Jump to content
  • entries
    4,963
  • comments
    2,719
  • views
    1,810,656

About this blog

My thoughts on everything.

Entries in this blog

Weird things going on in Area 51.73

Worked on Frank the Fruit Fly today. I spent almost all morning on it. It's after 11 a.m. and I think I have this screen done. This marks the first time I'm using random numbers in the game. Frank just got near Area 51.73. And the aliens stored in it aren't liking him. So they're trying to zap Frank with ray guns. The lasers move vertically, starting at a random x position. Frank has to maneuver in the "maze" to the right to get to the next screen. The maze was hard to do. I tried once

Banana joke book update.

So lots of time yesterday was spent working on my banana joke book. So not to suffer a computer death and losing all my jokes, I have it backed up on an SD card. Right now I am working on the third page. It's quite easy to make tasteful jokes about the banana. But I'm thinking I may make some more jokes about other fruit and make it "the fruit salad joke book." But that's if I can't think of any more banana jokes. Here is a sampling of my jokes I've made so far today.   What’s old, har

atari2600land

atari2600land in personal stuff

My new pet project

I'm still working on Frank the Fruit Fly when the urge strikes. But my new project is a side one. And it's not really a video game at all. It's this: I've began work on a new joke book. What made me decide to do this? It is nearing Halloween (it's the first day of Fall), so I got out my annual Garfield joke book. It's a Halloween tradition of mine to read it. It's called "Garfield's Big Fat Scary Joke Book." It's a paperback about the size of a Goosebumps book, or a little smaller. So

atari2600land

atari2600land in personal stuff

Frank the fruit fly - 9/21/2022

I had a tough time yesterday. I couldn't get to sleep when I wanted to. Didn't actually fall asleep until after 3 p.m. I discovered when I'm half-asleep and, say, dreaming I'm playing the keyboard, my fingers actually move. Kind of odd. Before I went to sleep, I made some great changes to Frank the Fruit Fly. I fixed all the stuff I was having trouble with.   I woke up at about 1 a.m. and went back to work improving what I already had to the game. I made it so at the screen with t

I give up Odyssey 2 programming

Not only am I giving up this time, but I am giving up on all other times. The Odyssey 2 isn't cooperating with me, so I guess I'll give up making games for it ever again. It can't cooperate with me, so I guess I'll have to give up forever on Odyssey 2 game making because it doesn't want to work. And to make sure, I'm going to delete all the programs I use to make Odyssey 2 games. Stupid, but necessary. Because I hate life. Tomorrow I guess I'll go back to coding Frank the Fruit Fly. At

atari2600land

atari2600land in personal stuff

New Odyssey² project: Dynamorb

This wizard is under attack by lots of mean evil creatures. What's more he's stuck inside different mazes! His only protection is the Dynamorb, a big ol' orb of force he can summon and hurl at those dumb enemies. (You'll have to use your imagination a little.)   So I added shooting the Dynamorb into my game. To throw the Dynamorb, you just press Action. I mean, how easier can it get? I had a version, but shooting diagonal was a little wonky, so I fixed it. I tried adding a ra

A new Odyssey² project possibly.

Someone over on the videopac.nl forums suggested someone make Wizard of Wor for the Odyssey². The same guy who suggested someone make Turmoil, which I did and renamed it "Tunnels of Terror," so I decided to try to attempt to bring Wizards of Wor for the Odyssey². One problem: I've never played Wizard of Wor before.   That, however, did not stop me from going ahead and working on a new game involving a guy going around in a maze. If Wizard of Wor doesn't work out, I could always turn it

Jeff Minter Classics title screen questions

Here are some questions I have about the title screen for Jeff Minter Classics for the Atari Jaguar.   1. Do llamas really sound like sheep? The title screen has sheep baaing and at first I thought that might be the llama making a baa sound, but then I thought, "Well, llamas don't make a baa! sound..." or do they?   2. What is the computer voice saying during the intro music? It sounds like it's saying "Earth-crushing deeds." It's like the Pin-Bot paradox. As a kid, I had Pin

atari2600land

atari2600land in Jaguar stuff.

