BIGGER BYTES - BYTE OFF IV INTERVIEW WITH JOE GRANATO
What got you interested in hosting a competition for NESmaker games?
Joe Granato IV: The first competition was held all the way back in 2019. Not long after we'd released the NESmaker tools, we saw such an incredible array of projects that we wanted to do something to recognize the community. We thought it might be fun to have a community-driven development competition to help foster camaraderie between users and to push the devs to create interesting and unique games. Once we saw the calibre of games submitted, we decided to do this faux awards show, all green screen with the pixelated characters from the games as the audience. Inviting judges like Howard Phillips into our digital show was just icing, and I think it's fair to say that the Byte-Off is now our community's favourite event all year.
Are you pleased with this year's crop of more than 50 projects?
Every year we see about 50 games submitted, and they always range from newcomers to veterans. This year, I was especially surprised by the breadth and quality of titles. From strong showings in common genres like platformers and adventure games to unique puzzle games, faux 3D games, and point-and-click adventures, there were many demos that rivalled in scope and quality games bearing the official seal of quality from back in the day. Every year, the games seem to get better and more inventive.
This year included the Emissary award for an older person encouraging younger people to develop NES games - is this important to you, and do you want to encourage more young people into retro development?
I have been teaching game development for almost 18 years now, at both the high school and collegiate levels. I now operate my own game studio out of which I teach game development. The educational component of all of this is integral to why I do this. One of the surprising things for me has been how many young people, for whom nostalgia cannot be the reason, are so compelled to see their game on a real cartridge playing on a CRT. And maybe it's even more evocative for them, because for a lot of them, it's the first time ever they experience a game that way, and it happens to be their own creation. I love that this software has made creation for this console accessible to a new generation, and I hope that it plays some part in keeping it alive for new audiences.
What have been the biggest surprises for you that people have managed to make with NESmaker - in terms of unusual gameplay ideas or technical tricks?
I love it when I see a game created with this software that causes me to pause and try to consider how they took the default underlying engine and did that with it. This is why we have an award called The Wombat, which is the only award we judge ourselves, for the most surprising entries. We've seen digital colouring books, a wrestling game, driving simulators, a dating sim, games with spotlight areas, parallax scrolling, a four-player game...so many things that go so far beyond the included modules. I love that some developers have made it a challenge to push themselves to try new things during Byte-Off, and I hope that continues!
The awards were announced live at a gaming event - was this fun to do?
It was a bit bizarre. I mean, yes, of course, it was a blast to do live, and I think it will be even bigger next year now that we've had this successful proof of concept! But you have to remember, as I stated the awards show was sort of schtick originally. Yes, a showcase for the amazing games was always sincere, but we have celebrated these through this tongue-in-cheek parody of an awards show for years. So to be asked to hold it live at Midwest Gaming Classic was surreal! We already have some great plans for next year.
Watch the live stream replay at https://bit.ly/byteoff4-awards
Will you continue to hold Byte Off events every year?
I will hold Byte-Off competitions every year until there is no longer support for them. As long as the community continues to engage with them, I will continue to do them, and with every ounce of enthusiasm I can devote!
Are any of the entries planning to become a fuller release, including physical cartridges?
That is always the hope. Often, Byte-Off games start off as demos that serve as a fun, trivial little vacation from a dev's larger, long-form, serious projects. Then, the games take on a life of their own and blossom into full-fledged games, often being released on cartridge and sometimes even to modern consoles such as the Nintendo Switch, Xbox, Steam, etc. I'm sure some of these games will definitely see full releases. We are also working hard on a multi-cart called Best of the Byte-Off, which will be a way of capturing this time and place for these demos all in one place, whether they grow bigger or exist perpetually only in their current state.
What is the next step with the NESmaker software itself?
Big things are coming. While it's a bit premature to get into everything, I can say that people can expect to see some major movement in the coming months!
In your opinion, what makes NESmaker ideal to learn development in?
In terms of learning how to create specifically a NES game, I think it's the easiest, most intuitive way to get started. That's not to say much - the NES is a beast to develop for. But most of the issues come from that initial phase of learning how it all works - spending so much time on the technical setup to get visual feedback to even know if you're doing things correctly, a lot of people hit a threshold of frustration before they build anything of consequence. NESmaker takes care of most of that part, and so within minutes you're seeing visual feedback in your emulator of what you're creating, and you can back in to learning the 6502 Assembly language. Now, you don't need to master ASM to get started.
You can be a writer or artist or musician or creative and start making a game in a similar way as you would in other modern creation software such as GameMaker, Unity, Godot, Construct, Scratch, etc.
But for clarity, I wouldn't say it's an ideal environment in which to learn game development. In fact, I'd say, with all honesty, it's quite clunky. It was never built to do what it is currently doing. It was an amalgam of in-house utilities designed with a single game in mind. Then, people wanted access to those tools, so we broke it apart and glued it back together in a way that can do more. It's a testament to the passion of the development community that it has been used to make such incredible and diverse things! That said, we've watched people use it for years now, and there have been many moments of "if we were to do this again, we would...". And if I may be vague for a moment, that may be the best way to answer your previous question about the next step with NESmaker.
THE RESULTS OF BYTE OFF IV
• BEST ART: Adventures of Panzer: Frontiers
• BEST MUSIC and SFX: Zapp & Zapper
• BEST NARRATIVE: Crater Song
• BEST PACKAGE: Spacin’ Gators
• BEST CHARACTER: Adventures of Panzer: Frontiers
• THE EMISSARY: Substation 7
• THE WOMBAT: Land Ahoy!
• PLAYER’S CHOICE: Midnight Zone
• BEST GAME: Pizza Portals
Play the games now at:
MORE HOMEBREW COMPETITIONS:
MSXDEV
With prizes and money awarded in this annual competition, the gorgeous Snake and Rhino in the Sketchbook from ARCS won in 2023. https://msxdev.org
CCSCGC 2024
Taskmaster Software “lost” in 2023 with Licence to Mow, so is organising the 2024 Crap Game Competition - https://csscgc24.blogspot.com/
BASIC 10-LINER 2024
Announcing its winners in April, Dan The Digger (C64) won the “PUR-80” category. https://bunsen.itch.io/
RESET 4K 2024
The “Craptastic” competition for C64 users challenges them to create a game in 4096 bytes, like 2022 winner Marble Boy. https://bit.ly/reset4k-2024
SMSPOWER 2024
Master System fans on the SMS Power forum voted RPG Stygian Quest as the 2024 coding competition winner. https://bit.ly/smspower2024
NEWS BYTES
ACORN ATOM: Kees Van Oss converted Sloanysoft’s Jet Set Steamboat Willie - https://bit.ly/steamboat-atom
AMIGA: The 2024 Amiga Game Jam theme is “The Sequel That Never Was”; submissions are due by November 30th. https://bit.ly/amigamejam
AMSTRAD CPC: Juan Martinez’s The Heart Of Salamanderland will get a poly.play physical edition. https://bit.ly/salamanderland
ATARI ST: Haplo converted Tenebra 2, with 8-bit and interlaced graphic modes. https://bit.ly/tenebra-2
ATARI 2600: Magovinna released the medieval Coarse Blade and shoot ‘em up Aliens, Plasma Guns & Chewing Gum. https://bit.ly/magovinna
BBC MICRO: Tony Kingsmill released text adventure Ghostship Delgado, also for Acorn Electron. The game is free, paying $2 gets clue sheets, a map, and source files. https://bit.ly/ghostship-delgado
INTELLIVISION: Three digital ROMs from developer Blah Blah Wolf Wolf are available – Parsec, Fox’s Quest, and Lode Runner. https://bit.ly/blah-intellivision
NINTENDO DS: Boulder Crash 3D is new from Brig. https://bit.ly/bouldercrash-ds
PICO-8: Stickyfoot from Andrew Reist is playable online - https://bit.ly/stickyfoot . Morning Toast’s latest is Steel Hunter, inspired by the Atari 2600 game Sea Caves - https://bit.ly/steelhunter . The brilliant Tiny Hawk Pico Skater from Morgan Quirk has a separate park editor. https://bit.ly/tinyhawk-pico
VARIOUS: Monochrome Productions released platformer TONY: Montezuma’s Gold, inspired by filmmaker Tony Halik, with unique filters for its 1-bit graphics. Digital editions are at for itch.io for Atari 8-bit, C64 and Amiga, with physical editions from Retronics.EU and K&A Plus. https://bit.ly/tony-montezuma
CHAMPION CODER - ANDY HEWITT (HEWCO)
Andy’s first computer was a VIC-20, and he still enjoys making games for it.
