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About this blog

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

Entries in this blog

Odyssey 2

ZipZap (f.k.a. Xybort)

So I changed the name of the Xybort game to ZipZap. And I worked on levels 3 and 4. I can't really think of anything else to do, so it may be finished. So I'm not releasing the final ROM because of piracy concerns (although I would be very flattered if someone were to pirate my games). Level 3 has a yellow ball bouncing around a purple background (along with the usual UFOs) and level 4 has a desert theme with robots following your ship trying to get it. It is really hard to not crash into t
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Xybort returns

After a two month hiatus, I recently began continuing work on this game. I added a few things, but I want to add a whole lot more. So I think this might end up being an 8k cartridge. Tonight I worked on adding a second enemy in that shoots at you. Oddly, I got finished at about 3 a.m., but the previous night was spent trying to make what I have work on a real Odyssey 2. I FINALLY got done at about 7 a.m. yesterday morning, even though I started work both times at about midnight. I love my Odysse
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Xybort - level 2

Watch out for the airplanes flying from right to left. So I didn't have a very hard time with this, except for the making my code I wanted it to be easier working a couple days ago. I wanted to make the levels differing code at the end so it wasn't interfering with the code structure. But this proved to be a difficult task since it wasn't working on a real Odyssey 2. It wouldn't get past the title screen. But eventually I made it work. I added a boss which moves around horizontally. The nex
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Xybort

I have decided to make a new Odyssey 2 game. It will be called Xybort. I have been playing around with the title screen trying to get it just right. That's all I've done so far, though. Perhaps tomorrow I will actually work on the in-game stuff now that the title screen is completed. In case you're wondering, that white x above the big X is a sparkle. It switches between an multiply sign and a plus sign very fast, creating an illusion of a sparkle. In case you're wondering what Xybort
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

X vs. O October

I decided to spruce up the game I had so far. Instead of turning the grid a color for wins, I decided to put in a message saying who won whenever they did. The X in "X WON" is sprite 0. Since I didn't have much room to work with, I decided to just make a sprite mimic a character. It certainly made things a lot easier. I was having trouble trying to make the game decipher two separate key presses. I had to give up, and instead to start the main game (the tic-tac-toe thing is a minigame
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

X vs. O - the classic rivalry (part 4)

So I found some bugs with that last version. I took an attempt to try to fix them. It took about 20 minutes of playing to find one, and another one popped up after only a few minutes. I noticed both the bugs had something in common (I think), it was placing an X when I should have been placing an O. Or at least I think so. My brain turns to mush and I stop thinking rationally when I work on stuff for too long. I took yet another look at the code and discovered that when the X was placed, it
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

X vs. O - the classic rivalry (part 3)

Well, it took a LOT longer than I anticipated but I finally got win detection in. I had to sacrifice the words "CEDAR GAMES" during the intro, though, so now it just looks like this: X is green and O is blue. If X wins, the grid turns green, and if O wins the grid turns blue. The grid turns red if there's a tie. I had to spend all my waking hours Sunday on this stupid thing without getting it done. So I had to go to sleep at some point. So I did. I woke up today and began w
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

X vs. O - the classic rivalry (part 2)

So I finally got it working after 6 hours. You can now input letters in the tic-tac-toe minigame. I have about 300 bytes left to check for wins. I had to move an awful lot of codes all over the place. I think I must have spent 4 hours moving around code in desparation trying to make the thing work. The left controller enters the X's and the right one does O's. Since the controlers have 8 directions to move the joystick and a button, that makes 9 possible inputs, which works perfectly
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

X vs. O - the classic rivalry

From tic-tac-toe to the gridiron, x's and o's have always hated each other. Now you can step inside an X's shoes and experience what it's like to be an o hating x. Well, not NOW, I just started with the game. Yep, it's a new game I started work on for the Odyssey 2. I don't know what the game will be like, I just created this since I was really bored. What I want is an 8k game. In bank 3 (the first bank), I plan to put in an Easter egg - a tic-tac-toe game. In banks 2-0 will be the game its
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Win counter

So I went back to work on X Vs. O for the Odyssey 2. Last night I worked really hard trying to put in a win counter for the tic-tac-toe game. One thing I couldn't do was update the win counter upon winning. You need to press o to start a new game to update the scores. This is because I tried to do it but it broke the game entirely. So I decided to do it this way because it worked. I worked and worked up until 2 a.m. last night but I couldn't do it so I went to sleep. I woke up at arou
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Whack that O!

So I think I finally got the Whack-an-O game done now. I had to get rid of the high score thing because there's more than one game now and I can't display the high score for both of them. Also appearing in the Whack-an-O game are Xs. If you whack an X the game is over. You only are supposed to whack Os. So I centered the score on the screen since there's only one score and not the high score as well. Not to worry, the tic-tac-toe game still has a win counter for both x and o. I h
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

wave 999

So work resumes on Robot Ron. People said I should drop the "in 2084" part of the title. So I did. It's now just called Robot Ron. But it was hard today. I may fear I will run out of room trying to put a Game over message. I only have about 300 bytes left in the bank where I would put it and about 900 bytes left in the other. But an odd thing happened while I was trying to put more code in. The game got slower. I have no idea why it would do such a thing, so I had to backtrack and rework it a co
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Walking around

