NES Starter Kit

A Beginner's Guide and toolkit for NES game creation.

Current game version: 2.0.0

Minimum create-nes-game version: 1.0.10

Click here to try the example game!

Download the example rom

Looking at this in Github's code editor? Check out the documentation site!

What is this?

It's a fully-fledged starter kit for NES games. It is the source to a top-down adventure game, alongside all of the tools needed to change it. It also comes with a guide to changing everything about it, which could also be titled "The dummy's guide to creating an NES game".

The idea is, copy this code using create-nes-game, run the game, then tweak it and make your own! With the right hardware, you can even play your game on your own NES.

The only thing this is not is an introduction to programming - if you have never programmed anything before, I suggest finding a tutorial online for C or C++, and getting a couple really basic programs working. (At the very least, find out what a "hello world" program is, and write+run one successfully.)

One options is the Learn C Tutorial - it lets you write and run your code in the browser, so you don't need to set anything up!

2.0 BREAKING CHANGE

Version 2.0 is a major update to nes-starter-kit. The entire build process has been replaced. This should make starting new projects significantly easier, but the new build process makes it very hard to upgrade existing projects. The original tools will continue to be supported indefinitely. You can use tag v1.0.8 or the master branch.

If you are interested in converting to 2.0, please reach out! It's possible, but the way to do it isn't straightforward, and will likely require a bit of collaboration.

What's new in 2.0?

Version 2.0 brings a number of long-needed changes, including greatly simplifying getting started. Here's a summary of major changes:

• Build moved away from cygwin and makefiles to create-nes-game - a one-stop-shop for building NES games
• Official linux support for build tools (including x86 and arm64! Wanna build on a newer raspberry pi?)
• New games can be created automatically from create-nes-game's interactive guide
• Full support for debugging in Mesen, with source code in both C and assembly language
• Collision bug with doors finally fixed! They're now solid, and you won't get stuck in them.

If you tried to set this up before and got impatient, now is a good time to give it another try!

Table of Contents

This guide is broken into 4 main chapters:

1. Getting Started
2. Making it Your Own
3. Adding new features
4. Adding Polish
5. Advanced topics.

The suggested approach is to follow along with all of part 1 in order to get yourself familiar with the console/tools/etc. After that, feel free to jump around to whatever chapters interest you.

The second part mainly focuses on core things you will want to change to make your own game. Art, music gameplay and more!

The third part focuses on how you can extend the game further. Want to give the main character a weapon? Add some new features to the start menu? Do something else unique? This has guides and pointers on how to do it!

The fourth part focuses on more cosmetic things - don't be afraid to get into these chapters early; sometimes adding a little bit of polish can really help encourage you to continue working on the game.

The final part deals with more advanced topics - for most simple games, you won't need to read anything in this section. It gets into depth on details of how the library itself works, as well as the system, and how the rom is organized. That said, these topics are here if you need them, or for that matter if they interest you.

Part 1: Getting started

1. Setting up your tools
2. Building your game
3. Playing your game
4. Making Your first change
5. Things to know about the NES and C
6. FAQ

Part 2: Making it your Own

10. Changing the world
11. Adding new map tiles
12. Changing sprite art
13. Changing the HUD (top bar)
14. Adding collectible sprites
15. Adding new enemies
16. Adding new talking NPCs
17. Adding/changing music
18. Adding/changing sound effects
19. Changing movement

Part 3: Adding new features

20. Putting your code in the right place: a brief introduction to prg banking
21. Giving your main character a sword
22. Adding more features to the pause menu
23. Adding a second map
24. Saving the Game
25. Adding objects that attract or repel the player
26. Adding an enemy that mimics player behavior
27. Adding a new sprite size

Part 4: Polish and more

30. Ways to improve performance
31. Making a full title screen
32. Animating tiles
33. Playing your game on a real NES
34. Debugging with Mesen

Part 5: Advanced Topics

Things in this section are somewhat complicated, and go into how the engine works. You shouldn't need these things for most games, but if you do, this is a place to learn!

40. Understanding and tweaking the build tools
41. Dealing with limited ROM space
42. Resizing your rom
43. ROM Data Map
44. Expanding available graphics using CHR banking
45. Getting finer control over graphics with chr ram
46. Writing Functions in Assembly
47. Automatic builds with GH Actions
48. Switching to unrom 512 for advanced features

Credits

Tools

cc65 By Ullrich von Bassewitz

NESLib by Shiru

create-nes-game by cppchriscpp

NES Screen Tool by Shiru

NEXXT by FrankenGraphics

NES Space Checker (nessc) by Shiru

Famitracker by jsr

FCEUX

Tiled by Thorbjørn Lindeijer

Art/Resources

Early 90's Arcade Pixel Art by Refresh Games

Who's Cuter Font by Damian Yerrick (Tepples)

8-Bit Victory Loop by Wolfgang

8-Bit Forest Theme by Wolfgang

Please credit these wonderful people in your own creations, if you don't replace their work! Technically all of the art and music is licensed as public domain, (CC0) but it'd be really nice to give them credit.

Related projects

There are a few other projects worth knowing about that might be a better fit for your task.

First off, there's the upcoming NESMaker project. This has not yet been released, but it is a full-blown gui for building games. Check out the NESMaker website! This project is a good fit if you don't quite want to get your hands dirty with code. You may be able to edit the resulting code, but it will likely be in assembly language, and a little harder to pick up if that is new to you.

If coding really isn't your thing and you like puzzle games, I have a puzzle game maker available: Retro Puzzle Maker. It's very user-friendly, and it can actually be extended with many of the same tools if you want to.

Another option, the Mojon Twins' MK1_NES modular game engine can be found here: MK1-NES.

Lastly, if you want something more barebones, I also have nes-c-bootstrap - it is a simpler "Hello World" project that you can use for more of a blank page. That project is elsewhere on Github.

Be aware that nes-c-bootstrap has not seen regular maintenance, and may be out of date.

Feature Comparison

Contributing

I don't have any set rules around contributions right now, but I absolutely welcome them! Thank you for even considering this.

If you've got something you'd like to add, just send over a pull request, and I'm sure we can get something together. Just try to follow the existing code style as best you can.

If you run into issues or have feature suggestions, please submit them through the Github "Issues" tab.