UPDATED – YoYoGames Marketplace EULA now allows Creative Commons licensing

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Update: It turns out that it has always been possible to link a Marketplace asset to another EULA; I had never noticed this before!

YoYoGames apparently has added Creative Commons licensing to their standard EULA for purchases made through their Marketplace with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.

The old GameMaker Marketplace EULA is still in use for some assets:

GameMaker EULA (old)

Assets sold under the Creative Commons license show a different EULA:

YoYoGames now uses Creative Commons licensing on the GameMaker Marketplace

Oddly, though, YYG have set up the checkout so that people purchasing assets for GameMaker Studio can make a donation to Creative Commons during checkout. At first, I thought that this was a donation to the asset maker, which would effectively allow a “pay what you want” model for free assets. But after clicking the Donate Now button, it became evident that it was for donating to Creative Commons, the organization that created the Creative Commons licensing. While I’m glad to see the Creative Commons organization getting support this way, it’s a bit confusing at first to someone who just wants to pay for their marketplace purchase.

Creative Commons licensing is a great idea and is exactly the right fit for the purpose here. I’m thrilled to see YoYoGames using CC licensing as another option in addition of their own license.

GameMaker Studio 2 impressions: Pricing

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[Rather than posting a long article that takes days to organize, I’m opting to do short-form posts that focus on a narrow aspect of the new GameMaker. This means more frequent, smaller posts, which will hopefully be more timely and more digestable for readers. For more articles in this series, just follow the GameMaker Studio 2 tag.]

This is all very early to talk about, and I recognize this, but a lot of people are talking about how much GameMaker Studio 2 will cost.

YoYoGames have put out their “prospective” pricing out on their website:

Currently, it looks like this:

GMS2 pricing GMS2 upgrade pricing

Analysis

First, I am very happy that YYG did not try to go with a subscription-based model with their pricing. This shows that they have listened to their users, nearly all of whom despise the idea of paying a subscription on an ongoing basis for software. For hobbyists and occasional users, it’s not a good deal to pay for a subscription if they’re not going to use it all the time and really get the value out of it.

I find that the costs are basically in line with what I was expecting. Sure, Master Collection is a few more dollars than it was when they released it 6 years ago, but guess what, that was 6 years ago. Stuff gets more expensive as time goes on. That’s how it’s always been

The upgrade discounts are reasonable. 40%-50% off is not bad for an upgrade.

I do question why certain modules are so much more expensive than others. I would rather see the Android/iOS bundle and HTML5 bundle cost the same as the Desktop bundle. The UWP an Console bundles, I can understand somewhat more, as those build targets are of prime interest to commercial game developers who, it’s understood, make money from the games they produce, and it makes sense that they should be willing to pay more for those tools, and if by paying more for them, it helps subsidize the other users, then great.

I’m sad to see no free edition, apart from the Trial edition. Depending on the limits of Trial edition, it could still be viable for hobbyist developers, but it sounds like it’s more intended as an evaluation edition to allow people to decide whether they want to pay for a real edition that can actually build games.

Community Chatter

So, predictably, most people who are talking about it are complaining that the cost is too much. That’s a subjective judgement, and of course everyone wants to pay as little as possible, and get everything for free if that were possible somehow.

Some people think that all software should be free (as in beer). Mostly, these people just don’t have enough money to afford to pay for software. They spend as much money as they have on just getting a new computer, and then they can’t believe that the cost of the software they need to run can more than double the price of the system. I sympathize, because when I was younger I was definitely one of those people, and if it wasn’t for deep discounts on student licenses, bundles that came with new hardware, and so on, I couldn’t have afforded to buy much software.

Fortunately there has always been a lot of good quality, low-cost or free software available, as well. Different products are aimed at different markets. Companies that sell to big businesses charge a lot of money for their software, in part because they can, but also because they need to, because in order to develop they need big budgets and a lot of employees. But some software is the product of a single developer, who doesn’t have all the overhead that a large company has, and they can afford to sell for a cheaper price, or even give away if they feel like it. Additionally, there are developers who feel that they get paid to program, not to sell copies of software, and they can get funded to do a project that someone who has money needs, but then turn around and give away the software as a public good, and as long as the cost of development is met by a few, everyone benefits from it.

GameMaker’s history started out with a single developer, who sold the software very cheaply at first, and always had a free edition, and a paid edition that cost $20-25. Later, as GameMaker grew, it became too much for one person to maintain, and he sold it to YoYoGames, who are a larger company, and who therefore have more overhead and need to charge more in order to cover their costs, pay salaries, continue R&D and support, and turn a profit.

YoYoGames initially raised prices, from $25 to $40, around the time of GM8, and users howled that it was too much. And we can see in retrospect what a bargain it was, and how childish people who complained back then were. GM:S has been considerably more expensive, anywhere from $70-200, although they have continued to provide a free edition. YoYoGames can’t continue to exist if they just give away software for nothing.

And YYG charge more for extra GM:S features, up to $800 for their “Master Collection” bundle which includes everything, including stuff they haven’t come up with yet, later for no additional cost. $800 is very expensive for most people, and unless you’re making money with the software, or are wealthy enough not to care, it’s probably not for you. It’s aimed at companies that can look at the purchase of software as a capital investment that is part of the cost of doing business. And if by charging more to these customers, it enables YoYo to keep costs lower for individuals, students, and hobbyists who otherwise couldn’t afford to buy what YoYo would have to sell it for, I think it benefits everyone.

Maybe low-budget amateurs will gripe about not being able to get all the features, but they do get something.

You also have to compare GameMaker against what else is out there. And there’s a lot else out there. There’s stuff that’s completely free, like vi + gcc, which is very high quality and extremely powerful, but that isn’t necessarily the best option for everyone, because it requires a huge amount of learning and knowledge and work to create games with. In more direct competition are tools that are geared specifically toward game development, such as Unity3D (which is more expensive, and uses a subscription model now) and Construct, and free tools such as Godot, Love, and Defold, which may not be as well supported, well documented, or easy to use. And many others besides these. The bottom line is, if you don’t like GameMaker because of what it costs, you have plenty of options to choose from, many of which are very good.

So for people who are complaining that it’s too much, I don’t have much sympathy for you. It’s very likely that at various points YYG will have sale events, as they’ve had in the past. If you don’t want to pay the release day price, you can probably wait a year or two and hit a Steam sale or a Humble Store sale and get it at a pretty good discount then. By that time, it will be even better, with more polish and more features. In the meantime, if you have GM:S1.x you can continue use it, it will continue to receive support and bugfixes, and 2.x will be ready for you when you decide you can afford it.

GameMaker Studio 2 impressions: New Project

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[Rather than posting a long article that takes days to organize, I’m opting to do short-form posts that focus on a narrow aspect of the new GameMaker. This means more frequent, smaller posts, which will hopefully be more timely and more digestable for readers. For more articles in this series, just follow the GameMaker Studio 2 tag.]

If I click on New Project, I have to choose between creating a Drag & Drop project or a GameMaker Language project.

GMS2: Create new project

Weird; I can’t use both in the same project anymore? [I haven’t actually created a new project yet; I don’t know. But that seems to be the implication here.]

Really, I expect that most GMS users use GML, but I’m glad that they’re keeping DnD, because for beginners and non-programmers it is much easier to learn. And it looks like they’ve really improved the Drag-n-Drop system by leaps and bounds over what it’s been up until now. (I’ll cover this in a separate post in more detail…)

But I think it’s odd that I have to pick between one or another coding system when I create my project.

Really, what I had hoped for was that there would be a “Convert DnD to GML” button that users could use, and this could facilitate learning how to code in GML by starting out in DnD, then converting to GML and seeing what it generates for you. I don’t know whether this is a feature that YYG have planned or not, if it is I haven’t discovered yet. Or, even better than a one-way conversion, YYG could have made DnD and GML completely equivalent, such that there was full coverage of the entire GML language with DnD actions, and allowed the developer to switch between views, viewing the code as visual drag and drop actions, or as GML code, and develop however they’re more comfortable at the moment.

I think this “one or the other but not both” approach could potentially cause problems, and will result in pushing users to using GML-only. When a new programmer begins to learn GML, at first they typically start out by going through a project they’ve created using DnD, and replacing the DnD actions an instruction at a time with equivalent GML. If you can’t do that in GMS2, it will make transitioning that much harder, because you would have to start a new project, and code exclusively in GML, before you’re totally ready. Rather than make a gradual transition to becoming a GML coder, the neophyte GMS2 developer will need to develop sufficient confidence in their understanding of GML to start a new project from scratch and use it exclusively.

This pretty much destroys GMS’s gentle learning curve that makes it great for first-time programmers. Update: GML-DnD conversion is exactly how it works! Right-click in the object-editor and there’s an option to convert from DnD to GML, and vice versa.

DnD to GML

GMS2 allows you to convert DnD directly to GML, and GML can be converted to DnD (it just shoves the GML code into an Execute Code DnD action, so it’s only semi-reversible).

