So You Want To Make A Retro Game

Making a retro game is not as difficult as you may think. Modern technology makes things much easier than they were in the 80s. Let's take advantage of that!
Support Noel's Retro Lab on Patreon: / noelsretrolab
You can also support Noel's Retro Lab on KZbin by joining this channel:
/ @noelsretrolab
Links:
Sublime Z80 extension github.com/psbhlw/sublime-tex...
Visual Studio Z80 extension / discord
Asesprite www.aseprite.org/
Arkos Tracker 2 www.julien-nevo.com/arkostrac...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:59 Setting your goals
02:13 New techniques
03:03 New games for retro platforms
04:05 Take advantage of new developments
05:14 Choosing a target retro platform
07:44 Choosing a coding platform
09:31 Using modern computers to create games
09:49 An ideal setup...
10:24 Source code editors
10:51 Building the code
11:48 Running the program
12:10 Choosing emulators
12:23 Launching the emulator automatically
13:23 Get two emulators
13:57 Automating outputs with scripts
15:18 Managing assets
17:16 Tools to create content
18:28 Graphics: Aseprite
19:17 Music: Arkos Tracker 2
🛠 Tools I use ➤ noelsretrolab.com/tools.html
Connect with Noel's Retro Lab:
Discord ➤ / discord
Facebook ➤ / noelsretrolab
Twitter ➤ / noelsretrolab
Instagram ➤ / noelsretrolab
Mailing list ➤ noelsretrolab.com
#retrogame #gamedev

[@IrrationalRecreation]

Back in the 80s, my Amiga A500 spent much of its time as a cross-platform development system for my C64. Having a fast, macro-assembler and a good editor was such a joy and you really felt the constraints being lifted. I seem to remember that I transferred the programs over a self-made printer-port to C64 userport interface which was pretty effective.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Yes, that was a pretty sweet dev set up for the 80s!

[@thebyteattic]

Thanks for the kind shoutout, Noel! If you need anything around Agon, don't hesitate to let me know (I mean it; I'm Dutch, I don't say things I don't actually mean ;-).

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Thanks, I appreciate that. I've been so busy I haven't been able to dig into it yet, but I'm really looking forward to it. I'll definitely get in touch soon.

[@capitanschetttino8745]

Hi Noel. This info is gold for young programmers. I wish we all had access to a video like this 30 years ago!!

[@stephenwhite506]

I love the way Z80 programmers use the stack (push/pull multiple) instructions to quickly copy graphics to the screen or move graphics data around. Just need to make sure interrupts don't occur when you are moving the stack pointer between source and destination.

[@Stonemonkie1]

Such things 6502 coders could only dream of.

[@lovemadeinjapan]

Is it quicker than the specialty instructions like LDIR?

[@stephenwhite506]

@@lovemadeinjapan I don't believe so as the CPU repeats the full instruction including fetching the instruction again. This is done so it can check if an interrupt needs to be taken. After an interrupt it can fetch the instruction again and continue. The 65816's instruction MVN and MVP operate in a similar manner. All these types of instructions allow you to loop without the overhead of fetching a branch instruction as the PC is auto decremented. When pushing a 16bit register to the stack then two bytes can be written to memory with the cost on only one instruction fetch.

[@adilsongoliveira]

Hey Noel. Loved this episode, I hope you bring more of the kind in the future, thanks!

[@AlejandroArcade]

Yes, please more like this.

[@CallousCoder]

The last two years I did a lot of assembly tutorials for this channel. And working on modern hardware and emulators really make it so much easier. And if you go the Unity or even C++ with Qt route for PC/ARM it's trivial to write a retro style game. And good fun and a good exercise.

[@Aeduo]

I've been liking Godot. It's a very compact download and quick to get in to. Don't need an account or to sign up for anything either. It's been a great no-nonsense game engine, and they responded to bug reports in the 4.0 beta.

[@horusfalcon]

I knew you were a crackerjack electronics technician, but had no idea you had such a history in the gaming industry. Thanks for sharing this!

[@geehaf]

EVERYTHING you describe I'm doing to develop retro stuff for the C64 and the Mega65....Spot on Noel! Love your video. I've never ventured into the world of Z80 - very much 6502 and 68000 (C64 and Amiga 500 from the 80's) person....but never say never! Thank you.