Chris Plays - Ms. Pac-Man

I found an error in the instruction manual. It says the between levels animation is in the game. Well, I can say it's not. Liars. Last time I played Pac-Man. And I think I like it better than Ms. Pac-Man. Ms. Pac-Man is just too hard. I played the game with two ghosts and got a score of 100,000. But with all four ghosts on, the best I could do was reach the third maze with 20,000 before I die. The problem is the red ghost. He moves too fast. And so does the pink one. They move faster than M

Sound effect

So I thought of a way I could have a four note sound effect play during the music and not have the music start over when it's finished. I don't understand how it works though. But I like the way it sounds, so I'll be keeping it in. I am having trouble though understanding why it works. I guess if three channels are on all the time it's fine. Especially since if I turn channel 3 off, it won't turn back on for a second press of the button. So I had to leave channel 3 on but mute it.   No

Today (September 11, 2022)

Today is almost over. I went to sleep last night at around 12:30 a.m. I woke up at about 2 p.m. I took my pills and then decided I was so sleepy I needed more sleep. So I went back to sleep for a few more hours. That put it to about 5 p.m. I worked on Frank the Fruit Fly for the first time in a few days. I thought the game was working perfectly last time I worked on it, but no. When I beat level 1 without saving, level 2 started with the health being 99 (despite me changing perfect health to 100

Sorry.

I'm sorry if the last blog entry turned out to be so selfish. I was just angry because I thought it was the whole outage area. Of course I don't want wildfires to start, but I thought that turning everyone's power off would be overkill. But that isn't the case, my power is still on (for now). Especially since it doesn't appear to be that bad of a windstorm as they expected, at least here. So again, sorry about my ranting about that.  

atari2600land

atari2600land in personal stuff

PSPS

So stupid PGE (Portland General Electric) has decided I live in a high-risk area for a wildfire starting, so they may shut off my power for 24-48 hours. I highly doubt any wildfire will start around here, and even if it did, I want my f***ing electricity. How many wildfires have started in a metro area ever? Any? So it looks like I may need to bust out my Game Boy and let the rest of the entire world run while I sit here in the dark for no good reason.   You know what I think? I think

atari2600land

atari2600land in personal stuff

Goodbye, Zoe

Just got back from having my dog put to sleep. Like I said in the pet death thread, it will feel real weird with no dog here, and I doubt we'll get another one. So now it's just mom, me, and the various insects flying around that are in this house now. I doubt I will be able to work much now without my dog for a few days while I get adjusted to a dogless life. I'm trying hard not to cry very much, but there's tears in my eyes and my stomach hurts. And of course they had to mow the lawns today wh

atari2600land

atari2600land in personal stuff

An idea.

While laying in bed trying to go to sleep, I had an idea to try and make Frank work again. So I got up and began coding. Then some more ideas came to me while I was coding, so I put them in too. And then I had a working version again. Although it automatically saves your progress when you enter a level for some reason I don't know. The problem was the variables. I had put them in in a way the computer didn't like. So I put them all in bank 0 and then called them when necessary in other banks wit

I give up yet again

I have to give up on another project. This time it's Frank the Fruit Fly. I can't get the health timer to work correctly. So I'm done. I've had it. Working on it any further will not be fruitful because my computer is being a stupid jerk.   My dog is dying. She won't eat very much. It's a slow and painful death apparently. If I ever get the chance to die, I'd like a fast death with very little suffering. Or a lot. I don't care. What is more suffering? Just as long as I get to die at th

atari2600land

atari2600land in personal stuff

Icicles

So I went ahead and made the screen I mentioned earlier I didn't like. And now I am officially out of ideas for level 2. Which isn't good because I need some more screens for it. I have the room, so I figure why waste it and having the level be shorter?   Anyway, here's the screen. The icicles will fall down if Frank gets too close to them. I also tidied up the igloo, in the off-chance that this may get published when I get done with it. The top ice blocks of the ig

Frogs.

