Gamegearguy

I'm torn. Should I keep the sky color like it was or change it to this: It looks more sky-like, but is it kind of hard to see the enemies? I also worked on a Game over screen. Which has got to be the lamest Game Over screen in the entire world. Even still, this was really hard to program. At least it has the standard death music on it. Plus, keep in mind that I'm a beginner at Commodore 64 assembly, so I don't know much yet. In fact, I'm impressed with what I've done so far when I don't know much of what I'm doing. Fortunately, Commodre 64 assembly is about the same as Atari 2600 assembly, except for the Commodore 64-specific stuff. I used to have a box and manual for Blueprint. But it left. I looked everywhere. I guess they grew legs and left.

The Commodore 64 was the first computer I ever had. I was around 2 at the time. We had it until Dad sold it and got me and my sister an NES. Years later, a few years ago, I saw a Commodore 64 at a local video game shop. I bought it. I didn't do anything much with it. I tried programming it, but it was really hard to do if you're not used to it. Well, I found a Commodore 64 game in my mess of my room. So I thought I'd try programming it again. Eventually I got this on the screen. I decided to attempt to make the Hamburgers game for the Commodore 64. This is the first and so far only level. You can't pass it because I haven't gotten that far yet. I will work a little bit on it tomorrow. How could you NOT work on a game about hamburgers on the fourth of July? Anyway, I think I got it so it's working for the most part properly. Here's the story of the game: "A flock of burgers are attempting to fly to Switzerland. But the Vegetable Air Force are egotistical and think vegetables are better than "junk" food are trying to stop them by shooting peas at the burgers. Little did the Vegetable Air Force know that the burgers could shoot French fries at the evil vegetables." So now that I think I got it working good, I'm going to get a Kung Fu cartridge so I can test it on a real Commodore 64. Yes, I know, it doesn't look very good. But I thought the black border would be the best option because if I made it blue, I figured people would wonder why the clouds and veggies disappear sooner than they should. It's not my fault. I tried to understand $D010, but I just can't wrap my head around how it works. And I may change this light blue to a more cyan-color. The Commodore 64 has a palette of only 16 colors, like the Intellivision.

I finally got it so you can erase one letter at a time when entering passwords. I knew that code would work, but it wasn't working. I discovered that I had to put the variables I was using in bank 4 also in bank 0. This morning I added level 30. It may seem very difficult at first, but not when you're the one making the game and discovered the way to beat it. Going into designing level 30, I wanted to make a simple level design but have it be really hard to complete. I think I made that here with level 30. So now I need to design 19 more levels. I have an idea for level 50. Also, I want to add in a Super Game Boy border, but I can't draw very well. Does anyone want to take a stab at it?

Here is the password screen now. The password screen has its own song. Since I figured if I couldn't subtract one letter (which I spent one day on and failed miserably at), I thought the next best thing would be an option to restart inputting the password. And, also, I put in an option so that if you selected PASSWORD on the title screen by accident, you could still start the game on level 1. Each level has its own password, a string of 8 a or b presses. Each level's password is displayed like so: Fortunately I had enough room to display them, on the final line of text I could use. So for level 2 on the password screen, you would press a, b, a, b, a, b, a, and b. This is the easiest form of password I could implement. Having a bunch of letters and then doing that felt like way too much work, so I did it this way. So there's about a 20% chance you could enter a valid password if you were just pressing buttons randomly. I spent about 45 minutes playing my Lynx. Since I got it, I now have all three: Game Boy, Game Gear, and Lynx. I need to get some more games for my Lynx. I played Pinball Jam and Lynx Casino. The Video Poker game is hard because even one pair of aces=losing. I wonder what would happen if your cash got to 0. Actually, I wonder that for all the casino games.

So I decided to cancel my Odyssey 2 doodle and instead work on the Game Boy game that inspired it. I decided instead of it saving your progress, to make it have passwords instead. Now it will be easier to publish when/if it gets finished because it doesn't need a battery. As a kid I wondered why every game didn't just save your progress because it was possible on some. Now I know why: To keep costs down. I tried to make the password minimal. It's 8 button presses on a special password screen. I also made it so it displays the password on the screen. Fortunately I had some room left on the screen to do that. So the next time I continue work on this, the next things to do are make the password screen song and work on level 30. My ultimate goal is to make 50 screens. Not as many as Chip's Challenge's 99 screens, but I'm only one guy working on this. And it's hard to design these levels in the first place.

Here is a link to a YouTube video of my latest Odyssey 2 "doodle". My, that is quite large. Too bad there's no way to shrink that. Anyway, today's work was adding a level intro. The umpire needs to collect the umbrellas while avoiding the jet planes (which are not present in the video.) The next time I work on this, I will attempt to make a second enemy for level 2. I will try to make a maximum of 5 jet planes zooming around the screen randomly. An interesting thing happening with this is that the umbrella never pops up near the exact center of the screen. And, while it's supposed to pop up randomly when you get one, and it does, but just not near the center, which is odd because I told it to at least randomly to. I've been working on this thing for 3 days now and not once. Oh well.

