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Gamegearguy

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Blog Entries posted by Gamegearguy

  1. Gamegearguy

    Blargh (part 2)

    By Gamegearguy,


    personal stuff.
    It's been three days now where the temperature has been below freezing. I don't think once it got above 30 all weekend. And with .1"-.25" freezing rain coming this afternoon, the power may go out. So if I go missing for a week or so, that's where I am. Tomorrow it's supposed to finally get above freezing. So if the electricity goes out, we'll have no power and it'll be 50 degrees as opposed to 20 degrees.
    I understand that most of the country right now is below freezing, but it's really rare where I am that it is so cold for so long. It should be in the 40s and raining, not 24 and freezing rain. I have good reason to be paranoid since the 6 day power outage two winters ago. At least we have a fireplace to keep us warm.
  2. Gamegearguy

    Blargh.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Other video game related stuff
    Ahead of the half-inch of ice we're supposed to get tomorrow here, I have been working on Pokemon Mini stuff. Why? I don't know. I looked at some other Pokemon Mini titles, most notably Psychic Seeds, and I redesigned my game to look more like that.

    I am attempting to make a Fast Food Atari 2600-type game for the Pokemon Mini, where the object is to move the mouth around to eat the candy and avoid the pickle. which will decrease your life by 1 if you eat one. The pickle is not in the game yet.
    It's too bad I don't live up about just 50 miles north where they're going to get mostly snow. I got some grocery shopping done yesterday in case the power goes out. And I hope to play some more Pokemon Mini in case it does go out, along with some Game Boy stuff as well. Also, we just got our fireplace serviced a few days ago. So we're all set.
    So yeah, it's not looking good weatherwise here. Usually we get saved from the bad weather that happens all across the rest of the country. But I guess not this time.
  3. Gamegearguy

    Between the liNES - Tetris

    By Gamegearguy,


    Nintendo NES
    How did almost a whole week pass between my previous blog update?
    Anyway, after reading about that kid who beat Tetris, I decided to play it myself. Here's how far I got.

    Apparently it doesn't take very much to be a Tetris master. I crap out at level 19 because it gets way too fast and I can't control the pieces any more. I don't understand how tapping the underside of the controller is supposed to help ("rolling"). I wonder what the highest speed is. I remember playing Tetris DX and I could seemingly play forever. I once got over 700 lines in it. After 300 or so lines, the background goes black and quits changing. But I'll never know because this version of Tetris goes way too fast.

    Here I actually got one line cleared on level 19. Whoopee. What I don't understand why it's the tenth palette yet it's only on level 19. Shouldn't it be the eighth palette (white, orange, blue)? You know what would have made this a great game? Battery saving high scores. But if even Super Mario Bros. 3 didn't get one, then, oh well.
  4. Gamegearguy
    Today I played NES. I wondered if it was possible to score over a million points and finish the game. Yes, but you must "cheat" in order to do so. In 3-2 you can build up your score to a million without losing very many lives and then proceed to beat the game. I watched some YouTuber get a million points. I was wondering why he kept dying, but I soon figured out why.
    So all that talk about SMB made me want to play it. All I did was use infinite lives, nothing else. And I beat it a second time. I pressed B to select a world and I started at 8 and went through the game until 8-4 and won again. So hey, I figured if you can cheat in order to get to a million points, you can cheat to beat the game.
    I have a tip. In 8-2 you can easily time it just right and find a hiding space here for a few seconds.

    The Green Koopa Paratroopa won't land on the spot Mario is at, and after he passes then you can proceed. I never did get a million points legitimately:

    But since I suck at just about everything, I consider this an accomplishment because I didn't warp at all. I went through all 32 levels. Yay. And it's my first NES game beaten this year. Perhaps I should see how many I can beat this year...
  5. Gamegearguy

    Avoid an O

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    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 which you control can move where he wants within the white lines. I plan to make the o's get faster as the game progresses.
    I had a very hard time getting to sleep last night. It took at least 2 hours of just laying there really sleepy until I finally fell asleep. As a result, I woke up at 4 p.m. It was awful. It went from waking up at around 11 a.m. or 12 p.m. to waking up at 4 p.m. and attempting to go to sleep at around midnight or so. I guess I'll be up later now.
  6. Gamegearguy

    Fun with hamburgers (Dec. 29, 2023)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Gear
    What has happened since my last blog entry? I designed a few new levels for the hamburger game.
    Level 6 is the city. There are lots of skyscrapers in it.

    I don't know whether or not to make the score black or white on this level. Right now it's white, but I could easily change it to black if I want to. I don't know if I want to.
    Level 7 is the beach.

