I didn't mean to sleep all day yesterday. I broke my sleeping record by sleeping for 21 hours straight. I didn't mean to. I was awake for most of my birthday, so I got to sleep at about 9:30PM. Then I woke up at about 7PM. I went back to sleep at 7:30PM and slept for a few more hours, waking up at about midnight tonight.
After I woke up, I decided to work on Frank the Fruit Fly again. I made a fireplace. The fire will be on most of the time. When it's not, that's when you can go in t
Yesterday and today I spent a lot of time working on Frank the Fruit Fly. I'm back to working on this again.
This first one was kind of easy since it was just avoiding the large flies (Frank, after all, is a smaller fruit fly.)
Art imitates life. I got the idea for this screen after ants were crawling around my desk in my room. So I put in a messy table with ants crawling around on it.
The first version of the couch wasn't very good, so I wanted to redraw it. I like this
That darn bug will not get squished. I was playing it and I noticed something: It only happens on a first run-through. Meaning if I clear it and then start back, it won't happen. So I have to close the emulator and open it back up every time I clear the room. So I tried yet another thing to try to stop it from happening. After about 10 times of exiting the emulator and opening it back up, it hasn't happened yet.
I don't know why it happens, so I don't know how to stop it. All I know
Another bathroom idea. This time it's for a new room in Frank the Fruit Fly. I spent a few hours coding and it's now in the game.
The game froze after exiting the level again. So I tried something new that I hope will work. I deleted a bit of code. It's really odd that it doesn't do that all the time. Why wouldn't it? I don't know.
The game will have at least one "exclusive" screen. All the others I've had to steal from the Pokemon Mini version.
I was thinking a
It's not something you would want to do when your air quality is "Unhealthy". So I'll be keeping them closed. But the house in Frank the Fruit Fly has windows that are opening and closing. Your job is to get into the house when the window is open.
The reason why the window is so thin is due to Game Boy technical reasons. Originally the plan was to have the window be twice as wide, and have 8 sprites make up the window. But the fly kept disappearing over the left side of the window due
So I finally found the registration code for my Anvil Studio print sheet option which I had to pay $40 for a long time ago. And I finally realized the way to put it in so it's usable. And I like it much better than the original, it looks much more like "official" sheet music (whatever that means). This had way more options, like how big the notes are, how many can fit on a line, etc. And I experimented until I got a part to fit on one page. I attached what I got it to look like here.
I took some time to finish level 4 of Frank the Fruit Fly. The gist of the next two screens is: Frank is always moving right, no matter what you do. Your job is to avoid the spikes in the wall by going up or down (depending on which screen you're on.) Once you get past the second of these screens, you'll finish level 4. But since I haven't programmed anything about level 5 in yet, it'll just go back to the title screen.
If you touch the pointy wall, Frank will lose 5 (!) health point
So I put in the blank screens. I thought they looked boring, so I added tiny harmless fish that swim by.
I went to my local game shop. I got a Game Boy game. I didn't want to leave empty handed since it was hard to get there, so I walked out with a copy of Jurassic Park. I either had the others or they were just stupid sports titles. The Sega CD is still there, with a price tag of $460. They seem to price everything bananas.
Then I stopped at Burger King and got a yummy Whopper, t
I worked on Frank the Fruit Fly some more. The pain in my right wrist seems to have almost disappeared, which is good because it is annoying when I type. I don't have very many ideas left for level 4, so I'll probably put in a few "blank" screens which I've done since I worked on level 1. Right now I have 5 screens where something happens, I'd like to think of at least one more and then put in two blank screens and then begin work on level 5: the city.
I used a screen that I had in t
So I tried to play Frank the Fruit Fly on my Game Boy Everdrive. It just wouldn't work. No matter what I did it wouldn't work. So I went on Discord for help. Everything seemed to be correct. But it was someone who mentioned trying to set up my Everdrive's options manually. That's when it all clicked and worked correctly. I lost a micro USD card in the process, It flew out of the slot and I never did find it. That's the second time it happened to me. I never did find the first one either. Perhaps
Today I went back to work on Frank the Fruit Fly. I worked so hard, I think I have carpal tunnel on my right hand, it hurts at the base of it. I added in fish. Then I discovered it wasn't going from level 3 to 4. So I spent over an hour on just that, trying to make it link. Eventually I did. Then I fine-tuned the fish to make sure they were where I wanted them to be.
Then I fine-tuned the collision detection so it detects whether Frank touched the fish or not. For all the fish doing is
So I thought since I bought a 5200 that I should clean up a space in my room for it. I put my X-box, PSP, and Dreamcast games outside my room. When I get around to it I will put them in the garage. I was looking at that comic I drew and thought I should clean up the letters so it's more legible. I really want to keep my handwriting in since most comics have what looks like writing instead of typing.
Even though I didn't really feel like it, I worked a little bit on Frank the Fruit Fly. I be
I ate fried squid at a Chinese buffet once. It tasted like you'd expect. I liked the fried part. They are hard to draw. In the Pokemon Mini version of the game, I drew what I thought was a good looking squid (well, as good looking as I could make one.) I tried to duplicate it yet making it look different at the same time. I don't really like this version of the squid, but seeing as how I achieved everything I wanted to do while drawing it, it will stay in the game.
Now that I actually
I went to sleep at about 8 p.m. I was so sleepy for some reason. Usually I don't get to sleep until about midnight. And I woke up at around noon. I don't mean to sleep 16 hours, but then again, if I didn't need to, I would get up. I don't know.
While I was up, though, I worked on Frank the Fruit Fly. It took less than a month to complete level 3 programming. Today's job was to put in the beginning of level 4. I made a soothing tranquil (IMO) song for underwater, because level 4 will
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
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
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
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
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
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).
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord