Uncle Hairy's Nosehair

[+atari2600land]

Changes:

• Fixed score digits 5-9.
• Made it so the more you cut, the faster the nosehair grows (in addition to time passing)
• When the fire button was held at the end, it made one long note. This has been fixed.

nosehair22a.bin

[+atari2600land]

• Changed the look of the score. I got tired of that tiny blank space between the score and nose, so I removed it.
• Changed the look of the nose. I think it looks more nose-like.

nosehair22b.bin

[+atari2600land]

I'm wondering whether I should change the point system so the score gets higher (to make use of all four digits if you're a really good nosehair trimmer.) I got a little over 500 points in this version, where you get 2 points for nosehair cutting and ten points for each box you get. I don't know whether I'll keep the nosehair cutting points in because you can just keep pressing fire over and over again and still get points. This is why I need feedback. I know it'd be hard to give it when I'm constantly changing everything, so I won't touch it for a few days so you can give feedback on this latest version.

nosehair23.bin

[bah]

Yes you can sit under the hair and cut for as long as your fingers hold out.  Eventually the hair grows fast enough so when a box shows up on the far right, you can't get to it and back without  losing.

[vitoco]

I got 597 points in the last version (without staying under the nose and cutting).

 

Is this a bug? When you move horizontally to the right, at some point after the last digit, the scissors move up one scanline!

 

Also, if you get 2 or 10 points, why can I see odd scores for some at times? It seems that sometimes the score jitters a bit while increasing.

 

9 hours ago, atari2600land said:

I don't know whether I'll keep the nosehair cutting points in because you can just keep pressing fire over and over again and still get points. This is why I need feedback.

My ideas:

 

- The whole action happens in the left side of the playfield. I think that the box should appear in the right half of the playfield to force the player to move away of the hair and use the whole screen.

 

- In order to be tempted to go for the box, it should give more than score. I think that it could slow down the hair growth.

 

- The demon should follow the player (at a lower speed, but increasing as time passes) and move arround the hair area to protect it, but it should also run for the box (at full speed) and steal it.

- Currently, while the demon touchs you, the hair grows faster. It should happen something more dramatic, like throwing you away from the nose to a random place at the right side of the screen.

 

That's for the moment.

[+atari2600land]

• Got rid of the cutting scoring
• "Fixed" the scissor scanline jumping
• Fixed the score jitter
• Scissors left boundary changed to immediately to the left of the nosehair
• When the nosehair demon touch the scissors, you'll lose points (if you have any.)

 

nosehair25.bin

[+atari2600land]

Question: Why does this subtract one point?

        sed             ; turn on decimal mode
        clc
        lda Score+1     ; Score+1 holds the Tens and Ones digits
        sbc #0            ; subtract ONE, not zero.
        sta Score+1
        lda Score       ; Score holds the Thousands and Hundreds digits
        sbc #0          
        sta Score       ;
        cld             ; turn off decimal mode       

 

The whole reason I made the game subtract two points for demon touching and not one was because of this. I was angrily thinking that I had done something wrong with CXCLR, so I spent an hour trying to move it various places but without luck. How does telling the game to subtract 0 actually subtract 1 (like in line 4 of my example here.)

[+Andrew Davie]

29 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

Question: Why does this subtract one point?

        sed             ; turn on decimal mode
        clc
        lda Score+1     ; Score+1 holds the Tens and Ones digits
        sbc #0            ; subtract ONE, not zero.
        sta Score+1
        lda Score       ; Score holds the Thousands and Hundreds digits
        sbc #0          
        sta Score       ;
        cld             ; turn off decimal mode       

 

The whole reason I made the game subtract two points for demon touching and not one was because of this. I was angrily thinking that I had done something wrong with CXCLR, so I spent an hour trying to move it various places but without luck. How does telling the game to subtract 0 actually subtract 1 (like in line 4 of my example here.)

 

When the carry flag is clear on subtraction, then it's -1 more.

Same thing, when the carry flag is set on addition it's +1 more.

So, normally you'd go...

 

    sec
    lda Score+1
    sbc #1        ; subtract one, taking into account the carry
    sta Score+1
    lda Score
    sbc #0		  ; subtract 0 but also take into account the carry from the previous subtraction
    sta Score

Incidentally, it is convention that variables in 6502 programming are little-endian, just like the processor.