Oddly, the DnD2GML conversion warns you that this is a one-way change, but that is apparently not the case (although converting GML to DnD simply puts the GML code into an Execute Code DnD action).

I suspect that many users look down at DnD disparagingly, but really there’s nothing wrong with using it. It’s quick, and if it’s all you need, it’s all you need. For what would be a simple, one-liner GML script, I often opt to use DnD when I’m in a hurry, because it’s expedient.

GameMaker Studio 2 impressions: Start Page

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[Rather than posting a long article that takes days to organize, I’m opting to do short-form posts that focus on a narrow aspect of the new GameMaker. This means more frequent, smaller posts, which will hopefully be more timely and more digestable for readers. For more articles in this series, just follow the GameMaker Studio 2 tag.]

Here’s what the new Start Page looks like:

GameMaker Studio 2 Start Page

Observations

  1. My display resolution is 2048×1152, and yet the Start Page still doesn’t fit all on the screen without scrolling. Wow.
  2. The top third of the Start Page is taken up by a rotating slide show of images. Personally, I find this annoying. Granted, the Start Page is not a screen I’ll be spending a lot of time looking at, but I just don’t care for the rotating images. I find them distracting. I want a dev tool, not a marketing delivery system. It’s one thing to have the “did you know” tips that provide useful information, and I of course love the news and release notes, but a image that updates every few seconds when I just want to set up a new project is a bit much for me. The images don’t do anything for me, and they take up a lot of space that could be used for something more useful.
  3. Hovering over the rotating slideshow, I noticed the cursor changed to the pointing finger which indicates I’m hovering over a hyperlink. Intrigued, I clicked, wondering what would happen. This is what happened:
    GMS2 Start Page 2Where did Getting Started and Explore go to? How do I get them back? Why did clicking the image at the top of the screen make that happen? It took me a few minutes, but I figured out that if I click the GameMaker Studio logo at the top left of the Start Page, in the transparent ribbon overlaying the rotating slideshow, it puts the Getting Started and Explore sections back.This is really weird navigation. They should just have left and right arrows at either side of the sections, or tabs.

    Start Page UI suggestion

    UI suggestion: Rather than switching between [Getting Started|Explore] and [Tutorials] by clicking on the slideshow or the GMS2 logo, which have no apparent connection to these sections, just use a straightforward left/right arrow navigation system to switch between them.


    Clicking links on the top, which aren’t even obviously links, which have no apparent relationship to the bottom half of the screen, just isn’t good UI design.
  4. I notice Start Page is a tab within the GMS2 window, but I can’t close the tab. What other tabs will appear here when I start using the software?

Vote for GameMaker Studio 2 on Linux

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I just created a Twitter poll to assess the interest in a Linux port of the GameMaker Studio 2 IDE.

One of my biggest wish list items for GameMaker Studio is to have the IDE on Linux, so I can stop being a Windows user. I’m on Windows 7 currently, and Microsoft will not support this version forever. Already they have stopped selling new computers with Windows 7. After the way Microsoft treated Windows users who were not interested in upgrading to Windows 10, using unethical, underhanded, and very likely illegal tactics to try to force Windows users to upgrade, I am not interested in ever purchasing another product from Microsoft, and my preferred platform to migrate to would be a popular Linux distro such as Ubuntu or Mint. GameMaker is the only Windows software that is holding me back.

I’ve asked on the GMC Forums if YYG intend to release a Linux port for GMS2, and currently there’s no plans to do so, but they are open to considering it if they see sufficient interest.

In 2014, then-YoYoGames CEO Sandy Duncan had teased us with the possibility that GMS2 would bring an IDE that ran on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Obviously things can change, and a lot of things have changed with YoYoGames since then. Whether or not we see a native Linux IDE for GMS2, it’s still my #1 wish list item for GameMaker.

GameMaker Studio 2 announced

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Today YoYoGames released an announcement with some details of the impending release of GameMaker Studio 2.