I took some time yesterday to put another screen in the game. But now the bank for level 2 stuff is 75% filled and takes about a minute to compile. I couldn't sleep, I ended up going to sleep at about 9 p.m. or so. Woke up at about 10 a.m. The frog jumps on the ice blocks trying to get Frank. Frank needs to make his way over without touching the frog's tongue. The frog consists of 6 sprites. It could have been three, but I chose SPRITES 8x8 at the beginning because Frank isn't all that

Text on a light gray background.

I found a bug related to entering the igloo. It involved pressing A and having Frank freeze in place if he doesn't enter the igloo. So I fixed it. I also thought it would look much better if the text was on a light gray background. But how do I do that? My solution was to make a new font with a light gray background instead of a white one. So now I think it looks better. So now since I have about only half of level 2 filled, I will take a few days to think about what else to put i

An easy solution.

So I finally tested a way I got told of yesterday. Turns out it works great, and it is better than what I tried with the unsigned char list of changed values since it doesn't use them. I'm posting it here in case I need it again. I used it again in the level 1 screen where the wall disappears. This is what I did in level 1: fill_bkg_rect(10, 2, 2, 13, 0x50); fill_bkg_rect(11, 15, 1, 1, 0x57); fill_bkg_rect(x starting point, y starting point, x width, y height, tile to change to).  

the return of Frank again.

After getting tired of the potato chip game, I'm putting it on the back burner until I am ready to work on it again. Today I'm working on Frank the Fruit Fly. This is what I did so far today: The goal of this screen when it is complete, is to eat the carrot nose of the snowman. The snowman will then disappear and Frank can go on. Right now I'm trying to figure out an easy way to do this. Which it has become apparent that'd be hard. So to test the snowman going away, I have ma

Chris Plays - Pac-Man

This whole blog topic started when I was looking through my Atari 2600 manuals and found a Pac-Man one. It listed the ghosts as being GHOSTS and the pellets have turned to wafers. So after reading the manual I decided to take a new approach on 2600 Pac-Man. I wanted to see what it was like with the "walking" ghosts and the "fast" Pac-Man.   I was not born when Pac-Man first came out. So I can't remember playing Atari 2600 Pac-Man for the first time back in the day, probably was around

Potato Chips En Masse - August 28, 2022

So I was looking for an AC adapter for my Atari 2600. I found something that I thought was what I had used before. So I plugged it into my Atari 2600 and turned it on. Nothing. I thought perhaps I fried my Atari 2600, but I didn't smell the usual "burnt electronics" smell that occurs. I was trying to test the colors of my potato chip game on an Atari 2600 since the colors on my 7800 made the mountain look hot pink, which wasn't correct. So I went to sleep and woke up 12 hours later. Digging arou

atari2600land

atari2600land in Atari 2600

Sleep to the rescue

While I was working on my game this morning, I had an eyeache. It got so bad I had to stop what I was doing, run to the bathroom, and vomit out all I had eaten since when I woke up at 10 p.m. This was at about 6 a.m. About an hour later, I had to quit. It seems like the only thing that makes my eyeaches go away is sleep. So I tried to take a little nap. It took about an hour to go to sleep because I wasn't really all that tired yet. Sure enough, when I woke up, I felt better.   Continu

atari2600land

atari2600land in Atari 2600

The "Potato Chips En Masse" website

The latest version of Potato Chips En Masse will always be on its website I just made yesterday. I intend to fully finish this game even though it probably won't be released anywhere. I guess my games like "Uncle Hairy's Nosehair" aren't good enough. Or too weird or too gross or something. So I decided to make a game about junk food. It's not gross. I just had a Whopper from Burger King yesterday and it wasn't gross. It was delicious. The Whopper is the best fast food burger out there. But back

atari2600land

atari2600land in Atari 2600

×
×
  • Create New...