[Name]
Andy Hewitt (HEWCO)
[Info]
From: Wolverhampton
Website: https://www.hewco.uk and https://hewco.itch.io/
Format: Commodore Vic 20
Previous games: Vic Nibbler, Cheesy Trials, Escape 2020, Mars Landing, Pumpkid, Pink Windmill Blitz, Snake Games Are The Best Games,
Newest game: Emu's Massive Hunt.
What got you into programming VIC-20 games?
My first computer in the early 1980's was a Vic 20 and it is here I found making games to be more enjoyable than playing them. There was an air of magic to it, and I loved learning everything I could about the machine. While I have continued to make games since then, it wasn't until more recently that I came back to the Vic and began to learn everything I had forgotten again. It is much easier now, with a wealth of documentation, great tools and people wanting to help.
What is your development environment, and any major tools that you use?
My main tool of choice is Turbo Rascal (TRSE). It is a complete development IDE I discovered early on and something about it just clicked.
It's like a cross between C and Pascal and is perfectly tuned to making games and demos on vintage computers and consoles. Code is converted to assembler which makes it very fast and efficient, and it includes built-in editors for graphics, sprites, and music.
With a huge amount of encouragement from Nicolaas, the author of TRSE, I have helped to expand its support for the Vic 20. Today it is a very mature tool and worth a look if you have the desire to make your own games.
What games inspire your work?
While I still had my Vic 20 growing up, I had friends with C64's and Spectrum's and got to play the best these machines had to offer. I often wished for a version to play on my Vic. So many of these 8-bit games kind of stick in my mind and inspire me today.
There has also been something about the smaller games on early computers that have appealed to me the most over games made for later generations of machines.
Perhaps I am on my own with this opinion, but I prefer a game with well-crafted tiny 8x8 chunky graphics these days, so perhaps that is why I have so far stuck with the Vic 20.
How do you produce graphics and sound?
Everything I need is in Turbo Rascal. It has a couple of great editors for graphics and level designers, and pre-processor commands to extract what I need to binary to include with the program automatically.
Creating sound effects is easy with the Vic's four arcade-like voices but I struggle with music. For Emu's Massive Hunt, I had the help of a talented musician by the name of Mince: Unknown. He did wonders with just one voice channel. For the next one, we'll expand out to use more voice channels.
Programming for the VIC often means limited memory - do you see that as a problem or a challenge?
It is definitely part of the fun. I've made several unexpanded games, and the restricted memory gives you focus on what elements are most important.
I thought I had modest plans for Escape 2020 when I started and despite heavy optimisation, the space soon ran out and I scaled it back. I'm extremely happy with how it turned out though, and it is probably a better game for it.
The Vic can be expanded to a total of 40k with modern RAM expansions, so it is possible to make more ambitious games and there has been some superb homebrew appearing as a result.
What have been your most successful/popular games so far?
My first game, Vic Nibbler, has had the most downloads on itch.io, followed by Escape 2020, Pumpkid, Mars Landing and Cheesy Trials. The Future Was 8 Bit has shipped out a lot of Nibbler cartridges too and they have recently released Emu's Massive Hunt on tape. Am I allowed to say that there is a bonus surprise to be found on one side of the tape?