[@noveltyman6723]

I decided to develop my own games for the ZX Spectrum, and then maybe port them to the Amstrad CPC, MSX, and Sega Master System. The reasons for that are because I'm very into retro gaming and how old hardware works and I find development for modern platforms boring and uninteresting. It's a passion project I want to put as much love and effort to as possible. My friends keep telling me to scrap that idea and make games exclusively for modern systems just with retro styled graphics, only because homebrew "isn't profitable", but then I wouldn't care and just make a crappy cash grab shovelware thing and not a real passion project.

[@xxTeamFearLessxx1]

Oh Noel wants switch the entire industry of the 8 bit software.

[@ingmarm8858]

Brilliant and useful video Noel. I've been fiddling with some game dev on my old MicroBees and once you get over the initial effort it is so much easier having all the dev tools running on you PC with a good emulator.

[@VarionJimmy]

Nice! I really like MicroBee. Unfortunately they are hard to get by nowadays here in Sweden.

[@stephanemignot100]

Doom has been developed on a NeXT for example, great video!

[@electronicengineer]

You provided so much excellent information in just this single video Noel. I stop by to visit your KZbin channel when I have the time and I have enjoyed every one of your videos... Honest. It is easy to see the passion that you have for these older computer platforms. Please never change Noel. I will always respect all of the effort that you put into these videos. Stay blessed sir!

[@trelard]

One of the reasons the Commodore 64 Scene is still finding new tricks to do on it to this day. The hardware was such that not even the people who designed it realized what could be done with it. Then there's the new games released for it every year. Awesome machine.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Yes, and that's probably true for most machines of the time. People are always finding unexpected ways to use the hardware. So much fun!

[@Aeduo]

People are still finding new behaviors with stuff like the IBM CGA/EGA/VGA cards.

[@AnthonyFlack]

@@Aeduo - I saw some demos of things that people have been doing in CGA recently. Never knew any of that was possible.

[@BreakIntoProgram]

Great video - really enjoyed watching it. Lots of sound advice for budding developers. And thanks for the Agon shout-out.

[@andrewdunbar828]

The colour stuff is new for the Speccy but vertical scrolling isn't. Vertical scrolling by pixel was much easier than horizontal pixel scrolling on the Speccy, which only a few ultra-wizard coders could do, and most games that could do it came out after I'd moved to the Amiga 1000. I believe the colour tricks don't leave much CPU time and maybe some other limitations. People have assured me you couldn't integrate it into a closer to arcade like Pacman port even, though I'm not 100% convinced those people really know.

[@R2AUK]

Absolutely fantastic! ❤ I just started to learn Z80 assembler (there is a nice course on "The Retro Desk" channel) and wanted to write my first retro game for ZX Spectrum+ 128K (although I will probably limit myself to 48K resources, for portability), probably something simple like Tetris or Snake. Your video is just in time. Looking forward for the continuation!

[@a_very_tired_gamedev2725]

This is the video I didn't know I needed to kickstart my gamedev after 6 months. Thanks man! Awesome video. Subbed and liked after 5 mins :)

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Glad to hear that! Welcome aboard :-)

[@AnthonyFlack]

Nice! I have been enjoying recreational programming on the CPC using modern tools too. It's really very easy to get into and z80 assembly is quick to learn. If you are someone like me who is accustomed to using higher-level languages, it's surprising how quickly you get used to thinking in ASM. I find it's a fun little intellectual exercise finding efficient ways to do things with the limited mathematical functions of an 8 bit processor. Like doing a crossword or sudoku, but more creative. Such a good feeling when you find the tiny bug that's been crashing your code and suddenly it all snaps into place.

[@retroobsession7519]

This was a very interesting video. I have been writing retro games for 80s hardware during the last year off and on as time allowed. I do the programming on a PC and test in an emulator with occasional tests on real hardware. I went through the same thought process and when I started I was adamant that I was going to write on the hardware I was programming for. That didn't last long as it was difficult to work in small screen sizes with no windows or multitasking. So far I have only worked on games for 2 types of hardware but intend to expand that as I have an extensive collection of real 80s hardware. I hope you continue this as a series as I have talked to many people who have always wanted to program a game and this will give them a good idea of how to go about it.

