September 29, 2020

Well, it is kind of odd to be starting a blog in 2020. I hear that these are no longer a thing in our social media age, but it seems like now is as good as time as any to start talking about what has been (and is!) going on at Sole Goose Productions. Truth be told, a recent hard drive failure has left me realizing that if I were to lose all of my data, literally no one knows what I have been up to these past several years. Other than an occasional ROM that has been sent to collaborators, the majority of my projects have been kept under wraps. Beyond easing the fear of simply fading into the ether, my other goal with this blog is to begin talking about what lies ahead. I have a tendency to work on things in secret and then spring them on an unsuspecting audience; not always the best method for keeping people in the loop!

I suppose that a brief history of SGP is probably in order since there have been whispers and rumors of various projects over the years. I will keep it brief for now, though I will have much to say on each of them later.

I’ve been programming the NES for over seven years now, and publishing games since 2015. The first game that SGP released was called Swords and Runes, a project designed and programmed by a fellow named nemesys. This project kind of appeared out of the blue on the NintendoAge forums, and my love of RPGs caused me to volunteer to help out in any way that was needed. In the end, I had a small hand in things like the title screen art and smoothing out the text, and a major hand in the publishing and production of it. It was a great opportunity to help someone else realize his dream of making an NES game, and it also served as a trial run for manufacturing and distribution years ahead of any of my own games being finished.

Nemesys then went on to make 0-to-X, and I again expressed interest in publishing his work. This time, however, he programmed the core of the game, and I then took his code and modified it. The gameplay was solid, but I felt that it needed a few bells and whistles to really stand out, ones that he was not interested in implementing himself. Fair enough in my book, especially since some of them were unknown territory. At this time S&R had not yet been released, and the mapper that the game would end up running on had not even been discussed. Eventually the additions that I would add involved a bit of a process: converting the original code from his custom compiler and syntax over to NESASM, working it into my usual framework, and then adding features to the game. The big title screen full of unique tiles, flash saving for the high scores, the intro sequence, and more were all small additions that I felt would improve the gaming experience. Hopefully they did!

After 0-to-X, and in the midst of Swords and Runes being released, Nemesy programmed three more games directly for SGP: CityZen, Swords and Runes II, and Swords and Runes III. His work on these was all finished in 2015… and there they have sat on my hard drive ever since. Thankfully they were not only on that hard drive.

As with 0-to-X, I felt that there were small additions that were needed to complete these games, or that would make for a better gameplay experience. About a year ago I started the process of editing them, and they are finally going to see the light of day some 5+ years later. Perhaps now is a good time to share a bit about them. Please note, I will have further information and updates regarding each of them in future posts as they near final completion and release.

CityZen is the city building simulation that the NES never received; kind of anyways. When we started work on the project the NES’ true city builder was known to exist but not available, namely, SimCity for Nintendo’s 8-bit system. It has since been discovered and dumped, allowing people to finally experience a potentially lost classic. I say “potentially” since many prototypes are incomplete, or were abandoned due to development issues. Being classed as a “city building simulation” is about where the similarities between these two games ends, however, and CityZen plays in an entirely different manner. It is a thoughtful and strategic simulation that tasks the player with building the perfect city. It has undergone a slew of changes in the past year, and it is nearing completion.

Oddly enough, Swords and Runes II began life as a European war simulation. Within days of seeing nemesys’ screens for the initial project proposal, I made a trip to visit Rob from Sly Dog Studios. He was just finishing The Rise of Amondus at the time, and I was so impressed with his vision for a multi-game series that I asked nemesys to recast the game as an entry in the Swords and Runes universe. At the time Swords and Runes II was already underway. Wait, II you say? Yes. What is now known as Swords and Runes III was once S&R II. The luxury of time has allowed me to not have a Final Fantasy II/IV, III/VI situation, but it is worth noting the order of things as they happened at the time. With two S&R games in hand, rounding out the trilogy made perfect sense.

One key difference in gameplay with this entry is that Swords and Runes II is not a turn-based RPG like S&R I or S&R III. Instead, it is a turn-based strategy game that chronologically takes place between the other two games (the main reason for the series’ re-numbering). It tells the story of warring factions fighting for control of the Tyon Valley between the two quests for the runes, and it supports up to four players, either human or computer controlled.

