atari2600land's Blog - Me vs Cat vs. Rat: Round 2

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So Mom has gotten to be depressed all the time. I know I should be there for her, but at the same time I don't want to see her like this. So I have been sleeping all day to avoid her giving me depression. But that will end now because I'm feeling a little selfish for doing that.

Anyway, with Mom sleeping I decided to work on Cat vs. Rat again. This time it was trying to add a maze that gave me the most problems. Again: I hate the dumb 256-byte "page" limits imposed on Odyssey 2 programmers. This was the source of the fight. I couldn't fit 9 level data parts in a single page. Breaking it up into chunks and still making it work was the anger for the few days. I finally did something right because it finally worked.

Next up was trying to make the grid not disappear if the action button was held. This was a little easier. I kept wondering why it ignored the part of the code that kept the grid on while action was being pressed. I fiddled with the code moving it a little and that worked for some reason. Again, the 256-byte page crap. But I am having trouble designing puzzles for the game. Everything I do either is too easy or doesn't work and when I try to make it work it ends up being too easy.

And I have 169 bytes left now since I had to make extra code to make mazes 6-9 work. I doubt I can fit 18 mazes in. But I'll try to fit as many as I can in. The 2k limit is 2,048 bytes. I've used up 1,879. So I think I can have 5 more mazes in. Which 14 mazes doesn't seem like a lot. I may just go 4k on this game. it would be the first time I would do this: Put the game logic in one 2k bank and fill the other one up with puzzle data. But is that possible? Who knows?

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-14257-me-vs-cat-vs-rat-round-2/