[@TRONMAGNUM2099]

Excellent video. One day I hope you are able to teach an A to Z type class on game development. I think you make an excellent instructor.

[@lostrocket9126]

Wow!!!! The new video and theme is awesome, thank you a lot Noel!!!!!!!

[@Davidprograma]

Great video Noel! Your advice is a lead in the good direction for developing retro games, I know well, because I have walked the same path. Last summer I programmed a game for the ZX Spectrum Next and I agree with you in many aspects you mention in this video, about using modern tools, no need for makefiles, creating custom tools for graphics, etc. In the last few months I have begun using Godot, the free game development engine, for retro looking (and feel) games. I even think it could serve as a prototyping system or even level designer for retro games, with some custom tools to adapt format. It features a great tilemap editor which could be easily repurposed for retro needs ;-) On a different matter, I have noticed you speak much faster in your last videos. It must be because of living in the States ;-)

[@PigDogBay]

Great episode, love to hear your game developer war stories.

[@thomaszaniello7084]

This was an outstanding presentation; I wish I could have watched something like this in the '80s when I had my TI-99/4A.

[@HAGSLAB]

Cool video and some great tips Noel! :)

[@WacKEDmaN]

Excellent stuff Noel....thanks!

[@timcross3461]

Thanks for the insight! It really makes me want to roll my sleeves up and try it!

[@NoelsRetroLab]

That's the idea. Do it! 😃

[@dodgydarryl]

Great video Noel. I'm a software bloke interested in hardware so was pleasantly surprised to see you talking about software development. Great to see your clean explanation of how the pros developed on machines much better than the target hardware and how much easier (and cheaper) that is today. Please don't stop doing the hardware videos:)

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Oh don't worry, the hardware videos are the mainstay of the channel 😃 But I might sneak a software one here and there occasionally.

[@mogwaay]

Really nice overview of retro game dev, thanks. Something I fancy trying more of once I've finished tinkering with the hardware. Would be interested in more updates of your own projects or interesting deeper dives on a particular aspect. Cheers!

[@mogwaay]

One bit of retro Dev I have done recently was for the BIOS of my custom build 8088 PC and man is that a pain when you have no emulator that does what your machine does and limited ways to debug on actual hardware - edit, assemble, run - dump variables to screen, crash and repeat!

[@Syokool]

Absolutely amazing video. I can only admire the programmers that made games like Mario and Prince of Persia back then, with the limitations of that time. Hopefully we get to watch more of this kind of content in your channel.

[@bricerive]

Thank you so much for this episode, Noel! It totally motivated me to get back into CPC coding. I'm going to try and make that build chain to rebuild my 80's games. Also, I didn't even know I could run WinAPE in Wine. Keep up the great work!

[@NoelsRetroLab]

So happy to hear that! Enjoy! 😃

[@stephenelliott7071]

Great video! Amazingly I began doing just this yesterday, using the sjasmplus assembler and CSpect Next Emulator to write for the Spectrum Next Computer.

[@FrankDrebin]

You can also fork Aseprite repository and modify build workflow to save compiled program using upload-artifact action. This helps to avoid mess with local compilation.

[@dannixon247]

Awesome Video man.

[@VarionJimmy]

I started with basic on VIC20 in the 80’s. (I learned by editing games and analysing listings of C64 basic in magazines. No books..) Now I program assembler on PIC microcontrollers. But I’m thinking about going back to Vic20. One day… 🙂 By the way: If they’re using “more powerful” computers back then, what did they use when they wrote for the VIC20? There mainframe systems were definitely not easily available for everyone back then.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

Not mainframes, probably washing-machine sized Minis with the price tag of a car, still quite affordable for a studio.

[@DavidBrant]

Excellent video thank you!! This I’m super interested in. I was a CPC464 owner in my youth, even repurchased an old machine recently for restoring. I only dabbled lightly in making graphics and even programmed music & drum patterns on my old cpc, in basic. 😅Would love to see more on retro dev’ing! 😊

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@xtokumaru]

Just wanted to point out that you can configure the display aspect ratio in Photoshop (and I'm pretty sure that in GIMP too), so non-square pixels are not really an issue.

