So I went back to work on the lettuce game last night. Frustrated, I went to sleep with a broken game. Woke up this morning and tried to fix it. I think I did so. This is the uneven ground I was talking about earlier. After trying various zany ways to make it even I told myself that I like it this way and I'll keep it like this. I think it's a little too high though. I can't control how high it is. That part of the code is disobeying me. I tested and tested until I got about 110 points. Everyth
So I had an idea for the background image for the Game Gear game I was working on. Since it takes place in space and it's on a Sega system, why not a picture of Saturn? Actually I thought of Saturn being a Sega system later. I thought a ringed planet would be good, and the only one I know of is Saturn. So I redesigned the rocket. Got rid of the USA letters on it because I wanted it to be white. So I put the image in and this is what Saturn looks like on the Game Gear: But that image alone took
So I was working on my Game Gear game. Today was focused on the first part of getting the main game working. I had a hard time with this because when the rocket was facing down, it turned white with red lettering. As it turns out, they weren't sharing the same palette. I redesigned the rocket so it is easier to tell which direction is facing. Right now you can move the rocket left and right and make it face up or down in the center of the screen, just like in the Game Boy version I was making.
So yesterday I began work on a new Game Gear game that's a "port" of my Game Boy game I was making called Tenpest. I suppose I could change the name if I wanted to. Anyway, this morning I spent part of my time working on the rocket for the title screen. Last night I composed a song for the title screen. So this is what I have it looking like. The rocket goes upwards across the screen. But with all this fancy stuff, it means I only have about 3/4 of the size for the rest of the game.
I've decided to give up on Killer Heads of Lettuce. Apparently what I want to do is too advanced for the poor Channel F. Apparently I can't have three different types of lettuce coming at you because it likes to reset the game and do all sorts of stupid crazy crap at random. So now I'm going to work on My History Teacher Ate Lemons for the Intellivision now. And apparently Kevin Vs. Tomatoes is the only Channel F game I'm going to make unless I think of a REALLY simple project, one that the Chan
At about 10am yesterday, I decided that I was going to lay in bed with my eyes closed because I was tired. I fell asleep, had a few crazy dreams, and the next thing I know it's 10pm. Anyway, before that, I worked on Killer Heads of Lettuce, trying to make it randomly select whether the lettuce attacks in a sinus wave or straight. I finally got it the way I wanted. I don't know why, but I have felt super tired these past few months. While I was asleep, the mail came. I got a box. I opened the b
It took me a few hours but I made it so the lettuce moves up and down in a sinus wave. I did it but then the rocket stopped working so I had to work on making it work again, which took more extra time. I think I'm using too much code though. Perhaps that's the reason why the ground was uneven and looked like it was grass. But it's a good look though, so if it happens again I may keep it. Then out of curiosity I wanted to know if the score would work if someone got 100 points or more. It took m
I went and worked on my Channel F game again this morning. Today's goal was to make the lettuce heads shootable. This required more time than usual. Once I thought I had it, but then realized that just because I made the bullet blue didn't necessarily mean it was off the screen. So more work had to be done. At one point, the ground was uneven. It had a grassy feel to it. Odd because I didn't do anything to make that happen. I figured it might be because I was using too much code. Eventually th
So I worked on my spaceship game for the Channel F. It's similar to Space Jockey for the Atari 2600. You fly a spaceship, moving only up and down, to shoot at stuff coming towards you. Now I have the lettuce head in the game. It doesn't move yet nor can you destroy it, but it's there. Yesterday I worked on making the spaceship shoot missiles. Then I went to sleep for all of yesterday. Woke up at midnight and went back to work on it after eating breakfast. I've decided to start working in smal
I redesigned the game so it's not a cube at all, but a spaceship. It's actually a triangle. I redid the sprites so it was an actual shape. At first I couldn't get the program to decipher the shapes, it kept wanting to draw a square. But after about 10 minutes of trying various things it is actually a shape now. I think it's more detailed now than just simple blocks. I just got up about an hour ago after sleeping all day. I missed the Super Bowl. Anyway, the ship can move up and down. This me
All was well in Floatingredcubeland. That is, until the green floating cubes invaded. As the border guard of Floatingredcubeland, your job is to stop the floating green cubes from coming into the country. This is the setup for a new game I want to make for the Channel F. I spent all night programming this thing and didn't get very far. All I have is a floating cube that you can move up and down. A little tune plays at the start of the game. I don't have a name for this game yet. I was thinking
So I found my DVDs of episodes of films I made called "the adventures of mr. stick." It's about a popsickle stick going on interesting adventures. Back a long time ago when I was a kid, the cable channel Nickelodeon had this block of afternoon animated shows hosted by a popsickle stick named Stick Stickly. I decided to do my own version (Mr. Stick), which looks a lot like this: That's right. I decided to Game Boy-ify him. I spent the better part of three hours trying to write a Game Boy song. F
Before I went to sleep last night, I wanted to work on my novella I was writing. But I was too tired to work on it. So I reminded myself by opening the folder it was in on my computer and then I went to sleep. I woke up at about 4pm, after 14 hours of sleep. I went to my computer and after checking around AtariAge and my e-mails to see what I missed while I was sleeping, I noticed I had put my computer in the folder last night to remind myself I wanted to work on it. I didn't really feel like
