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Gamegearguy

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  1. Gamegearguy

    Dabbling with Game Boy Color

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Boy
    I finally got around to dabbling in Game Boy Color coding. My goal was to see if I could make a lemon yellow when it was on a GBC, and light gray on a normal GB. Mission accomplished:
     
    I also put in a red color. There's also a third, which is brown. The goal of the game I want to make is make it like Fast Food only have the food go from left to right AND right to left, AND up and down as well. The history teacher is only wanting to eat lemons while avoiding the hamburgers. I want the hamburger bun to be yellow, the patty to be brown, and the ketchup to be red. Sort of like the Yum! game I made for the Game Gear only the guy can move around instead of closing his mouth to avoid food.
    So I think I'm going to have to give up on X vs. O since yesterday one time it started a new game without me pressing o on the keyboard. This after playing the thing for 15 minutes.
  2. Gamegearguy

    X vs. O - the classic rivalry (part 4)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    So I found some bugs with that last version. I took an attempt to try to fix them. It took about 20 minutes of playing to find one, and another one popped up after only a few minutes. I noticed both the bugs had something in common (I think), it was placing an X when I should have been placing an O. Or at least I think so. My brain turns to mush and I stop thinking rationally when I work on stuff for too long.
    I took yet another look at the code and discovered that when the X was placed, it wasn't adding a turn to the turn counter. So I luckilly had enough room to direct it to the code where it does so after it checks for a win. This is aggravating me and I want it to stop.
    I also took a stab last night to make a title screen that says "CEDAR GAMES." I remembered that I could use the grid. I tried to use three sprites but that took up too much room. This is what I came up with. I know it looks dorky, but I kind of like it. This was my best attempt drawing with the grid.

    I couldn't draw an M with the grid and also fit an S in there as well. So I put an M character there instead. I don't know, I really hate the letters M and W. They are such a hassle when I'm trying to create fonts. Or I guess this time it was Odyssey 2 grid drawing limitations. My favorite letter is Q.
  3. Gamegearguy

    X vs. O - the classic rivalry (part 3)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    Well, it took a LOT longer than I anticipated but I finally got win detection in. I had to sacrifice the words "CEDAR GAMES" during the intro, though, so now it just looks like this:

    X is green and O is blue. If X wins, the grid turns green, and if O wins the grid turns blue. The grid turns red if there's a tie.

    I had to spend all my waking hours Sunday on this stupid thing without getting it done. So I had to go to sleep at some point. So I did. I woke up today and began work anew and I think I finally got things straightened out. If you have an Odyssey 2 emulator, play it on this and let me know if I did something wrong. Also, take a screencap of your weirdness.
    Programming the win detection was really hard. I had to try a couple of things for it to work decently.
  4. Gamegearguy

    X vs. O - the classic rivalry (part 2)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    So I finally got it working after 6 hours. You can now input letters in the tic-tac-toe minigame. I have about 300 bytes left to check for wins. I had to move an awful lot of codes all over the place. I think I must have spent 4 hours moving around code in desparation trying to make the thing work.

    The left controller enters the X's and the right one does O's. Since the controlers have 8 directions to move the joystick and a button, that makes 9 possible inputs, which works perfectly for this. I also made it so you can't make a letter where there's already a letter. I think I am going to use the letter double check variables to check for wins. One interesting thing to note is that a win is not possible until move #5 at the earliest.
    I tried it on my Odyssey 2. An extra 2 where there shouldn't have been prevented the game from working. So I removed the 2 and it works just fine...for now. This is hard.
  5. Gamegearguy

    X vs. O - the classic rivalry

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    From tic-tac-toe to the gridiron, x's and o's have always hated each other. Now you can step inside an X's shoes and experience what it's like to be an o hating x. Well, not NOW, I just started with the game. Yep, it's a new game I started work on for the Odyssey 2. I don't know what the game will be like, I just created this since I was really bored.
    What I want is an 8k game. In bank 3 (the first bank), I plan to put in an Easter egg - a tic-tac-toe game. In banks 2-0 will be the game itself (whatever it is.) I have to think backwards since Odyssey 2 games with more than one bank start on bank 3. I don't know why. I didn't design the thing.
    So the first thing I will make is the tic-tac-toe game. I thought of a way to enter x's and o's in a grid: if the player presses up on the controller, the x (or o) will go in the upper center. If the player presses left/up, it will go in the upper left corner. ACTION button presses put it in the center part.
    But that's for tomorrow. I don't want to make my eye hurt again getting angry at this game. So it will be baby steps. I had enough anger trying to make my compiled correctly game actually do what I told it to this morning. I slept almost all day yesterday. I woke up at about 6 a.m. and it was 11 a.m. when I got really sleepy and slept for about 7 hours. Woke up, watched tv for an hour, and then went to sleep at about 8:30 p.m. Woke up today (Friday) at around 6 a.m.
  6. Gamegearguy

    The tubes arrived

    By Gamegearguy,


    Magnavox Odyssey 1972
    So a major milestone has been hit in me and this project: the mailing tubes came. They are 2" wide and 13" tall, just perfect for all the stuff to fit in there. So now what's left to do is this:
    Pack up the games, get peoples' addresses and money post instruction manual on line mail them out. Don't know when I'll go to the post office, I'll try for next week sometime.
    The doctors' office called. Remember that ultrasound I had last month sometime? They FINALLY called and said I had fatty liver. I don't know what I'm supposed to do about that. I guess eat better (read: food that tastes disgusting) I was hoping for more people to buy the game, but oh well. I guess I should be glad that I sold some and actually have a use for 20 mailing tubes.
    I just wish I didn't have to give feed back for every single thing I buy on eBay. Required feedback is stupid. That's all for today.
  7. Gamegearguy

    Avatar change.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Other video game related stuff
    It's the Halloween season. I have been on an Odyssey kick since I announced my game and taking preorders for it here at the Video Game Sage. So I needed to find an avatar that combined the two. I found it.

    This is a card from the Haunted House game for the Magnavox Odyssey. I scanned it, cleaned it up, and shrank it down. Unfortunately, I wanted the word "cat" to be visible, but I guess I can't. So say goodbye to Uncle Sam holding a bowl of corn flakes for now. He'll return in November. That avatar is from an old Corn Flakes TV ad from 1983. It was on a VHS tape I had.
     
  8. Gamegearguy

    Odyssey 1972.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Magnavox Odyssey 1972
    I am one of the few people on the entire planet that owns a working Magnavox Odyssey from 1972. I guess when they built these things, they were built to last! About 50 years later and the thing still works like a champ!
    I have been making off and on for the past year or so, a new Magnavox Odyssey homebrew game. I was planning it for the 50th anniversary, but I kept holding it off and putting it on the back burner so to speak. Well, today I finally got my rump in gear and bought the tubes to mail these things in. And as such, I started a preorder thread here on the marketplace section on Video Game Sage. I don't know, I have some feedback on the names: Buy! and Sell! Well, if you have something to sell, would you put it in the sell section since you're selling it? So does that mean Buy! is a WTB thread? It all confuses me.
    Anyway, next year I will make an ambitious project: Three games in one. I need to work on that some more since I only have one game ready.
  9. Gamegearguy

    I left the AtariAge forums.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Stuff that isn't video game-related
    This whole AtariAge selling out thing stinks to high heaven. And I don't want to be a part of it one bit. Not one reply to the question "What if the iteration of Atari folds or goes bankrupt?" I really hate drama. I go out of my way to create or be a part of drama. So I have decided to excuse myself out of the AtariAge forums. I guess Al is a business man, and sure, it gets him a lot of money, but if I was in the same situation, I would have turned any offer from Atari down, even if they offered me millions of dollars. You just need to think about other people before yourself first. That's a lesson a lot of people, I guess including Al, need to learn: DON'T BE SELFISH. Or greedy. Greed is never good.
    So I guess I'll remain here unless Gloves decides to sell out as well. I think I don't see that happening, seeing as how there's no company called "Video Games", but you can never be too sure about anything these days, I guess. If you don't know about my posting history, I'll be short: I posted a lot over there. I almost reached 20,000 posts in the 17 years I'd been there. It was my main internet home, and I'm sad to see it go. But I don't want to be a part of any forum that is part of a company. I guess it just says you are a fanboy. I don't want to be seen as a fanboy for a company that may fold at any minute.
    I guess forums in general are a dying breed, and I guess we all need to go to Discord now, which is sad. Discord killed forums, just like Amazon killed Wal-Mart, malls, and bookstores, and Nextlix and Hulu killed cable TV. The world goes on. Why can't things ever stay the same forever? All changes that companies think are good turn out to be bad. Or I guess I suppose, as I'm about to turn 41, I'm just plain too old.
  10. Gamegearguy

    Complete.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Boy
    Ugly Uppity Umpire is complete (unless I find any more bugs.) Worked on the ending today and spent most of my waking hours discovering and fixing bugs I had come across. And now since it's after midnight, and I had played all the levels (except for 13. I hate the snails, and this level is full of them!) I think I may be done. So what's next? Testing it on a real Game Boy. I tested this on my Super Game Boy. I'll do that when I get up. It's after midnight and I need to go to sleep soon. Here is a Labor Day comic I drew just for Labor Day.

