2023 comes to an end, HB updates

Entry posted by Cafeman in Homebrew December 30, 2023

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I'm over 50, thus I have 1 deceased parent (from year 2000), 1 elderly mom and her elderly husband (of 21 years) , my stepfather. This year I spent a lot of days in support of my 2 elderly parents. My stepfather's health deteriorated a lot in particular, and thus there were many trips to hospitals, caregiving, then in-home hospice, then his death in December at age 84. Now my mom is a widow again. The first time she was widowed in 2000, she was only a few years older than I am now.

So, things like Atari, and homebrewing, well there wasn't much time or energy for that.

But I did make some progress on these:

Koffi Redux. I've been reworking the OG 2002 game in the same 32K memory space. Got some new tweaked graphics like more colors and more interesting backgrounds, a 2-player simultaneous gameplay, and plans for a more pinball-game inspired style of gameplay. But I did all this in the 1st part of 2023 with little progress in the tail end of 2023. I want to include things like appearing bumpers and targets (on the clouds and tree edges) for Koffi to hit and earn you points as you play. I'd like to release whatever I can accomplish in 32K as a demo, then bump it up to bank-switched 64K for a more fleshed-out follow up.

Adventure II 5200 2023. I applied bug-fixes, minor gameplay tweaks, and engine improvements to the OG 2007 5200 game, still 32K as well. These improvements were based on what I did on Adventure II XE in the 2010's. I don't have much ROM space left. I was trying to make a new 'base' version of Adventure II 5200 that I could then modify for future DLC ROMs which would have fresh new things for folks to play. The changes significantly improve the efficiency of the sprite engine. The only problem is that these fixes introduced an old bug. I could put in a simple plug to identify if the bug happened and fix it on the next frame - but I really would like to solve the root problem that causes it. I put in an error trap , played in Altirra until the bug happened, then investigated memory. But I haven't really solved it as I haven't had time the past few months.

Very little progress of another long-running 5200 Homebrew "Detective Powers".

Going forward in 2024, after this end-of-year period where I'm really slacking, drinking, and just playing games and watching movies - I hope to get back into the rewarding creativity of homebrewing games for 5200 and A8.

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Allan 2,772

Posted January 1

Life. It can get crazy. Many ups and downs. Especially when you have to be a caregiver to the previous generation.

When you get older it does get harder to do the things you want to do that require a lot of time and energy verses the easier and short-term things. I find it gets harder to resist watching a movie verses working on long-term projects. Hopefully you can find the resources to get back to more homebrewing.