Devlog #4

October 18, 2025

Short one today. I'm working on a piece of promo art. No idea if it's gonna be the final "cover" but I like it. This is a color mockup for the version I want to create in watercolor, for that authentic hand-painted cover art appeal of early games.

Devlog #3

October 4, 2025

Ok this one snuck up on me. Today I'm gonna talk about the visual choices I made making an NES-style game.

Working Within Aesthetic Limitations

So it was really important to me that Ruby Rust really feels like an NES game. A big part of this game is the feeling of nostalgia that you get from playing the NES, and that shapes the look of the game. But I'm not making an actual NES game, I'm making it with GameMaker so I can choose which limitations I want to stick to and what to ignore. Overall my philosophy is to stay true to the NES limitations, as long as it doesn't make development significantly harder.
And there's an advantage here, I can make art a lot faster, a fraction of the time it usually takes me! It was actually fun trying to discover my own style within the limitations. I've had to go against my instincts to make everything as pretty as possible and instead embrace the little quirks!

Limits I Chose To follow

  • Resolution. Game area is 256x240. I wanted to keep a 4:3 aspect ratio (8:7 if we're being pedantic). I considered a 16:9 ratio but it just doesn't feel like an NES game anymore.
  • Overall Palette 64 colors. I stuck to this one mostly. I looked at a list of NES palettes that were in use, and found one that looked nice. It had some repeated colors in the palette, so I decided to use some of those spare slots to add some of my own colors!

  • Sprite Color Palettes. For NES, each 8x8 tile can only contain 4 colors, including transparency, so effectively 3 colors. I chose to stick to this for most sprite art. Some sprites do have more than 3 colors, but this occurs in some NES games as well, using sprite layering.
  • No Tile Rotations. Tiles flip horizontally and vertically, but avoiding rotations overall (any "rotations" on NES would just be additional sprites, so it's not impossible). Definitely NO rotations outside 90° increments!! Never!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Limits I Chose To Ignore

  • Sprite Limits. NES hardware only allows a certain number of sprites onscreen at a time (I think 8). I chose not to worry about it, I'm not sure exactly how I'd track it anyway.
  • Screen Palette Limitations. You are only allowed to use 8 palettes onscreen at once and only 25 colors onscreen overall. This would be difficult to track and probably not that noticeable.
  • Overall Tile Limitations. Most NES games have a limit of 256 8x8 sprite tiles and 256 8x8 background tiles. I might still be under this limit but I haven'r been keeping track, I just doubt it's even noticeable if I'm being honest.

Things I'm undecided on

  • Sprite Flicker. I would love to find a way to implement this effect occasionally, as it really conveys how primitive NES hardware feels. But I do worry about the fact that it can sometimes be hard on the eyes, especially if you have photosensitivity. I could potentially include as an optional visual effect that would you could opt-in on the settings screen.
  • Slow-down. In Legend of Zelda, sometimes things kinda slow down when a lot is happening. It honestly never really bothered me that much, it gave you a little extra time to react and it was kind of dramatic. Like... bullet time? ...Bullet Bill time? Eh, wrong game.

I also plan on adding CRT and TV overlays, warm muffled sound and other fun little tricks to invoke that warm, familiar feeling. But that's another devlog!

This game can't play on real NES hardware but I'll find a way to play it on a real wooden TV, just you wait and see!!

Helpful links about NES hardware capabilities

https://noelberry.ca/posts/nes/index.html
https://www.nesdev.org/wiki/PPU_palettes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfh0ytz8S0k

Devlog #2

September 21, 2025

School takes up a lot of time, but I managed to get a few hours to work on the game. Here's what I did:

Boring Stuff: Refactoring!

I capitalized some enums! Then I accidentally made a mistake find-replacing a variable name and it took 25 minutes to fix! So I stopped refactoring and worked on something more fun and stress-relieving.

Fun stuff: Cool Bombs!

In addition to Classic Bombs, I've add two new bomb types, Line Bombs and Cross Bombs! These bombs align to the grid and they have deadly explosion patterns, Cross Bombs explode in a four-sided cross and Line Bombs blow up in the direction you place them. In the future maybe I'll make some remote bombs.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Devlog #1

September 8, 2025

Alright, this is my first official development log post for Ruby Rust! First off, here's a video I posted recently that shows the gameplay through a randomly-generated map.

Where are we at? Why can't I play this yet?

I've been working on Ruby Rust all summer. Right now it's a playable game with a solid loop, but it's a little too easy and not fun enough. While I have considered releaseing this version to trusted people for bug testing, I think right now it's a little boring. It needs more content. And it needs to be weirder.

Timeline

So, the current situation is that I just started my 3rd semester of my Computer Science education. This is supposed to be the most challenging semester of my program, so, unsurprisingly I will be prioritizing school. However, I still plan on working on the game, at least 3 hours a week, wherever I can find the time. AND to stay accountable to that, I have a little plan:

Devlog Challenge!

To keep myself committed to working on my game (AND commit myself to talking about it, something I have a lot of difficulty with for some reason), I am challenging myself to post a devlog every 2 weeks! The devlog will be me reporting on the work I've done on the game. And here's the kicker: if I do not post the devlog in time? I release the game project for free as open source. If this becomes an unfinished project for me, I'm not letting it just sit on my HD gathering dust. All this work should be for something!
But truthfully I don't want that to happen. It's difficult to promise particular features by certain dates BUT I can commit to working on it when I can. And after December I will have more free time again!

Well there's a lot more to say but we'll keep it short and sweet for now. See in (at most) 14 days!