians act: nothing flashy under the surface, super efficient and seamless. The average programmers code is like a magician you hired last minute for your kids birthday party: it kind of works sometimes but is otherwise a total mess of copied tricks and a pigeon in a hat, and the pigeon is dead and useless but they kept it in the act anyway.

[@dacueba-games]

"Is this too much voodoo?"

[@angeldude101]

As a programmer and self-proclaimed sourcerer, no; there isn't a difference.

[@designator7402]

​@@error.delete4945 I will not remove the KillPidgeon() method from my code, no matter who the IRS sends!

[@KertaDrake]

Simply speak the binary incantations and technomagic will occur. You use hex for hexes, of course.

[@miasma82]

I don't play any modern games. I love these old consoles so much. They bring back so many memories

[@Holital]

Yooooo I love your channel!!!

[@Roid33]

Scott the Woz outro whatt

[@Squigdude13]

went from a random recommended video to wanting to get one of those romhack carts from back in the day you could load games onto

[@adryanlucas096]

Clicked as soon as i saw the notification 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 ur videos are always the best!

[@douggiebee]

That was incredible. I was just thinking that something like this would be very interesting, and here it was, waiting for me to find it.

[@mukulnag1578]

This is amazing... As some how now works closely with cpu hardware and firmware learning about the limitation that we went through is fascinating... And i see how some of the stuff/limitations from 90 is till there in mordern cpu... We just find more ways to go around them

[@PanoptesDreams]

Restrictions birth creativity

[@1008md]

That was amazing. I didn’t understand a lot but was still mesmerized!

[@maximeeuziere]

Each 8x8px tile of the background nametables can use a distinct palette index. They are indeed grouped in chunks of 4 tiles internally because each index is encoded on 2 bits, and the whole chunk is represented by 8 bits (1 byte), but the index of each tile of the chunk can be set individually. ;)

[@JJisntHere.]

I like the microphone used here! really nostalgic sounding!

[@merman1974]

That was a brilliant explanation and a fun game as a result. Great work.

[@Controllerhead]

What a wonderful explanation, sure with i had this video when i started years ago. Great work!!!

[@thechosenone729]

Amazing video as always thanks for your work.

[@MoustiluigiRandom]

Amazingly well explained.

[@intangiblematter_misc]

I wasn't going to comment, just a really solid video. Then the Scott the Woz ending whiplash hit

[@erdemmemisyazici3950]

This is valuable knowledge. Thanks man.

[@The-E-Base]

3:03 Fun fact, some later games (including a few bootlegs) use all 4 nametables.

[@jabrowski_]

Bro great video. Liked and subbed

[@RareSun]

Can't wait to watch the episode where you program a 3D Mario for the GameCube in 10 years.

[@Mobik_]

The good thing about the GBC is that you can actually use cool things, like C instead of Assembly. I did the iconic DVD bouncing logo and made it run into original hardware (GBC and GBA)

[@InkboxSoftware]

You can use C for the NES, too, I just prefer assembly

[@skRapKlan]

Nice work! Thanks for the cool video!

[@BianicEpicVideos]

Thank you for this video

[@Clancydaenlightened]

Hint they didn't do it with only 32k rom and ppu rom Kirby on nes was around a 1megabyte cartridge

[@mcleodautomation]

Your audio is SOO good - keep it up! Love the dry mic sound tbh.

[@cdkw2]

I would love to see the gbc videos, good luck!

[@golvellius6855]

Incredible😮 i learned a lot in this video❤❤❤

[@FernieAriel]

1:40 that’s the music from Goal 2, one of the best soccer games of all time. I’d recognize it anywhere.

[@alexela_]

Am I on time?! I'm enjoying it already

[@taagoallas3336]

It's always a good day when Inkbox uploads!

[@oa_math]

Careful using Nintendo characters in your game, they might swat your house

[@CeceliPS3]

It's insane how difficult that is. It you did like a tech demo. Imagine coding the entire Kirby's Adventure back then. OOF

[@majicweather4890]

Look up Micro Mages, it's made with only 40kb. Dude that made it also made a "making of" video

[@Oler-yx7xj]

Now I want to try to make NES games again. Touching it really made me appreciate how big a kilobyte is

[@monchytales6857]

fun fact: on reset it only clears certain parts of ram, this was exploited to make some games able to set ram values which are then used by other games to get extra lives or levels or such, famous example is using tennis to break super mario bros

[@zed54]

Had this on in the background and the old scott the woz outro music jumpscared me

[@ShinoSarna]

You inspired me to try to make a version of Minecraft for NES.

[@jumbledfox2098]

What an epic video!

[@mirabilis]

6:45 this left side masking is achieved by manipulating some bits at address $2001.

[@ava0003]

It would be cool if at different score thresholds, the color of the background changed

[@EWARS_2]

Scott the Woz outro?! (Breakout?)

[@ScreamLoud763]

Mario was really made with 40,000 sets of 8 lightbulbs

[@aplanebagel]

Well explained !