[@sabotrax]

I'm developing a game in FastBasic for the Atari 8bits. The .atr disk image with the code is living on a TNFS server running on a Raspberry Pi. For the actual development I'm using the Altirra emulator on Windows with the fujinet-emulator-bridge which is a virtual FujiNET device, so I can access the disk image. This setup seems complicated but makes it easy to run the game on real hardware using a real FujiNET.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Very interesting set up!

[@xKynOx]

When i was a kid i spent hours writing games in basic i got from magazines it would take me hours then i would always find tat it did not run because i messed up somewhere.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Oh yes! But at the same time, it was a kind of weird crash course on programming at the same time 😃

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

As a kid I thought that is dumb, but then university and later my employer forced me to type bulk data into the computer. The latter one at least payed good for the bore out.

[@boogieknee3781]

Yup.The rem statements weren't necessary to type,fortunately.They were there simply to tell you what each subroutine actually was MEANT to be doing. If you screwed up,they gave you a good clue where the error might be found. I learnt far more from typing in these programs than any of us did from our teachers at that time. Sadly,modern programming methods are way more confusing due to the myriad number of naughty things that windows will try to do in the background without ever asking permission of the ACTUAL USER. Most apps/programs will only function if you turn OFF every safety protocol. Example. Google any news story ,you will have google sending you to websites that should (uk law changed about 3ish years ago)have one simple button(clearly marked)say "No"to cookies,pop-ups,etcetera. They shouldn't fine these companies for not complying. They should be sending the MAIN 10 shareholders to work personally on an incontinence ward for a daily 11 hour shift,until they actively comply. (Similar treatment of tenement owners,who served house arrest IN their tenants' dilapidated,mouldy,unheated properties.) In the uk.sadly these new laws have largely been ignored because even the Govt.owned websites have yet to adhere to this.

[@julienderiviere4907]

Great video that really speaks to me! I love it

[@PersistenceOfVisionAtari]

Great video, giving some our secrets away (pre-scrolling gfx, etc. for speed). I used to code on the Atari ST and a friend started working as a professional games writer and used PDS. He and a friend wrote a homebrew PDS for the ST so I could code on one ST then send the assembled code to another via a special parallel cable. We had a version that even allowed us to write on the ST and send it to the Amiga. I used that until about 10 years ago.

[@ArneChristianRosenfeldt]

Or you just use a good gaming machine like C64 or Amiga and don’t have to pre scroll. Even C16 could smooth scroll.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Thanks. Yeah, I'm still kind of mulling over making a PDS for the Amstrad at some point. It won't help with debugging, but it would be great to launch it on the machine instantly.

[@Xoferif]

I'm fascinated by the home-made PDS equivalents that early 8-bit game devs made and used. Matthew Smith (for example) made one to connect his Tandy Model 3 to a Spectrum and used it to develop Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy. (You can see it in the photo of him in this video.)

[@dagobertkrikelin1587]

Great video! Even though I won't be writing games any time soon... :) I'm curious - what games did you work on, back in the day?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

You can find a (not very complete) list over at MobyGames: www.mobygames.com/person/73481/noel-llopis/credits/

[@BastetFurry]

And now, if you want a challenge, make a game for CP/M that can run on most machines capable of running CP/M. Noels beloved CPC is, by the way, a fully capable CP/M machine. And if it weren't for that darn 3" floppy... just because of that i prefer a C128 with a 1581 attached. Screw the 2 MHz Slowpoke Z80, i can use media that i can still buy at a reasonable price! 😁

[@AndyPetrie]

Great video as always Noel. The last game I programmed was in 1982 on my trusty ZX81 with a 16k Memopak and ZX printer. I'm thinking it's time to make a few new games. My ZX81 cost $99.00 for the kit. The other day I purchased a AgonLight2 for $50.00. At $50.00 they are selling like hotcakes!! It's a good time to make videos about the Agon Light 😉

[@thomasandrews9355]

I want to give a shout out to @ChibiAkumas, in fact this should be pinned because he makes AMAZING content on assembly language stuff for all platforms. His content is absolutely brilliant.

