Westward Ho! for NES

Westward Ho! is a clone of the Oregon Trail game for NES. We aim to implement a mixture of features/design from the Apple II and Macintosh (Deluxe) versions. The intention is to have the game ready for distribution and demonstration at VCF PNW 2021 in early 2021.

Westward Ho! is programmed in NES 6502 assembly. It is compiled using asm6f. Though we are testing the game with the Mesen emulator, we plan to produce a physical cartridge.

How to compile

Compiling on Windows

Prerequisites

• Windows 10
• Python 3.8.x (tested using Python 3.8.1)
• GNU Make for Windows 3.8.1
• asm6f v1.6 (freem modifications v02)

Instructions

1. Install GNU Make for Windows and add the bin directory to your path.
2. Download asm6f_64.exe from the latest asm6f package and put that in your path as well.
3. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/samcan/westward-ho-nes.git
4. Switch into the westward-ho-nes directory.
5. Run make.
6. This will RLE-compress the background files and compile src\westward.nes. This can be run in Mesen.

Compiling on Linux - OUTDATED

Tested in a live CD environment of Pop!OS 20.04 and in an install of Ubuntu 20.04.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.8.x (tested using Python 3.8.2)
• GNU Make 4.2.1
• asm6f v1.6 (freem modifications v02)

Instructions

1. Install python3, git, and make on your machine if not already installed. If you haven't already compiled asm6f, you'll also need gcc installed. In Ubuntu, you can install by running sudo apt install python3 git make gcc.
2. Download the latest asm6f package and unzip. A Linux makefile doesn't exist yet, but you can simply compile by running: gcc -Wall asm6f.c -o asm6f. Put the compiled binary asm6f somewhere in your path.
3. Clone the repository: git clone https://github.com/samcan/westward-ho-nes.git
4. Switch into the westward-ho-nes directory.
5. Run make.
6. This will RLE-compress the background files and compile src\westward.nes. This can be run in Mesen.

• If make can't find asm6f, you can specify its location on the command line using the variable ASM_LINUX. Similarly, you can specify the Python command using PYTHON_LINUX.

Cleaning

1. Run make clean to clean the directory of all generated files, including westward.nes.

Mesen emulation settings

We are using the following emulation settings in Mesen v0.9.9. These are changed in Options > Emulation, on the Advanced tab:

• Enable OAM RAM decay
• Randomize power-on state for mappers
• Randomize power-on/reset CPU/PPU alignment
• Enable PPU $2006 scroll glitch emulation
• Enable PPU $2000/$2005/$2006 first-write scroll glitch emulation
• Default power on state for RAM: Random Values