Jump to content
  • entries
    371
  • comments
    183
  • views
    9,740

About this blog

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

Entries in this blog

Game Boy

The Ugly, Uppity Umpire

For a long time, I thought that the Lynx/Windows game "Chip's Challenge" would be a perfect fit for the Game Boy. Years went by and nobody attempted to do it. Well, I took it upon myself to try my hand at it. My attempt is called "Ugly, Uppity Umpire." Why? I like video game titles that begin with the letter U. Must be because I don't have very many. Uniracers, Up 'n' Down and... well. Anyway, here is a screenshot of level 1. I attempted a second time drawing a pair of underwear.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Windows for Game Boy

So I was having trouble drawing the window shade on the window Frank enters in in "Frank the Fruit Fly." I tried using sprites, but that didn't work because of the fact that when two sprites overlap, it gives preference to the left-most one. This cut off a bit of Frank if you happened to stop at a certain place. Settled on an ugly window solution and went to sleep and woke up and while I was in the bathroom. Where I do some of my best thinking. Another place I do my best thinking is laying in be
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Frank dries off

Today is the big day: I'm supposed to get my 5200 RF switch. After a couple weeks of my 5200 console sitting on the floor, I can finally hook it up and see if it works. I have an AC adapter, I have a console, I have a controller, I have a couple of games (Galaxian should be great for testing the "refurbished" controller I bought) So I should be all set for when it comes. In the meantime, I worked on Frank the Fruit Fly again. Level 4 has been completed and work began on level 5. I composed
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Frank underwater

I've been working on Frank the Fruit Fly again. I've got three screens done since October 1, my last blog entry. Also, I got my 5200 in the mail yesterday but I can't test it because I need the special rf switchbox and a controller. I spent big, getting a refurbished 5200 controller instead of all those UNTESTED ones on eBay. Question: If you're selling controllers for a console, why not just take the time to actually test them? Because if you don't have the console, how did you get a
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Game Boy dolphin

So it's a unusually hot October day. It got to be 85 here today for some reason. So this got me thinking about tropics. And how they're as hot as deserts. So in the last screen of level 3, I merged the two. I put palm trees and a dolphin jumping in and out of one of three random ponds. How a dolphin can fit in that tiny pond, I don't know. I was having trouble trying to draw a dolphin. Attempt #1 looked good, but I forgot that white=transparent so it couldn't work. So I changed the white parts t
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Frank in the desert.

Last time we left Frank the Fruit Fly, he was wandering in the desert. I've been working on the game these past few days. I aded a couple of screens to the game. For some reason, the game broke so I had to fix it again. Everything seems to be working again...for now.   I'm almost done with level 3. I'd like to add an oasis with a fish jumping out of a pond that Frank must avoid. That will serve as a prelude to level 4: the ocean. It's like the Pokemon Mini version, where instead o
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Time and Frank: Flies

It seems like only yesterday I posted that blog entry. Oh well, it's 4 days later. I had to give up on the Odyssey 2 program I was working on. I went back to Frank the Fruit Fly. I finally fixed all the major problems that has been plaguing this game. Save sound now works no matter what level you start on. Game now fades out after passing every screen. I changed Frank's sprites, I added two more frames so his flight looks more fluid (at least it does to me.) Health now
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

I know now what I want to do.

Working on Frank the Fruit Fly for Game Boy again. It had been a few days I took off. Even still I forgot what I wanted to do next. I went ahead and made a screen for level 3. I made a better saving game noise. After much trial and error, I finally made the beginning to level 3. While it's not a screen you can lose health on, it's still a big step since I needed to continue the work on the beginning of level 3. I found that the game did not save health properly, so I think I fixed
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Fixing things.

So I had to give up on my Frank the Fruit Fly game. But I had an idea about maybe fixing it while I was trying to go to sleep last night. So I got up and a couple of hours later it was working again. Although it automatically saved when you got to a new level for some reason even though I didn't tell it to. The problem was it was saving automatically after all screens, something I didn't want it to do. I want players to decide when they save by pressing Select. Oh well. I guess it's good it
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Reducing compilation time

So I didn't make anything new for Frank the Fruit Fly today. I was sick of waiting forever for it to compile, so I decided to take today and see if I could reduce the time it spent compiling the game. It took two minutes to compile the game. I had to sit there and wait for it being awfully slow. I wondered what I could do. I noticed in my code I had some very long switch statements in the main part of the code. So I changed them into voids and then pointed the correct void to the correct sc
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

A frog.

I think it's okay to steal from yourself. I lifted the frog from the Pokemon Mini version and put him in the Game Boy version of "Frank the Fruit Fly." I got bored and so I decided if I had an idea I'd might as well just program it. And then I tried to go to sleep, and couldn't, so I got out of bed and made him face the other direction. I'm satisfied with the result. Don't touch the frog tongue! You'll lose health if you do. I don't remember who designed the frog, I just know it wasn't
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

A frosty snowman.

I was looking through my code and thought "What can I make talk?" If you go up to certain characters and press B, they will give you a short comment or hint. I worked yesterday on the snowman, so I decided to make him talk. If you go up to the snowman's face and press B, he'll say something. Well, not "say" something as in making the game talk (although that would be cool. Having Frank say "ouch!" in a tiny little fruit fly voice whenever he gets hurt. But that's not going to happen.)
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

The ultimate day of August, 2022

"Ultimate" here meaning "last." It was partly spent working on Frank the Fruit Fly. I looked through the guide I had made for the Pokemon Mini version. So I made a snowman on a screen. You cannot pass this screen until you make the snowman disappear. This was tough to solve how to do. I wanted an easy way to do it, but as it turned out, there isn't one. So I had to go my hard way I first thought of. And so another day, another screen added to Frank the Fruit Fly game for the Game Boy.
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Select your destiny.