[@AnthonyFlack]

Seconded. Keith's tutorials are a fabulous resource which will teach you everything you need to know to make an 8 bit game.

[@kresoptube]

And that sprite on your shirt is from Gunfright :-)

[@AClockWorkKelly1]

Noel, If you had a full playlist documenting your code, your tool use, your scripts, your setup and your amazing creativity from scratch to an amstrad CPC game ... I would owe you a beer

[@VincentGroenewold]

Very unique topic and very nice to see! Awesome video, is this going to be a series?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

I wasn't thinking of a series about this, but I might make an update at some point sharing my experiences making a full game. One series I've been thinking about though is how graphics worked in different platforms. Could be interesting to compare and contrast.

[@andrewclark3325]

@@NoelsRetroLab I want to ask you make "how to make a game" a series. I have never tried any assembly language besides x86, so it is interesting for me.

[@FranciscoFoco]

Buenísimo Noel! Ya quiero aprender ASM para hacer un juego en mi viejo IBM 8086

[@stephanesikora]

Brilliant!

[@me0262]

Very good video! Where did you work as a game prgorammer? I had a class where they taught programming on the Gameboy Advance, and it was very fun to create everything in the editor, then compile it up and view it in an emulator. One day we had programming units that would write flash carts and we could see everything done on hardware.

[@BsktImp]

Oh man it's been a good few years but I'm almost tempted to delve into Z80A assembly for the CPC6128 again. I started with the type-in Raw Assembler from _Computing With The Amstrad,_ before being able to buy Maxam. Still got all my old Z80 books. They were happy carefree times...

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Do it! That's what vacations are for 😃

[@Antireality]

For C64 development the 1541 ultimate is wonderful - you can compile in seconds on the PC and send it to the cartridge via ethernet and have it launch on a real machine almost as fast as if you were testing on an emulator.

[@drexcipher305]

I'd like to be able to run my own software on old consoles and experiment with their hardware. For example, imagine rescuing the games from the extinct Adobe Flash Player by porting them to consoles like the PSP or Nintendo DS. One of the things that inspire me are the Tempads from the Loki series. The TVA has that curious combination of science fiction technology and retro technology that catches my attention.

[@tommyovesen]

Great video. As a software engineer it was really interesting. I really want to do some retro programming, if only I had the time to (re)-learn assembly -language

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Thanks! And you can DEFINITELY re-learn assembly. It took me a couple of hours to remove the rust, and a couple of weeks to get totally fluent again. Do it! It's so much fun!

[@gdclemo]

You don't really need to know that much assembly language for old platforms these days, but it helps. There are a lot of higher-level cross-compilers such as C, Turbo Rascal (is a Pascal compiler for 8-bit systems), and more. Even if you recode the slowest parts in assembly, you can write a lot of the less-critical paths in something easier.

[@rwxdesigns]

The C64 is my platform of choice. I released my first game just after Christmas. Plenty of good tools on the PC to cross-develop with for the C64. It's a lot easier today than coding on an Action Replay V cartidge back in the 80s.

[@TheArmchairrocker]

Rasmus Moustgard amd a few others have really pushed the capabilities of the TI99/4A with some modern ports and homebrews.

[@DanielMonteiroNit]

I chuckle every time that I think that my Master System game has unit tests (and code coverage metrics!) 😅 The game core is written in C, but the unit tests (which runs on the workstation, of course) are a C++ wrapper, using gTest and gMock

[@RetroTuna]

That game charactor on the t-shirt looks like he is sat on a horse with his knob out lol, good video by the way.

[@rigues]

Thanks for the video, Noel! Didn't know you were a professional game developer, can you share a few titles/platforms you worked on?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Nothing super famous unfortunately. You can find a (not very complete) list over at www.mobygames.com/person/73481/noel-llopis/credits/

[@THESCUMMBAR]

Both ASM and even C are pretty unfamiliar languages for young programmers. I daresay most could use them if they wanted, but they are hardly the language of choice. Tony Wang is working on a project that compiles a gameboy binary from a BASIC variant. I'm surprised no-one has attempted something similar with a more modern language.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

That's because memory is a first-order concept in assembly (and to a certain extent in C). You can compile any language to a Gameboy binary, but it would be crazy inefficient probably (which for a fun little project is totally fine).

