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About this blog

What I'm working on for the various consoles I can program for.

Entries in this blog

Atari 2600

Back to nosehairs

Last night I didn't want to go to sleep. So I was laying in bed thinking about various things like I do. I got up and worked on the nosehair game I had made for the Atari 2600 and then gave up on because it wasn't going well. I thought about what I was doing and tried different ways to do what I wanted the game to do. A couple hours later, I had it: A steady picture while playing, and while not playing. It was good. Then I finally fell sleep at about 10:30 pm. Woke up at about 9 am and work
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Nosehairs for December 15.

Yesterday I did some more work on Uncle Hairy's Nosehair. That's the name of the game, although since the game doesn't display the name in it, I could call it anything I want. I got rid of the cutting nosehair for points. I made it so touching the nosehair demon subtracts from your score. I made the box worth ten points instead of one. I have over 100 bytes left. And the game is 2k. I don't know what else to put in the game. I don't know how much I can put in the game and still have the display
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Nosehairs for December 17.

I worked some more on the game. Here's a video of me playing it with the Stella emulator. I made it so the nosehair demon chases you around the screen instead of him moving randomly. Since he now does this, I could delete a fair amount of code associated with the process of randomly moving around, and as a result I now have about 70 bytes left, which is up from about 30. I also made it so you can play the game in black and white instead of in color. Though I doubt many people will, I j
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Another Return of Uncle Hairy

I was having trouble with this game getting the cutting just right every single time. An idea came to me as I was laying in bed trying to go to sleep. Make the Cutting variable the same as the PlayerY variable. This meant when PlayerY moved, so did the Cutting variable. And THIS meant setting a permanent variable for all of PlayerY's positions. Thankfully it wasn't as complicated as it sounds. It just meant to put in this code before exiting the Joystick code: [code]         sec     
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Flying Hamburger - May 14, 2021

I have been busy this past couple of days on a new Atari 2600 game I'm making called "Flying Hamburger." It's a lot like my NES game only it's on the Atari 2600. Because of that, I had to make some changes. Milkshake now an onion ring. Onion rings cannot shoot. But they will eventually speed up and go in different directions. The backgrounds will be something like this: I like having purple mountains with white tops in my game. Once I get the rest of the game figured out,
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Uncle Hairy returns.

I want to finish Uncle Hairy's Nosehair. I returned to work on it. I made it so when the box pops up, the demon stops chasing you and goes after it. Nothing special if he gets it, although you lose all the points lost while the scissors weren't going after the nosehair, and you do have to wait a little bit for another box to pop up. There's no more music, but there is color cycling when the game isn't running (think "Combat"). So now I have 10 bytes left. And I spent hours and hours working on t
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Nosehair update - 2-24-2021

I worked on my Nosehair game last night. I did three things: I made the nosehair's top speed faster (because people said it was too slow), I got rid of the horrid title screen music and replaced it with a better-sounding tune, and I changed the shape of the nostril. This is what it looks like now:
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Music and flashing colors.

So I worked some more on Uncle Hairy's Nosehair tonight. I went to sleep at about 11 a.m. and woke up at 10 p.m. because my leg hurt. I saw someone found a bug, so I was off to fix that. And then the stupid scanline wasn't being steady. Most of my work on this game has been attempting to make the scan line count be a steady 262. I did find a way however to add back the color changes and have music at the same time. But now I have 0 bytes left. That is, if I want to make it a 2k game (which I do.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

X vs. O

I wanted to make a fly swatting game for the Atari 2600. I wanted to make a game about letters for the Atari 2600. I wanted to make a new Atari 2600 game. So I decided to combine all three into a new game I'm working on called "X Vs. O." You are the letter X, and your job is go up to letter Os and press fire. But there are some bees. If you touch a bee, you'll die. I'm deciding to make this a one-life game like the Odyssey 2 games used to be. The game is in a very early stage. I just began
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Flying Hamburger - May 17, 2021

I got some help with the score. I added a lives counter to the left of it. I also made the onion rings move at different speeds. I also made a few other minor changes. Now that there's lives, I added a death to the burger if it touches the onion ring. I've been working on this a lot for a few days, so I'm on a this-game-programming break now.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

The new return of Uncle Hairy

I jump from project to project. When I get bored with one, I pick up another and work on it for a while. I plan to repeat this plan until I die (or can't use a computer any more.) So, as you may have guessed, the project du jour is Uncle Hairy's Nosehair. About a month ago, I called it done, but now I've decided to go back and work on it some more. So I did. This is what it looks like now. I find it funny and odd that this picture of the game is larger than the game itself. You can get
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Technically a game

After working for days and days I finally have a working version to show. I gave up on it, but then got some advice and it worked. I put music in it, but I don't know if it will be in there for long. Depends on how much feedback I get on the game part aspect, as I want it to stay at 2k and with the music in I have 35 bytes left. The version with music just has temporary music in on the title screen and if you're interested in seeing it it's in the AtariAge forums. It has music like MidSpace
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Count's Castle

So I was making the beginning of Count's Castle for the Atari 2600 (The "lost" Kid's Controller game) when the power went out. I was expecting it to be out for a couple days since we had an ice storm here that toppled trees. It lasted SIX DAYS. For almost a week, all I had to keep myself warm was a gas fireplace. And all I had to entertain myself with was the radio and a Game Boy. Many hours were spent trying to figure out the puzzles in Daedalian Opus and trying to complete the screen in Word Z
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

My nose is still running.

