iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ahhh yes, these games love to shrink the screen size with massive HUDs so there's less pixel drawing to burden the CPU with 😄

Yup. I just learned I might be wrong, though. 😅 The ROM seems to use MMC5, which extends NES capabilities quite a bit and hasn't been around for long enough during the commercial era (or was too expensive) for developers to learn how to utilize its full power. Sooo no idea how this actually works

Lastly, the artifacts at the top and bottom of the screen make me think they're forcefully extending the VBLANKing period by turning off rendering during parts of the screen to cram in more updates, a trick very few NES games use. As black magic as it gets on the NES 🪄

The update handling seems to be pretty smart, only updating changed tiles and possibly spreading updates across multiple game frames to deal with the limited VBLANK time (where updates are allowed to happen). The artifacts you see on the giant objects when they move make me think that's the case.

Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

With 2 background tiles (one fully black, one white), you can draw very blocky, low resolution graphics. With 16 background tiles, you can double that resolution (pixel size: 4x4, all possible combinations stored in the 16 8x8 bg tiles) With all 256 available tiles, you'd get 2x2-size pixels.

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Yeah, I should honestly have made the switch a while ago. Seems like Linux really can do pretty much anything these days. I probably won't make the final jump until work calms down (don't wanna mess with my dev machine right now), but... It's gonna happen 😁

Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 21/09/2025

I think I found the most noble use for AI: Switching to Linux. 🐧 I don't enjoy (OS) tinkering, but after spending a couple hours with ChatGPT gaining insight and porting many of my Windows-specific scripts and customizations, Linux is now a breeze to use! 👀

Capturing decent footage directly in OBS should be possible. 🤔 Similarly, the bigger the emulator window (crisp source), the less blurry OBS' output should be when it needs to scale your footage to its output resolution.

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You could simply upscale the 1x original footage to a non-integer scale directly with nearest neighbor, e.g. 4.5x (450%) for 1080p, but that may lead to visibly uneven pixel sizes. Tl;dr Nearest neighbor scaling = crisp pixels (preferably at an integer multiple of the original resolution)

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For 1080p, you may need to stretch the image some more. I imagine if you're stretching the already nearest-neighbor-scaled image some more using one of the common scaling algorithms (bilinear, bicubic), the result will be less blurry than if you simply stretch the og 1x resolution video.

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 15/06/2025

I personally use fceux's avi recording, which produces an uncompressed video at the original NES resolution, then scale up to 200% or 300% etc. using nearest neighbor scaling. That gives perfectly crisp pixels. If you're aiming for 720p, this works nicely, can letterbox a bit if you need

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You know how with 32k switching in #NESdev you don't have a fixed bank and have to duplicate some code? Thanks to gratuitious SRAM, 2k RAM remained free. "Wait, why not just load the duplicated code into SRAM? SRAM won't switch banks. SRAM IS a fixed bank?!🧙🪄💡" savings across all ROM banks 🥲

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

too relatable 🥲🥲🥲

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

So did I. Our usual approach of making games does not lend itself well to Kickstarters, we've learned... for the next project :~) But we want this game to be great so bad. I've had to play it a lot and it's still fun, hope players won't struggle with the controls, can't wait for people to play it 💚

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

That is such a pretty palette! I do wonder what a little vertical shake on the car sprites would look like when they're driving on the cobblestone.

Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

I'm much better at written interviews, though, and I'm absolutely swamped with work, currently, so... maybe in the future? Podcast seems right up my alley, though, I'm gonna give it a listen :)

Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Aw, well, thanks for reaching out! I have a bunch of thoughts on sound design on the NES that I'm not sure how to articulate, yet, but would like to at some point.

Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Hello, you guessed right! What's up? 👋

Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

Simply beautiful. And I'm not just talking the underwater part. How you're making that little jump over the chest at the end with barely touching the ceiling... Great physics combined with great animation work. 😎 Love it!

Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

It's been a blast, buddy!!!!! <3

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 24/02/2025

Oh no, that sounds absolutely terrifying...

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Had to revive old C++ code. Got stuck in circular dependency hell within the first 5 minutes. 🥲 How do people put up with this?

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

I think you may have showed me this game wayyy back in the old times 😁 Don't remember the ost at all, will have to cheggit

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

Aw yess. Been a hot second since I checked in on this. Neat effect and neat everything, really, the polish is off the charts 💪

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 07/01/2025

Ok, here's a fun one! Streets of Rage 2 OST is amazing. This mix prolongs the experience. Love blasting this during work. Two hours of intense focus. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyqb...

youtube.com

Streets of Rage 2 Music Soundtrack (Reconstructed Club Mix by 8-BeatsVGM)

YouTube video by 8-Beats VGM

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 06/01/2025

Ohh yes, it's amazing to me how much text space is a concern on 80s hardware, something you wouldn't give much thought to later. I suppose a good compression scheme is a must for text heavy games on the NES.

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 21/12/2024

:)) those were some times. Try within a deep forest 👼

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 07/12/2024

Loving those environments! I wanna live on that beach

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Reposted by Julius

Nate Ehlers @supernatetendo.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

TIL at one point Tribute was going to make a NES game and it was looking incredible.

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

Ahh, that makes sense. I keep getting asked the same question so I get curious whenever I see someone using FCEUX as well 😅

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 21/11/2024

That looks neat! I have a similar thing for FCEUX which got a little out of hand over the years. What's your reason for not using Mesen btw? ;)

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

I wasn't gonna post another one right away, but then I got reminded of silly old Ragnarok Online. The OST has a lot of great tracks, but this particular one will burn itself into your ears. Go straight to the 1 hour version. Good luck. #vgm www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF-m...

youtube.com

Can not go home again, baby "Amatsu Dungeon " - Ragnarok BGM 1 HOUR

YouTube video by Picky Picky

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Work was done and things were sorted out this week. Time to celebrate with some @maxo.bsky.social. Melts your face right off. 🫠 Criminally underrated. maxo.bandcamp.com/album/eigeng...

maxo.bandcamp.com

EigenGauge Original Soundtrack, by Maxo

18 track album

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

Here's the plan. I'll subject you to the best underrated #vgm, #chiptune or whatever musics. Cause why not. 😈🎵

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Julius @miau6502.bsky.social · 03/11/2024

That is a neat trick. I try to do it on slow-moving objects mostly, but didn't consider missing bullets sometimes might be ok if it's in the player's favor, that's an interesting thought.