The biggest news in today’s release:

  1. It appears that they are not moving to a subscription model at this time. YoYo will be selling permanent licenses on a per-module basis for $99 each. There will be upgrade discounts for users who hold a paid license for GM:S1.x, for a limited time. This is very good news for casual users of GameMaker, who would be turned off by a subscription for something they don’t use all the time.
  2. At launch, the IDE will only be available for Windows, but a Mac OS X version of the IDE will go into beta shortly after launch.
  3. No word on a Linux IDE. This was something I had very much hoped would be introduced with GMS2, but at this point at least it seems like there is no plan for it. I really hope that it does happen, so I can get off of Windows.
  4. Confirmed that this is the total re-write that we’ve been waiting on for years, which has been known about for some time. Still not a lot of details on what improvements have been made with the IDE, or whether the GML programming language has changed dramatically. Ideally we’d all like old projects to import into GMS2 and just work, and we still don’t yet know whether they will. There are some significant changes to GML that will impact compatibility with old projects. No doubt this will generate a lot of complaints, but we’d also like GML to add new features and modernize so that it will be more powerful, more easy to use, less prone to bad programming, etc. So this is a balance/trade-off kind of thing. There is a porting guide to help projects that were created in 1.4 migrate to 2.0.
  5. The public Beta for GMS2 begins today, but they are limiting the number of users who have access to the beta for now. At the moment there are no slots available, but YoYo will be adding more slots gradually in the near future.

Additional information

More specific details about changes in GMS2 are available at the YoYoGames Help site.

They’ve brought back a product roadmap! I’m extremely happy to see this.

Deeper dive

Over the last few years, I had been an active contributor on the Suggestion Box subforum in the GameMaker Community Forums. Many of my suggestions were denied, because YYG interpreted the forum as being for suggestions for the 1.x line only.

This wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the forum rules, but came out after numerous ideas that I’d suggested had all been shot down with some mention of “Not feasible in 1.x” and I kept replying, “OK but I don’t care what version it gets delivered in, I still want a GM:S that works this way someday.”

It’s nice to see that one of my suggestions, to have an inheritance system for rooms, has been adopted. Reading the article on this new feature, it sounds a bit more complex than I would have expected, but it is powerful and more fine-tunable.

It should be fun to discover what other ideas from my wish list may have been made a reality in this new version.

Nintendo NX announcement: Nintendo Switch

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Nintendo just dropped their big, long awaited announcement of the console heretofore known as the NX. Now we know that the official name of the new console is Switch.

It is an impressive, ambitious design that shows Nintendo are deeply committed to innovation and reinventing how we play videogames.

Portable, handheld, yet capable of connecting to docking station, playing through a standard HDTV and acting like a full-size console, with detachable controller-handles that Nintendo calls “joy-con”. It also looks like it is very easy to do social/party games, with easy to configure multiplayer, where every player brings their own Switch and they communicate wirelessly in an ad hoc manner.

The Switch logo evokes the detatchable controllers, and looks like a yin-yang. Very cool.

Nintendo Switch "yin-yang" logo
Nintendo Switch “yin-yang” logo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5uik5fgIaI

It shows that the console is essentially like the Wii U controller with the large screen in the middle, with controls at the wings, which also serve as handles. But beyond that, the controller wings are detachable, and can be held in the hand, while the screen is propped up at some distance. Or the console/screen can be mated to a dock which allows the console to use a full size TV as its screen.

This design is so smart, it’s like something that you’d see in an art student’s senior portfolio for industrial design concepts — concepts which tend to be more whimsical or ambitious, and less practical. That it’s actually a working piece of engineering is jaw dropping. Switch is reconfigurable, almost like a Transformers toy.

I’m still digesting it, but I do think that my initial impression is that this is somewhat gimmicky and the “neato” factor will wear off unless Switch is better than everything it’s competing with in all its configurations, and not a “swiss army knife” game console that does everything but none of it better.

And that’s a really tall order. Especially considering that it’s virtually certain it won’t have the power of the PS4 and XBone. Nintendo have always done well with lesser hardware by bringing better games, though. So I think ultimately the success of Switch will hinge on the software and whether Nintendo can keep us interested in another sequel to their 30+ year old gaming franchises.

But from a practical standpoint, it may not be as fun to reconfigure and transport the thing all the time. While the “take anywhere, play anywhere, same experience everywhere” factor is pretty cool, I’ve yet to see what Switch will offer gamers that is actually new. The Wii gave us motion controls, taking a bold new direction from the then-standard gamepad paradigm, and thus offered a new way to play videogames. I’m not sure that Switch does anything like that, or what a new direction for playing games would look like. I’m even skeptical that a new direction is needed at this point, or whether an incremental evolution is all that we need. But it does impress that Nintendo have put so much thought and creativity into the design of the new hardware.

There’s also practical considerations such as the pieces becoming separated and lost, their locking mechanisms wearing out and not working securely, and so forth. This could slide the Switch more toward the gimmicky, impractical end of the spectrum, and away from the cool, does everything end.

At this point, it appears that the writing is on the wall for the DS handheld line. If the Switch is portable enough, it seems like this is the new handheld platform, and it can do more than the DS did.

It doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to offer backward compatibility with the DS library, either, since the Switch doesn’t have dual screens. We haven’t seen yet whether the Switch tablet screen is even touch sensitive (although I have to assume so) or whether it will support the 3D effects introduced by the 3DS (which at the moment I doubt). It’s possible they could emulate the dual screen DS by doing some kind of split screen windowing effect, or perhaps by using the tablet screen in conjunction with a TV. Nintendo has said that they do not intend to release any new information about Switch’s specs or capabilities until the official launch in March 2017. But if the aim was to unify the customer bases, bringing the living room and handheld markets back together, Switch looks capable of delivering.

Ultimately, whether the Switch succeeds or not will depend entirely upon the catalog of games released for it, and support of third-party game developers. If these are good, and compelling, and different from what the competition are able to offer, Switch will be another big hit.

Price is another consideration, of course. People seem to be saying that $300 is about what they feel it should be. If it turns out to be more than that, it could hurt sales. With the lackluster sales for the Wii U, Nintendo cannot afford to have a slow start with Switch. But I expect that Nintendo will bring its usual first person exclusive titles and draw fans of Zelda, Metroid, Mario, Kirby, and the rest in, almost regardless of price, so long as those games are top-notch. And from the teaser video’s snippets of the new Zelda, it looks like they’re on target.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Switch handles battery life. With separate, detatched controls, there are three different distinct units that make up the system and will need to be powered somehow. This appears complex, perhaps overly so, and may not work out as great in practice.

One of the neatest ideas I’ve seen for the Nintendo Switch is the idea of having variant joy-cons, the modular controllers that clip to the sides of the tablet-thing. If they could produce a variety of inexpensive yet high quality joy-cons with different layouts or different types of controls on them, it could open up home gaming in a big way.

One thing I miss about the early 80’s arcade was that every arcade cabinet had its own unique layout of just the right controls for that game, whether it be a joystick, buttons, spinning dials, trak balls, light guns, or whatever. Game design was more inventive back then, more experimental, as companies were trying to find out what games were, or could be. Of course in time this converged into some more-or-less standard layouts, but to this day the arcade enjoys a wider variety of control schemes.

The home console market by contrast has usually tried to offer different types of controllers, but in order to reach the widest possible market these controllers usually have to conform to a design spec enough so that the controller can be used with any game, which tends to make them all same-y. You may get a gamepad and an arcade stick, but that’s about it. Nothing crazy, like track balls and flight sticks and more exotic stuff. This changed somewhat with Guitar Hero’s unique controllers, and more so with the launch of the Wii and the Xbox Kinect. But the possibilities enabled by modular controls hinted at by the Switch are tantalizing.

But one major problem is that any unique controller that isn’t packed in with the console doesn’t get games developed for it, because the smaller install base of the unique controller makes the games market for games that work with that controller that much smaller. The NES Zapper wasn’t part of the cheapest basic package that Nintendo sold, and so the number of games developed to use the Zapper was very small — game studios wisely targeted the largest market, which was everyone who had a NES, and everyone who had a NES had a gamepad.

In any case, I’m sure this new system will get a lot of talk and attention over coming days and weeks, and more information will be forthcoming shortly.

GameMaker Studio 2 nearing release

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In the last couple of days, YoYoGames have released some teasers that seem to be signaling the immanent release of GameMaker: Studio 2.0. This long-awaited release will overhaul the GM:S GUI, which YoYo have been rewriting in modern C++, and usher in a new era for GameMaker. Beyond that, little is known, as YoYo have been pretty secretive about their plans for the future of GameMaker since being acquired by PlayTech in 2015.

My greatest hope is that GM:S2 will have builds for Mac OS X and Linux. Out of all the software I use today, GameMaker is the last product that runs only on Windows, and I am eager to move to Linux full-time.

It remains to be seen what the release will bring.

Recent purchases of GameMaker who picked it up through the Humble Bundle have been speculating about what GM:S2 will cost. Obviously, a major release isn’t going to be free. It’s typical practice for software companies to sell upgrades to existing users at a substantial discount, so I’m expecting no less.

If YYG do extend discounted upgrade pricing to Humble buyers, most of whom paid around $15, they’ll still be getting an incredible value.

The RetroUSB AVS reviewed

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My AVS arrived from RetroUSB last Friday, 9/16/16. Following up on my earlier article announcing it and some other competitors, here’s a review.

The AVS from RetroUSB.

The AVS from RetroUSB.