    Happy Labor Day to the U.S. people!
  11. Gamegearguy

    Designing Men

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Boy
    Well, man anyway. (Although I'm fat enough to be considered two men.) I did it. I designed the final level of Ugly Uppity Umpire for Game Boy. Now it has 50 levels. I started last October, so it took about a year of off and on work to design them. Like about one level per week. Although I made the last two levels today. Now what I need to do is make some sort of ending and I'd like to put in a Super Game Boy border. I have room enough to do both since I have two unused banks left.
    It's been a lot of work, but I accomplished my dream: Programming a game on a console I grew up playing. After a crappy NES game, I think I have the hang of making GB games with C. Too bad Frank the Fruit Fly never got published. Hopefully my choice of not using a battery for Ugly Uppity Umpire will pay off and I can get it published somewhere.
  12. Gamegearguy

    Super Game Boy border

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Boy
    So I designed a Super Game Boy border before I went to bed last night. Today I woke up at about 12p.m. and thought I was too sleepy to get up, so I went back to sleep. While I was sleeping, I had an odd dream that a frog had got into the house, so I adopted him as a pet. I loved that frog. It was sad that I had to get up and realize it was nothing but a dream.
    When I got up finally, I went to work making the garbage when the Super Game Boy border comes on disappear. Now all I have to do is put in an ending. And then a few hours later, there were thunderstorms. Not very big ones and they seemed far away and it didn't last for very long. The rain came down in sheets for a couple of minutes.

    I told you I couldn't draw at all.
  13. Gamegearguy

    Golf 2600

    By Gamegearguy,


    Atari 2600
    I didn't get time to work on the Wasp Woman today. That's because I spent a few hours getting really angry at programming a golf game for the 2600. Sometimes when I get angry, my right eye hurts and that's what happened this time. It feels like it's going to explode. Here is an official site with ROM to try: Golf 2600.
    I'm not going to work on anything else today since my eye began hurting. And I'll probably go to sleep in an hour or so because it's 8 p.m. right now and sleep cures my eyeaches.
  14. Gamegearguy

    The Wasp Woman (part 2)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Chris Makes Fun of Movies
    So I'm about a half an hour into the movie now and nobody has been attacked violently yet. It seems like there's little plot among the bee/waspkeeping footage and the business company part where people smoke a whole bunch. I can't believe there was a time where people smoked at work.
    The plot so far is this: There's this old guy who is working with wasps, and he creates a serum that, if injected, makes people look younger. He writes a letter to an (apparent) CEO of a cosmetics company, and she invites him up. He shows her his experiments and she is so impressed, she hires him on. I'm shortly after the part where the serum gets perfected and she gets injected a couple of times.
    I'm curious on the scientific side of this. How can wasp jelly actually make people look younger? I guess it's one of those "watching the movie when thinking about it makes it nonsensical so just forget about it" movies. This is really a dorky movie, and seeing the name Roger Corman (director of several movies riffed on MST3k) didn't exactly get me really enthused to see it. I'm surprised Tom, Crow, and Joel/Mike/Jonah haven't done this one yet.
    Work continues on syncing my comments to the onscreen action continues. It's really hard to do because my computer plays the footage back slowly on the software I'm using. I guess it's because my computer is 7 years old and I should probably get a new one but I'll wait until it dies completely before I do. Or maybe it's because there's too much of it (the whole thing is 72 minutes long). If I watch a movie, I need to do it like a soap opera because my attention span can't handle a movie and I'll get real fidgety and want to do something else.
    So I'll continue work on this tomorrow.
  15. Gamegearguy

    The Wasp Woman (part 1)

    By Gamegearguy,


    Chris Makes Fun of Movies
    "Ant-Man and the Wasp" this isn't (although this one is probably better.)
    I was curious. Whether or not I could rip movies from those DVDs various cheapo companies sell with dumb movies on them. It took a little over two hours to rip a 70 minute long movie with Handbreak. It's for my latest project: "Chris Makes Fun of Movies." This is like MST3k, only with audio commentary instead of shadow-rama. It takes a fair bit of work. I'm doing this in 10-minute or so long intervals. I record myself watching the movie for the very first time. I don't know anything about the movie. The test here is to test my ad-lib and thinking of funny things to say on the spot. Then comes the hard part: Syncing my ten-minute or so long commentary with what I was seeing on the screen.
    I'm about ten minutes into a film from 1960. Roll that beautiful bee footage! I've yet to see the title character. I may or may not put this on YouTube. I don't know about copyright, but I think if these old stupid movies are being released by these companies, they had better be in the public domain, or else all these studios would come after these small companies putting out these cheapo boxed sets. I got a couple of boxes of these, one says "100 Sci-Fi movies" with the intent of doing this, but never did until now. If I don't put them on YouTube, I guess I'll mail them free of charge for anyone who wants them.
    The thing is, I can only do the short ones, about 70 minutes long or so. I'm working with Pinnacle Studio so I can design the DVD menus as well. So we'll see how this goes.
  16. Gamegearguy

    Two flies.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    So I was going to put three flies in the game. But that was impossible since I couldn't make the third fly swattable even though the code I wrote should have made it do. So I decided to attempt two flies in the game. That worked.

    So I have an idea for the game. It seems pretty simple, but I don't know if it will work. I spent all morning and part of the afternoon on it. I got it working, but I don't know if it will be fun enough. I sent my idea ROM to the publisher of the game and we'll see if he likes the idea. It involves characters. It kept erasing the characters on the screen. I was angry and working on it for about a few hours, until I looked at the code and realized I had put "clearchar" in the code at some point. Why did I do that for? So I removed that and it began working good. Oh, I remember why I did that! It was to erase the light blue letter K that showed up at the top left of the screen. It must have been char0 since I now am using that in the game.
    I have decided to use the Voice module for the game. Unfortunately I can't test whether I did the Voice code correctly on my real Odyssey 2. But it works okay in the emulator. I went to sleep at about 4 p.m. and woke up around 8 a.m. I slept 16 hours.
  17. Gamegearguy

    Flies

    By Gamegearguy,


    Odyssey 2
    Yesterday I decided to make a new Odyssey 2 game. I attempted to put three sprites on the screen moving randomly. In the end, I could only put one. So I decided to make it like my Atari 2600 game Fruit Fly Fun.

    This is what it looks like so far. I decided on white as the background color so the black fly would be easily visible. That and I can't think of another Odyssey 2 game with a white background. I've always wanted to make a game with a white background.
  18. Gamegearguy

    Video games for the Game Gear.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Gear
    I worked on my Game Gear game a little bit more. I made the following changes.
    moved the text in the title screen outside the cookie.
    made it so it's okay if you don't eat the burger. But eating it gives you an extra life, so it's good if you do. The burger will only appear if you have less than 2 lives remaining. made it so the burger appears less frequently. The way it was set up before it was really showing up a lot, even though it only appeared if a certain variable returned a value of >252. I changed it so it only comes if the value was 255. made it so the mouth doesn't flash when the game comes back. made a pause between life losing and starting up again. (I might have mentioned this here before.) made it so you can open and close the mouth during the life losing pause. You can play what I have at the game's official site. I checked out version 25 on my real Game Gear and it worked okay. But I doubt that many people care since there were only 5 people who viewed my last blog entry. I bet it'd be 0 if I had made this a Master System game!
    I have room for a couple more backgrounds so I may put some in. I don't know whether I should. And if I do, where should the action take place?
  19. Gamegearguy

    Game Gear work

    By Gamegearguy,


    Game Gear
    Today's work is on the Game Gear. Trying to spice up and make the cookie on the title screen of Yum to look better. This is what it was like before:

    And after a few hours' work, what it looks like now:

    I misplaced the cookie so my name is lower since they're both in the same picture. I'm going to leave it as is because I don't want to work on the title screen any more.
    I'll test this later on a real Game Gear when the mood strikes. I need to play my Game Gear more often. You'd think with over 154 games for it I'd play it more. But the same was true back when as well: The Game Boy had better games. I guess it didn't really matter that the Game Gear games were in color if they weren't all that good.
    We're in the middle of a heat wave here. Today will be day 3 of temperatures above 100 degrees. We're just not that used to it here.
  20. Gamegearguy

