The Intellivision is way better than the Odyssey2. Due to the fact it has INTVBasic on it. So I decided to ditch the Odyssey2 version and work on it for the Intellivision. I was still having trouble with the UFO missiles and was wondering a few things, but I got them worked out. I don't do anything special for Easter, so I can devote all my time to whatever I want. I'm saying that like I want to devote my time to being angry. Bah. I played Mario Kart 8 Deluxe for the Switch a few days ago. D
Apparently the music I made isn't music at all, but an album of Romanian phrases, that is, according to Windows Media Player. It gets the craziest album info from heaven knows where and associates them with the CDs I made. So I had to tell it to stop doing that. And add my own album info. I thought I had done that, but I had to do it a second time, this time to stop it from doing that when I put in an album to rip to my computer. I got extremely bored so I thought I'd see if the album info for d
So I was thinking about what I could do about Frank the Fruit Fly and saving. Then it occurred to me: Passwords. But how could I do passwords when I have the health to worry about? Incorporate them into the password. So I made a password screen to enter the passwords in. Pressing B at the title screen makes Frank move left and goes to the password entry screen. This is just a test, I was planning on making it better looking, but I don't know how. At the beginning of the second level a password
So I worked a little bit on MidSpace for the Odyssey 2 the past few days. I added in a couple things. One thing I added in was missiles that move towards you to try and get you. Every UFO can shoot these. My original plan was to have each UFO stick to shooting one type of missile, but I couldn't get it to do that. So instead, each UFO can shoot both types of missile during one attack. I think this makes the game harder. Another thing I worked on was the left/right movement. Since the introduct
Another day, another programming adventure. This one wasn't very long though, as I am kind of getting tired of this game. I changed the way the UFO looks. It is now green with a purple center. The purple center is a character. In order to not have characters collide, I changed the star pattern (the stars are characters). It looks like a pattern going horizontal, but I try to differ the stars' Y positions so it looks random enough. Perhaps a few days of not working on it will make me want to work
I was bugged by this. So bugged that I had to move the screen down a little bit more. Because the star kept twinkling when the game ended. But then I got to thinking: There has to be a reason for this. The reason was the game was working too hard. So I tried to move the star up a little so the screen didn't look strange with everything below. It took at least 3 hours of work, but I made it so the star doesn't twinkle when the game starts. I kept on using the C7050 cartridge over and over again
So it took way longer than expected to come to this point. I was having trouble trying to get the fire button to not fire when it hit the enemy. All that other stuff, enemy adding, noise adding, was fairly easy but this took at least a few hours and many reattempts. But I finally got it working. Odyssey 2 coding is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle, because of the small sections. And the only way to jump from section to section is with the "jmp" command. And if some code spills into
I had been meaning to do this for some time. I woke up at 3 a.m. to discover my computer was installing updates. So when that was done, I went back to work on my new Odyssey 2 game I am making. I am porting my MidSpace game I made for Game Boy to the Odyssey 2. I tried it with batariBasic, but it just didn't feel right. That, and I already have a project that uses that I'm working on (White Water Madness). So I thought to myself, "I needed an Odyssey 2 project." And this seems like a perfect fit
For the first time in at least a few years, I got out my Microvision collection to see if it still works. I have two consoles. There was a 9-volt battery in one of them, so I put it in the right space and turned it on. A couple of random pixels. I turned it off and back on again. Nothing. I tested the other unit. The same problem. Could it be that both of them died in storage? Then I thought of something to try. I went and got a new 9-volt battery and put it in. I got a 180 score in Bowling. I
So I made a font. Well, what I did was modify a font. I had to spend an unholy fortune and search and stuff to find the right program for me, one that will let me import images and make them be letters. I doubt the guy who made the original font is still around and can be contacted (the font was copyright 1992, 93.) So I don't really know what to do with my modified font. Can I post it on my website? Is it abandonware? What started this whole thing was someone replied to my font query from WhatT
So I took a chance and gambled and bought a disc game off eBay. It came despite slow shipping. The guy waited a few days to mail it out, which I understand, but if you are selling stuff on eBay, you really should ship it ASAP. I got another X-Box game. This one is, well, you know. This is not the same Tetris as I was used to. I guess I am a Tetris purist, but it should keep going until you reach the top. Not so in this version. After a certain amount of lines, the game ends and says "You won."