 

Selecting the AVS

I pre-ordered my AVS about a half hour after hearing its announcement, about after carefully reading the details and specs. While waiting on my pre-order to be shipped, I saw many skeptics on RetroUSB’s facebook page, complaining about this or that, mainly the price, or questioning the need of yet another console that plays NES games.

Many people think it’s best to play on original Nintendo hardware, on an old NTSC CRT TV, and have taken to repairing and modding their consoles for improved reliability and improved video, split-mono sound, etc. and a cottage industry has grown up around supporting these enthusiasts in keeping their original hardware running.

Still others think that having access to the entire NES catalog for free via emulation and ripped ROMs is the way to go, and that emulation is good enough that there’s no reason to spend money on games anymore.

To be fair, there have been a lot of other products over the years that have over-promised and under-delivered: Messiah’s Generation NEX, the various Retron consoles, etc. It’s fair for the market to be leery of yet another console promising the moon.

I’m not here to tell anyone how to play, or why they have to buy something new. People can make up their own minds. But I will explain why I was excited to buy an AVS, and share my experiences with it.

The most important feature that the AVS delivers, is HDMI without upscale lag. I have played my NES and Generation NEX on a HDTV, and it’s just not good. I only kindof understand why, and it’s complicated to explain, having to do with the differences between CRT and LCD screen technology, differences between the old NTSC standard and modern HDTV standards, and the fact that the NES doesn’t output a true NTSC 480i signal. This leads to visible artifacts as well as processing lag when an HDTV attempts to handle the raw signal coming through an NES.

Rather than try to explain it all, the TL;DR version is that I wanted a simple way too play NES games on a modern TV without having to educate myself to the point where I could be a video engineer.

Now that the AVS is here, it seems that they really have delivered a high-quality modernized NES that gives gamers everything they would want in a tricked-out NES: HDMI output; built-in 4-score; no problems with the 10NES lockout chip or worn out ZIF socket; and a 100% hardware, no-emulation implementation to provide full and faithful compatibility with the entire NES and Famicom libraries (with the exception of light gun games, where the compatibility is due to the TV display technology, not the console). If you happen to have a CRT HDTV that can handle 720p, however, you may be in luck (I have not tested this).

The top competition to the AVS currently are the Retron 5 by Hyperkin (not recommended, so no link), the HiDef-NES mod from Game-Tech.us, and Nintendo’s upcoming NES Classic. I covered these in a previous article, but to briefly recap:

  • The NES Classic held no interest for me at all since it does not support playing my vast, existing collection of cartridges, but it may be of interest to more casual gamers who never had (or no longer have) the original games, and want to relive 30 of the most popular NES titles, with the addition of save states. It is official Nintendo hardware, and is the cheapest option at $60.
  • The Retron 5 does HD output, but has some significant limitations, being an emulator-based solution it cannot properly handle some games, and has some ethical issues with stolen software and comes with a really, really bad controller, but on the other hand it can emulate multiple consoles. Currently it is no cheaper than the AVS, and given the choice I’d overwhelmingly prefer perfect accuracy in playing my NES library to imperfect support of multiple consoles and unethical abuse of software license.
  • The HiDef-NES mod requires you supply your own NES console, or else buy a pre-assembled one from Game-Tech if one is available for $500. On the other hand, it’s a true-hardware solution and does 1080p while the AVS does 720p, and the firmware on the mod gives you some great options including color palette choices. I’m planning on getting my top-loader modded soon, because I’m a geek like that. Also, Game-Tech have a great YouTube channel and do fantastic work repairing and modding old consoles, and deserve support.
  • Analogue NT is another modern, upgraded, high end system, and they are rebuilt from original NES components, but very expensive and not currently in production. Analogue are taking pre-orders for a new NT Mini system, at $449. Original NT’s are available on eBay for hundreds of dollars more.

Ordering

Normally, I’m leery about buying new electronics products, until I’ve heard whether they’re good or not, and to wait for 1.0 bugs to be patched.

However, with the AVS I pre-ordered as soon as I found out about it. I didn’t want to take the chance that the initial product run would sell out. I have ordered other products from RetroUSB in the past: controller adapters, mainly, and knowing the quality of these products made the decision easier.

I first heard about the AVS in early August, so my wait time was only a month. Compared with many other product pre-orders (mostly crowd funded) this was a reasonable wait. RetroUSB promised delivery by mid-September, and importantly they successfully delivered right on time.

Way to go, RetroUSB! This, and their years of presence in the retro game market, inspires a lot of confidence.

Out of the Box

The AVS comes with the AVS console, power adapter, USB cable, and HDMI cable, and owner’s manual.

