The hamburger experiment

[+atari2600land]

Yes, let's move this to the Programming subforum.

[+stupus]

I think the food theme is great. No need to change it imo. I like the flying burger ship. Just my 2 cents

[carlsson]

6 hours ago, stupus said:

I like the flying burger ship.

If the burger stays, it could fight an Unidentified Flying Liverwurst.

[+atari2600land]

Okay, after more than a year, I have decided to come back to this. I was surprised at how far I came along with this. I added a Game Over screen, and a tiny victory tune after defeating the giant eggplant. Level 4 will be Doughy Desert. I tried to come up with something burgery to match what was there (Meat Meadow, Mayo Mountain, Sesame Seed Sea). But after thinking about it, I noticed that there aren't that many words that begin with D.

 

I'm wondering if I should make a special boss song that plays when fighting the boss. What say you? I'm getting real close to the 16k mark, so I may have to start moving stuff around, right?

 

herts16.rom

[+DZ-Jay]

Haha!  Those eggplants are nasty!

 

But ... why eggplants in a Hamburger game?  Pickles, I understand.  Onions, tomatoes and bacon would be cool too.  (I also don't recognize that beige thingy floating around ... looks like a razor blade.)  Maybe fries?

 

1 hour ago, atari2600land said:

Okay, after more than a year, I have decided to come back to this. I was surprised at how far I came along with this. I added a Game Over screen, and a tiny victory tune after defeating the giant eggplant. Level 4 will be Doughy Desert. I tried to come up with something burgery to match what was there (Meat Meadow, Mayo Mountain, Sesame Seed Sea). But after thinking about it, I noticed that there aren't that many words that begin with D.

Does it have to start with a "D"?  How about .. "Dangerous Dinner"?  Although the other names sound like geographic features ...

 

Here are a few, from the top of my head:

• French-Fried Falls
• Lettuce Lake
• Tomato Trails
• Cheesypeake Bay  (sorry!)
• Grilled Grotto
• Split Bun Butte

 

 

1 hour ago, atari2600land said:

I'm wondering if I should make a special boss song that plays when fighting the boss. What say you? I'm getting real close to the 16k mark, so I may have to start moving stuff around, right?

16K is still pretty small -- especially when they are "Kilo Bytes," instead of "Kilo Words."  Your game is barely 8K in the Intellivision common vernacular (we use "K" to mean thousands of 16-bit words, which are twice as big as an 8-bit byte).

 

1 hour ago, atari2600land said:

herts16.rom 15.06 kB · 1 download

This game is hard.  I haven't managed to complete the first level.  Should there be some sort of progress report somewhere to let me know if I am even close to the end?  After a while, I sort of feel like it may go on forever, and start getting a bit antsy.

 

Perhaps a "League Marker" (like a mile marker) that passes by letting you know how many leagues you've covered.  Just an idea.

 

      -dZ.

[+atari2600land]

Right now I'm using all 8 sprites, so a league marker is out of the question. Also the fact that the game is using scrolling. One thing I guess I could do is change the score to show instead how many enemies you need to shoot before the boss shows up. I put eggplants in the game since they are the epitome of bad-tasting vegetables, while hamburgers are my favorite food.

[IMBerzerk]

Game looks good so far... definitely something totally different.  I like the burgers.  

 

Are you using JzIntv?  The colors you're posting look off, like neon and very bright. The original color palette that came with JzIntv was made to mimic what games look like on a CRT.  A few years ago,  with Joe's help, I tweaked the base colors of JzIntv to give it a more true to color look on an LCD screen.  Have you ever tried it?  It's easy to add in to JzIntv.  

 

Add this this line to your executable as well.

 

gfx-palette="wherever JzIntv is"/tv_colors.txt

 

Keep up the great work.  It's always fun to see more new games come out for the Inty!

 

 

tv_colors.txt

Edited March 30, 2022 by IMBerzerk

[+DZ-Jay]

30 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

Right now I'm using all 8 sprites, so a league marker is out of the question. Also the fact that the game is using scrolling.

Wait, why can't you just use a simple background character?  It will just move past as the screen scrolls, just like a league marker would ...

 

30 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

One thing I guess I could do is change the score to show instead how many enemies you need to shoot before the boss shows up. I put eggplants in the game since they are the epitome of bad-tasting vegetables, while hamburgers are my favorite food.

Hmm ... I guess you like the taste of raw onions then? *shrug*

 

    -dZ.

[+atari2600land]

Ah, okay. I guess a league marker would work then. But then the player would need to know how many league markers pass before the end of the level begins. The end of the level with the boss fight begins after you shoot 30 vegetables. So I changed the score to show how many more vegetables you need to shoot before you get to the next level. I also put in the level # to the left of that.

