Morphcat Games

Turns out Saber Surfers is lacking challenge in the early game so we're reworking the game to favor groups of bullets and geometric patterns. #NESdev

More in our latest Triple Jump Kickstarter update: www.kickstarter.com/projects/mor...

Coming soon: Micro Mages MAKER! 🧙‍♀️🔨

Steam page: store.steampowered.com/app/3907760/...

Wishlist if you'd like to support us and not miss the release <3 Thanks! #NES #NESdev

It's been 40 years since the NES was released in North America.

And a whopping 50 years for the CPU which powered it: the MOS 6502.

It launched at $25 in 1975, orders of magnitude cheaper than its competitors and became of the most successful microprocessors of all time. #NESdev

Grunt work, but gotta get these things right. 🤖

Decoupling some moves from their states, making sure they work together gracefully.

E.g. the drill (vertical dash) + cocoon (deflects bullets back at the boss) #NESdev

Not right now, I don't think. But sounds like Homebrew Factory/Broke Studio are working on a solution, so hopefully it won't stay like this for too long.

When you finally catch a longstanding bug on an emulator recording. #NESdev 😭

Player is teleported to bottom screen edge and dies instantly when trying to use a gadget with up+B. It happens VERY rarely.

Thanks, @betoux.bsky.social !

An ending screen that didn't make it into the game 👽 #NESdev

Oops, missed this one. Is it too late to reply?

That's definitely a tough choice when in the midst of development.

My half serious take: Always favor speed. Development speed. So everything can fall apart and you'll get to the inevitable rewrite more quickly 😅

Finally getting to do some optimizations :)

Improved the engine to handle twice as many objects without slowdown. #NESdev

That's gonna come in handy for 4-player mode, which is especially taxing on the CPU...

Update 17: Shipping Delayed / PCB Prototype / Shark Curse / Micro Mages Stock Rediscovered / Homebrew Factory Shoutout · Triple Jump: A platformer multi-cartridge for the NES Hi everyone,it's time for an update! June has begun, and we're still deep in the development of Triple Jump.In this Kickstarter update, we’ll talk about the delayed shipping, the prototype PCB, the bo...

You can find more info on Triple Jump's progress in our latest Kickstarter update: www.kickstarter.com/projects/mor...

We added another curse haunting the bottom screen edge in Triple Jump's bonus game. #NESdev

He just wants to play. 🦈

Update 16: Bonus Game / Final Labels / Limited Edition Certificate / NES KS Shoutout · Triple Jump: A platformer multi-cartridge for the NES Hi everyone,we received new prints for Triple Jump and have been working hard on the bonus game :)🏄‍♂️ Bonus GameWe made a ton of progress on it and the second round of beta-testing should start soon!...

New Triple Jump Kickstarter update #NESdev

www.kickstarter.com/projects/mor...

Sounds cool, but we're super busy currently. Let's talk about it later this year once our schedule is clear again :)

I've just added the 100th sound effect to this project. #NESdev

20 items, 7 curses.
45k lines of code. 🫠

(Micro Mages was 22k)

Sorry for the scope creep delays, I think this has turned into a fine game, now on to more QoL additions and balancing... :)

-Julius

Great news for all retro console homebrewers!

Broke Studio has been responsible for putting our NES games on physical cartridge. #NESdev

Now they're making cartridge production available to ANYONE.

:)))

Hello! both cartridge and ROM will be made available

Sorry, but the flicker looks completely wrong :-)
The GIF elves strike again

New game relies on a short tutorial, but we're trying to make it as interactive and visual as possible. #NESdev

Little surfer animation was done with the help of a lua script that recorded the sprites of a real player doing the move. Seemed like the quickest way given the circumstances.

Absolutely! :)

New Kickstarter update for our NES multi-cartridge Triple Jump! Some print material arrived :) #NESdev

www.kickstarter.com/projects/mor...

omg and why don't bosses have the same behavior?

being able to bump off of them might make them seem beefier. and the player is actually getting to do something in order to inflict damage? 😱

The result.

We wanted the player to not accidentally pop a bubble while they're busy reading.

So now, simply touching bubbles isn't enough. You need to use one of your moves. #NESdev

‪
- bubble bump wiggle, unless boost, then bubble slash pop
- lighter bubble pop sfx
- HUD transition: click, wiggle

These TODOs are getting out of hand. #NESdev

Aw, thank you for the kind words!

😂 ohhh no

Faking chromatic aberration on the NES with a combination of screen shake and palette cycling on the sprites. #NESdev #TripleJump

Shaders won't be a thing for another 20 years or so.

And maybe didn't give enough info: The reason this works is the NES graphics chip has hardware support to flip sprites vertically and horizontally. I.e., it is FAST.

You could rotate sprites programmatically by 90° using CHR RAM, but it would be very very slow.

Looks like we got confused with the flipping directions here:
frame 3: 1st sprite flipped vertically
frame 4: 2nd sprite flipped horizontally

Did you know that two sprites are enough to create rotating objects on the NES? #NESdev #MicroMages