Zeta

It's a photograph showing Tactus running on a real NES! A SNES controller is plugged into P1, and a PowerPad is plugged into P2. Either one can be used to fully control the game.

Today in especially cursed input methods, I am pleased to present working Power Pad support for my #nes game Tactus. Like other entries in the rhythm-based roguelike genre, it is **remarkably** difficult to play like this. Ermh... enjoy? #gamedev #screenshotsaturday

Ricochet Raven on Steam Ricochet Raven is a fast paced side scrolling roguelike where you can only attack by deflecting enemy projectiles back at them! upgrade your deflection abilities by acquiring upgrade feathers as you m...

i can finally say that the steam page for my game Ricochet Raven is FINALLY UP!!!
#indiedev #indiegame #plswishlisthankyou

store.steampowered.com/app/4002020/...

I'm pleased to report that Tactus is working perfectly on real hardware using this mapper. How delightful! I'll include it in the next demo release so folks can finally give it a whirl on their real NES consoles.

🌈I've been working on the NES Rainbow mapper a lot lately, trying to squeeze a bit more features and fixing some issues. I also ported it for the Everdrive N8 Pro so everyone can now play with it on their computer with Mesen2 or with their NES! So if anyone is curious, links are below...

Sometimes it's the little things that take all the time. Today that was adapting these title splash screens for widescreen, so they don't awkwardly cut off at the edge of a 4:3 boundary. SDL2 and set_color_mod got the custom palettes working... hopefully. I need to run tests! #gamedev #sdl

Layout here is definitely not final. I'm lukewarm on the 2x-sized weapon icon, which causes the dreaded mixels. 😱

If I keep this layout, I might draw PC-exclusive weapon artwork just to work around that. Undecided, and thoughts welcome!

Working on the HUD for the PC build, which has to be totally rearranged. Today I got particles working! That's tricker than it sounds since the NES's 256x240 canvas is still mostly running the show. Particles cheat, and are drawn by SDL2 directly to maintain the illusion. #gamedev #nes #rust

I am pleased to report that Tactus is running, for the first time, on my real NES hardware. How exciting! ( I might be dancing around my house like a complete fool. ) Here's a recording from my unmodified US NES. #gamedev #nes #homebrew

What creature? All I can see is a perfectly normal chest :)

It's the End of Demo screen, after a victorious game of Tactus. This player reached floor 2-1, with a run time of 26 minutes, 9.03 seconds. They took 4,243 steps, earned 9,758 gold, and were carrying: an Air and Earth upgrade crystal for their Longsword, a Charge-a-Bulb, Ninja Footwraps and Topaz Earrings.

I spent this entire run bullying One-Armed Bandits for their lunch money. I'm thinking the economy might be just a **bit** unbalanced. :D #nes #gamedev #screenshotsunday

My very poorly informed understanding is that the USPS is imposing the $80 flat rate. Do we know how this affects other shipping methods? Did FedEx/DHL just get a **lot** cheaper?

Wow, this is super polished for how quickly it came together. I'm having to un-learn all my Tetris intuition, because the "trouble" I get into in this game is very different. Great fun, I hope there's a cartridge release in the works!

Tactus v0.8: "Perfectly Normal Chests" is now released to my Patreons. Warp zones, one-armed bandits, evil cultists and loads of items! Also, v0.7 is now public! Check out the full changelog, there's a ton of new features in here. #gamedev #nes #chiptune

zeta0134.itch.io/tactus/devlo...

Oh I'm not even upset at itch. Their response is completely reasonable given the surprise requirements and seems like it has a sensible path to resolution. (Sounds like games can pick and choose payment processors?) No, the torches and pitchforks are aimed squarely at Visa and Mastercard. Seriously?

Sometimes past Zeta leaves good documentation, and other times he was clearly fatigued. Whose code I'm dealing with 6 months later is a tossup.

Gosh this looks neat! Love to see more lighting mechanics on the NES. It's really tricky to pull that off on this hardware!

📢NEW NES PRE-ORDER CAMPAIGN

Hold the Light is an action game where the player tries to prevent darkness from extinguishing the central fire.

A new NES game by TSBF Studio

Only 25 pre-orders required to launch production :)

➡️ www.homebrew-factory.com/nes/152-hold...

I looked into this briefly and I'm glad it was as simple as it seemed to be. I'm thrilled that FPGA authoring is available to hobbyists, even if the tooling can be hard to parse at times. (Quartus is at least far more pleasant than Xilinx. Eyuch.)

Spotify just doesn't understand the appeal of the 5-hour OST loop of that one town theme

Zenless Zone Zero has some of the most*amazing* looking animation for any game I've ever seen, and I am happy to never ever actually install it or play it for any reason. Gacha mechanics are a plague on this industry.

Wicked Plague by Locus Motion
2024
#gbstudio #retro #gameboy

Play as Ramuel, a young boy who destroy his enemies with his Gun-Lighter. Get inside a hunted building and eradicate the menace!

locus-motion.itch.io/wicked-plague

I've messed around with local generation, and I realized that there is a frustrating lack of actual control for the things. One of the best ways to generate something specific is to... sketch an example. Otherwise, it's a slot pull every time. That's kinda fun? But not very useful!

Waffling a bit on whether the RTA timer should stop while paused. I'll probably make that an option, as it's nice for casuals, but I can't guarantee there won't be some pause-based exploit for actual #speedrunners. XD

On the plus, it is region and lag safe: it counts all NTSC and PAL frames. :D

One nifty feature of my custom sound driver that I gloss over on here is the concept of variants. Each stage has "normal", "cave" and "pause" versions of the music, and I can hop between them at phrase boundaries.

Also shown: a fancy new RTA timer for speedruns :D #nes #gamedev #screenshotsunday

Spoiler alert: traits are very much like **interfaces** in other languages. They're also the closest thing Rust has to anything that can quack like OOP if you squint, so they are used a lot as a high level organization feature in most crates. Unlike Go however, Rust traits are explicit.

A quick #accessiblity note: the dingbat's effect is currently audio only (a high pitched chime), but for the final version I intend to have its item icon light up and draw visual attention to itself. That's currently on hold, as the HUD drawing code needs to be reorganized a bit.

Check it out! Two new items for Tactus:
"Dingbat": Sound a chime when near a hidden secret
"Interrogation Beam": Preview chest contents

Also, new chest types!
Timed Chest: Defeat all enemies quickly to open
Perfectly Normal Chests: Not suspicious at all!

#gamedev #screenshotsaturday #nes

From left to right: Standard Chests, Rare/Legendary Chests, Challenge Chests, completely normal chests, nothing out of the ordinary here, no sir! #pixelart #nes

Oh good, ffmpeg worked. Okay, these settings were the winning solution in case anyone else needs to make 60 Hz "flicker" transparency work on 30 Hz bluesky:

ffmpeg -i charge-a-bulb.mp4 -vf "tblend=all_mode=average" -r 30 charge-a-bulb-blended.mp4

I present: the newly invented Charge-a-bulb™! This ingenious contraption harvests latent energy from the very monsters giving you trouble. Turn the tables and light your own path!* #nes #gamedev #screenshotsunday

(*The Charge-a-bulb will automatically deactivate when it detects natural light.)