So I tried once again to put in the option to save whenever the user wants to by pressing the Select button. I worked on it, went to sleep, woke up, worked on it some more and I think I finally have it so all the screens I have so far work. I had to change the igloo screen's goal since it wasn't working. You can just pass by the igloo without going in. But what's in the igloo? That is what I changed. Because originally I had it you had to go in the igloo and press a button to open up the rest of
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Blocks

So I made a screen with a fire flower coming out of a block with a giant question mark on it. In Super Mario Bros. this is a common occurrence, but I don't know ahout other games. When you fly in the screen, you are in a race with a moth to see who gets it first. If you get to the fire flower first, you can just press A to shoot a fireball to melt an ice block and continue on. There is only one shot you can make though. This is due to me programming for hours and not figuring out a way to see if
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Push the button, Frank!

(Yes, it's an MST3k reference.) So I was having a hard time with the game. I actually announced I was giving up on it. But today, I took a long hard look at the game and code, and worked on it and discovered a few things I didn't know in the process. And now the game works correctly. Frank needs to go into the igloo and press the button inside to be able to pass the igloo. Right now if you pass the igloo, it just goes back to the title screen since I haven't programmed what happens after the igl
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Frank the Fruit Fly - 8/2/2022

I changed the font. I didn't like the one I had in there. I replaced the not working spider web screen with a couple of new ones. One has Frank dodging a bee. If the bee stings Frank, he'll lose health and another bee will come out of the  beehive and go after him. The other has two flowers. Frank must go on the ground between the two flowers and press A to unlock the way out of level 1. I don't know how hard it will be to figure out that's what you must do, though. I also fixed a
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Frank the Fruit Fly: Igloo.

I had to get rid of the spider web screen. I worked on the game all last night. I got bank 1's compiling time from around 2-3 minutes down to 35 seconds or so. And I fixed some other things as well. And I began level 2 work. Here's Frank in level 2 in front of an igloo. In order to pass this screen, Frank will go into the igloo and push a button located inside. But I haven't gotten that far yet. I just started work on level 2. The next thing I want to work on is composing music for lev
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Frank the Fruit Fly for Game Boy

The time is right. Game Boy deserves Frank the Fruit Fly. I've begun working on a Game Boy version of Frank the Fruit Fly. I made a Pokemon Mini version, which turned out to be the second-largest Pokemon Mini homebrew game ever made. But it had problems. I couldn't get it to save anything, so I had to resort to passwords. Second, the tiny screen didn't allow for more elaborate things, like, say, quotes. To talk to a thing that can be talked to, go up to it and press B. There are o
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

HERTS Game Boy

I spent most of the day yesterday and this morning and fixed what I had and I think I finished the game. I am waiting for feedback. I want to know how well I did this time around. And a publisher to publish the game would be really nice. Just e-mail me if you're interested. Here is a link to the game's ROM: Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland thread in AtariAge. Something odd I discovered. I had been putting in #pragma bank 3 in the level defeated tune code, but discovered if I lef
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Yesterday

I spent almost all of yesterday trying to fit all of the bgm I made into the game. I figured out I would need to put a couple of short tunes in bank 3, but otherwise they fit. I tried putting in a short 4-note noise but I couldn't get it to play without it being really scratchy. So before I went to bed and gave up for the day, I tried once more to put in the little victory tune, this time in bank 3. It played, but without the bass tones. So I tried to make some changes, and found out that if I t
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Background music composing

So I've been busy composing little tunes for the background music for different levels. Each level will have its own song. For level 3, the snow level, for example, it will play my attempt at transcribing Winter Wonderland. The second part is really hard ("in the meadow, we can build a snowman/and pretend that he is Parson Brown...") so it may be a little off, but it sounds good, so I'm keeping it in. I am figuring I should have enough room for two more songs in bank 1, but that'd be it. Ri
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Black and white burgers

So I got some help on my Game Boy version of Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland. It now works again. I originally made it not work after attempting to add a boss screen where you shoot at the boss. I had to change the background from light gray to white. I had to turn off the display for a few frames, and I made it white to make it look less shocking and more smooth when the boss milkshake disappears. Sad, because I liked the way it was, but oh well. I'll do just about anything to make
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

Mega Cat Studios order

I got the order today from Mega Cat studios. Inside the box was two Game Boy games. They didn't come with a regular cardboard box. They came with a plastic holder. And apparently Infinitron is not for the regular Game Boy after all but for the Game Boy Color. So I'll have one game to review instead of two. That game will be Retroid. And I will review it as soon as I can. Unfortunately I ALSO got a jury duty summons to deal with. I think they should make it a full-time job, like a lawyer. So peop
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
Game Boy

GoSub release candidate #1

I finished the game. I programmed the ending yesterday and the Easter egg this morning. Now I need to test it. Who will help me test the game? You can download what I have of the game here. (Link to AtariAge.) It took me a little over 4 months from beginning to now to make the game. When I started, I never would have guessed I would make a Super Game Boy border for it, and learn how to do such a thing in the process. It's stuff like this that helps me to learn and make better games in the future
Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

0
×
×
  • Create New...