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SNES programming

Started by Joelius Apr 12, 2004 at 9:34 PM 10 replies 2.6k views
Original Post
Joelius
Joelius
I want to begin programming for the SNES, NES and gameboy and i was wondering what programming languages they use for them. If anyone could let me know that would be great so i can start learning!
Oluseyi
Oluseyi
Moved.
Premandrake
Premandrake
Unfortunately the SNES, NES and gameboy (original) all use different processors, and assembly is pretty much the only way to go as I don''t know of any C compilers that exist for them.

As the AP said though, the GBA is much easier to get into, supporting C/C++ and with a large developer community that makes it much easier to get started. Check out www.gbadev.org and devrs.com/gba for some excellent resources.

However, if you still want to work on the older systems, there are some excellent resources around:

SNES:
Zophar''s Super Nintendo Page - extremely comprehensive.

NES/Gameboy:
Zophar''s page for general info.
Dot5
Dot5
Unless your going for a very processor heavy game then C will be fine on those systems. NES/SNES games were written in C but had a fair amount of asm as well (although i doubt 95%). I have written published GB and GBC games which were 99% C, so there is no real problem there. (just use the GNU compilers, nothing special about compilers its the libs for the console you need).
Benjamin Heath
Benjamin Heath
Thanks for the clickies Drakonite. That's my post btw. (I lost my password for a little bit there, so the post is anonymous.) EDIT: The anonymous post Drakonite quoted here is mine. The others are not.

I might add that CC65 is not for SNES like I said earlier. I think you could find a SNES C compiler, but frankly, I don't know if I'd even bother. C is a beautiful language, but if your goal is higher-level code and more efficient development, why not go a step farther? With some good work and research, you could instead write a simple Python API that prints 65816 assembler to a file or to standard output. That'd be your code generator. That's an idea, anyway.


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Benjamin Heath
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[edited by - Benjamin Heath on April 24, 2004 2:29:22 AM]

[edited by - Benjamin Heath on April 24, 2004 2:01:13 PM]
Benjamin Heath
Benjamin Heath
Ya know, I talked earlier about a potential Python wrapping that generates assembler for NES or SNES. Well, if you take a look at pygame, do you see some potential in that? Suppose pygame were stripped of certain components (CD, for instance) and modified internally so that it essentially arranges assembler code and prints it to a given file or to standard output. Keep the interfaces similar enough at least (as you would be tossing out some things), but other than that, let any game written in pygame without those components "compile" into an SNES ROM! Which you could then test with your emulator.

Hmm. I feel good now. I think I might try this.

---------------
Ben
"You have to struggle in order to succeed." --William Hung

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