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3 years ago

Ever wondered how devs measure performance on real a NES, which has no dev kit? A common way is the change the "color emphasis" while an operation is executing, during rendering. This effectively draws colored bars representing how long something takes.


Here, Green represents the player update. At the start of the "player_update" function, which is running while the TV is drawing the previous frame from top to bottom & left to right, I tell the NES to tint everything Green. At the end of the function I stop tinting Green.

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This tells me that to update the player, it takes *roughly* 15 scanlines of the video frame. I have about 260 scanlines to finish all the work for the next frame to maintain 60 frames per second, so this one function takes about 6% of my CPU budget for the frame.

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The game in the video is a new, untitled, NES homebrew I am working on.

Follow for more updates on that game, and retro console development in general!

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This week's Fan Art Friday celebrates Yooka-Replaylee! Accept the quest in your quest log to get started.

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Both come complete in box with free global shipping! 📨

shop.matthughson.com

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A platformer with ZAPPER support! Super Sunny World allows a 2nd player to kill enemies with the Zapper Gun.

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Happy #WIPWednesday! Are you working on a game? Making some art? Practicing a song? Something else? Tell us in the comments!

MASSIVE Game Boy Homebrew GIVEAWAY! We're giving away physical copies of 4 new Gameboy games to 1 winner! From Below is on sale NOW: http://shop.matthughson.com 🚨 ENTER HERE: https://twitter.com/matthughson/status/1710641131590221843 🏁Giveaway ends Oct 11th 11:59PM PT