New graphics are drawn and working in-game. I present the *Combat Anchor.* Gosh it's HEAVY! Drag it behind you to catch foes giving chase, then charge it up and SLAM it down in front of you for massive damage. Tricky to use, but quite powerful in the right hands. #gamedev #nes #pixelart

How to summarize this fix... ermh. For "racing the beam" reasons, dialog splits weren't quite finished before the top-of-screen split got drawn. To fix it? Add an extra invisible split that does nothing, but which gives dialog time to finish processing. Bug squashed, yes! #nes #gamedev

I'm pleased to report that Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo controllers (on PC), along with NES, SNES, and PowerPad controllers (on NES) are all ... mostly supported! (xbox+SDL2 on MacOS specifically is misbehaving.) This was so VERY tedious. But it's nearly done! #gamedev #screenshotsaturday #nes

Currently wrangling the finer points of controller standards. Check it out though: I can detect the controller type and display the appropriate glyphs! It feels... so odd for my #nes game to display #playstation buttons in the interface, but it matches the controller, so... it does. #gamedev

I'm so excited to finally be able to demo Tactus in person at #SuperMAGFest2026! This will be the game's first public showing, so come on by and Slay to the Beat! Shoutouts also to @frankengraphics.bsky.social and the rest of the Halcyon team! That game looks *rad* and you should check them out!

As part of the effort for the PC port, I'm slowly working on alternate button labels. Good lord, there are so many buttons. Why do we have so many competing standards for what to call shoulder buttons? #gamedev #pixelart

Here's a fun polish-y detail. When a bomb explodes, I need to scroll the playfield 3 pixels "up" for screen shake. But there isn't any valid data "underneath" the playfield to draw. To avoid glitchy tiles, we use extra scroll splits to repeat the last scanline instead. Problem solved! #nes #gamedev

Added a new accessibility feature after getting some feedback from playtesters: high contrast mode! This forces the floor color to always be $0F (black) even in rooms that would otherwise be fully lit. It's also great if you just prefer that classic NES aesthetic. #accessibility #pixelart #nes

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

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'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

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

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

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...

📢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...

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

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

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

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.)

Am I supposed to do two #screenshotsaturday posts on the same Saturday? Anyway, I was on a roll, so please enjoy this new footware: the Ninja Footwraps! Featuring the all-new player invulnerability, these will reliably dodge incoming attacks, provided you can keep them charged up. #nes #gamedev

Four new accessories in one day. Not too shabby! Finally something other than the Chain Link to go in this slot. #pixelart #screenshotsaturday #indiegame These all interact with the new elemental affinity system, and the limited equipment slots should hopefully encourage more strategic builds.

Player jumps were looking a bit stiff due to a frame pacing problem, so I fixed it. Now I can switch out frames independent of the musical tempo, allowing me to squish the player sprite upon landing. This helps a ton! #pixelart #gamedev #nes

After finishing Mario and Luigi: Brothership, an RPG with timed hits, I've started Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, an RPG with timed hits. This is some real emotional whiplash, right here. Good grief.

Finally wrapping up work on a fancy new enemy type for Tactus. These guys teleport around and cast the FORBIDDEN SHAPES, with various debilitating effects! Try not to get caught in the blast. Also, they glow in the dark! #gamedev #nes #pixelart

Introducing robust dynamic lighting in Former Dawn, a new Action #RPG for the NES and PC! This is just 1 part of a fairly big update (21 pages) that we just posted on our Kickstarter page: kickstarter.com/projects/som... New art, music, features...check it out! #nesdev #indiegame

Now that the engine is in good shape, I can focus on adding new enemy types. I present: the one-armed bandit! These have a variety of rewards, including whole-room magic spells if you can line up the symbols. They're also a real pain to fight with the broadsword. :D #gamedev #nes

Please help! I seem to have set my title screen on 🔥FIRE! #pixelart #gamedev #NES

Tactus progress update: working localization! I've been learning toki pona, so I'm using that as my test language. Eventually I want to support more, but I will need to find translators. Getting sitelen pona to render was great fun though! #gamedev #nes

The final title screen splash is working in-engine! Good grief the sprite layer was TRICKY for this. 48 (out of 64) sprite objects in total to make this display on a real NES. But it does! #gamedev #pixelart I'll do a raster split partway down the screen, so the title can use its own palette.