We have known for many years that the NES could support internet play, if only someone would take the time to finish the hardware for that feature. Thanks to an intrepid group of individuals, 2020 will see this finally become a reality, and S&R II is being adapted for online play. Due to this largely unknown change to the core game, its release will fall after S&R III, but it will be worth the wait. I’m anxiously awaiting a prototype board from Infinite NES Lives as we speak (err, write… whatever).

Taking place 99 years after the initial quest, Swords and Runes III returns to the gameplay style of the first entry in the series. Fans of the first game will be delighted to hear that although the game improves some features and makes some small additions, it retains the look and feel of the first. It also continues some of the narrative elements of the first game, fleshing out the world and seeing the heroes return to many familiar locations. It is a solid, if slightly more challenging, successor.

A couple of months ago I took the time to 100% finish Swords and Runes III. Other than music it was complete and ready to be flashed to boards, but the above mentioned hard drive crash took care of that. All data was lost. I am still waiting to see if I can retrieve the data, but if not it was a relatively quick process to convert and finish nemesys’ original code. I may be a glutton for punishment, as I have now re-coded and adapted all of the projects he did for SGP. I even took the time to go through the process with the original Swords and Runes just for fun! Ok, not just for fun, I wanted to study some things in it, but still.

Part of the reason that these projects were not released sooner is that although I enjoy publishing other peoples’ games, I do want to get some of my own finished and out into the world. In 2015, right as Swords and Runes III was being completed, I started work on a game called Family Vacation. Scattered bits about this lost travel simulation can be found online, but the game needed a lot of work before it could really be shown to others. I had focused on the functional aspects of gameplay, and not so much on making it appealing to the eye. Work on this project was interrupted by some life happenings, and also the need to release 0-to-X (converting it over, adding to it, and then manufacturing and releasing it). It was left in a rather rough state when I was forced to stop working on it.

“Life happenings” involved surgery to my neck, and I was unable to work at a computer for over a month. With all of that time to sit and convalesce, I started getting ideas for other games, and the fruit of that came to be known as Spook-o’-tron. That project as a whole served as an excuse to better learn how to work with sprites, a sticking part in the Family Vacation project, and it accomplished that goal in spades: the game is nearly all sprites! As a bit of a timeline, that would have been the spring of 2016 when I began work on it. Most of the game was done relatively quick over the next few months, but in the end level design and then manufacturing held it up. I learned a lot about what not to do, to say the least.

Spook-o’-tron is a twin-stick shooter in the vein of Robotron: 2084. Since the NES controller does not have two d-pads/joysticks, I had to get a bit creative as to how the player would control things. The most basic setup has the player holding two standard NES controllers vertically, one in each hand, with her thumbs resting on each d-pad. This method of gameplay was used by Smash TV, and it has also found use in a few homebrew games over the years, such as MRN’s BAN. I took things a bit further by adding in SNES controller support, via an adapter, and even Virtual Boy controller support, via modification. The latter was one of my main reasons for doing the project in the first place, after I discovered that it was possible to wire up a VB controller for use on the NES. Nintendo’s unloved console had the perfect controller for this type of game; it just required making the right kind of game for it from scratch.

Different editions of this game were released, with the initial runs being largely made by hand. These versions also contain a modified version of the editor that we used to build the levels for the game, “we” being myself, but mostly being the group of amazing testers who helped out on the project. One of the reasons for releasing the project through Kickstarter in late winter of 2017 was to get backers involved with level creation, and a couple did manage to get their levels into the final game. All of this took place behind closed doors, but I will be delving into the history of Spook-o’-tron in a future post and showing what that process looked like in depth.

During the development of Spook-o’-tron, instead of going back and working on Family Vacation, or the earlier Zelda-like which had consumed my first three years of programming attempts, I switched gears and started work on my dream project, a full blown RPG. I had avoided this when setting out in the homebrew community since it seemed overly daunting. After working on things for three years now, I can tell you that it is! The problems with RPGs are twofold: they are nearly all content, and they require a number of complex systems, each larger than a small game.

This is where things kind of break down with Sole Goose Productions, at least in terms of releasing things and talking about them publicly. I started putting a lot of effort into the RPG beginning in the fall of 2016, designing the game, writing the broad narrative, even hiring an artist to start on assets. My desire to create an epic RPG goes back over two decades, and has seen many failed attempts over the years. Deciding to try and learn how to program for the NES was a major step in making that dream a tangible reality, but I will talk more about that in the future.

