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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

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

Paku Paku for the Odyssey²

I think I'm responsible for half the Odyssey² homebrew library, if not more. Yet I'm starting work on a new Odyssey² game. This time it's a port of the game Paku Paku. I wondered if the Odyssey² could handle it, so I'm trying to do it. I just started on this yesterday. So there's tons more left to do. It was like that with the Intellivision, some one else did Pac-Line for the Intellivision. And I was sad. But shocked nobody tried to do Pac-Line for the Odyssey² yet. So I'm doing
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

1 On 1 Soccer

So I finished my Game Gear game about the burgers. Big surprise no one cares enough to want to publish it. So now I'm on to my next game. I've decided to make a better Soccer Odyssey 2 game. I did 1 on 1 Basketball before. So I worked and worked and worked some more. And I'll probably work more on this unless the game craps out on me and decides to break (which it has done a few times on just this ROM. I had to erase what I had and restart from the past save point a lot.) I have way too muc
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Avoid an O

2024 begins with more Odyssey 2 work. I decided to try to put in a fourth game. To see if it's worth it. Is it fun? In this game, the x will rescue other x's while avoiding those pesky o's. I made a game before called Oranges for the Odyssey 2, but it was never made into a game for sale. So I think it's okay to steal ideas from myself. Oranges was sort of like this except there was no one to save and there were 5 oranges. The o's and x's travel from right to left. The green x whi
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
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Fighting with computers (part 3)

In the last blog entry I said I found a bug. I finally figured out what that bug was. And I think I fixed it. I did a few things to the game since the last time. I added the standard Cedar Games logo back in. I tried to fit it into a bank I already had that had room in it (bank 2), but it wasn't going to work. So I had to make this an 8k game and put in a new bank to use. I added the beginnings of the Whack-an-O game. I made the score red this time to differentia
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Fighting with computers (part 2)

So I woke up this morning to discover another bug. So I moved a little bit of code around and then played the game for like 30 minutes and didn't run into it any more. Seems really odd though. I should mention that I wanted the score to reset when it does. Because I told it to do so. It seems like the only thing I could do. I couldn't use the same score for both. Since one game is a one-player game and the other is a two-player game. I don't think there's enough room for a player vs. comput
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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

More X vs. O fun for you

So I had to go back and fix a bug in the zap game. I think I finally got it fixed. While I was at it, I put in some code to go to banks 0 and 1, which I hope will have something in both of them. I got an idea for one of the two banks. It is going to be Whac-a-mole. I know, there is already a whac-a-mole game, but you need to go to a website to play it. I want this one to work on a real Odyssey 2. It will feature two grids and will use the controllers (instead of the keyboard) to play. I made a m
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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

Left left

Or rather, the way to move it left. So I worked all yesterday and part of today on the game. I had it working fine, but the display crapped out on a real Odyssey 2, plus I couldn't move left. So today was spent restoring left movement, which is tough when you don't know why. I also got rid of the tree. Someone pointed out that the tree should be getting larger as it nears. Since I couldn't, I just decided to get rid of it. I have some more room for more stuff now. Once left movement was res
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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

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
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Back to the Odyssey 2

So I finally got back into Odyssey2 programming again. This game is like Mario Bros. It's called "Pipe Down". It only has two enemies, and the fireball is always on. But I did try to add some interesting things. Like if you don't kick the enemy within a certain limit, it gets back up and starts walking again (which is in Mario Bros.) Unfortunately I don't have room for much else (like coins or other enemies). The last version I tested works great on a real Odyssey 2, though, so that's
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

1 on 1 Basketball: Title screen

With 1 on 1 Basketball's in-game code potentially completed, I went to work on a title screen for the game. After the "Cedar Games" intro, this is a first attempt at the title screen to the game. Not a very splashy thing, I know, but since this is the Odyssey² we're talking about after all, something like this should do. Some more work needs to be done on it (like centering and stuff), but I just wanted to show you my idea for a title screen to my game. The entire thing works now. Titl
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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

Cruisin' down the Nile

I decided I was sick of Game Boy programming for now. I'll say this though: It's a lot EASIER to program something on the Game Boy than it is on the Odyssey². I returned to my canoeing game (still nameless). I added a new level. And then the next day (today) I sat there for four hours to come up with the beginnings of a couple more levels. It was hard, but I managed to put in the beginnings of four more levels. Right now, level 2 just repeats over and over again. But I got the screens in anyway.
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Busy doing things

I've been working on a version of Basketball for the Odyssey². I made a website where you can download the work in progress game. It is here. I worked and worked on it, it kept not wanting to work because of the Odyssey²'s dumb "page" coding. I kept reaching across page boundaries. A page is a block of code that's 256 bytes of code. You cannot go over the boundaries and spill into the next code "page" with continued code. It's all very complicated, but after a few hours, I think I got it back wo
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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

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
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Jack and the beanstalk (part 6)

My internet was down for most of the day today. I worked on Jack and the Beanstalk for a little bit, trying to figure out how to redo things and make stuff work. I realized I had to redo the Jack sprite in the castle again for a bug to disappear. He now walks like this: Not a very good walk, but I fear it has to be this way, otherwise bugs creep in and ruin the game. While my internet was down, I cataloged my Odyssey² collection. As it turns out, I have 78 games for it. This includes a
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Jack and the beanstalk (part 5)

I think I figured out the problem with the walls. If Jack's animation switches to a new frame that is touching the grid when before it wasn't, of course he'll get stuck in it. So I had to design a Jack that is very minimal and doesn't change a whole lot yet changes enough to make it necessary for it to be animated. This is my attempt: So I have to do it this way. Today I worked on the ending. It's a very minimalist ending, though, as I didn't have room for a very grand one. Odyssey2 pr
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Gamegearguy in Odyssey 2

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Odyssey 2

Jack and the beanstalk (part 4)

I finished the fourth floor. I also put the key in the game. It hides itself in a room and your job once you get in the castle is to find it. It's your only way out of the castle: only when you defeat the giant will the exit show from the castle. But this blog entry is more about the beanstalk. I figured I might put in the down part of the beanstalk since I didn't think it would take very long. Was I wrong! I had to go to sleep with semi-broken code at about 1 in the morning. I woke up this
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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

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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