Zyx v0.2

Current Version

The current version of Zyx represents only a simple boilerplate for NES development using cc65. It comes heavily commented to act as a learning tool for those with an interest in Famicom/NES development.

It is ready to be compiled and run right out of the box using cc65 (tested with V2.13.3).

Also recommended are the FCEUX emulator (v2.2.1+) and the tile editor yy-chr (v0.99 beta).

The current project offers the following:

• Simple Makefile configured to build an iNES ROM.
• Linker configuration for a standard iNES MMC3 mapper ROM.
• Clean organization of CPU and PPU memory space elements:
  • Zeropage
  • General RAM
  • Read-only data
  • Character ROM
  • Program ROM
  • Hardware interrupt vectors
  • iNES Header
• Simple and highly commented hardware initialization routine covering:
  • Basic initialization of 2A03, PPU & APU
  • OAM direct memory access (DMA)
  • MMC3 initialization
• Debug-friendly graphic set featuring 8x8 tiles containing all hexadecimal values from $00-FF at their respective address(ie, tile $ff is the 256th tile).

Coming in the next version(s)

• Main Menu
  • Drawing backgrounds
  • Drawing & moving sprites
  • Taking controller input
  • Playing Sound FX (basic APU use)
• Main Game Logic
  • Sprite 0 (screen splitting)
  • Bank switching
  • Playing music (advanced APU use)

About

This basic NES example program can be used as an example on the basics of program structure, memory addresses, compilation/makefiles, etc in regards to NES development.

The nesdefs.inc and nesfile.ini are adapted and expanded from Anton Maurovic's NES Gamedev Examples which can be found here:

https://github.com/algofoogle/nes-gamedev-examples

How to compile

You can simply run make to compile, link and run the program.

Or:

• Use make build to compile and link.
• Use make chr to generate/edit the character tile file.
• Use make clean to delete the compiled rom.