Features

  • Price: $185 ($200 shipped)
  • Video: 720p wide screen HDMI output, 60Hz (NTSC) and 50Hz (PAL)
  • Audio: 48kHz HDMI output with expansion audio from carts
  • Display: Variable pixel scaling including integer options(1:1, 4:3, 5:3) with optional variable darkness scanlines
  • Carts: Front loading NES, top loading Famicom
  • Ports: Built in NES Four Score Pro, Famicom Expansion Port
  • Ports: HDMI Type A for video and audio, USB Mini B for power and data
  • Cheats: 5 cheat code slots with built in code database supporting Game Genie, Pro Action Replay, Pro Action Rocky, and raw formats
  • Online: NA Scoreboard online score system through USB
  • Updates: Upgrade FPGA configuration and menu system through USB

The AVS didn’t come with a controller, and before you start complaining — it doesn’t need to. If you don’t have your original NES controllers handy, they’re easy to find and cheap.

Mine arrived on 9/16/16, right on time for the mid-September shipping date promised by RetroUSB.

Build Quality

I didn’t crack the case for a look inside, so this is just a review of the construction of the system from an external perspective. The outer shell feels like it’s constructed from good plastic, not cheap flimsy junk plastic. The Power and Reset buttons look and feel just like real buttons from a toaster NES. The colors of the plastic are accurate to the original toaster NES. The cartridge slots grip games snugly, the controller ports plug in firmly. Everything looks and feels well made.

One thing I noticed, the AVS that I received does not have any UPC symbol or SKU number printed on the box, and the AVS itself does not have a serial number. Based on this, it appears that RetroUSB intend to be the sole distributor and seller of the system. This may be a necessity due to the power that Nintendo still has with retailers, or it may simply be that RetroUSB want to maximize profits and eliminate middleman markup.

In Use

The AVS comes with a USB cable and power plug adapter to allow you to plug it into the wall, but if your TV happens to have a USB slot on it, you can use that to power the console.

The USB port is also used for data transfer. Firmware updates are applied over USB with a PC as the host for delivering the update. I haven’t had to do a firmware update yet, but it’s nice that the device has this capability. As of this writing, the current firmware version is 1.10.

You can also use a PC with RetroUSB’s software to copy saved high scores off of the AVS, and upload them to Nintendo Age (and perhaps other participating websites).

Finally, the AVS has a Famicom expansion port on the back, meaning that you should be able to plug in Famicom devices that use this port. I don’t own any, and so am unable to test this out, but it’s very cool to have this option, and I may end up picking up some Famicom accessories in the future now that I have an easy way to play with them.

When you power up the AVS, you don’t see the game right away, but the AVS menu, which shows all the options: Start Cart, Scoreboard, Video Options, Controller Settings, and Game Genie Codes.

Start Cart will play the game currently loaded in the cartridge slot. The NES cartridge slot is very tight, and it’s difficult to pull the game out, mostly due to there being not much room to grab the cartridge with your fingers. I feel that RetroUSB could have done a little bit better here. My preference would have been for both the Famicom and NES slots to be vertical, like the top-loader NES, and lose the cover door. I suspect that RetroUSB chose to design the cartridge slots this way in order to make it impossible to have both slots loaded at the same time, but whatever the reason, I would have liked for it to be easier to remove NES carts.

Scoreboard allows you to store your high scores, which can be downloaded from the AVS over the USB port using a PC, and upload them to Nintendo Age if you want to see how your scores compare with the rest of the world. I have yet to try this, as most games that I play on the NES don’t even have a score, but it’s an intriguing feature.

The video and control options provide you with various adjustments to fine tune how your games look, and how the controllers work. The options are all fairly straightforward. You can adjust the height and width of the pixels, draw simulated scan lines for a more classic CRT look, and enable/disable extra sprites, which helps with flickering graphics that are a result of the limitations of the original hardware. The controller menu allows you to set turbo rates for the buttons, and some other miscellaneous settings.

The Game Genie codes are built-in, so you don’t have to enter them manually; just select them from the menu, and play. This is a great timesaving feature, and recordskeeping feature.

Light gun games do not work with HDTVs due to timing issues with LCD and Plasma based HDTV screens. This is not a shortcoming of the AVS. If you want to play light gun games, go with an old NTSC TV and original hardware. It might be that light gun games could work on the AVS if it is connected to a CRT-based HDTV, but CRT HDTVs are rare, haven’t been manufactured in years. If you happen to have access to a CRT HDTV, give it a try. Fortunately there were never that many light gun titles for the NES.