    I put a couple of palm trees on it. I also need to compose some music for it. I've been looking at samples for the tracker I use for Game Gear programming, but I don't know what else to do to make the music sound different. What's also hindering me is the fact that I only have two channels to work with. I'm using the third is for sfx and the "white noise" channel for sfx of the enemy shooting. I jus tnow have an idea for music for the final level, I need to go track it before I forget.
  7. Gamegearguy

    Palette change

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Gear
    So I played my Game Gear for the first time in a while. Man, orange is hard to see on a blue background. I tried to make it more visible by darkening the screen and it worked a little. I think the problem is the shape of the onion ring: It is hard to make an 8x8 O-shaped sprite visible like that. The nacho that the taco shoots is visible. I think putting a black border around the sprites like I did in the Virtual Boy game would not look as good if you actually have a color other than red.

    I have been working on this more than I should have after I realized there were still some things to do in the "engine" mainly having to do with going up into the boss level. But I think I figured that stuff out, along with the amount of shots needed to defeat the boss, which magically broke for no good reason.
    If this is my last blog entry before Christmas, have a merry one. And let's hope 2024 will bring this game having actual physical copies somehow.
     
  8. Gamegearguy

    Mountains are purple now.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Gear
    With all this work on Mean Santa for the Game Boy...

    I thought I'd take a little time to work on Flying Hamburgers for the Game Gear as well.
    Today I added in the ability for the enemies to move up and down instead of just straight on. I am planning this out.
    levels 1-3: head on, regular speed levels 4-6: head on, regular or faster speed levels 7-9: up and down movement or head on level 10: a mixture of any of these. I have also decided to put in an ending for the game. This came because it would take some more programming time to put in level intros for levels 11 onward. Plus, I want the player to sense a feeling of accomplishment knowing he made it to the end. "I beat 'Flying Hamburgers'!" Like that time I was playing X-box 360 because I never got a chance to get a Wii and I was playing Tetris and the game stopped and said I had beaten it. Granted, I didn't know you could beat Tetris, but I felt a sense of accomplishment.
    So what I need to do right now is compose some music for level 5, the purply mountain and then think up of 4 more and then do level 10: the castle. I also took a little time to name the levels as well.
    Cloud Nine (and others) Caving In Deserted Reef Madness I only have two empty banks and only 5 levels. I don't know if I'll be able to fit in 5 more levels. But I'll try.
  9. Gamegearguy

    Sleepy Saturday

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Boy
    So I went to sleep at around 6 a.m. yesterday. And then I woke up at around midnight. So basically I spent most of Saturday asleep. I don't know why. But I figure if I didn't need to then I wouldn't have. So since midnight I have been working most of the time. All my work today was on Mean Santa. I could have worked less had I remembered I could make the background palette and the sprite palette different. I think that was the most troublesome part of my work. I am trying to make an endless runner-type minigame except that it ends. And it's not very long.

    Soon I will put Santa in here and his job here is to jump over a few snowmen before going to loot more houses. I could have made it scroll, but that would involve more work, so I just decided to create the illusion that it's scrolling. So I put some little grass blades. At first I had the grass green here. Because it normally is green where I am. The last time snow was on the ground on Christmas was when I was 1 year old. But then I decided to make it have snow. I wish it would snow on Christmas. But it looks like another sunny day a little above freezing (around 40F).
    I had to get rid of the Super Game Boy palette since I'm only allowed 1. If you count the number of different colors here, it's more than 4. So that's why. Each palette contains 4 colors. I get 16 palettes, 8 for the background and 8 for the sprites. What's odd about this is that's exactly how the Game Gear works and it was released 9 years prior to the GBC. Somehow I find it easier to work with palettes in the Game Gear rather than the GBC though.
  10. Gamegearguy

    Rude awakening.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Boy
    I woke up at 2 p.m. Not because I wanted to, but because of the leafblower people going around with their stupid leafblowers on. I thought perhaps they'll stop, but no, they kept going, 20 minutes later. So I decided to get out of bed. I worked a lot on Mean Santa again today. I got really angry because I was having horrible trouble with making the game easier to program.
    A few hours passed, and I finally got everything straightened out. I was trying to make it easier to add new levels in the game, like this one.