[@Doktati]

Top Video from a Pro.

[@matiasd.7755]

Please, do a video sharing with us the games you worked at!

[@theALFEST]

Photoshop supports pixel aspect ratio correction: View -> Pixel aspect ratio.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Interesting. You're right! Somehow I missed that even though I looked all over at the time. Oh well. I still like Asesprite palette-handling better (even though PS works fine too there).

[@rastislavzima]

My problem was always that although I know how to code I always lacked ideas "what" to code. And without graphich and music talent, knowledge of coding is just not enough... 😢

[@NoelsRetroLab]

I get it. I think doing a remake in a case like that is a good way to go. The game is already designed and you may even be able to use the graphics (from that game or another platform) and go from there.

[@The-E-Base]

When it comes to your skill expectation, the exact opposite is the case here. I can only really use Ti-Basic, but I'm unable to learn anything else due to risk of forgetfulness, stress, etc. Also I couldn't afford Asperite.

[@Zhixalom]

When you're talking about, somebody maybe using a Commodore Amiga for developing @<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="553">09:13</a>, that is clearly a C128 in the photo there. An easy mistake, since they do appear very similar, however the Amiga 500 obviously has its rather iconic 3½" disc drive in its right side, where the C128 has its power plug, power switch, and joystick ports. I fail to identify the computer on top of the C128, but it doesn't look like an A500 to me... an Atari maybe? - It's not my intention to heckle or nit-pick, just pointing out an obvious inconsistency.

[@mojoblues66]

What's that keyboard on your desk?

[@MinorLG]

I've been wanting to make a GBA game. which means targeting ARM5/7 for assembly. fortunatly, there's a large gameboy/advance dev community

[@2kBofFun]

Im my classroom kids make a retrogame with Pico-8. Not for a real machine, but a fantasy console. They output looks very retro though.

[@GconduitYTubeAccount]

If you make another video for console game makers these are as easy as it gets: batari BASIC (2600), 7800bas (7800), JagStudio (Jaguar), IntyBASIC (Intellivision), SecondBASIC (Genesis & 32x)

[@MichaelDoornbos]

Fun video. I prefer to develop on hardware the hard way, but I suspect I belong to a very small group who enjoy pain.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

That has a special kind of charm to it for sure 😃

[@PatrioticGestalt]

Retro with modern tech in mind, eh? I'm thinking starting with Raspberry Pi Pico. I've seen Doom running on a Pico. There's a handheld by Pimoroni. And there's PicoMite VGA. And finally there's books on assembly language for the Pico.

[@lovemadeinjapan]

Nice to see both Pico-8 and Asprite. We love those tools. I do miss that no-one said enough is enough when it comes to assembly mnenomics. They suck. If I want to put 8 in register A I want to type A=8. Not LD, A, 8. Any recommendations to someone who made a sane assembler?

[@Xoferif]

I'm sortt of in the opposite boat: I understand all of the hardware and assembly language programming, but I've no idea what I could make that would be something new that hasn't been done to death already...

[@AnthonyFlack]

Game design is harder than programming, I always say. One thing you can do to avoid all that is convert an existing game, which I think is an excellent place to start.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Right. That's one reason we get so many remakes. Great place to start if you just want to flex some tech muscles and not worry about design. And so many games (especially ports) were SO bad back in the day!

[@aut0turret]

I haven't tried to make any games because I'm not creative at all in that kind of way. Just knowing how to program isn't enough.

[@andre0000000007]

ty Noel, i'm just thinking you could use a 2x1 pixel brush in photoshop or am I wrong?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

You can, but you need to make sure it falls on an even boundary, so there's some manual checking involved.

[@AndrewHelgeCox]

Is that the Knightlore guy on your shirt? Is he riding a dragon?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

Almost! Same company, different game: Gun Fright. Underrated game! :-)

[@spinnetti]

Yep, and doing it now in assembler with no fancy tools for the ZX81... making it easy isn't the goal. Its conquering a difficult subject the same way it was done back then :)... Close to the finishline on our second game (first one was assembly, but standard graphics. This one is in assembly but also has highres and sound). Is anybody aware of any AY sound effect banks I could start with instead of creating all my sounds from scratch?

