Classic Game Programming On The NES - Chapter 2 - Getting setup
This chapter covers
- Selecting an emulator
- Selecting and setting up a tText eEditor
- Selecting and setting up an aAssembler
- Selecting a tTool for creating tile and sprite patterns
- Selecting a tTool for creating sound effects and music
To start creating games that will run on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), you will need a development environment. Back when games for the system were first created, specialized computers hooked up to a hardware-based development system were required, which was quite an expensive undertaking at the time and only handed out to selected parties by Nintendo. Now, due to the availability of modern personal computers, we can not only simulate this development environment completely in software, but we can have far more advanced tools.
An easy-to-use development environment, with a modern text editor with syntax coloring, along with additional tools to compile and debug your programs, will allow you to focus on developing the functionality of your game.
We will cover getting a development environment set up on either Windows-, Linux-, or macOSMac OSX -based systems, and by covering various options you will be able to choose the tools that suit your preferences. The selection of tools is far more limited on Linux and Mac OSX systems, but a usable setup can still be achieved.
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