What other homebrew developers inspire you?
We're really lucky right now with so many people returning to their old computers making hugely impressive games. On the Vic I loved the style of games that Jason Justian produced, otherwise known as Chysn, he will be sadly missed in our Vic community. The games made by the elusive Derek are hugely fun and accomplished. And the Vic 20 Denial forum, with so many contributors creating some seriously impressive games and utilities, I could not name them all for fear of leaving someone out.
What influenced your current game Emu's Massive Hunt, and how pleased are you with it?
It started with a new version of a library I had written that I wanted to use. It makes it really easy to create faux-character sprites on the screen ( https://www.hewco.uk/lbm8 ) and my first thought was to create a game like Jet Set Willy.
Early on I doodled a miniature emu sprite and from there it kind of took on a life of its own. Every idea fell into place, and I ran into no real problems throughout the development process.
Rod from the Future Was 8 Bit gave lots of encouragement and some good ideas of his own. There's so much gone into it, I think it is the best game I have made to date.
Are you working on any new projects?
I have several on the go including games like Vic Rockman and Omega Race, and I do have a unique idea for another game the LBM8 library would be perfect for. Will have to watch this space!
Emu's Massive Hunt is available on cassette from TFW8B and requires 35K expansion:
DATABURST
TX-1696
Format: Spectrum Next (50Hz only)
Credits: Lucky Red Fish / Technoshed Software
Price: £39 (physical), £34 (download & print), £8 (soundtrack download), £21 (soundtrack vinyl)
"a classic horizontally scrolling shoot ‘em up in the R-Type mould, with well-designed graphics and a pumping soundtrack from Richard Faulkner - it’s a polished game that Next owners need to check out."
[Score] 88%
Pac-Man RX
Format: ZX Spectrum
Credits: Midnight Brew Games (Alan Turvey)
Price: $4.99 (digital download) / tape TBC
"Those who want an authentic arcade experience for their Spectrum should look no further than this — highly recommended."
[Score] 90% - Retro Gamer Sizzler
Data Man
Format: NES
Credits: Darkbits (developer), Broke Studio (publisher)
Price: $10 (digital download) / €50 (physical cartridge)
"A great-looking NES game that will take patience to make progress – or a second, skilled player."
[Score] 86%
PROCESSING - PREVIEW OF FAMIDASH
(GEOMETRY DASH FOR NES)
Paul Stulberger is part of the team bringing the stylish Geometry Dash to the NES.
What got you into programming NES games?
I've been an NES fan since I was a pre-teen with my dad owning one, and a romhack fan since I was a teenager in the late 90s. I just never knew how to or had the time/patience/know-how to do anything, so I just enjoyed them. Now that I have the ability to modify games for a console that gave me so much joy, it’s almost like moulding my own perfect clay pot. And it’s hard to stop when I'm constantly having success with it.
What has been your favourite project to work on so far?
It has to be Starfox EX. It took up a good 3 years of my life, taught me ASM, problem-solving, and honestly the constant stream of new things I was able to do made continuing to spend hours upon hours a day for months and months something I looked forward to.
What is your development environment, and what other tools do you use?
I am on a laptop my wife bought for me, Windows 11. Nothing special, I use Notepad++ for the code editing, YY-CHR when I have to do minor sprite work, and my desktop has no useful icons. I run just about everything using START, Run in Windows. I'm a mess of disorganization, but somehow, I manage to flow with this setup. No projects I work on need any kind of developer environment; they all compile with single click .BAT/.CMD files almost instantly.
What made you decide to remake Geometry Dash for the NES?
After spending so much time with the SMB modding community (SMB Arena), it started to dawn on me that a lot of the tricks that speedrunners and TAS creators use need sub-pixel accuracy, which mimics the accuracy needed for Geometry Dash. At first, me and a programmer named Brette attempted to do this with the Super Mario Bros engine as a romhack but was plagued with limitations.
