A programmer named Pubby has designed a new programming language called NESFab for NES game development (as spotted by the Retro Game Club Podcast). So, if you're a homebrew developer or just want to experiment with a new language, this might be something worth taking a closer look at.
The NESFab website refers to the language as being "designed with 8-Bit limitations in mind", and claims that it is "more ergonomic to use than C". In particular, it advertises itself as producing "faster assembly code", being able to handle bank switching automatically, and load assets much more easily.
To demonstrate this new language, Pubby shared a small arcade game he made using NESFab called Hang Glider, based on the paper airplane mini-game from Wario Ware, Inc: Mega Microgame$.
You'll find the Source Code and Binary Releases for NESFab on the website GitHub. Documentation and a tutorial on how to make a short maze game are also available on Pubby's website.
Are you going to give it a try? Let us know what you think!
[source pubby.games, via twitter.com]
Comments 2
Awesome!
Now, someone with this kind of programming skill, for Christ's sake, do the same for SNES.
There's so much untapped potential there, in every way you care to imagine, from the potential of the console's capabilities being pushed to stunning new limits, to the relative size of the audience just waiting to lap up titles for this system and whatever else (actual paying customers).
I think most people just don't get it: Out of every single system from the SNES era backwards, if the SNES had a robust set of development tools and a community producing new AAA titles as regularly as we're seeing on the likes of NES and Genesis, etc, the SNES' would have the biggest audience of willing paying customers just waiting to snap up quality new titles by far. Regardless of previous sales or whatever of any other system from its era and previous eras, the bigger popularity of the SNES in general than any of those other systems today by a long ways (see comparative sales of every single recent Mini console below to see how they stack up in popularity and money to be made, etc), would absolutely translate similarly if a healthy indie/homebrew scene existed for it too.
Look, whatever system you like most, here's how popular they all are comparatively based on any current official version of them that people can actually go out and buy today, as a best indicator of where their current-day appeal actually lies:
SNES Classic Mini sales = 5.28 million
NES Classic Mini sales = 3.26 million
Genesis Mini sales = around 300,000
PlayStation Classic = something over 120,000
Genesis Mini 2 sales = around 30,000
PC Engine Mini = God knows, but probably tiny
C64 Mini = God knows, but probably tiny
Astro City Miini = God knows, but probably tiny
Neo Geo Mini = God knows, but probably tiny
Atari Flashback 8 Gold = God knows, but probably tiny
Random others = God knows, but probably tiny
A vibrant SNES indie/homebrew scene of brand new and genuinely high quality titles is a gold mine waiting to be mined.
Come on, give us [the tools to create them and] some great new SNES games to buy!
It's an interesting language, having gone through the tutorial the lack of opening and closing braces around blocks of code is kind of blowing my mental fuses. 😅
I'm not totally clear what's nested within a loop and what isn't. I also don't know what putting UU or U before a variable declaration does, best I can guess is it loads it into a register.
Overall it's pretty cool, but I think it would be better if the syntax was a little bit closer to C and less like Assembly.
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