Tessera

Moles were feeling weak. So, I reworked them to pop up more quickly, and added elemental variations to their attacks. The tethered wrenches are easily my favorite! Wrench jumping is still technically a valid strategy, but Earth and Air moles now need appropriate resistances. #gamedev #nes #indie

Check out this very WIP effect for "stability" in my warp zones. This is just the torchlight system under the hood, but there's no reason the alternate tiles have to be "lightness variants" exclusively. Needs tweaking, and less placeholder walls. #gamedev #pixelart #nes

Finally working on a new in-game area. I've just reworked the tile compression system (I *have* tile compression now) and that means I can go nuts with metatile variants without blowing out my CHR budget. I haven't even started on detail structures and I already love how this looks. #pixelart #nes

It's gameplay footage from Tactus. The player stands in a dark, dingy room, surrounded by purple walls adorned with industrial orange stripes. Lining the back wall are three variously colored machines, adorned with flashing lights. Who knows what they're for.

After a few more rounds of polish, the new VWF system for dialog is complete! Here's a quick tour of the new stuff it can do. Being able to mix and match all unicode glyphs on an NES is wild. (Pay no attention to the Combat Anchor's brief visual bug. I see it. 😱) #gamedev #nes #pixelart

Oh my stars, it WORKS. I just rendered UTF-8 on an NES! Apparently ca65 can even handle UTF-8 strings by using .literal, so the resulting file with localized strings is shockingly readable. I'm so happy right now! #programming #gamedev #unicode

On the left, a giant table of exported and technical strings, formatted for ca65 assembly language. On the right, a python routine whose behavior can be summarized as, "scan for extended commands, and otherwise pass unicode glyphs through unmodified."

On the screen, the resulting unicode is rendered in sitelen pona, except for the player's name. The font it uses isn't widely supported yet, so I'll transcribe in sitelen lasina instead:

sina jan seme?
1. Zeta
2. lipu musi sin
3. lipu musi sin
o ala e lipu musi
o tu e lipu musi

In English, this loosely translates as:
Who are you?
1. Zeta
2. New Game File
3. New Game File
Erase Game File?
Duplicate Game File?

What a delightful, cheery game! Nothing bad could ever happen to these characters. #omori #chiptune #famitracker I'm pleased with how well VRC6 handled the "synth burst" at the start of this. For 8bit hardware it sounds just fine. www.youtube.com/watch?v=49so...

Omori - Three Bar Logos [2A03 + VRC6] | Dn-FamiTracker Cover

YouTube video by zeta0134

youtube.com

Yes, that's what this solution needed. *Another* raster trick... VWF system is coming along! Rendering works, nametable layout is solid, and I even managed to squeeze in little dialog portraits for items and such. #gamedev #nes #pixelart

I'm so happy right now! My very complicated VWF system just drew its first lines of text today. The core is working, but lots of little polish-y details remain. This is software-rendering these glyphs directly into CHR patterns on the fly. Goodness, the code is messy! #gamedev #nes #retrodev

Welcome to Debug Zone! (Sorry, no fancy music.)

Various flavors of "ah yes, that's working, technically!" Just normal gamedev things really. #nes #gamedev

A rather plain set of very bright squares. This is the most expected result of the bunch, with 0xFF data bytes filling all of CIRAM

Unusual horizontal stripes. This was tested on my flashcart, and I think the stripes are leftover nametable data from its menu being reinterpreted as patterns

This is what the real cartridge does. ... incorrectly! We're seeing PPU open bus patterns instead of the expected (random / uninitialized) contents of CIRAM, which suggests a problem with the /CE line. I'll work with my cartridge supplier to troubleshoot.

And this is what my own emulator, "rustico" does. Here at least I know what's going wrong: I'm incorrectly using FPGA RAM as pattern data, instead of the requested CIRAM. So we're seeing the same data that makes up the level also get used as that level's tile graphics. This should be a quick fix.

"Why, I'll just decode UTF8 on an NES," I said. "It'll be the easiest option!", I said. So if you're wondering why updates have been slow, it turns out text encoding is remarkably complicated. Who knew? Have a peek into the abyss with me. #gamedev #programming #unicode

A rather dense collection of byte values in a giant list. This is a small portion of the index for an exported font, with the tables arranged in order of unicode codepoint. Several nested tables are used to make the indexing efficient on a 6502 processor, which generally favors "pages" of 256 bytes each.

A lengthy routine in assembly, partially completed, named "access glyph at codepoint." This routine's job is to index into a nested tree of tables, spanning several memory banks in the process, as the entire table is too big to fit in memory at one time.

It's a table describing the 1bpp glyph for a percent sign, along with metadata concerning that glyph's width, height, and bit depth.

Crazed cultist casting making you cranky? Turn the tables with the Forbidden Amulet, available at your nearest in-game shop. Now you, too, can cast the forbidden shapes. Show those cultists how it is **done**, yes! #gamedev #tactus #pixelart

Kijetesantakalu is here to help you remember all of the numbers in Tactus. 😱 "All of them?" 🦝 "ALL numbers, yes yes!" #gamedev #pixelart #kijetesantakalu

I'm finally working on implementing nasin nanpa kijetesantakalu in Tactus. It's sure to be very helpful on your runs! #gamedev #tokipona There are so many different ways to draw numbers in this game. It's gonna take a bit to work through them all, but I've committed to the task, yes yes!

"nasin nanpa kijetesantakalu"
All numbers are replaced with kijetesantakalu.

KaosRio@kaosrio.bsky.social · 6mo ago

I've been following development of this for a while. This game has uncomfortable levels of polish!

YOU CAN PLAY RICOCHET RAVEN NOW!! The free demo for the game is officially up! store.steampowered.com/app/4002020/... #indiedev #indiegame #RicochetRaven

Been a while since I posted any of my chiptune covers, so have an Angel Island! ...no not *that* Angel Island, the other one. NES + VRC6. (Triangle does nothing 😔) #chiptune #famitracker #sonic www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HOK...

Sonic Advance - Angel Island [2A03 + VRC6] | Dn-FamiTracker Cover

YouTube video by zeta0134

youtube.com

It turns out a cornucopia is too difficult to draw at low res, so I fixed it. #pixelart #gamedev

If you'll pardon a bit of shameless self-promotion, Tactus is now available for wishlisting on Steam! 🎉 Digital copies will also include an NES ROM, compatible with modern emulators and dev carts. "Wishlist Now!", "Tell your friends", other clichés, etc! store.steampowered.com/app/4129270/...

Tactus on Steam

A rhythm-based dungeon crawler with authentic retro charm. Explore mysterious ruins, find powerful weapons, and slay to the beat. Designed and built for the original NES, playable on Steam with modern...

store.steampowered.com

Mega Cat Studios @megacatstudios.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Playtesting revealed that damaging hits weren't obviously successful-looking enough. I realized I can repurpose the coin system to also handle these bouncy damage indicators. Now, if you don't defeat a foe outright, you can see how much damage your (possibly buffed) attack did. #gamedev #nes

The results for the #SuperMAGFest2026 Indie Retro Showcase winners are here! 🏆 🔊 Best Sound Design: Tactus by Phonorail LLC 🎨 Best Art Direction: Wicked Plague by Locus Motion 🕹️ Best Gameplay: The Adventures of Panzer: Frontiers by Pixel Craft 🎮 Best in Show: Light from Within by Atarath Games

I'm set up at #MAGFest 2026! Come find me at Indie Retro. Mega shoutouts to @megacatstudios.bsky.social, setup was a breeze. There's tons of other awesome games here too. Excited, nervous... emotions, yes!