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About this blog

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

Entries in this blog

I need your opinion on something.

I want to put a lemon in for Frank to bite and gain health in before the final "battle." (I call it a battle even though it'll be just Frank dodging shots for two minutes.) I designed two lemons. For those who haven't looked closely at a lemon, it has these tiny little bumps on them, which is what I was trying to convey. But what color should I make them? The one on the left has them middle gray (like the grass) and the one on the right has them white (like the background). I can't decide which

Gamegearguy

Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Bears are hard to draw.

And now it's time for the final bosses in the game. It's getting near the end of my programming this game. The bosses will span out for a couple of screens. I was going to make the bosses be bears. But bears are hard to draw. So I decided to not make them be bears. I have made them cats. These cats look different than the cat in level 1. After a rough screen of throwing rocks at Frank, the cat decided to take a snooze. Your job as Frank is to pass the cat without waking him up. I'll le

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Bird legs.

I put a bird in Frank the Fruit Fly. At first I tried to show its legs, like so:  I wonder what happens to birds' legs when they're flying. I decided then to get rid of the legs and I like the legless result better. I assume birds tuck their legs under themselves while in flight and then stick them out when they're about to land. As you can see, the bird is flapping its wings, a nice little addition I made to attempt to make the bird more lifelike. I also discovered something

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Frank the Fruit Fly - 11/30/2022

It's the last day of November. The wind and rain is sure coming around now. Electricity kept. So I worked on Frank the Fruit Fly again. I put in an idea I had where Frank moves right automatically and you need to move the trees out of Frank's way. So I did that. I wasn't sure how this screen idea would turn out, but it turned out pretty good I think. There's lots of unused space, the bottom half isn't used for anything, which is kind of weird, but I had to do it this way so it would be

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Autosave

So I was playing Kirby's Dream Land 2. It's nice that the game automatically saves what level you're on AND which doors have been beaten. It kind of reminded me of Frank the Fruit Fly. But, it didn't autosave. The player had to press Select whenever he wanted to save. Seeing as how you can't go back in the game, I wanted to have an autosave feature as well. So I did some deleting of code that requires a "select" press mid-game to save, and instead told the game to save when a new level has been

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Frank the Fruit Fly - 11/25/2022

Last night I worked feverishly to put in a sound when Frank lost some health. This must be the last major change I can make to the game, since I have to do stuff like that bank by bank and bank 2 only has 200 bytes left in it! I think putting any more code there would make bank 2 overflow into bank 3 and cause tons of problems, like crashing the game. The one thing I had trouble with (the fading out of level 2, it broke for some reason) got fixed finally earlier today (I woke up at about 6 p.m.)

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Frank the Fruit Fly - 11/23/2022

I began work on level 6 of Frank the Fruit Fly. I was angered by the amount of time spent compiling. So I decided to try to do it myself after asking for help. That way, if I fail to do it myself, I can still have asked for it. Bank 0 was taking about 2 1/2 minutes alone to compile. So I broke up a giant switch statement into various void functions. That worked, believe it or not. It now was all speedy. But then I had to get rid of the kinks. For example, if I selected "new game" with no pr

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Frank the fruit fly - 11/20/2022

Today finds me spending part of my time awake working on Frank the Fruit Fly. Frank must pass through these walls on the roof (I don't know why there's walls on the roof except to impede Frank!) while avoiding those pesky bigger flies. I think they should be called moths, though. And with this, level 5 is finished. Bank 5 (where level 5 data is) is only 10% free, so I will make a level 6, an ending, and a game over screen, and then call it done. I still have not run into the game crash

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Back to Frank again

I decided to fiddle with Frank the Fruit Fly some more again. I added a couple of lines of code, and so far I can't make the game crash. So that's good. I tried and tried but I could not make it crash. So I added a new screen to it. And I finally got it the way I want it and I can beat it and the game still won't crash. So I've decided to keep working on the game until it crashes on me. Right now, Frank is in the chimney. In the next screen, he will come out of the chimney.

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

fiXed.

I fixed the letter x in my font. I am taking a little break from this because I have been working too hard. I didn't do anything on the game today, and I doubt I will because my head hurts now. I tried to get the computer in the den on the internet. You'd think a guy who can make an NES game do it in three tries, but nooooo. They made it so hard, it's like they don't want you to have two or more computers connected to the same router. God forbid that happen. Now I'm wondering if I can use a

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Gamegearguy in Nintendo NES

Stupidman font change

I changed the font in Stupidman. It now looks like this: I was never quite that happy with the font I had in there originally, so I changed it. And so all the places where the font was used have now been changed. I don't like the way the letter X turned out in the redesigned font, but if I have to use it, I'll try to redesign it. X, per Bert of "Sesame Street", is "a silly little letter that you hardly ever use." He's right, you know. it's just a cross turned 45 degrees. G, or R, or ev

