atari2600land's Blog - Ken and the tomato.

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So I was laying in bed thinking. About the Channel F. And how I shouldn't have sold it. Anyway, a thought came to my head about the game Killer Snakes. I dropped the second S from the title, making it Killer Snake. Because the screen isn't big enough to have two snakes on it. The thought was: If I can test if the edge is touched, then why not the fruit? So I went and worked some more on the code. I made a collision part of the code, and a few tries later of posting random bits of code (I still don't know what I'm doing.)

I finally had a code in place that tests where the snake is on screen and if it's near the fruit. If it's near the fruit's X position, then it goes to a second part that tests if it's near the Y position. If it's not then resume play. If it is, reset the game. Success! Now that I can make the snake (whom I named Ken) eat the tomato, I would like a sound to play. I don't know if the Channel F can do sounds and if so, I really don't know how to make it do so. I don't remember my Channel F making sounds. Of course, that was a couple years ago.

And another next step I'd like to do is once the fruit has been eaten, clear the snake fast and make the tomato appear somewhere else randomly on the screen. I can clear the snake, but it clears every other variable and starts from the beginning. Ultimately what I need to do is make the playfield a little bit more narrower so I can put in a timer and tomatoes eaten counter (score). The whole point of the game is to see how many tomatoes can be eaten in 60 seconds. So it's a little bit like the Aaron the Aant game only that game has no timer, Aaron is an ant, he has an enemy. I decided if Ken can't have an enemy then I'll have a clock be one.

I don't know how many sprites the Channel F can display all at once. I think I have two so far, the snake's eyes and the tomato. I'm unsure of what the snake is composed of, though, because I was fooling around with some existing code and noticed that if the controller was moved, a snaky line would appear. I instantly thought "Snakes!" But although a snake eating fruit game has already been done (homebrewers got to me before I even had a chance to hear about the Channel F.) I figured I'd need some sort of difference to separate it and my game.

So if you have MESS or something, try the game out: http://www.atari2600land.com/killersnakes/

http://atariage.com/forums/blog/168/entry-14485-ken-and-the-tomato/