pubby / fabioware

Micro minigames for the NES

FabioWare

This is a community project to create a WarioWare inspired game for the NES using the NESFab programming language.

How to make a microgame

1. Download the files on this GitHub, along with NESFab.
2. Create a new folder in the microgames/ directory. Its name should follow the pattern: username_gamename.
3. Copy microgames/template.fab to this folder and rename it to microgame.fab. This file contains directions inside - just edit it!
4. Edit fabioware.cfg and microgames_list.fab to add your microgame.
5. Compile with the nesfab program.
6. Play your new fabioware.nes file!

Tips for graphics

Microgames often involve full-screen graphics without much scrolling or repetition. To create these, I like to draw the graphics in a generic image editor like GIMP, then convert them into a NES-compatible format using programs like NEXXT or makechr.

For NEXXT, you first must convert your image into a palettized BMP file. In GIMP, you can do this with Image -> Mode -> Indexed and setting the color count to 4, then saving as a .bmp file. Then in NEXXT you can do File -> Import -> Import BMP and it should load your graphics. The final step is to save the .chr using Patterns -> Save 8k, and the nametable using Canvas -> Save as Screen.