Now that I think about it, I could call it "The Runs" and have it be a piece of poop running. But I won't. I redesigned Mr. Noseson (Noseson is a palindrome) and worked on the boxes to jump over. Mr. Noseson now looks like this: I decided to make his legs orange instead of black. This morning I put in collision detection for the boxes. Next up is working on making some music for the menu. But not today. I'm done with programming for today.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

My nose is running.

So I didn't really want just one guy running for my running game. I thought, "What else runs?" Noses. So I titled the game "Runny Nose." Here is Mr. Noseson. His little legs are animated. I attempted a realistic jumping code, with gravity and stuff. I thought I was done with Atari 2600 noses when I finished "Uncle Hairy's Nosehair." Well, anyway, this is being done in batari Basic. I originally was going to have the ground in this be of varying heights, so I began in bB because I didn'
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Fruit Fly Fun

I made a website for my fly swatting game. I'm renaming it "Fruit Fly Fun." Hopefully it's more fun swatting fruit flies than it is guiding them to melons. I want to work on the game, but I think it's finished. So what do I do? In other news, my Lynx came in the mail today. I already had two Lynx games from the last time I owned a Lynx: Shanghai and Zarlor Mercenary. It took a while to figure out that my AC adapter does not work, but the Lynx works. I have ordered a second ac adapter, this
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Hot.

Yesterday it was 116 degrees here. I could have sworn the Weather Channel had 117 on the screen for about an hour or so, but I guess it was a mirage? Anyway It was hot Sunday too. About 112 or so. Both those are above the all-time record of 110. And yet I coded. I am making a new Atari 2600 game. I was influenced from a post on AtariAge. (Influenced is not the word I wanted, but it will work.) It was about one button games. Games that only use one button and no joystick. I thought "I could
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Some potato chip fun

I was looking through my stuff on my computer a couple days ago. I went into the Atari 2600 folder. I found my flying burger game. I tried it. It was okay, except for that the missile for the burger changed color. I thought to fix it, I could make the burger not a burger, but instead be something that just used one color. A hamburger wasn't one color. But what is? I thought for a minute. Potato chips are one color. So I changed the burger into a potato chip. The missile is the same color now.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Potato Chips are fun

Yesterday and today I have been working on my Atari 2600 game "Potato Chips En Masse." I made some lovely changes to the title screen and added a new level in. I have room for one more level, so this will be a 4k cartridge with 6 levels. I could put more in, but that would require bankswitching, which I would be new to since I'm using assembly. Potato chips on the moon? Well, one, anyway. The title screen does a color cycle. I have also been working on Frank the Fruit Fly. I added
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

A change of looks

I had a box planned for the game, but in order to fit it in, I needed to change the play field drawing code I had because it was too large and wouldn't support me having another sprite in there, even if it was just a missile. So yesterday was tons of work. Today was adding back the animation. I finally got this: It looks a little different. Gone is the green strip at the bottom. The two sprites are 2x bigger. The nosehair is now thinner, due to it being the ball instead of the play fie
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

A sun day.

So I got some feedback and suggestions for my Fruit Fly Fun game for the Atari 2600. I worked and worked and went to sleep and woke up and worked some more. I bet all in all I worked for about 8 hours combined yesterday and earlier today on it. I didn't sleep very much since I woke up because I was hot and I couldn't go back to sleep so I figured I might as well work on it. So now here is a screenshot of what I have now. I merged the two bananas into one. This is because the fly now ea
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

4 l

Changed the look of the arena. The o will come out of one of those four buildings and move around randomly. There will be a lowercase l instead of a bee. I think it has to be yellow. I had a heck of a time trying to make the display steady, but I eventually did.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

New score

So I got an Atari 2600 game I didn't have before. I bought Chase the Chuckwagon. But a huge shout out to AtariAge user SpiceWare, who changed the way the score looks in my nosehair game. It now looks like this: I redesigned the number font and I think it looks good enough. I also worked a little more on it and got the scissors back to facing the "correct" way (the way I wanted them to and were before.) With all the changes though, I have about 2 bytes left. Which I guess is okay since
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Potato chips at the beach

Well, I went back to working on my Atari 2600 game after a few months. What was left? I added a sixth level, and what happens after you beat the sixth level. When you beat the sixth level, it will loop back to the first level. Not very much changes from level to level, I did that just for a change of scenery. After the third level, though, the onion rings are equipped with homing missiles, which is an attempt by me to make the game harder. Once you beat level 6, the missiles should stay homing m
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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Atari 2600

Behind the clouds

I finally figured out how to make the bugs move behind the clouds. It should have been just a simple change for the CTRLPF register, but I changed it and then the scanline went crazy again. So I had to fix that too. And then I had to even out the clouds and make them uniform. That took about an hour or so. One thing, though, if the flies move behind the clouds, the fly swatter has to as well. There is no way around that. Say, changing the player1 fly swatter to a missile or something. It wo
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

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