High score function for celery game

Entry posted by atari2600land June 3, 2014

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So I added a high score function for "The 50-foot-tall Stalk of Celery." But in order to display it, I had to slow down the game. Which is no problem because I then sped things up. I am still not getting the "waitvsync" thing. I just do things until they work. Which sometimes takes a few hours, like in this case. I almost had it. It was resetting at 100 points, but then scoring 99 points made the high score be 99 points. Wrong. So I fumbled around a workaround and I think I made it work. Time to try it on the Odyssey 2. Oh no, the score isn't showing once the game starts. So, like I said, I put in a waitvsync command, which apparently slowed down the game, so I had to speed things up, like for example, make the machine go 2 pixels left instead of 1 if the joystick is pressed left. I think I'm doing pretty good for someone who has no idea what they're doing. Right now, the four digit high score is blue. I'm wondering if I should leave it like that or change it. If I change its color, I don't want yellow because it would blend in real well with the title screen. I have used about 1,500 bytes (2,048 maximum). I also changed it so it gets faster at 25 and 50 points instead of 50 and 100. In addition to this, I also worked a little more on the Manhole game. I also got a whole bunch of Odyssey 2 manuals in the mail today. So my Odyssey 2 literature collection is growing. I still would like a manual for KC's Krazy Chase. I altered the celery manual, putting in new screenshots that show the new 4-digit high score. I don't really get why people think it's so cool. I mean, Atari 2600 games don't have it, and it just resets to 0 once the power is turned off. But oh well. So once Traffic, GoSub 2 and Celery get published, it will triple the Odyssey 2 games I have published. Nice Ice, which is coming this holiday season, will make it 6. I doubt Celery will be made this year. As for when Celery is finished, I don't know whether to continue the cat game, or go back to an even older project, making it better putting in stuff I've learned since I last attempted it, or to completely start it over again from scratch (my A-Star like game with the rolling face). Any suggestions? Here's a link to the revised instruction manual.

http://www.atari2600land.com/celery/celeryinstv2.pdf

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ozyr 86

Posted June 15, 2014

The high score function in O2 games is not cool, it makes the game better. It was done in all the later O2 games back in the day, and honestly, it makes keeping track of your high score in a series of games that much easier (otherwise they would not have bother doing it in the first place). 2600 games don't always have it, and frankly, that is their loss. Keep doing it, as it 'adds' to the game value.