I just got NESmaker, now what?…

[Joe]

STEP 1: DON’T BYTE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW
Do not attempt to make your magnum opus right off the bat! You may have grand ideas about creating your 4 player wrestling game with JRPG elements that uses the zapper and the power glove…and you probably eventually could do that. But whatever your epic vision is, put it aside for a moment and first get to know the tool, how it works, its quirks, and its limitations (both NES and NESmaker limitations!)

STEP 2: THE BASICS
Making games is hard. Making NES games is exponentially harder. NESmaker has a lot of deep corners, but before we even dive into those, we need to learn the different parts of the interface and how they work. Based on user feedback, this is what I recommend as a way to get started learning the software.
– Do the 12 Days of NESmas video tutorial series (link) – note, you’ll also want to get the asset pack here.
– Next, do the 13 Bytes of October – yes, there are only ten…what can I say, it was a weird month! (link) – note, you’ll also want to get the full project here.

STEP 3: Some of the genre modules that come with NESmaker are a bit more ambitious than others. You can find 7 different modules on the learn page that will make great starting points, but none are meant to be “Mario Maker” – they’re all rough template starting points. My recommendation is that you make the following three games in intermediate mode (and then advanced if you want to tinker under the hood a bit. You can find all of these on the LEARN page.
– MAZE GAME
– ARCADE PLATFORMER
– LR PLATFORMER

At this point, you should have enough of an understanding of how the basics of the tool works to start making a game, and you should have a few fun burner projects that hopefully were fun to create and gave you new ideas!

ALSO, for those looking to get started FAST, whether you’re doing a game jam or the Byte-Off or some sort of weekend hackathon, I’m currently working on a tutorial series of 20 minute videos to blast through the basics and have something usable.

DAY 1: GRAYBOXING

• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by Joe.
• This topic was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by Joe.

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