    Hot

    By Gamegearguy,


    Intellivision
    So today it was 105 degrees outside. I wanted to take a 10-minute walk every day. So I had to wait until 9 p.m. for it to cool down enough to do that. And I also worked a whole bunch on the lemons game. Here is what the picture of the place in yesterday's blog entry looks like now:

    The cacti are a little skinnier now, but I think it's good since now the cacti's offshoots are the same width as the stem. I think I have a little trouble digesting salad. I don't know why.
    I had to speed things up. Most of today's work involved deleting and changing code so it wouldn't slow down if Fred moved diagonally.
    I had a salad. I learned I don't like Italian dressing. I love ranch though. I would usually not eat a salad, but I guess I'll be eating more of them. Going for a 10-minute walk and eating healthier aren't really helping with my weight so far though.
  21. Gamegearguy
    Back in 2017 and 2019 I worked on a game for the Intellivision called My History Teacher Ate Lemons. I got to level 3 before I stopped for some unknown reason. Perhaps there was some bug. Well, I went back to work on it and I think I got the bugs straightened out.

    Anyway, I have been chugging away with work on my other game, the Ugly Uppity Umpire for Game Boy. I had to give up on the Steve the Watermelon game because it just wasn't working out. Since the doctor's visit I have been taking about a ten minute walk every day. After which, my legs start hurting and I need to go sit down, which is the exact opposite intention of the walk in the first place. Today's walk was at about 7:30 p.m. It was 97 degrees outside. We're in the middle of a heat wave with high temps above 100 for at least two more days.
    I also changed the theme to dark mode. It's a lot better on my eyes.
     
  22. Gamegearguy

    Yet another doctor visit

    By Gamegearguy,


    Stuff that isn't video game-related
    So I'm going to have to go somewhere else to get an ultrasound to check if I have fatty liver. I guess not having diabetes is a good thing.
    I'm getting quite sick of health issues. I worked some more on Steve the Watermelon.

    I had to change the whole idea to a maze-like thing I had an idea for a long time ago but never got around to making. Let me tell you, making Steve move like Pac-Man was a major hassle.
  23. Gamegearguy

    Another doctor visit

    By Gamegearguy,


    Stuff that isn't video game-related
    So the doctor's office called about a week ago and said he wants to talk with me about my blood test results. I have an appointment on Friday. They didn't say what was wrong with me, but I am guessing I have diabetes, which is stupid because it's not my fault I'm fat, it's the stupid pills I'm taking.
    I decided to start work on a new Atari 2600 game. Since I had problems with the scan line on my last assembly attempt, I decided to use batari Basic on this go around. I don't know what Steve the watermelon is going to do, but it was fun working on it.

     
  24. Gamegearguy

    Banana jokes.

    By Gamegearguy,


    Stuff that isn't video game-related
    I am in the middle of trying to go to sleep. I don't really like it when I am trying to go to sleep and I suddenly think of something and I have to get up and type it or write it down somewhere so I don't forget it when I wake up. But I was really wanting to continue work on my banana joke book. The problem was I was having trouble thinking of jokes that had to do about bananas after 21 pages' worth. Well, one idea led to another and suddenly I had 2 more pages completed. Here is a banana sampling of the work I did just now.
    What does a banana use to defend himself?
    Bana-nunchuks.
    What Canadian province has the coldest bananas?
    Ba-Nunavut.
    Which game show has the grand prize of a bunch of bananas?
    Family Food.
    Why did Isaac Newton like bananas?
    They didn’t fall on his head.
    By the way, if you know of a company that can print one-offs of books (or a couple-offs?) let me know. I tried to make the pages the same size as a paperback. When I want to resume work on this, I will start on page 24. My goal is 100 pages. I'm about 25% there!
  25. Gamegearguy

    Waffles return

    By Gamegearguy,


    Intellivision
    Four years ago, I made an Intellivision game called "The Secret Government Waffle Project." So now in the midst of a boredom attack, I thought of a rhyming phrase "awful waffles." Then I thought, "That would make a good subtitle for a sequel of The Secret Government Waffle Project!" So I did.
    For those of you wanting a butt update, here it is. The doctor was running half-an-hour late. I wanted out. So I didn't tell him about it. And then I had to wait another half hour to get my blood test done. Doctor said he's going to test me for diabetes. I thought that was what I was taking a pill for so I wouldn't get it. Oh well. And my blood pressure is up. Barf. If it's still there 6 months from now, I'll tell him at the next appt.


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