[@anon_y_mousse]

If you were using C, it'd be awesome to have a C23 compliant compiler to handle resource embedding. Towards that end, the oscar64 project intrigues me. It's intended for the C64, but it shouldn't be too difficult to modify it for other 6502 based systems.

[@rusi6219]

C23 is what happens when python script kiddies infiltrate an established programming language

[@anon_y_mousse]

@@rusi6219 For a lot of the things I see getting added to C and C++ both these past few revisions, yeah. I hate constexpr and consteval and they're adding constexpr to C.

[@lorenzodiambra5210]

the difficult thing was not to put them in 40 KB, but rather to make them run with 20 bit of RAM

[@cube2fox]

Now I'm really interested in the difference between NES and GBC. Especially black cartridge games look quite similar to NES games, apart from the resolution.

[@elijahvincent985]

Question: is it possible to alter the color pallete of a sprite on a per-LINE basis rather than a per-cell basis if coded correctly? Sorta like how the Atari 2600 did to give the illusion of extra colors for a single sprite?

[@InkboxSoftware]

Yes, but it would require keeping track of PPU cycles

[@ehippo1]

Nice video ❤

[@maazali6283]

Your my inspiration to become a better programmer

[@TheUKNutter]

4:48 what is this game from?! I remember it so well

[@r3ebl]

Kirby

[@Yehor-v7y]

Kirby

[@TheUKNutter]

It’s not Kirby

[@Yehor-v7y]

@@TheUKNutter what

[@TheUKNutter]

@@Yehor-v7y talking about the music

[@9a3eedi]

You'd be surprised by how much you can do if you have a couple of kilobytes of storage space, if you just didn't have any of the bloat of modern software

[@KrunchyTheClown78]

I really wanna see videos like this about the Atari 7800.

[@Lowkeychilldroid]

Daaaaam, this guy knows everything about hardware

[@deusexmaximum8930]

1:56 is or isn't

[@ErdrickHero]

I hope you're not just using GB Studio. A channel like this needs real programming.

[@InkboxSoftware]

I've doing it all in assembly for now, but I might use some music tools later since making music for these machines is like writing a whole program on its own

[@codeway4374]

Nice vid !

[@modlich_303]

what about the Minecraft? since you are moving on from NES, and that Minecraft is on NES, what's gonna be with that?

[@retroboi128thegamedev]

The 8-bit Minecraft project is on the Commander X16, I don't think it would be possible on the NES without several compromises

[@spg3331]

Loved playing the game boy color as a kid!

[@KingF-hi4wg]

I’d like to see this guy cover sega master system homebrew

[@kamikazeeOG]

Hehe. He said PPU

[@DerKlemm-Crafter]

You are one of the best programmers I have ever seen, though I don't understand much😅

[@chobies5383]

SCOOT THE WOZ OUTRO MUSIC?

[@NikodAnimations]

I think a jump is better represented by a parabola, with the amount going up constanly reduced by a constant number.

[@williamfabuien1125]

I will continue to follow and watch I hope you make many more.

[@deltapi8859]

beautiful svg art in the video.

[@lafcursiax]

What a great idea for a homebrew NES game! It would have been cool if a game like this had been built into the NES so we could have played something even without a cartridge inserted. I wonder how feasible it would be for someone to hack that feature into an NES...

[@williamfabuien1125]

Great video brother

[@bootime265]

time for a cool video

[@Sky_kidharry]

A few swag genesis games utilize alternating color palettes as a way to save space as frames of a sprite are stored in individual colors of the sprites, with the limitations of the nes having it so sprites can only alternate 3 colors, this can allow only 2-3 sprites created by alternate color palettes but nonetheless could this be utilized so background sprites can be “animated” if you can change the colors of the palettes?

[@Mobik_]

Scott the Woz?! Is that you at the end?!

[@OmeedNOuhadi]

Congratulations!

[@Only_Some]

wow innovation and not copying? cant wait to see what this video will entail

[@potatogameryt]

Wait is it actually 60 frames per second for a CRT? I thought it was 24?

[@ChaossX77]

Real original ending music.

[@MarkRayers]

Super mario bros was made in assembly and most of the prg rom isnt full because compiled assembly code isnt that big and they moved the compiled assembly to the rom and they made sure it didnt go to the blank prg area so that is how super mario bros was made in 40k (a lot of the rom is 0s) Thank you for reading.

[@TheGuyWithAnOldBuick]

would you be willing to do a video with an in depth explanation of mappers? I've been digging around on nes games that are over 40kb, but I'm having trouble grasping the concept

[@InkboxSoftware]

I've mentioned mappers in this video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/gpeUm5iobd5phsU Basically a mapper facilitates bank switching, where a section of memory can be switched out for another portion of memory from the cartridge.

[@nunyabeeznutz5286]

Fun fact you know what is also 40 KB? the maximum allowed size for metadata for images. Hmm makes you think...

[@familiapdantas4646]

This video remember me 2014

[@lazysh508]

really helpful