So I was having a lot of trouble with making the game know which tile Frank was on. Eventually I stumbled on the answer. I was using 8 bit variables. Their values go from 0-255. The y position of Frank in the equation I was using goes beyond 255. So I tried making the 8 bit variables be 16 instead. I didn't want to since their values go to way more than I needed. Too bad I can't use 9 bit variables. Well, that made it work. If only I had known this when I made GoSub.
I made some cacti.
I know. I could make it for the Game Boy Color and have it be really colorful. But I'm not going to so people who don't have a Game Boy Color can play my game. The Atari 2600 even beats out the number of gray shades the Game Boy can produce. Ergo, a scene where, say, a pineapple sitting in the middle of the desert doesn't look as good as it could. This is the best I could do:
If the pineapple looks familiar, it's because it's the same one from the title screen of my Atari 7800 game "Pi
I went and returned to work on my canoe game since someone posted good things about it on the videopac.nl forums, which I just learned will be closing in April. I'm wondering whether I should buy it to keep it open. But I don't know how much it would cost.
Anyway, once I got it working, I tested it on a real Odyssey 2. It still had some problems. So I went back to work on it. Now I think all the problems are gone. I had to fix some things to make everything appear on the screen. Appa
I decided to make the pages of my banana joke book the same as a Goosebumps-like book. I am using Libre Office to type up the jokes. Because Microsoft Word costs money. While this means it will be harder to print on my printer I think the quality will be better. That and I can use more pages. I'll have to cut the sheets out when I print them because they're smaller than 8.5 x 11 inches. So here's today's banana joke.
Why was the young banana yearning to grow older? He was green with
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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.
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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).
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
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