[@zment]

My retro game itch got stratched by a custom emulator with breadboard parity for which I make all my future games :D

[@SteveHacker]

Have you, or will you be working with and doing videos on a Nabu computer?

[@NoelsRetroLab]

I haven't and I have no plans for now since I don't have access to one. Maybe some day though.

[@EgoChip]

I use Notepadqq, along with CPCtelera, Tiled, Retro Game Asset Studio and Arkos Tracker to make my CPC games. Notepadqq is basically Notepad++ for Linux. CPCtelera is a library and compiler for C and Z80. RGAS is a muti-platform graphics and screen editor, and Tiled is for designing maps with, although I will do each screen in RGAS.

[@MechaFenris]

Vi... the coder's code editor. :) :)

[@eekee6034]

A whole lot of this is the same as good practice for developing an operating system. :) Loading separate files is horribly slow on modern PCs! ;) Some programs aren't too bad, but many are horribly slow AND you can hardly use your computer for other things while you wait. Linux used to be better because it had a primitive scheduler, but now it has "good" schedulers like Windows had all along, it gives all the power to whichever program wants it most, disregarding the user. This is why I want to develop an operating system. :D Well, this and a whole lot of other clever nuisances.

[@chloebiscuits6440]

If you would write a book and publish on Amazon, I buy it. Kindle or hardcopy or both.

[@skeleton_craftGaming]

Yeah that is kind of what the open source community is supposed to be, that's why it's free as in freedom and not free as in free product.

[@headbangersworld]

How do you not have enougth memory? You had an CPC6128 :D

[@JakeBirkett]

Yes I desperately want to make a retro game but I need to earn some money from my PC games first :D

[@JakeBirkett]

Also, I have that Lord of the Rings poster!!

[@alanharris2799]

I wish the trend for zooming in and out would go away!! So annoying.. Enjoyed the content though, got me thinking about trying to code again!

[@jonwheal]

I second this. Love Noel's content but please stop the chopping in and out, in and out, in and out!

[@alanharris2799]

@@jonwheal I don’t understand why it’s started, everyone’s doing it these days. Glad I’m not alone in finding it annoying!

[@Aeduo]

I've recently started writing a game for an elektronika mk-90 graphing calculator, using a PDP-11 assembler. It's been interesting but difficult and slow going. :p I have no background in assembly language or low level programming like that, but it's really easy to corrupt memory or have your code go off the rails. You don't have this huge heap with allocations and pages spread far apart with the stack miles away from everything. It's all very "intimate" when you have 16KB RAM. :p The limitations are fun to work with though. You get a _lot_ of mileage out of things when the graphics are all monochrome, with any sprite just being a few bytes.

[@jtsiomb]

Aseprite is not open source. Providing the source does not make it open source. This confusion is one of the downsides of the popularity of the term "open source", instead of the differently ambiguous but much better "free software", both of which refer to the same actual thing.

[@Breakfast_of_Champions]

On the 8-bit systems coding a game really isn't so hard, especially with all the modern tools and knowledge. Step up to, say the Amiga, and it's already another level another level of difficulty.

[@eklipsegirl]

You tell about coding retro games on a modern computer, but you actually do that on a Fisher-Price version of a modern computer called MacBook. LOL.

[@psteier]

Way too much and dense information for only one video. You should make a series of it...

[@Senux-Video]

the video is great, but the hair on the neck needs to be shaved more often

[@unlokia]

The word “retro” has been UTTERLY done to death. Stop using it, it’s so cliche.

[@Lucretia9000]

Those are spectrum next games though, aren't they? That has Amiga inspired hardware additions. And talking of the Amiga, yes, I got my A1200 on the interweb at on the university network using ppp, it was painful. IIRC even Matt Smith developed JSW on a Tandy.

[@NoelsRetroLab]

No, those are stock ZX Spectrum games!!

[@Mrshoujo]

GIF is pronounced 'JIFF.' #GIF_is_JIFF