Sometimes when you're making a game, some problem shows up during testing, but you have no idea what triggers it. Until you notice it and something clicks in your head. This is what happened to me last night. But unfortunately, that is the easy part. The very hard part is trying to STOP the problem from happening. You try various things and nothing works out. So in a last ditch effort, instead of trying to solve the problem, instead you try to have the problem never happening. This is what I h
Back working on my Atari 2600 assembly game I promised to pick up again sometime in January. While it is the 27th, it still is January. So anyway, while working on the game, I inadvertantly changed the landscape of the game. I noticed I had commented out a "sleep" command because I apparently didn't need it any more. So I put it back in. I don't know how long I told it to sleep, I tried a few different values. But 30 seemed to work best. Plus, it still has a stable 262 scanline count. This is v
One of the things I do to pass all my free time (those annoying hours I'm not sleeping), is to draw comic strips. The fact that I can't draw hasn't been stopping me. Another thing that hasn't been stopping me is the fact that even though I have been drawing for most of my life I haven't gotten any better at it. I might as well just be drawing stick figures. So anyway, even though you probably don't read them, here is the process I go through to create these "works of art." </sarcasm> Fir
So I went back to programming My History Teacher Ate Lemons today. I spent about an hour trying to program the inside of the igloo. I think I finally got it. I put the inside of the igloo as screen number 254. Screen number 255 is where the first lemon of the level is hidden. So now what? I plan to put in a cyclops and a lemon in the igloo. What if some guy walked into your igloo and was after your lemon? Anyway, I gave up on the rocket thing for the channel F because it was too hard and not
So I've been playing with channel F programming today, seeing if I can get an object to move without a trail behind it. I don't know why, but it seems as though apparently it doesn't clean up previous bitmaps after drawing them? This discovery was used in Kevin Vs. Tomatoes. So I made a second object trailing behind it the same color as the background. This technique works pretty good. So I made this program of a spaceship travelling left across the screen in a dusk sky with the ground below. It
So the missing channel F games I bought have been found. I have carts 1, 3, 5, 9, 12 and 17 plus 6 duplicate cartridges ready to be made into Kevin Vs. Tomatoes cartridges. I guess I'll keep a #3 even though it won't work in my Channel F (the f stands for "flaky"). So it's safe to say out of the ones I have, #17 is the best game. I can actually play it. But yes, something is wrong with the buttons. I'm not sure, but in cart #3 it acts like a button has been pressed and goes straight to the built
Since Kevin Vs. Tomatoes is pretty much done, I decided to go back to work on one of the previous projects. It turned out to be Oranges. I saw that I had a few spare background tiles I could use, so I spruced up the title screen a little. It now looks like this: I also changed the bass part of the song to not be so low-pitched and brought it up an octave or so higher. Doing so enabled a few more notes to use. Before, the bass part was only using three distinct notes, now it's more. I also chang
So I got out my Dreamcast. The mail came and they stick it in a hole in the garage. No mail. Going through the garage, I saw my Dreamcast and games. So I decided to take them in and plug in the ol' Dreamcast. I played Looney Tunes: Space Race for about 45 minutes. Now my right middle finger hurts from me clutching the controller, I guess. The game is okay, it is way better without the weapons though, as most of the time all the computer players gang up on you and you finish last. I discovered th
So talking with e5frog, it sounds like everything is go with making 18 copies to sell (well, technically 20, but he gets one and I get one.) Too bad he's in Sweden and I'm in the US though. This also does mean I have to buy 16 more duplicate Channel F cartridges. Kevin Vs. Tomatoes has no final price quite yet, but it will be lower than Pac-Man since there's no box for the game (to keep costs down.) But it will have a lovely instructions sheet which I haven't designed yet. So if you want one, le
Second blog update of the day. I put noise in Kevin Vs. Tomatoes. I added a simple quick 3 note cue that a tomato has been eaten, and a small ditty when the game ends. I also made a little "thud" noise when you bump into the wall. So right now I guess what I'm doing is polishing the game up for a possible release. Which means I have to buy some donor cartridges. If you have any spare duplicate Channel F cartridges, PM me so I can buy them from you. I don't really know how many people would be
So I finally did two things that I wanted to do to my game. First up, I increased the size of the hit detection for the tomato. This took a lot of attempts to do, getting the code just right so it would do it. Second, with help from e5frog, I made the timer start at 99 and count downwards instead of it starting at 00 and counting upwards, I don't know why but the way I did it is when the timer reaches 8F, then I force it from 8F to 89. The previous way I didn't have to do that. How odd. e5frog
So I was having a problem with programming yesterday. I had to stop right in the middle of trying something. I had an idea for a solution, but no time because I had to go get my hair cut. After that, I went to the Game Crazy on Lancaster Dr. They had Mega Man V for NES, but it was $80. And Mega Man for Game Gear but it was $90. I saved $10 on eBay. I haven't been there a while, so there were lots of new things, but unfortunately, nothing I was extremely wanting. I went back home after stopping
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