So I went back to work on trying to improve my Golf game. I think I got rid of a ball movement bug and added a visual representation of the power meter. When the gauge reaches the white dot, it's full power. So in the screenshot below, it's about 1/3 power. I also changed the number 1 from a straight line to look more like a number 1 and not a straight line so people wouldn't confuse it with something that might be for the power meter if they're on hole 1. I've been working on this all mornin
Last night I was up all night because I wasn't tired. So I decided to work on my Golf game. I added a hole. I fixed a few things. That took a long time. I tried putting in borders, but it looked ugly so I decided against it. I tried sleeping at about 1:30 a.m. but gave up once it hit 2 a.m. That plus I thought of another idea for a hole. So I put the hole in and now there's three holes. I broke the 2k barrier so now the game is 4k. Weird stuff kept happening, but I want it to end because I don
My stupid computer has developed a habit of resetting itself when I'm trying to work on something. Last night, I was testing the game on MESS when it decided to restart itself. Luckily, I had the game saved, so I didn't have to redo anything, but I fear the day will come when I'm working feverishly and it decides to do that right in the middle of programming this game. I added the power meter, the guy positions himself at the ball when it stops moving, and, new for today, added a little song t
You're probably thinking, "Hey, what happened to version 2?" Well, I had some more extra time so I thought I'd put a score in. In version 2, I added a stream, the hole (which unfortunately has to be red), and hitting the ball. I thought I'd make another version of Golf after thinking about how I would go about doing this. So it will not be like the Atari 2600 and Odyssey 2 versions after all, but a new approach (no pun intended). What you do now is line up the club to the ball and press fire.
Just me fooling around with Channel F programming. I wanted to make a game and thought "What can I make a game about that primarily uses the colors blue, red, green, and white?" Then it occurred to me: Golf. This is the result of a couple of hours: The guy can move anywhere on screen, but he can't hit the ball. I don't know if I can continue work on this or not. But I'll try. I tried to make an all-brand new file, but it wouldn't work, so I ended up changing another file that was working to thi
I have an eyeache again. It's 3 a.m. I began work on my third MIDI, this time it's one of the 19-minute-long song "The Caves of Anamnesis" by a band called Spiral. I've never heard of them. And the only reason I have now is because of the long song list. I wanted to do a long song about the same length as the first two and put the three together in an "album" of sorts. So that's what I've been doing. I'd show the cover but it's 300kb large and I don't want to clutter up the AtariAge server with
Another ant-filled day here at the Read residence. Mom keeps saying she thinks Terro traps and Terminix are enough. Yeah. I'm beginning to think she's enjoying the ants all over the kitchen counter. Like that old Far Side cartoon where the kids are enjoying the fact that the slugs are back: I'm not in a very good mood. I tried to get saving progress in Frank the Fruit Fly and failed miserably. She refuses to do anything about the ants, citing multiple inane reasons. So you'd think she'd be a
So I went to Wal-Mart to get Yoshi's Crafted World. Wal-Mart is the closest place to me that sells video games, so when I want a video game, I usually go there. I looked and looked at the cages and couldn't find it. So then I looked a second time. There, up in a corner on the highest shelf, was the game. After waiting for a few minutes while the lady there was ringing up someone else, she got the game for me and rang it up. $59.88, which meant I got a dime and 2 pennies back. Like I'm going to u
So with Yoshi's Crafted World coming out for the Switch, I decided to make an issue of Nintendo Power. What I forgot though was that not only did I make one 6 years ago in 2013, I made three. So this will be the fourth one. It's easy to forget things you did 6 years ago when your computer keeps crashing every couple of years. It's a wonder I've had mine for 3 years now. *knocks on wood* Anyway, issue 4, May 2019, will have a review of Yoshi's Crafted World in it. I even made a cover and the fir
I was looking through AtariAge and noticed the thread where they were talking about trying to make the Odyssey be an online system. it prompted me to get out my Magnavox Odyssey and test it. Found 6 C batteries, put them in, and the console still works. It's amazing because it was released 47 years ago! Then I remembered I was going to release a game for it but never got around to it. Well, I decided that I should do it now. I had to remake the instructions because it had a copyright of 2016 (!)
I finally got the snow to fall randomly. I was wondering if there was a value that was happening psuedo-randomly all the time since the beginning, like a register. Turns out there was. While I was at it, I also composed and added a new song for level 2. it's hard to compose little tunes when you only have one audio channel to work with. A second one would have made a world of difference. I guess Nintendo didn't really try really hard when designing, making, and selling the Pokemon Mini. Which th
I thought of an idea for Frank the Fruit Fly, so I decided to implement it. It took a few hours to figure out the collision code for the walls, but it was done. This was yesterday. Today I decided to play it to try to get a better picture of it. I noticed that the snowflake was only health subtracting causing if it fell on him. Since I wanted him to subtract health if he bumped into it, I looked at the snow falling code. Sure enough, I had made a small mistake. I used "add" twice instead of "add
I worked really hard and wore myself out working on the 19-minute-long MIDI composition. I went back to that website to convert it to MP3, and the result was it was longer than the MIDI. I had to make a special version of the MIDI (sped up) to make it the correct length. I went to check out the other one I had done, and it mysteriously slowed down as well, so I had to speed up the other one to make it the correct length as well. It was quite the challenge to do, so it's not really perfect, and
So I've decided to take a break from Billy the Ball to focus more on some other stuff. I have all these projects I do to keep myself busy. It's quite possibly the only reason I don't watch all that much TV. This time, I've decided to try and make a MIDI of the Incredible String Band song's "Ithkos" off the 1974 album "Hard Rope and Silken Twine," which I bought for the sole purpose that it has a 19 minute long song on it back when I was collecting long songs. "Ithkos" is the 19-minute long song.
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