Along with all of my game development dreams, I received an opportunity to fulfill another life goal that fall: writing a book. The release of retroUSB’s AVS console was drawing nigh, and Brian Parker and I got to talking about a book to coincide with the launch. The history of the console was right there for telling, scattered across hundreds of forum threads and private posts, but it was there nonetheless. This was finished and released in time for the AVS’ launch, and within a few months he had decided to fund another, more ambitious writing project: a complete history of the NES homebrew community.

I now had three major projects that I was actively working on: the RPG, the Homebrew History book, and Spook-o’-tron. That last project, the least exciting of them in terms of my larger life goals, was finally about ready for release in February of 2017. A Halloween game in February… what does one do in that situation? That was another reason for going the Kickstarter route, as it served as a positive way to delay the release until the right season. What also transpired was that waiting for backers to create and submit levels led to a lot of time to work on other things, whether writing or beginning to actually program the RPG.

Spook-o’-tron was supposed to be a small project to begin with, but that was even more important now that I had started in earnest on two major endeavors. Like I said, I will get into the specifics of the game’s development later, but the hurdles I encountered in the production process put the brakes on anything and everything else with SGP. I could not justifiably release another game until the one I had already promised was fulfilled, and yet a lot of other things were in the works at this time. I wrote, I programmed, I dreamed big, and I attempted to finish Spook-o’tron despite the manufacturing hurdles. Add in a bunch of other life happenings such as moving states, buying a house, and not having a stable workspace, and further delays crept into the schedule. Projects can become overwhelming, big or small, and I even picked Family Vacation back up for a few weeks as a much needed change of pace. This time I focused on the visuals, scrolling, and updating the existing 1.0 engine to work with this new direction. This has led to some interesting things that I will hopefully be able to talk about someday soon.

For reference, let us set the calendar sometime in the summer of 2018. The fellows at Retrotainment Games asked if I would come to Pittsburgh and help them with a project for a couple of months and I enthusiastically said yes. The official purpose for my visit was to help them build the Mega Man Legacy carts for IAm8Bit, but I think we all knew that a lot more would come from the visit. Our hands may have been building games, but our minds were elsewhere, and we talked over a lot of potential projects that we could do together. In the end this led to us forming The 6502 Collective, a joint venture between Retrotainment Games and Sole Goose Productions. Our first project, CTWC: The Archives, was mostly completed by the time I left PA.

When I got back home I quickly finished Spook-o’-tron and got that out of the door… almost. I was able to ship any and all standard CIBs, but the limited editions were still stuck in limbo due to, well, many issues. Dare I say too many issues. It would be almost another six months or more before these were completed, but that is a story for a different day.

The trip to PA had been invigorating and promised a lot of opportunities for the future. Being able to talk games all day every day for two months straight also served as a shot in the arm for my solo projects, and I dove back into these feeling refreshed. I was able to start on a new direction for the RPG before I left the Quaker State, thanks to some insight from Derek Andrws of Gradual Games. I had made a trip to his place to interview him for the homebrew book, and seeing the process by which he built Trophy got the mental wheels turning in regards to creating a larger project.

That was two years ago now, when I left PA, and a lot of work has been accomplished during that time. The first fruits of my RPG work can be seen in The 6502 Collective’s second release: The Convention Quest. We have done other commission work as well, such as the Zao: Reformat/Reboot and Goofy Foot MP3 albums, in addition to helping publish games for other homebrewers such as Rollie and Trophy. We are set to do even more in the future, and it has been a great experience all around.

Things at SGP have soldiered on, despite all of the work that has gone into getting The Collective up and running. I want to start publicly sharing details about the RPG and the homebrew history book, but before I do that I would like to get at least somewhat caught up on the past. Indeed, even talking about those two projects involves a lot of history just to get folks up to speed on how they came to be, and where they are currently at. It will be a good excuse to re-examine them and see how they have been shaped. I want this to be an active dev blog, but there is a lot of ground to cover and cross-over between projects. Finishing nemesys’ games and getting them out into the world is the first order of business, though, and I will have more on that soon.