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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

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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Channel F

Fishing

I decided to return to work on Quest of the Cranberry. I spent the last few hours trying to put a fish in the game. Craig (the cranberry) is now underwater, so a fish would be an appropriate enemy. But now I have no ideas left on what to do. So it's a good time to pause and think of new stuff for Craig to encounter under the sea. Do you have any ideas? I'd love to hear them. The last part of the work was trying to make sure the game ends (temporarily) and you can't go any further
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Channel F

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Game Gear

Testing begins

I finished up Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland 2 for Game Gear. Let me know if you'd like to test it. I need other pairs of eyes out looking for bugs in this thing. I'll send you the game and a list of expected behavior (so you can tell if something is wrong). What would be especially nice is if you have a Game Gear Everdrive and can test it on a real Game Gear. I have a Game Gear Everdrive and a working Game Gear so I'll be doing that as well. Or you can just use whatever emulator you play Ga
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Gear

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Game Gear

Game Gear work

For the first time since September, I worked on a Game Gear game. I worked on the sequel to HERTS, HERTS2. Level 7 is the forest. Amazingly, I spent more time trying to draw a forest than coding the part of the game that handles the forest. I think I got it working though. Now I just need to add some level-specific code, music and boss. I tried to put in a picture of a forest I found on the internet, but it had too many colors and too many tiles, so I had to draw one. The result, while I wanted
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Gear

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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
Gamegearguy

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
Gamegearguy

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
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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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

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

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

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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Channel F

Starting level 3 of the cranberry game.

I started working on level 3 of Quest of the Cranberry a few days ago. But I was looking at my code (which is over 5,500 lines long) and I decided that I might want to move the password entering code to the end instead of the beginning because I will add to it as I make new levels. And I may break something. Apparently the Channel F is as finicky with code as the Odyssey 2. So I managed to move the password code down to the end and make it work in only about 15 minutes. So now I can actually beg
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Channel F

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Channel F

Level 2 of the cranberry game finished

I finished level 2 of Quest of the Cranberry for the Channel F this morning. It was hard. But I finally got it working okay after a few hours of coding. I still don't know what the problem is (I think it might have something to do with code page boundaries, but I'm not sure.) I spent almost all day asleep. I went to sleep at about noon and woke up at 3 a.m. after a horrible nightmare. So I got up and solved the problem I was having earlier. Once you get to the end of level 2, it freezes for a bi
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Channel F

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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

Music returns.

Music has returned to Uncle Hairy's Nosehair. The colors don't change any more though (unless you flip the switch to b&w). I also made some more changes. For instance, if the demon gets the box, you lose 10 points. And I also made the nosehair's beginning growing speed slower. And then I had to get the scanline count a steady 262 so it doesn't jitter on real hardware. That is the hardest part of the projects I do in Atari 2600 assembly. The machine is what? 45 years old? It shouldn't be stup
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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Intellivision

Hamburgers INTV update

I'm still working on this whenever I get a desire to. Added a boss level, much like the one in the Virtual Boy version. There's a giant eggplant shooting giant peas at you. Shoot him twenty times to get past the level. I only have two levels done: Meat Meadow and Mayonnaise Mountains. Soon I will work on Sesame Seed Sea. I worked on the boss for a couple hours because the computer was being a jerk and wouldn't do what I told it to. But eventually it worked.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Intellivision

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Intellivision

Hamburgers for Intellivision

I decided to make a version of Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland for the Intellivision. I finished the Virtual Boy version on Christmas, and started this on January 10. Here is the title screen for it. I've been working on this each morning and it is technically a game. You can die in it and there's a score. But there is much work to do. Instead of the milkshakes in the Virtual Boy version, the enemies in the Intellivision version will be different forms of vegetables. This may change
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Intellivision

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Tiger Quiz Wiz

Quiz Wiz madness

Latest Xybort news: Now you can move your ship and make it shoot out laser beams. But most of my waking hours I've been super busy working on my Quiz Wiz game. What I'm doing is making my own trivia questions, but making sure the answers match the ones on cartridge #1 (the most common Quiz Wiz cartridge.) So when I'm done, I will put new labels on #1 cartridges. I have a long way to go to finish. Each cartridge has 1,001 questions. I'm betting a team of writers wrote the questions, but
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Tiger Quiz Wiz

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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
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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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

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

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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Virtual Boy

Seeing a lot of red

On the VB Discord channel, everyone was kind of in agreement with the sentiment that there was too much red in it. So I changed it back to what it was before, the night scene. Looking at it now, I have to agree that the entire screen was just red and overwhelming. But in making that all-red screen, I discovered a way to make the text black, so I guess it wasn't all for naught. Since I have yet to find a way to change the text's palette, I just changed the palette it used. Since the same pal
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Virtual Boy

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Virtual Boy

Hamburgers level 8.

I designed a level 8 for the game. It's a beach scene. I still have to do music for it. Then levels 9, 10 and ending, and it will be all done. I am wondering though whether or not I should make a custom font for the game. I know how to, but I don't know if I should. I want some originality, but at the same time I want it to be legible like it is now. I also worked some more on Pipe Down, that Odyssey 2 game I've been working on, changing things to make it better. Not running code
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Virtual Boy

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