Tools and Resources for NESFab

This page contains a list of links for learning NESFab and NES programming.

Resources

• The NESDEV wiki provides documentation on the entire system. In particular, the PPU registers page is a must-read.
• The NESFab homepage provides an ever-growing list of tutorials.
• Dustmop has written a series on NES graphics, which enlightens how 8-bit visuals work.

Tools

Text Editors

You can use any text editor with NESFab, but only a few have syntax highlighting. The following are guaranteed to work:

• Visual Studio Code is a modern text editor designed for developers.
• Vim is an old, opinionated editor with many fans. It has a steep learning curve, but is very rewarding to learn.

If you don't care about syntax highlighting, Notepad++ is a great text editor for beginners.

Graphics - Tilesets

The NES is a tile-based system, and uses tilesets called CHR. These tilesets are 2-bits-per-pixel, and are comprised of 8x8 pixel tiles. The following programs can be used to create and edit these tilesets:

• YY-CHR is a simple tool for editing CHR files. The nice thing about it is that it's designed around NES limitations, and works with .CHR files directly.
• GIMP is a powerful image editor, similar to Photoshop. Although it's not designed for pixel art, it suffices, especially when you enable indexed color mode.
• mtPaint is a simple image editor that's good at pixel art. It supports indexed colors, which is handy for designing CHR.

NESFab can input either .CHR files, or .PNG files, so feel free to use whatever you like.

Graphics - Backgrounds and More

To produce graphics, tiles are arranged to encompass a background, comprised of 256x240 pixel regions known as nametables. Typically, these nametables are produced on-the-fly during gameplay, but in situations like title screens, it's handy to edit them by hand. The following programs can be used:

• NES Screen Tool is a very simple tool for editing nametables.
• NEXXT is an extension of NES Screen Tool, adding a myriad of features. It also supports editing sprites and CHR.
• NES Assets Workshop is a powerful editor designed around NES limitations. It also supports editing sprites and CHR.

Depending on your game, you may rely heavily on these, or you may not.

Level Editors

• MapFab is NESFab's official level editor. It is flexible enough for most games, while being simple to use. NESFab can import its files directly.
• Tiled is a powerful, general-purpose level editor. To use this, you'll have to write your own conversion scripts and work around its limitations.

Audio

NESFab includes its own audio driver called PUF, which has support for importing audio from the following programs:

• FamiTracker is a tracker-based music editor designed around NES limits.
• FamiStudio is a piano-roll based music editor. When using it with NESFab, be sure to enable FamiTracker mode.

Note that the PUF driver cannot handle every sound produced by these programs. Before composing music, it's a good idea to read the documentation in the driver source code.

Emulators

You'll want an emulator to test your game. The following are recommended:

• Mesen2 is an emulator with a crazy amount of features and excellent debugging support. Every NES developer should have Mesen installed.
• FCEUX is a decent emulator with OK debugging support.
• Nintendulator is a very accurate emulator with OK debugging support. In particular, it's good for PPU debugging..

[Back to my homepage] | [Back to NESFab]