SNES Development Kit

JAN 2025 EDITION

This is an SDK for making SNES games. I would hope that this serves as a useful resource for SNES adventurers. Note that this is quite a low-level distribution and some of the tools have been recently updated and may not be stable.

If you're looking for something higher level and potentially easier to work with, you may want to check out pvsneslib. This lib also has much better support for C.

Either way, happy tinkering! Please open an issue if you come across anything confusing or to suggest improvements. I don't have a lot of personal time to contribute to this, so other contributions are welcome as well. All of my SNES tools are free to play with and licensed under MIT.

Prerequisites:

• python3 (with pip and venv)
• git
• make
• go

After checking out the repo, run make all tidy to install tools. The bin folder will be populated. If you're on Windows, you can easily install Make with winget:

PowerShell> winget install ezwinports.make

SNESKIT should be added to your environment pointing to the sneskit folder, no trailing slash.

Tool installations:

CC65

The cc65 folder is populated with the cc65 compiler from cc65.github.io.

The binaries should be at /cc65/bin.

bin2ca

A simple python script to convert binaries to includable assembly files.

pmage

An SNES-compatible image converter - https://github.com/mukunda-/pmage

The setup makefile will install this from source (Go).

NOTE: This is a rudimentary tool that needs a lot more work to be stable. Contributions welcome!

smconv

SNESMOD music converter - https://github.com/mukunda-/snesmod/smconv

The setup makefile will install this from source (Go).

snesbrr

A tool for converting sound files into compressed brr files (and vice versa) - http://github.com/mukunda-/snesbrr

The setup makefile will install this from source (Go).

sneschk

A python script to fix the header portion of a compiled cartridge image (SFC).

Additional Documentation

You can add these to your /docs folder:

• Fullsnes - Nocash SNES documentation. Very thorough and detailed.
• book1.pdf - Official SNES programming manual
• Programmanual.pdf - If 65816primer.txt isn't enough
• w65c816s.pdf (missing link) - 65816 datasheet

Emulators

You can populate your /emu folder with these recommended emulators

• Snes9x

  • A personal favorite.

• ZSNES

  • A very performant emulator.

• Snes9x DEBUG VERSION

  • Snes9x with additional debug capabilities.

• BSNES

  • This was up and coming as a "super-accurate" emulator back in the day. Looks to still be updated!

• SNESGT

  • Not so sure about this one...

• BSNES +DEBUGGER

  • Not so sure about this one. It's very old.

• ZSNES +DEBUGGER (missing link)

  • Another one I haven't tried.

Other useful resources/tools

• VSNES

  • SUPER useful for viewing data (like VRAM) in an emulator savestate!

• SPCTool (Missing link)

  • Very useful for SPC development.

Using SNESKIT

Getting Started

Check /templates to get started. Adjust the template files to suit your needs. Common things you might change are the cartridge memory map (HiROM is much easier to work with), linker regions, and cartridge header details (NTSC/PAL, title, speed, etc.).

Syntax Highlighting

• VS Code - ca65 Language Support
  • Extension for VS Code to support ca65.

snesmod

See example/snesmod for a basic demo. SNESMOD in general could use improvement with documentation. If you have specific questions, please file an issue and the documentation can be updated.

Note about pmage

This is in very early stages and hopefully will evolve over time into a reliable image conversion tool.

Contributions welcome!

Check the issues page for things to do.

IRC

Join #snesdev on EFNet!