One thing I was wanting to do with the basketball game was make some animation on the guys. It looked like they were gliding around rather than walking. I knew how to do this, change the look of the sprites so it made it look like they were walking, but the main problem was fitting this into the game. I was trying to go to sleep when I thought of a workaround. Instead of attempting to change the sprite when the player was moving, instead change the sprite based on its y and x position when movin
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

UStupiPS

It's almost 5 p.m. and still waiting for my stupid mail to come. So I drew this, colored this, and even added some text to it. I don't expect it to be used for anything, it was just something to cure my boredom waiting for the stupid mail to come. I finished the second floor of the giant pyramid. I don't have enough room for three ghosts. Having just two is hard enough, so it's going to stay that way. I made a program to help me figure out the exit and entrances of the rooms.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Uncle Hairy on Odyssey² again

So I tried Uncle Hairy's Nosehair on Odyssey² again. I think the trouble I was having was me speeding the addition to the cutting timer too much. So I slowed it down. This however made moving left and right seem fast. So I slowed down horizontal moving. I tried what I had on a real Odyssey². A big problem was the nose flashing when the score was subtracting. After trying multiple things that made the program crash, I just told it to wait for the vsync to continue the score showing. Twice. W
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Two flies.

So I was going to put three flies in the game. But that was impossible since I couldn't make the third fly swattable even though the code I wrote should have made it do. So I decided to attempt two flies in the game. That worked. So I have an idea for the game. It seems pretty simple, but I don't know if it will work. I spent all morning and part of the afternoon on it. I got it working, but I don't know if it will be fun enough. I sent my idea ROM to the publisher of the game and we'l
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Tunnels of Terror (part 1)

After Jack and the Beanstalk has entered testing phases, people don't really seem to find any bugs with what I have. I've been working on another Odyssey² homebrew. Someone on the Videopac.nl forum mentioned Turmoil and how it might be a good fit for the Odyssey². So, I decided to see what I could do with it. This is day 4 of working on it and here is what I have so far. Right now it's an 8k game. I figured if I had four banks, why not use them? Man, that link is big. I wish Video
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Three little ghostsesses

...sitting on postesses. Well, not really. It was a song I was forced to sing in elementary school. I attempted to put in a third ghost in level 3. Turns out I did in fact have room for it...barely. I only have 8 bytes left in bank 0 (where floor 3 is stored.) What I need to do now is figure out the entrance and exit points of each room in the floor. I will do that tomorrow. It's good that I have 8 bytes left since I don't need to add anything else in the bank, just change around data.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Those Quirky Q's (part 2)

As it turned out, I can't add anything to this bank. It took a ridiculous amount of time just trying to get the game to pause upon a death so it doesn't go directly back to the title screen where the score isn't displayed. It took lots of time just trying to fit tiny additions in. So I've used up 1,400 bytes. I have plenty of room to add my "Cedar Games" intro...except it won't work right. So I guess this game won't have it. Oh well. At least now this minigame is done for the most part. Now
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Those Quirky Q's

So I decided to hop to another project for now. I will return to the burger game later, especially if this game doesn't work out. I always seem to have trouble with Odyssey 2 games. I was thinking about letters for a reason I forgot and q popped in my mind. Then I remembered reading about an Oric game called "Don't Press the Letter Q!" Then I researched the game, found a couple of YouTube gameplay footage and I thought I'd try to make something similar to the Odyssey 2. This is the beginnin
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

There.

More work. I'm at a good stopping point for now. Everything works good. I'd be happy with just this as a game, but I'd like to add more stuff in the main game. And I have the room to do it too. Not so much in the tic-tac-toe bank. Apparently "clearchar" does not clear the quads (score), so the score of the main game was showing during the tic-tac-toe game. I had a real hard time trying to put in score clearing code. I was just going to omit the word "tie" when a tie happened, but then I noticed
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

The nosehair demon.

I put in the nosehair demon. He follows you around trying to get in your way. He can also collect boxes. When a box comes up on the screen, the nosehair demon stops persuing you and instead moves towards the box. I made him white in order to be more visible. I think I'll redesign him though. It's hard to draw 8x8 pixel sprites. I also made a title screen for the game. Nothing fancy, just the word "NOSEHAIR" and the score. I also put in a game over screen. This says "YOU DIED." for
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

The Golden Q Quest (part 2)

I worked all day on this yesterday and I have it now: The first bank of "The Golden Q Quest" is (almost) finished. I had to make a few changes, like not use the standing man character when the guy stops. This was causing him to get forever stuck inside the pyramid walls. Second, I added the inside of the other two rooms. This is the room where the Ruby r is in. The third room contains a Silver s. Right now when you get all three treasures and exit the last room, it goes back to the beginn
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

The Golden Q Quest

This is that Venture clone for the Odyssey 2 I was talking about. I worked a lot on it these past few hours, and I have a couple of screenshots I want to show you. This is the title screen. If you press Action on the left controller, you use it to control the guy. If you press Action on the right controller, you use that to control him. This is the first level. Notice there's only three rooms. I want to have room for enemies in the game, so I only put three rooms in each leve
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Testing.

I spent most of last night finishing up my Robot Ron game. It's come to the point where I think it's finished. Now comes the testing/feedback part. I have a few testers to test the game for me and tell me how I did. The changes I made: each enemy is introduced in each wave until all four enemies are in. Then the game becomes a fight for survival as (with most Odyssey 2 games) you only have one life. added a game over screen. changed the numbered box enemies to more alien-look
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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