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Gamegearguy in Nintendo NES

Stupidman: Act V

I think giant peas attacking the Stupidmobile would be funny, so I put that in the game. I have an idea for the way Mr. Germ slowly dies. He'll start out by being 8 pixels tall. Each time you hit Mr. Germ, he'll shrink by a pixel. So eventually he'd be 1 pixel tall. That'd be really hard to hit though. But first I have to finish Act V, where giant walking peas are attacking the Stupidmobile. They walk towards the Stupidmobile so it would have to dodge hitting the giant peas. Since I re

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Gamegearguy in Nintendo NES

A new song finally

I finally did it! I put in a new song! The problem was this: I was using the wrong program to get the correct code to make the song play correctly. I was using FamiTracker when I should have been using FamiStudio. I guess I should have finished this back when I knew how to do it correctly. I wrote a note to my future self in case I forget again. Now tomorrow I can put in the soap in the game. Or maybe later today. I don't know. I just woke up and an hour of getting angry is enough for one day.

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Gamegearguy in Nintendo NES

Act IV intro

Yesterday after I finished the blog entry, my head got better. So I decided to work on the intro to Act IV. I also darkened the background inside the store so you can see the score better. What I'll do today is compose a song for the store and put it in the game. 1,000,000 / 60 / 60 / 24 = 11. I once heard it would take 11 days to count to a million. And sure enough, if you count one number per second, it'd take you 11 days to get to a million. So I think I'll make the s

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Gamegearguy in Nintendo NES

Back to the NES

It had been a while, but I decided to get back to programming my Stupidman game for the NES. We last left Stupidman heading to the grocery store to get some soap to kill Mr. Germ, his archnemesis, with. I decided to start the work on Act IV with wandering around a grocery store. It took a long time, like three or four hours, but I finally got Stupidman walking around a grocery store that looks a lot like the museum. So why is there nothing in the grocery store? Well, there IS something

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Gamegearguy in Nintendo NES

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

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Gamegearguy in Atari 2600

Ugly Uppity Update

So I decided to quit Frank the Fruit Fly semi-permanently and devote more time to Ugly Uppity Umpire. Frank just has too many bugs that I can't figure out how to get rid of, so it's another case of I made it too advanced for my capabilities. I made Ugly, Uppity Umpire automatically save your level upon clearing one. This means you don't have to start at the beginning every time. Or select the starting level. If you want to start all over again, you can select "new game" at the title screen,

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

b button presses

So with ants crawling all over me still, I work on Frank the Fruit Fly. I kinda forgot about the B button can be used to talk to characters. But I don't know if I should keep doing this, or mention it in a booklet in case this gets released. There's nothing to talk to in level 3, and only this big squid in level 4. But he didn't say anything. So I made him say something. Just in case someone wants to talk to the squid. And also, in case you didn't notice, I made the health have a % sig

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Ants are stupid (part 2)

So I was cleaning my desk area earlier this evening. I found a tiny bit of what appeared to be a tiny chunk of M&M. Who knows how long that had been there. I sprayed some Raid in the carpet near the wall under my desk. All this ant talk though has a positive side: I thought up of a couple of comics for my webcomic. I'm not going to use this one, it's really hard to draw fire. Luckily I have another idea that I can draw. I also worked on Frank the Fruit Fly some more. I'm sorry

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Ants are stupid.

There are ants everywhere. I am drowning in an ocean of ants. If I went outside there would be less ants. I spray and spray that damn stinky Raid but they don't care. I am going to try white vinegar next since the ants won't die. Raid is false advertising. It said it would keep ants away after I spray it. WRONG. They keep coming in, even after I must have used a quarter of a can's worth of that dumb stuff that won't work. Now there are ants in my room. I make it a point NEVER to eat in my r

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Gamegearguy in personal stuff.

Ugly Uppity Umpire - level 6

I'd like to thank all the people who read this blog and like what I'm doing. I had no idea there were any. I thought I was just writing this for my own amusement and detail to myself what happened and when. I think I fixed what was wrong with the umpire game and tested it out. Earlier today, if I didn't move and let the game play, it froze after a bit. I don't think it does that any more. I made a sixth level. I had this idea: Have a level be like a race-like scenario for part of the level,

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

Beginning to think nobody cares

Ever since I began making Game Boy games, I've found that hardly anyone cares about them. Is it because my games are bad? I don't know. I keep wishing for feedback, but I'm pretty much pessimistic at this point. I've made five levels of this game, but it apparently doesn't matter if nobody except me looks at them. I made a whole bunch of changes and bug fixes. I found that if you die on level 5, there's a small chance the game will crash. I've found that on my Frank the Fruit Fly game too. I won

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Gamegearguy in 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.

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Gamegearguy in 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

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Gamegearguy in 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

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Gamegearguy in Game Boy

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