So, you should really have the ones and tens in "score", and the hundreds and thousands in "score+1"

 

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Andrew Davie

[+atari2600land]

Thanks!

I need to use 'sed' instead of 'sec' though because the score is dependent on being base 10. I tried 'sec' and it didn't display the correct digit.

I'll change the scores around.

[+Andrew Davie]

Just now, atari2600land said:

Thanks!

I need to use 'sed' instead of 'sec' though because the score is dependent on being base 10. I tried 'sec' and it didn't display the correct digit.

I'll change the scores around.

You need "sed" to do the addition/subtraction in decimal mode.

You need the "sec" to do the subtraction properly. You need both.

 

[+atari2600land]

But this works okay, though:

        sed
        lda Score+1
        sbc #1        ; subtract one, taking into account the carry
        sta Score+1
        lda Score
        sbc #0          ; subtract 0 but also take into account the carry from the previous subtraction
        sta Score
        cld             ; turn off decimal mode       

 

(I can't change the scores around, they'll just have to be that way. I'll remember the next time I program something.)

[RevEng]

You're relying on the fact that whatever code that ran previous to your score subtraction just happened to set the carry flag. If you know that the previous code will always set carry, then that's fine. If the previous code will sometimes will clear carry and sometimes set carry, then you'll have an issue; your subtraction code will sometimes remove 2 from the score instead of 1.

[+atari2600land]

So I should do this?

        sed
        sec
        lda Score+1
        sbc #1        ; subtract one, taking into account the carry
        sta Score+1
        lda Score
        sbc #0          ; subtract 0 but also take into account the carry from the previous subtraction
        sta Score
        cld             ; turn off decimal mode                
    

[+Andrew Davie]

Just now, atari2600land said:

So I should do this?

 

        sed
        sec
        lda Score+1
        sbc #1        ; subtract one, taking into account the carry
        sta Score+1
        lda Score
        sbc #0          ; subtract 0 but also take into account the carry from the previous subtraction
        sta Score
        cld             ; turn off decimal mode                
    

 

Yes, but only if your units/tens is in "score+1".

Otherwise, you should do "Score" first, then "score+1".

Always do the low part first, then the high part.

The code above is for your original "big-endian" storage format.

If you switch to "little-endian" then "score" first, then "score+1"

 

[+atari2600land]

OK, cool. Thanks for the help guys. I really do appreciate it.

[+cvga]

Cool concept

 

I thought "Nosehair help" was the title of the game lol

 

I know there were lots of suggestions for names earlier. I would have submitted "nostril damus"

[+atari2600land]

I called the title of this thread Nosehair help because the game's original title was simply "Nosehair."

[+atari2600land]

Version 27.

The game now subtracts a point for each 1/4 of a second you touch the demon. It may sound a little harsh but given the speed of the demon, it's not that much.

Feedback wanted.

nosehair27.bin

[+atari2600land]

A short video of Uncle Hairy's Nosehair in action:

 

[+bfstats]

Here’s a suggestion, though implementation might exceed 2K:

 

When the scissors cut the hair, the whole thing disappears rather than from the location of the cut. What’s needed is an additional tool that can be earned after achieving a certain arbitrary score. 
 

At that point, scissors would be replaced by tweezers which would indeed PLUCK the entire hair (ouch). The “demon” would need to be faster to make the game more challenging once the tweezers are acquired.

 

[+atari2600land]

Thanks for the feedback. I put in some more code that make the scissors cut from its position, rather than the whole thing. And I still have 91 bytes left.

 

nosehair28.bin

[+atari2600land]

Now you can play in black & white as well as in color! 30 or so bytes left.

 

nosehair29.bin

[vitoco]

Tha latest changes are nice, but I have to insist in demon AI. It should follow the csissors, push the scissors out of that zone and run for the box. But I know that it is more than 30 bytes!

[+atari2600land]

The demon now follows the scissors instead of moving randomly.

nosehair30.bin

[+atari2600land]

Fixed a problem with jittering when a box is touched.

nosehair30.bin