4k

Entry posted by atari2600land September 4, 2018

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I think I figured out how to make 4k games on my own. I went to the VES wiki and took a look at some of the disassemblies of commercially released games. I noticed something. A 2k game did not go above the address A0fff, while the bigger ones did. I went back and inspected my own code. I noticed the signature:

    org $ff0signature:    .byte    ".chris read 2018"

I thought the ff0 was A0ff0. So I thought to myself, "Well, what if I changed that org statement?" So a few attempts later, I got a 4k binary file by changing it to "org $17f0". It works just fine in MESS, so unless I run into problems, I can just continue to make it larger if I need it to be. Pac-Man was 8k, I think, so I think I can make an 8k game. I don't know about larger than that, though.

Yesterday I put a key in the game. I worked for hours trying to get it just right. Much time was spent making the game NOT freeze when Craig was trying to get past the first screen. And then, I had to work on the key disappearing when he went back a screen and reappearing when he went back to the key screen. And then I had to make him collect the key by touching it.

I figured games like this have keys to open doors, but mine will serve a different purpose. Mine will involve a bunch of work, but in the end, I think it will be funny. It will take a few days' coding to do. But I think I'm going to rest a day or two since I've been working on this game so much.

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