    So now it will be (relatively) easy to just add new levels. I think I have the main engine mostly done for the most part. A few things need to be decided, like whether or not to add lives, or points, or both. Or just have Santa have an infinite attempt at stealing the presents in each level. And now my left wrist hurts so I'm done with typing code for today. It's 2 a.m., so I've been awake for almost 12 hours. Perhaps it's just time for me to go to sleep. The leafblower people usually come on Wednesdays so hopefully nothing will wake me up when I go to sleep today.
  11. Gamegearguy

    Mean Santa

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Boy
    Tim Duarte and I are working on bringing his game Mean Santa to the Game Boy. I have been programing it and he has been giving me feedback about it. Not that I'd get it completed by Christmas, but perhaps we'll do a Christmas in July and release it then or something.
    I have been making it work for Game Boy Color and Super Game Boy, as well as just regular Game Boy, all in one cartridge. These screenshots are from the Game Boy Color mode. The Super Game Boy mode has its own border and color palette.

    The premise of the game is Santa has turned grinch-like and wants to steal presents instead of giving them out to the kids. Trying to stop him is the Ghost of Christmas Presents, who wants the kids to get their presents. You control Santa as he's trying to steal the presents in each room. Basically it's sort of like my Game Boy game Ugly Uppity Umpire.
    So how this works is if you put the game in a GBC, it will be in color, if you put it into a Super Game Boy it will be in color only a different palette and border, and if you put it in a regular Game Boy it will be black and white. Got it?
  12. Gamegearguy

    The wonderful world of YouTube poop (December 2023)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Stuff that isn't video game-related
    Last month I said that on the third of each month I would post a new YouTube poop. Well, it's December 3, and I kept my word. Here is my second creation.
    I am particularly proud of the first part. Not just because I found it, and found it sort of suggestive, but what I did to it. All this stuff was a commercial break of As the World Turns somewhere around 1993. I have quite a few episodes of the soap as my mom and grandma were big fans of it. Grandma said she watched the first episode. Too bad she wasn't around for the last episode.
    So January 3, (if I remember), I'll post yet another one. Because I'm bored, that's why.
  13. Gamegearguy

    Whack that O!

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    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 had a hard time trying to get the X to appear in all 8 spaces. It refused to go in the top one for no apparent reason. But after a few hours of attempting, I think I finally got it to work without repeating a certain pattern over and over, which was another problem I was having.
    And yet another problem I was having was when, say, o pressed left and then an x appeared in the same spot the game ended and you were left wondering why. The solution to this was make the letters not repeat the spaces they were in in the previous appearance. So after you whack an O, you can't whack an X because it won't appear in that same spot.
    You also may be wondering why there's no center spot. Originally I was going to have ACTION button whack the O in the middle but then I thought that would be 9 spaces. 8 is a better round number computerwise (2^3) and therefore would be easier to get a random number for. In learning how to code for all these different retro consoles, they all have one thing in common: They like numbers that are powers of 2.
    I also began work on this this morning and now I think I have completed it, which is pretty quick even for me. It's only about 2 p.m. I woke up at about 5 a.m. or so. In order to get my (apparently needed) 14 hours or so of sleep, I will probably get sleepy and will be headed to bed here pretty soon.
  14. Gamegearguy

    Bad bananas.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Nintendo NES
    So I thought to myself "What can I put in the Stupidman museum level beside boxes?" What's long and would fit in the game? Then the answer came: bananas.

    Some other changes I made:
    made Stupidman stop animation in Mr. Germ's hideout when he reaches an end. fixed the supermarket level by re-designing it. made it so the soap is always in a different screen each time you play the game. spaced out the bananas more evenly. So now I think I've completed the game now. It was a lot of work to do this, so hopefully people will like it. And if they don't, well it does serve a purpose: It eliminated boredom.
  15. Gamegearguy

    Thanksgiving

    By Gamegearguy,


    Other video game related stuff
    Here it is. Thanksgiving. Apparently it's just me and mom. I'm going to visit my sister this weekend. And apparently it will be just me and mom on Christmas as well. My sister's boyfriend works at a hospital so he'll be sleeping all Christmas morning so we'd have to do Christmas in the afternoon at my niece's apartment and I just don't want to do that because I'm used to doing it in the morning at my sister's house. Oh well.
    Anyway, enough personal stuff you don't care about. I woke up about 10pm last night. Right now it's about 7 a.m. I have been working on fighting with the computer again, this time on Pokemon Mini programming. It was doing all sorts of stupid zany garbage that I didn't want it to do. But I hope I fixed it so it won't do it any more.

