Ever since I upgraded my main computer to MacOS Catalina, I've been spending a lot of time recently trying to find alternatives to NES Screen Tool and Famitracker. WINE no longer works on Catalina due to the removal of 32-bit app support, and running a virtual Windows machine through something like Virtualbox is very clunky. Thankfully, after much searching, I found cross-platform ports of both programs that use the Qt framework. My new tool recommendations are:

NESTool - "aims to be a better NES Screen Tool", has all of the NES Screen Tool features that will be used in the book

Qt FamiTracker - part of the NESICIDE toolkit, a port of FamiTracker's code to cross-platform Qt

Are these tools perfect? No. NESTool's metasprite features don't currently work, and Qt FamiTracker can occasionally crash without warning. Additionally, both tools currently have to be built from source, but I plan to create binaries for Mac, Linux, and Windows eventually. Nevertheless, they are both extremely convenient for users who are not on Windows, and they are going to be my main tools going forward.

I'll be spending time re-working earlier parts of the book to use NESTool, and it will be used in the upcoming background graphics chapter as well. Thanks for your patience, and please let me know how the tools above work for you if you decide to give them a try!

As always, please send any feedback to kevin@famicom.party. Until next time...