 

I like onions. On my burger.

 

I don't get how to start jzIntv with an executable since I have it set up to start when I click on a .ROM file.

 

Edit: To start the game on level 1, press 1 at the title screen, 2 for 2, and 3 for 3. Pressing Fire at the title screen starts you at level 0, which won't start the game.

 

herts16a.rom

[+atari2600land]

2 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

Haha!  Those eggplants are nasty!

 

(I also don't recognize that beige thingy floating around ... looks like a razor blade.) 

The beige thingy is (supposed to be) a chicken nugget, when touched, will give you an extra life.

I improved the eggplant shooting code to add a short pause between its pea firing when you can shoot it.

You can also start the game by pressing fire (it will take you to level 1. The level select is for testing purposes and will be removed from the final game.)

herts17.rom

[+fdr4prez]

1 hour ago, atari2600land said:

I don't get how to start jzIntv with an executable since I have it set up to start when I click on a .ROM file.

 

You can use the LTO Flash! gui to be your frontend, it is termed LUI. You do not need to have an LTO Flash! cart.  The LUI software can be used as your jzintv frontend, and if you get an LTO Flash! cart in the future, then you'd already have the software installed.

 

There is also an older GUI, too, but the jzintv version used in it will be older so you'd have to drop in the latest jzintv afterward the installation.

 

Or you can make a .BAT file with the needed commandline text and click on that instead of the ROM file.

[carlsson]

2 hours ago, DZ-Jay said:

I guess you like the taste of raw onions then?

I eat raw onion almost daily, mixed with mayo and other stuff into a dip.

 

Eggplant is decent if you fry it well enough. Uncooked it is inedible. Same goes for many other vegetables, e.g. root celeriac. I suppose as a vegan option, a big slice of eggplant might substitute the hamburger in size, but not in consistency, taste or protein content. That is why vegans make patties out of other ingredients.

[+atari2600land]

I thought for a sharp note, you needed to do this:

    MUSIC C4S

As it turned out, that is not the case. I was wondering why A and A sharp sounded the same. You need to do this:

    MUSIC C4#

It still is weird though to have the sharp be after the octave number.

As a result, my music sounded a little off. I fixed it and this is now how it should sound. I will not post any more updates today.

I have an LTO Flash.

 

 

herts18.rom

[+fdr4prez]

25 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

I have an LTO Flash.

ok, then you use the LUI software to add in the needed flags and run the rom from the LUI gui.

 

There is a thread in here about the software, so if you have questions then it would be best to direct them there since the software developer (and others) can help directly as they may not be reading this specific thread.

[+atari2600land]

Changed the way level 2 looks. I had to work on it for at least a couple of hours. I finally figured out that in order for the mountain to scroll properly, it has to be below a certain point of height. I don't know why. For example,

   PRINT AT 140 color 2, "\256" : print at 120 color 7,"\257"

will work properly, but

   PRINT AT 40 color 2, "\256" : print at 20 color 7,"\257"

will not. I just found that kind of odd.

Press 2 at the title screen to go to level 2.

 

herts19.rom

[+DZ-Jay]

17 hours ago, atari2600land said:

Ah, okay. I guess a league marker would work then. But then the player would need to know how many league markers pass before the end of the level begins. The end of the level with the boss fight begins after you shoot 30 vegetables. So I changed the score to show how many more vegetables you need to shoot before you get to the next level. I also put in the level # to the left of that.

Ah, so the length is by number of enemies not by distance.  Still, displaying the distance traversed can be useful in indicating some progress, especially since the background is so ... samey ... across the entire level.

 

Maybe you can even add an extra dimension to the game play by having the player's hamburger get all soggy and pruny when the distance reaches some kind of maximum, and end the level in failure.  (Or maybe even have a bunch of eggplants coming in and just shoot peas at the player to kill him unconditionally.)

 

Quote

I like onions. On my burger.

Fair enough, me too.  I was going with onions being offensive by their nature, and I was just curious why you chose eggplants in particular instead.  Eggplants do not strike me as the worst of vegetables ... they are certainly more edible and tasty than others.  (And if we are basing it on their raw state, consider that Peas and other legumes taste pretty much like leaves or grass when not cooked. Blegh!)

 

Anyway, no worries.  Enemy eggplants it is. ?

 

16 hours ago, atari2600land said:

The beige thingy is (supposed to be) a chicken nugget, when touched, will give you an extra life.

I improved the eggplant shooting code to add a short pause between its pea firing when you can shoot it.

You can also start the game by pressing fire (it will take you to level 1. The level select is for testing purposes and will be removed from the final game.)

herts17.rom 15.06 kB · 4 downloads

Ah, a chicken nugget ... I guess knowing that helps me see it ...