Cue my surprise when a few months later, a developer named Zephyrside posted their WIP of a Geometry Dash NES homebrew. I immediately reached out and was very motivated to help out in any way possible, as well as keep up with the project.
At the start of January, the developer suddenly left due to real-life circumstances. Towards the end of March, I can only describe what happened as I got "tired of waiting" and decided to see what I could finish up by myself.
It turned out, I was capable of much, much more than I could have imagined. I then got ficusMcHouseplant back on board to help with levels and graphics, and after I figured out the method that Zephyrside used to import levels from Tiled, things just haven't stopped since.
Who else is working on the game?
Ficus mcHousePlant, Zenith, AleFunky, alexmush, jroweboy, jaezu and aquamarine at this point, but we are always welcoming new contributors!
Are you basing your level designs on the original, and how are you transferring them?
Yes, we are, and our level creators have found copyable levels of the original GD levels and have painstakingly hand-recreated them tile by tile to line up with the originals.
What have been some of the more difficult problems to solve?
How to reduce lag for one. The game is heavily reliant on precision, so lag can completely ruin the experience.
The other annoying problems are making sure all of the different game modes work, alongside gravity changes, mini-growth portals, and dual modes. Every time something is added or changed, everything must be retested over and over.
Getting the physics *just* right is also a challenge, having to redo things such as gravity pads/orbs until we are able to get it feeling like the original game. Fixing one level's problems may affect another. And with all the game modes in there now changing physics is something that now can affect a wide range of things.
Are you using any particular tricks or techniques?
My big trick is having the patience to keep throwing darts at a dartboard until finally something sticks. Sometimes I'll spend hours and hours just trying to get one thing to work. Otherwise, no tricks, just someone learning as they go along.
Jroweboy is also doing some amazing tricks for parallax and things like making spikes blend in with the parallax. 2 sets of alternating CHR sets, as well as 144 copies of the background pre-scrolled in the ROM for the parallax effect.
How many levels are you hoping to have in the final version?
12 of the official levels, ending with Clutterfunk and Theory of Everything. Hoping that we get some level creators to come on and help make some fun custom levels/demon levels! We have room for lots more!
Will you be adding any features or mechanics to the NES game?
Most likely, I tend to like to add fun features and extras to my hacks. So far, I've added a 2-player mode and an "invisible" mode.
How long have you been working on it, and when are you hoping to finish?
The original developer was working on it from the end of September until around the end of December, where I contributed small things such as gravity flipping. I've picked this back up on March 11th, so I've been resuming work on it for a little over a month now.
Hoping to finish by Summer, but I don't usually like to set hard dates.
Will you be planning a physical release or just a digital download?
There will always be a free digital download. As for a physical release, I have reached out to RobTop and based on his response we can go from there.
What other NES homebrew has impressed you recently?
Former Dawn by Something Nerdy Studios, The Trial of Karzoid by Pascal Belisle, anything Morphcat Games puts out, Oratorio by John Vanderhoef to name a few. I've always been a huge fan of the NES homebrew scene, but sadly I can't play all of them because most of them are only sold commercially.
Do you have any other projects in progress?
I'm always converting SNES games to fastrom, which helps eliminate or relieve slowdown and lags in games that were not released with fastrom from the factory. There's also lots of new progress on the Starfox modding front, with a mini-map and all-range mode being developed. Finally, I'm involved in SMKDX, which, when released, is going to rock the world of Mario Kart lovers.
Is there a dream project or game you would like to work on, or someone you want to work with?
I always feel like if I was brought onto a team or worked with experienced coders, they would be underwhelmed with how little I know or am able to do. Of course, in the end, I'm sure I would exceed my own expectations.
I would love the opportunity to work with anyone who is running successful Kickstarter or funded campaigns, as extra money would be amazing for me and my family.
Working with a company like Q-Games would also be up there, as working under Dylan Cuthbert would be a dream come true.
Follow @kandowontu on X/Twitter for the latest. https://x.com/kandowontu
Since the interview, Famicom mouse control has been added and the cover art competition has concluded. Release is near.
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