    I want a version of Yum! for the Pokemon Mini, so that's what I'm hard at work on now. I want it to be a non-sucky game.
    So in summary, I don't know what I'm doing, and I don't feel very good.
  16. Gamegearguy

    Fighting with computers (part 3)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    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 differentiate scores from the Shoot-an-O game. If the score is red, you'll know it's from the Whack-an-O game and not the Shoot-an-O game. I also decided to keep things simple and just make Whack-an-O a 1 player game. It all goes down to space I have left. And it's not very much, even when doing assembly. Plus add to the fact that I really don't know what I'm doing. Sure, I've learned a few things along my way of programming the Odyssey 2, like certain ways of doing things do certain things, but I still don't know why just adding some code completely breaks the game sometimes.
    When you switch games, the high score on the previous game you played will be lost. Variables are limited and I've used quite a few already. Not only that, but I don't have room in bank 3 (where the title screen is) to put code to display both scores in.
    I also made it so 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the keyboard starts games rather than X, O, times and 0. I thought the latter would be really confusing so I dropped that idea.
    It is just about midnight here and I just woke up. A few days ago I stayed up all night working on something else and went to sleep at about 11 a.m. Combine that with sleeping at least 12 hours each day and you get my life. I would have slept even longer but I woke up because I needed to pee and I couldn't go back to sleep. So I decided to write this blog entry.
  17. Gamegearguy

    Fighting with computers (part 2)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 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. computer option for the tic-tac-toe game. I had enough trouble trying to fit what I had in one bank anyway. But I bet if I got rid of the other stuff, like the title screen for the whole game, I might be able to. I guess I could use the SELECT GAME thing, but I don't like it because every single official game used it for some reason. I mean, if it's possible to skip it, why NOT skip it? At least once?
    I am wondering why the Christmas Music Choice channel plays stuff like Britney Spears and NSYNC if nobody likes them. It's channel 941 if you have Comcast. But they mix it in with the classic Bing Crosby and Tony Bennett stuff. That's the problem. I only want the classic stuff. I listen to 950 and 949, the classical music channels (i.e. Beethoven) when I am coding because it's supposed to help with thinking. Or perhaps that study was just bologna.
    So next for X Vs. O will be a Whac-a-mole type game, with one twist: whack the O's. Don't whack the X's. X whacking means the game ends. The whole point of the entire game is you are X and are trying to get the O's. I heard Elon Musk's favorite letter is X, so he changed Twitter's name to it. He should get this game if I finish it. He'd have enough money to buy 50,000 Odyssey 2 consoles anyway.
  18. Gamegearguy

    Fighting with computers

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    I took a few more hours and actually made it so the game updates the score automatically when you win, not when you press o to start a new game. I tested it on a real Odyssey 2 and it works!

    The thing is, when you press reset the game resets all the scores. Also, if you've been using the game and go to the tic-tac-toe game, the scores gets wiped out as well. In this screenshot, X just won his second game. Man oh man, this was HARD to do. The computer would not give up without a fight. I am still wondering why the score didn't update when I told it to. And I still don't now exactly how I did this, but I did it. Now for rest...
  19. Gamegearguy

    Win counter

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    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 around 1 p.m. and decided to take another stab at it.
     
  20. Gamegearguy

    The return of the flies.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Atari 2600
    I had been working on a game called Fruit Fly Fun for the Atari 2600. I had to give up and call it quits after I couldn't get the scan line and display a steady 262 scanlines. I came back to it briefly yesterday and could not fix it.
    So then I thought, if I couldn't fix it with assembly, I thought I'd try with Atari 2600 basic. For those who don't know, Atari 2600 basic uses extra code for compiling and displaying stuff, like making the scanline a steady 262, along with score handling and other stuff. So yesterday, I began work on the basic version. Since it is Basic, I couldn't draw the banana and then have it disappear with bites. (Basic's displaying routine makes it very hard if not impossible to do). So instead I made the action up in the sky.

    Since I wanted to keep it a simple 2k game (I like 2k games. Don't ask me why because I don't know.) I had to delete extra features like making the bugs behind the clouds or not, or make the black and white colors when the switch is set to B&W. In fact, I had to really struggle to put in the clouds in the picture, but I thought just having a blue sky with no clouds was boring, so I decided to attempt to add some. This is the result. I worked on the engine yesterday and the polishing today. One major change is if you don't swat the fly when the timer reaches 0, the game will end. I made this since there is no banana and needed a way to end the game with a fly on the screen. You can get my current build here: http://www.atari2600land.com/ataristuff/swatthoseflies.html
  21. Gamegearguy

