@michel-iwaniec.bsky.social
Ancient NES geek back in action. Maintainer of NES backend for GBDK-2020. Maintainer of "BB Studio" (NES hack of GB Studio)
This will certainly make optimizing the GB Studio (/BB Studio) engine a lot more fun! :)
06.06.2025 21:58 β π 9 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0GBDK v4.4.0 is out, and contains several improvements for the NES platform, mainly focused on improved GB compatibility.
highlights:
* VBL/LCD ISR handlers use GB conventions and pseudo-registers
* Timer interrupt emulation allows improved music playback
* Tilemap functions wrap around correctly
Yep. SMB3 could have been done without glitches had it used horizontal layout... and a bit more clever handling of the tilemap and the status bar.
(for example, adding some blanked lines in overscan / status bar, and use an unusual tilemap height facilitated by IRQ splits at an arbitrary scanline)
For an in-depth explanation of the reasons why these kind of scrolling seams appear in NES games, check out the excellent video by @rgmechex.com
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfrN...
Single-screen layout will remain the default. 8bit coordinates provide better compatibility with GBDK games targeting GB/GG/SMS.
It also means less memory / CPU cycles, which can be important savings.
But if you really want to avoid seams, there will now be options.
#gbdk-2020 #nesdev #gbstudio
#gbdk (and #bbstudio) is getting new NES tilemap layouts!
By default we use 1-screen layout for simplicity - but this has scrolling artifacts.
The NES can do better. 2kB VRAM allows H / V layout to limit artifacts.
And cartridges can also provide VRAM for 4-screen layout to remove them completely
Looking great so far! Love the use of sub-palette details in that level. π€©
04.05.2025 12:40 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0Not quite yet - but the next release should have it :)
05.04.2025 19:53 β π 1 π 0 π¬ 0 π 0This Kickstarter marks the very first two physical NES games making use of gbdk-nes - the NES backend of gbdk-2020 which powers a good deal of the BB Studio engine.
These two puzzle games will have a physical space on my shelf... as well as a fuzzy feeling inside.
#gbdk-2020 #nesdev #retrogaming
Looks like first few banks were reserved in gbspack parameters and went unused for auto-banking purposes. An over-conservative change I did a while back to make fixed banks work.
That's fixed now, so SampleProject is back to 256kB, and future BBS versions will have some more bank space freed up.
Hmm, nope. And the reason is probably that it's connected to the built-in debugger. π
This is part of the built-in emulator and its API, and will be quite a task to re-create for Mesen. Definitely should happen at some point though.
Cool tool, and works with BB Studio builds!
Now just have to figure out why the GBC sample project got bumped to 512kB when there only appears to be 16 total banks in the ROM... π€
Hmm, jag Γ€r ocksΓ₯ vΓ€ldigt grΓΆn angΓ₯ende hur det hΓ€r "microbloggandet" Γ€r menat att funka... men jag har fΓ₯tt uppfattningen att de plattformarna handlar mer om att promota sina grejjer (/sig sjΓ€lv), och hΓ₯lla lite koll pΓ₯ vad som hΓ€nder inom XYZ. Inte sΓ₯ mycket fΓΆr att organisera sociala saker IRL π
26.01.2025 21:59 β π 0 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0Stunning NES level design from @vinikdev.bsky.social !
Having grown up on Knightlore and other isometric Speccy games I really look forward to moving around in isometric spaces made with BB Studio... :D
#nesdev #gbstudio #retrogaming
Mistakes happen. And the second BB Studio alpha had two bugs with palette switching and number comparisons in scripts.
If either of those were affecting you, download this new hotfix!
And if they weren't... download it anyway! :)
github.com/michel-iwani...
#gbstudio #nesdev #retrogaming
On the #nesdev side I can recommend @mhughson.bsky.social @frankengraphics.bsky.social @cuttercross.bsky.social @dalecoop.bsky.social @vinikdev.bsky.social @brokestudio.bsky.social @rainwarrior.bsky.social, @morphcat.bsky.social @zeta0134.bsky.social @nesrocks.bsky.social @somethinnerdy.bsky.social
13.01.2025 14:56 β π 7 π 0 π¬ 1 π 0I too am a subscriber. Brings back old memories of reading Nintendomagasinet :)
13.01.2025 13:59 β π 2 π 1 π¬ 0 π 0Also, plugins that replace engine code can potentially replace it with sm83 assembly code as well, making them fundamentally unportable without re-writing all that code in 6502 assembly code (not an easy task)
But I don't know how many plugins do or don't do this. The plugin system is new to me :)
Some will work ok...
But plugins replacing engine code can easily break.
Especially ATM because I had to make a lot of optimizations to the engine (particularly platform module) to make it run smoother on NES.
And those optimizations are still BB Studio-only and not merged back to vanilla yet.
Other highlights:
* Preliminary support for logo scenes to show full-screen pictures with no tile limits.
* Support for MacOS (unsigned app, recommend to start it from command-line)
* Tempo mode (FamiStudio tempo vs FamiTracker tempo) can now be set from UI.
Bugfixes:
Fixed bug with vm_load_palette incorrectly interpreting colors.
Fixed bug with VM_RPN instruction being broken for user-supplied GBVM scripts.
Fixed bug with music compilation failing when path contains whitespace.
UI updates:
* New dedicated NES color picker to make sure you get the exact colors you want.
* UI rendering in app now reflects NES limitation of common-background-color taken from first sub-palette.
* Dialogue and Menu preview in UI now shows NES size instead of GB size.
Happy Belated New Year!
...and Happy Belated New BB Studio version!
Still just an alpha, but this new version fixes some crucial usability issues in the first alpha release.
Check out the comment section for full list of fixes!
#gbstudio #nesdev #retrogaming
github.com/michel-iwani...
Probably not yet. I see what I can do. Maybe the most important thing is changing the rendering of the scenes to match how it looks on NES.
I also do have some ideas for how to make sub-palettes more intuitive... but it's probably best to run them past Chris Maltby when he's back from vacation :)
On top of various bug fixes and usability improvements, BB Studio will soon have a dedicated NES color picker.
So no more of that RGB conversion guesswork!
(...just the inevitable Never-The-Same-Color guesswork from the golden years of gaming ;)
#gbstudio #nesdev #retrogaming
It probably will be soon-enough :)
But in all honesty I'd say it's best if you learn vanilla GB Studio first. This hack of GB Studio is still in its early phase at the moment - so people will for sure encounter more bugs/limitations than in regular GB Studio.
Things will improve soon though...
Thanks for reporting bugs on the BB Studio github. They are slowly being looked at, and an improved alpha should be out this month.
For quicker fixes, remember that the github automated builds may already have a fix for an issue you're having :)
#gbstudio #nesdev #retrogaming
Ah yes, somebody already created a bug on the github for that issue: github.com/michel-iwani...
No idea yet why it's happening, but am gonna investigating this bug soon. Glad the work-around fixed it for you... that logo looks great! :)
Other NES limitations are harder to get rid of.
An additional scrollable window layer doesn't really exist.
More sub-palettes is only possible with very big compromises.
Sprites / scanline increase is just impossible.
But if I could fix those issues too, I would. Anything to make ports easier.
They could definitely get used to it, but having to re-design all levels to get your GB Studio game looking correct on the NES is one big extra hurdle that may make people give up / feel that a NES port isn't worth it.
And because this limitation is so easy to get rid of, it just makes sense to me.