 

Maybe consider bacon instead?  I know that you used bacon as a power-up in the Waffle game, but let's face it ... bacon just makes everything better.  Hehehe.

 

Fries as power-ups seem also a propos to a hamburger game:  any burger meal can be enhanced by adding fries.

 

But ... back to your comment:  When I touch that chicken nugget, it kills me.  That doesn't strike me as giving me "an extra life."  Perhaps we're talking about different things.  This is what I'm talking about:

 

If I touch that, it kills me.  It may be a chicken nugget, but it looks like a razor blade, and cuts like one!

 

15 hours ago, carlsson said:

I eat raw onion almost daily, mixed with mayo and other stuff into a dip.

It wasn't so much a denigration of onions, as it was an observation that they are known to be offensive by nature, so I just thought they would be an obvious antagonist to the burger -- if only because they could take over its flavor when grossly apportioned.

 

Quote

Eggplant is decent if you fry it well enough. Uncooked it is inedible. Same goes for many other vegetables, e.g. root celeriac. I suppose as a vegan option, a big slice of eggplant might substitute the hamburger in size, but not in consistency, taste or protein content. That is why vegans make patties out of other ingredients.

Most vegetables that are typically cooked (excluding obviously those common in salads) taste very strange when raw.  To me, raw asparagus taste like wood chips, and most raw broccoli tastes like tree foliage.  But these are personal preferences.  My wife loves raw-ish asparagus, I hate them.

 

Eggplant ... I wouldn't even touch when raw.  It's kinda weird and slimy and gross.

 

14 hours ago, atari2600land said:

I thought for a sharp note, you needed to do this:

    MUSIC C4S

As it turned out, that is not the case. I was wondering why A and A sharp sounded the same. You need to do this:

    MUSIC C4#

It still is weird though to have the sharp be after the octave number.

As a result, my music sounded a little off. I fixed it and this is now how it should sound. I will not post any more updates today.

I have an LTO Flash.

 

 

herts18.rom 15.06 kB · 2 downloads

Yes, the traditional sharp symbol, as you know, is the octothorp ("#").  It's sort of strange that IntyBASIC adopted the symbol after the octave instead of the other way around.  Even in typical music notation, the sharp symbol is attached to the note, and the octave is relegated to either a subscript ("C#₄") or a completely separate term ("C# 4").

 

Traditional tracker notations simply follow the standard musical notation, and use a hyphen as a placeholder where the note is not sustained ("C-4" vs. "C#4").  Oh well.

 

It's good that you figured it out.

 

15 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

Changed the way level 2 looks. I had to work on it for at least a couple of hours. I finally figured out that in order for the mountain to scroll properly, it has to be below a certain point of height. I don't know why. For example,

   PRINT AT 140 color 2, "\256" : print at 120 color 7,"\257"

will work properly, but

   PRINT AT 40 color 2, "\256" : print at 20 color 7,"\257"

will not. I just found that kind of odd.

Press 2 at the title screen to go to level 2.

 

herts19.rom 15.56 kB · 1 download

PRINT AT 20, will draw on the first column of the second row.  PRINT AT 40, will draw on the first column of the third row.  In either case, you are placing them at the far left column of a screen that is scrolling to the left.  Wouldn't that mean that they will just be out of view because the first column is hidden behind the border extension?  Also, wouldn't they just scroll out of view (forever) the next time the screen shifts to the left?

 

    -dZ.

[+atari2600land]

Oh, you mean the yellow thing. That's a corn cob. Don't touch that.

[+DZ-Jay]

1 minute ago, atari2600land said:

Oh, you mean the yellow thing. That's a corn cob. Don't touch that.

Ahhhhhhhhhh!  Well, now you tell me. 

 

   -dZ.

[+atari2600land]

34 minutes ago, DZ-Jay said:

 

PRINT AT 20, will draw on the first column of the second row.  PRINT AT 40, will draw on the first column of the third row.  In either case, you are placing them at the far left column of a screen that is scrolling to the left.  Wouldn't that mean that they will just be out of view because the first column is hidden behind the border extension?  Also, wouldn't they just scroll out of view (forever) the next time the screen shifts to the left?

 

 

I was using this example as the starting point for the mountain. The actual code is this:

 

if fishx<21 and fishx>0 then PRINT AT stupidfish color 2, "\256" : print at stupidfishh color 7,"\257"

 

with the "fishx" variable determining how far the fish (or mountain, in level 2's case), the "stupidfish" variable being the fish's x position, and "stupidfishh" being the top of the mountain (and goes unused in level 3.) I find it odd that it has to be lower so I can't, say, add clouds to level 1.

