I've developed quite a few SNES-related things for fun, mostly using Go and C++, with some 65816 ASM sprinkled in.<p><a href="https://github.com/alttpo/alttpo" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alttpo/alttpo</a> - A Link To The Past Online. Lets multiple players see and interact with one another in the same game world and synchronize their progress through the game. Exclusive to a customized fork of the bsnes emulator which provides a scripting language and PPU-integrated drawing routines to render remote player sprites. In retrospect, I consider this a dead-end architecture; redesigned in o2 project (see below).<p><a href="https://github.com/alttpo/o2" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alttpo/o2</a> - Second version of alttpo (see above) but this time targeted at SNES hardware console support (via SD2SNES flash cart USB feature) and does not require a customized emulator nor a scripting language. Trade-off here is a loss of the visual aspect (cannot see remote player sprites) due to tight hardware limitations in the amount of VRAM and limited SNES CPU cycles available. Work is in progress to gain back the remote sprite rendering as an optional add-on via the bsnes-plus WASM module support (see below). This project includes a 65816 machine code emitter library (pure Go) with support for named labels of branch targets. There is also a bare-bones headless SNES emulator library (pure Go) included for unit tests to verify the generated 65816 ASM and ROM patching mechanism.<p><a href="https://github.com/alttpo/bsnes-plus" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alttpo/bsnes-plus</a> - A fork of bsnes-plus in development that invokes WebAssembly modules when certain general SNES events occur, e.g. `on_nmi`, `on_power`, `on_reset`, `on_frame_present`. WASM code has access to a draw-list API for drawing into the various PPU layers, e.g. extra sprites, text (with PCF font support), basic shapes. WASM code can also receive arbitrary binary messages from external applications, e.g. to update remote player positions or exchange custom sprite graphics.
Personally instead of Mesen-S, I'd use the fork at <a href="https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/Mesen-SX" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/Mesen-SX</a>, which contains a fix for saving settings on Linux Mono 6.12 (<a href="https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/Mesen-SX/commit/c374ca8b9ed35aeca532ce24be20a30c5a4e4da6" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/Mesen-SX/commit/c374ca8b9ed3...</a>).<p>I'm more interested in SPC700 development for SNES music. Mesen-SX has a SPC debugger separate from the main debugger, but I'm not sure if it's more or less useful than bsnes-plus (I know the Mesen emulators have a far worse Linux UI when running under Mono, and I haven't tried running the Windows Mesen under Mono or real .NET yet). I don't know enough to judge if the disassembler is better or worse than bsnes-plus though.
On a related note, the Retro Game Mechanics Explained YouTube channel has excellent videos about how SNES hardware works: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/RetroGameMechanicsExplained/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/c/RetroGameMechanicsExplained/videos</a>
If you decide you really enjoy 65816 development, just a gentle reminder: The Apple IIGS dev community would love to have you and we're seeing new hardware releases at a pace we haven't seen since the 1990s.
I really want to make a retro version of my turn based strategy game Proximity[1] (pretty simple game and I've mostly made a version in Pico-8 already, so it should be doable) for NES, GB, SNES, GBA, and/or something similar, but I'd like to do it with the smallest amount of time and effort necessary (because I really don't have a lot of time anymore).<p>It seems like the new GBDK might be the easiest, especially since I recently ran into the source code[2] for a Wordle clone someone made using it that I could reference, but is there perhaps an even easier way? Most of the low-code software kits assume you're moving sprites around on a screen and don't seem like a good fit for the project.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428" rel="nofollow">https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/183428</a><p>[2]: <a href="https://github.com/stacksmashing/gb-wordle" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/stacksmashing/gb-wordle</a>
Holy smokes! What a list of resources.<p>The official developer manual? I want to flip through that just to learn more about the system and the context for game development at the time.
Another fantastic resource (SDK + example codes):
<a href="https://www.chibiakumas.com/6502/snes.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.chibiakumas.com/6502/snes.php</a><p>And also accompanied by a book:
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08W7DWZB3/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08W7DWZB3/</a><p>It's awesome. Not many new materials dedicated for good old game console programming. BTW, the book also covers Nintendo, Gameboy, Sega, Atari (!!), etc.
also check out the bass asembler<p><a href="https://github.com/ARM9/bass" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ARM9/bass</a><p>and the snes dev kit<p><a href="https://github.com/alekmaul/pvsneslib" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/alekmaul/pvsneslib</a>