It may well take months or years for me to exhaustively test the AVS with my full library of NES and Famicom games, but so far everything I’ve tried with it plays. I’ve tried both the NES and Famicom slot, and both work with every game I’ve played in it so far, and, not that I claim to have a perfect memory, but I don’t notice any problems. As I continue to play games on it, if I notice anything I’ll come back and update this article.

Negatives

Accessing the AVS’s configuration menu is only possible before starting a game; you can’t change settings in the middle of play. Interrupting and going back to the menu kills the game session. This is unfortunate, but I suspect that it is a concession to making the FPGA implementation of the NES hardware as accurate as possible, and there wasn’t a way to introduce a pause-exit to AVS config-resume feature without making some concessions. If not, then who knows, there could be hope for delivering this as a feature in a future firmware update.

Quibbles

It’s hard to see this from the photos on the RetroUSB site, but the AVS is shaped like a trapezoid. There’s nothing wrong with this, really, but it was surprising to me. From the camera angles they shot it from for their site, it tricks the eye into thinking that it’s a rectangle.

RetroUSB AVS

From this angle, it is less obvious that the AVS is shaped like a trapezoid.

For aesthetic reasons, I’d prefer if it were a rectangle. It would be keeping more in the tradition of the aesthetics of the original NES. But from a functional standpoint, it really doesn’t matter.

The flip-up door cover that covers the cartridge slots is quite large. Compared with the flip-up door on the toaster NES, it’s much longer. This means that there is potential for much more leverage to be exerted against the hinge, which could make this part prone to breaking. When open, inadvertent force applied to the door could cause the hinge to snap off. Although the plastic feels sturdy enough, I will be treating the door with a bit of care.

Despite being awkwardly large, the door still will not close with a famicom game inserted into the cartridge slot. This is simply a matter of poor design. I can’t understand why RetroUSB didn’t take the time to design a console that either had two vertical slots for NES and Famicom games and no door, or a door that would work with a famicom cartridge inserted.

There is no serial number on the console anywhere that I can find. There is what appears to be a model number, but no serial number. This is pretty unusual, as just about every manufactured thing these days does have a serial number. It seems a bit un-professional not to have a serial numbering system. This could make it harder to do repairs and maintenance if RetroUSB goes through hardware revisions.

Recommendation

Highly recommended.

Shut up and take my money!

The RetroUSB AVS is everything I want in a modernized NES setup, without all the DIY complexity. For the cost of all the mod kits, time spent figuring out how to solder everything together and hope it still works, at $185 + shipping, it’s money well spent.

For people complaining that it costs this much, consider that it’s a small production run, not a mass consumer item made by a manufacturing giant. RetroUSB are hobbyists turned pro and are doing a great service to all gamers by helping to keep the NES alive and relevant.

$185 in 2016 dollars is only about $83 in 1985 dollars. If you think $185 is too much because $185 is a lot of money to you, then complain about how poor you are, not how the AVS doesn’t deliver $185 worth of value. It does.

(And, for that matter, adjusted for inflation, the $449-in-2016 Analogue NT mini is about what a $200 NES cost in 1985 dollars.)

Other reviews

  1. My Life In Gaming
  2. John Hancock
  3. RetroRGB
  4. Kevtris disassembly pt 2 pt 3

iMprOVE_WRAP 2.0 released

development, games
Comments

My GameMaker extension iMprOVE_WRAP has been updated with a new release to 2.0.0.

iMproVE_WRAP is an extension for GameMaker: Studio that provides a number of new functions that improve upon the built-in GML function move_wrap().

iMproVE_WRAP is an extension for GameMaker: Studio that provides a number of new functions that improve upon the built-in GML function move_wrap(). It allows you to define the range in the room where the wrap takes place, and draw the instance on both edges of the wrap, as well as detect collisions on both edges of the wrap.

Version 2.0.0 adds two new functions:

  • draw_sprite_wrap()
  • draw_sprite_ext_wrap()

And makes improvements to the existing functions as follows:

  • boundary wrap drawing occurs at the corners of the wrap range (8 phantom drawings rather than 4) when do_wrap_h and do_wrap_v are both true.
  • the collision functions iw_collision_wrap() and iw_collision_wrap_map() incorporate do_wrap_h and do_wrap_v parameters, and only perform collision checks where they are needed. The functions still return all potential collision variables so that there is never an undefined value, even where collisions are not checked. (Unchecked collision locations return noone.)

You can get it at the YoYoGames Marketplace or Itch.io.

Full documentation.