Mad props to @provolonecinco.com for working with my weird hardware palette constraints. This title screen splash art turned out great, and I'm able to draw it on NES hardware with the player's custom palette choices. Here "you" are, rendered with all the current presets. #pixelart #gamedev

A fun side bonus of reworking my color math is that I can leverage things like "hue shift" and "luminence step" on the fly. My player has a fully custom palette, so I need to do the actual math at runtime (on an NES), but I can, and it works quite well. Now these need mechanics! #pixelart #gamedev

Finally, the last #accessibility option is programmed! The rhythm assist feature can flash the separator bar or the player in time with the actual music, helping to "see" how on-tempo your inputs are when audio is otherwise unavailable. #gamedev This should all run on an actual NES!

One of my #accessibility options is "dot matrix mode", retro styled and fully monochrome, for anyone with any vision ability. Normally I'd cycle the enemy color in warp zones, but I don't have color, so here I'm cycling the luminance instead. Works just as well! #nes #gamedev

With a bit of effort, I was able to convince NEXXT to load a system palette with simulated protanomaly. Now I can see what I'm doing when I design alternate palettes for this #accessibility mode. I'll still need to find human testers of course, but this gets me in the right ballpark.

Hrm... I use "Earth" as my world palette, and mechanically "Air" opposes it. So I can lock earth to one strong hue, and the rule is that Air goes on the opposing hue. Then "Ice" and "Fire" are opposed on the luminence axis instead. Better? (Example is for Protanopia) #accessibility #pixelart

I'm working on #colorblind #accessibility modes for my NES game, Tactus. Due to hardware limitations I am constrained on hue selection. Could anyone with Red-Green colorblindness (Protanopia, Deuteranopia) spot check and tell me if the four mushrooms in the center here read differently?

My options screen has long since outgrown its "single screen with text" ambitions, so I'm working on a tab bar to split it up properly, with pagination for longer categories. Here's what that looks like so far. Do these icons read clearly? #pixelart #nes

Progress on Tactus continues to be very slow, but I did rework the palette system. Check it out: now when moving between chambers with different color palettes, I can smoothly... ish "fade" between them while the screen is scrolling! #nes #gamedev (Game running at 50% speed to demonstrate)

A strange ancient relic. I wonder what it does? #gamedev #nes

So far I've done all the art for Tactus, and as a programmer this can be quite challenging. I'm slowly learning perspective and shading. Left to right are various attempts at a "short column with a slot to hold an item." I think the rightmost is decent enough to use. #pixelart #nes #gamedev

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC-c... A Tactus song

After tons of tedious blocking work, I decided to go ahead an implement warp zones. Hidden portals take you to a strange place! Warp zones are naturally unstable. Take too long or too much damage and they'll kick you right back out again. (Most of this content is placeholder, etc.) #gamedev #nes

Progress is slow this month, but I'm slowly chipping away at blocking out the game's structure. Here I'm experimenting with warp zones, snuck into the otherwise "empty" space around a normal map. They're mildly non-euclidian too. #gamedev #nes

Working on blocking out the major content areas for Tactus, just to give the game some structure while I work on art, and ... I'm suddenly realizing just how many floors this is. Over 75 exits in my debug hub. Good grief! #gamedev #programming

One month left for late pledges on the Kickstarter campaign for Former Dawn, and new Action #RPG for the #NES and PC! www.kickstarter.com/projects/som... Cartridge preorders available until February 14th, 2025. Click URL to see the full trailer! Bluesky limits to 60s... #indiegame #pixelart

I'm on a "no code" break for a short while on Tactus, as I spin up on a different project. Still, I couldn't resist putting together a quick #chiptune track. The noise channel is working hard for its grooves today, yes! #nes www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpn2...

Freaks and geeks, I give you... the first installment of The NES Chiptune Challenge. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to create a short intro jingle, somewhere around 5 - 20 seconds, in the style of a black box NES game. You have a week!