    The wonderful world of YouTube poop

    By Gamegearguy,


    Stuff that isn't video game-related
    I was introduced to YouTube poop a few years ago when I began noticing it. After awhile, I watched one. I was instantly hooked. Even though it was years old back when I started. So about a year or so ago, I decided to attempt to make my own YouTube poop. And yesterday I had the nerves to post it on YouTube:
    Behold, my first-ever YouTube poop. I decided to make some more. So every month on the turd, er, third, I will post a brand-new made by me YouTube poop piece on my YouTube page.
    I worked on putting the ending of Stupidman in and fixed a few nasty bugs pertaining to the score. Now all that's left to do is compose the final battle song and the ending song and then I'll be done.
  22. Gamegearguy

    I finished Stupidman

    By Gamegearguy,


    Nintendo NES
    Got up this morning at 4 a.m. (Well, it was 5 a.m. but stupid clock changing made it 4 a.m. Why can't we just get rid of it?! It benefits nobody and it's really annoying.)
    I composed a couple of songs for Stupidman. The final battle song and an ending song. And I put them in the game. And I was done. I decided to hook up my NES and try it on that too. And so I did. And it works fine, but there's a space at the leftmost side where there's no colors or anything except the bakground color. And I can't put anything in it because I put stuff on the left most side, but it's still there.
    I notice this on some other games too, like Super Mario Bros. So I guess it's an NES thing. If you want to test or play the game, just PM me and I'll send you a test ROM.
    There were a lot of ants in my bathroom this morning. I don't know why. There's nothing sweet in my bathroom. Ants serve no purpose to anything. A world without ants would be an excellent world. Let the roaches live, I don't have any of those. Just kill the ants. Ants are dumb.
  23. Gamegearguy

    The final matchup

    By Gamegearguy,


    Nintendo NES
    I had a nice birthday. I had cake and pizza, we played Scattergories, I opened one present (nothing much, just a Carl's Jr. gift card and a $20 bill.) from my sister. If you remember, Mom got me my new office chair for my office room.
    I also took some time to work on Stupidman. I went to sleep at about 7 p.m., way past my bedtime. And I woke up at 5 a.m. My stomach is acting up. It doesn't hurt, but I've been farting up a storm recently. So I finished the final match between Stupidman and Mr. Germ. I also made some new sound effects for it, and put in a sound effect for bumping into walls. I also redid the museum yesterday so it looks better.
    So now here's what I have to do left:
    compose and put in a new end match song programming the ending compose and put in and ending song program the rest of the ending. look for bugs So that's what I did on my birthday and the morning after it (It's now abour 8 a.m., so there's still some morning left on November 3.)
  24. Gamegearguy

    My birthday (part 1)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Stuff that isn't video game-related
    So a birthday present of mine came early. It was a new office chair. I just spent the last 90 minutes (at least) assembling it. My right arm hurts. My birthday is November 2. So today is Halloween. I plan to spend the next few days relatively happy. Halloween is my favorite holiday. It signals the end of the sun. I hate the sun. It's too bright. Yesterday before I went to sleep, I worked a little on Stupidman. He is in the hideout now.

    I went through the whole maze to make sure the walls work correctly. One place it doesn't is at the final screen. This is because it's marked as room type #10 and I have no code to make it deal with it being room type #10 so it goes to the previous room type. But this is okay. I can just make some code to make it deal with it being room type #10 (move on to the final fight).
    A problem was taking the old chair out of my room. Another problem was putting the new chair into my room. But that's done. We don't get any trick-or-treaters here where I am (everyone here is too old.) I lived here before. I was about to turn 11. Me and a friend went trick-or-treating around here and everyone was surprised they got an actual trick-or-treater here. Then I moved away. And then I came back to the same neighborhood (That is a long story).
    So everyone, have a safe and happy Halloween. And don't waste a few hours assembling an office chair they said it was easy to do in the reviews but turned out not to be.
  25. Gamegearguy

    What color are germs?

    By Gamegearguy,


    Nintendo NES
    I worked some more on the walls and I think I got them good now.
    I also began work on the final battle between Mr. Germ and Stupidman. In doing so, I had to figure out something. What color are germs? Did you know that germs are bright green? Well, at least according to this game.

    I also designed the dirt Mr. Germ constantly throws (it's brown, but I may have to recolor it since the floor ended up brown) and the soap bubbles will be white.
    Here's how the final battle will work.
    pressing A fires a soap bubble at Mr. Germ. if Mr. Germ gets hit by a soap bubble, he'll decrease in size. Mr. Germ follows Stupidman's y position, throwing atomic dirt at him as he does. When Mr. Germ disappears, you beat the game. If a bubble touches the dirt, they'll both disappear. Today is my birthday. I worked on this game on my birthday. And I didn't get really upset. I think I won't press my luck and take the rest of the day off.
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