[+DZ-Jay]

Just now, atari2600land said:

I was using this example as the starting point for the mountain. The actual code is this:

 

if fishx<21 and fishx>0 then PRINT AT stupidfish color 2, "\256" : print at stupidfishh color 7,"\257"

 

with the "fishx" variable determining how far the fish (or mountain, in level 2's case), the "stupidfish" variable being the fish's x position, and "stupidfishh" being the top of the mountain (and goes unused in level 3.) I find it odd that it has to be lower so I can't, say, add clouds to level 1.

What are the values of "stupidfish" and "stupidfishh"?

 

To me it still seems strange that you are including the first visible position on the next row in the test condition.  "21" is the second second card in the second row (PRINT TAB uses BACKTAB cards as indices, and they are from 0 to 239).  Wouldn't it make more sense to test if the value is within 1 and 19, inclusively?  That is,

If (fishx < 20 And fishx > 0) Then ...

  -dZ.

[+atari2600land]

Here is the code for what I mean. In this, I tried to add a cloud to level 1. It displays it, well, flickery.

 

herts20.bas

[+atari2600land]

I added a bird flapping its wings in level 1. I thought, since a cloud would look funny close to the ground, "What WOULD look good close to the ground?"

And sometimes, I get these weird squares in the level intro DESPITE me using CLS. The basic file is in the .zip file so you can look at it if you want to. Also included is a rom.

 

 

herts20220331.zip

[+DZ-Jay]

4 hours ago, atari2600land said:

Here is the code for what I mean. In this, I tried to add a cloud to level 1. It displays it, well, flickery.

 

herts20.bas 27.74 kB · 2 downloads

 

I'm looking at it now, and one thing I will note is that the debugger shows that "stupidfishh" is set to 0 from the very beginning.  From there, it decrements, starting from -1.  If you are using this as a background location, that may be the causing of the flicker.

 

Ugly debugger output.  Open at your own risk:

Spoiler

The following was outputted by the debugger.  It represents two "variable watches" showing the values written to memory for the variables "stupidfish" (var_STUPIDFISH) and "stupidfishh" (var_STUPIDFISHH).  All values are in Hexadecimal (sorry).

 

Notice that "stupidfish" starts at $3C (60), but "stupidfishh" starts at $FFFF (-1) which is out of the screen.  The values then decrement progressively.

 

 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0000 CP-1610          (PC = $1168) t=15747902
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=0000 CP-1610          (PC = $1168) t=15747926
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0000 CP-1610          (PC = $5025) t=15843523
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=0000 CP-1610          (PC = $5026) t=15843532
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=003C CP-1610          (PC = $63AF) t=23337643
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=FFFF CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=23487726
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=003B CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=23487753
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00FE CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=23801440
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=003A CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=23801467
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00FD CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=24115054
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0039 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=24115081
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00FC CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=24429024
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0038 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=24429051
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00FB CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=24742272
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0037 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=24742299
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00FA CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=25055886
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0036 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=25055913
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00F9 CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=25369516
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0035 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=25369543
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00F8 CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=25683114
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0034 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=25683141
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00F7 CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=25996728
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0033 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=25996755
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISHH d=00F6 CP-1610          (PC = $53F9) t=26310342
 WR a=var_STUPIDFISH d=0032 CP-1610          (PC = $53FE) t=26310369
 0000 0008 2064 001E 0265 0264 02F9 6A0F ---CI-i-  DECR R1                               |         DECR R1                                                                                26549088

 

 

Your code suggests that "stupidfishh" is never initialized, which explains what I see in the debugger.

 

1 minute ago, atari2600land said:

I added a bird flapping its wings in level 1. I thought, since a cloud would look funny close to the ground, "What WOULD look good close to the ground?"

And sometimes, I get these weird squares in the level intro DESPITE me using CLS. The basic file is in the .zip file so you can look at it if you want to. Also included is a rom.

 

 

herts20220331.zip 17.54 kB · 0 downloads

I'll take a look at that next.

 

     -dZ.

[+DZ-Jay]

22 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

I added a bird flapping its wings in level 1. I thought, since a cloud would look funny close to the ground, "What WOULD look good close to the ground?"

Looks cute and funny.  ?

 

Although I think that the wings flap too fast, maybe slow them down just a pinch?

 

22 minutes ago, atari2600land said:

And sometimes, I get these weird squares in the level intro DESPITE me using CLS. The basic file is in the .zip file so you can look at it if you want to. Also included is a rom.

I can't reproduce it.  I will check the code in a few minutes.  In the meantime, if you could tell me how I can induce the issue, I could try that.

 

Also, I think the music is too low.  I see in your code that you set the music player at half the volume (8).  You may want to consider something higher.

 

    -dZ.

 

[+atari2600land]

Try dying when the bird is on the extreme right on the screen. This may be hard to time at first since the pause when dying.

I'll up the volume and reduce the bird flapping time.