Thanks for the input all. I guess I'll stay here. I guess I'm just one that blows things out of proportion. I don't want to get into any trouble here. When I am angered, I guess I should just not post anything. I tried to fix the thing, but at the same time I didn't want to break it further.

Look people. I said I was sorry. What more do you want from me? Tomorrow I am going to delete my account here. It's been fun. I wish you all goodbye.

I managed to open it. I blew some air into it and, even though it was a miracle I got it put back together, up still wouldn't work. I think I'll just give up and attempt to buy another one.

OK. I don't have a clue how to open up a Lynx 2. I'm sorry I said it that way. Is there some sort of guide somewhere about it?

All the pictures are for a model 1. I have a model 2. Like I'd have an idea how to do that. Anyone I can ship to to get this fixed?

So I got an Atari Lynx in the mail off eBay a few days ago. When I got it it worked fine. Then I didn't play it for a couple of days. I got an AC adapter, I plugged it in the right spot, and now the up button doesn't work. What do I do? Can I fix it?

I made a website for my fly swatting game. I'm renaming it "Fruit Fly Fun." Hopefully it's more fun swatting fruit flies than it is guiding them to melons. I want to work on the game, but I think it's finished. So what do I do? In other news, my Lynx came in the mail today. I already had two Lynx games from the last time I owned a Lynx: Shanghai and Zarlor Mercenary. It took a while to figure out that my AC adapter does not work, but the Lynx works. I have ordered a second ac adapter, this time an official one, to see if my Lynx works with it or if I can only power it with batteries. Shanghai is evil. I don't see why I liked it or how I beat it at all. In my two attempts I was left with about 90 tiles left. Impossible. I also worked on an ending to my Hamburgers Intellivision game. I discovered a pesky bug that took a while to fix. If you shot the last enemy in a level and then died at the same time the enemy did, the boss wouldn't appear, but he'd be shooting normal sized peas! Right now, my Lynx has 5 batteries in it. This is to save the battery power. I figured since it would only work with 6 batteries in it, then I could only take one out to save the battery power.

They look so simple in the sky. But I seem to have been having a ton of problems when programming them. First it was that 2k Atari 2600 game. Now it's my Intellivision game I started back working on called "Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland." The problem was with scrolling. When it was lower to the ground it didn't flicker, but when I moved it up more it flickered a whole bunch. I don't know why. I kept on working trying to not make this happen. I spent about 5 hours today alone working on this. But I think I have it done. And I don't know how I solved it. The whole screen scrolls to the left. It scrolls that way even when I tell it to scroll right. But that's okay because I want it to scroll left. I'm beginning to think the Intellivision is hard to code for, even in Basic. I still need to code in level 10 and an ending. And then it will be finished. So why did I decide to pick up this project? I was looking at my YouTube videos and someone commented recently asking when it will come out. I don't know. That's what I've been doing for the past few days: Having my head in the clouds.

I decided I didn't want to work on Ugly Uppity Umpire any more, so I've temporarily shelved that project. And so with that, I decided to work once again on Ran-Over Possum Man. But I didn't like that really long name he had. So I changed his name. He's now Superhero Man. I wonder if that's too close to Superman. If need be, I can just change the name again to Hero Man. I left off at the beginning of level 3. There is still Stupidman on the NES, but I decided to work on the Game Boy game because it's easier. But I am basing the Game Boy game on the unfinished NES game. So I changed the chicken to a crow. I am wondering whether I should change the colors around and have the mountains be black and the grass dark gray.

I tried again to get the sixth game in my Channel F Celery game working. I think I have it good now. Mr. Celery is hanging on a rope crossing the five piranha-filled gaps. As you can see, a piranha jumps out randomly out of one of the gaps. Your job is to guide the celery to the other side a whole bunch of times while not getting bit by a piranha. I found my Channel F multicart! This is basically what led me to continue work on this game. I originally tried to make a similar game, but I had to give up after differing speed issues. So I tried it again, and this time, it seems to work fine whether left or right is pressed or not. The piranha jumps out of and back into the water without his speed varying. Unfortunately, work on a Channel F flashcart seemed to have stopped (I am not the one working on that!) This should be the last game on the game since I don't have any more room on the menu for any more. This game, titled "Go Fish?" was originally going to be more like the Game and Watch game "Octopus", but then it morphed into what you see above. Interesting that it still has a water theme.

While I was working on the game and watching it grow, it became apparent that the way I had it set up was not going to be the most efficient way I could do things. So I got some help from the Discord Game Boy programming and with their help, I think I have things ready to go good. The only thing I'd need to do is change the SWITCH_ROM() code, adding some more instances to make it point to the newly added code correctly as I put in some more levels. I went through all 22 levels in the game so far, and it all works great now. With my only fear not being able to put in new code for new levels. Although I think I just thought up of something. I could just add in some more functions to point to the other functions. Sure it would be a giant web of functions, but that'd be better than a giant web of switch or if statements. What I plan to do is, if I can think of that many, put in 100 levels. Right now I have 22, so I'm about 1/5 way there. So I'm thinking this will probably be a 256k game, my first. I don't expect to come into any additional problems with a game that large since most of that size will be used to store level data. Right now it's a 128k game and I'm using 4 out of the 8 banks, so it's half empty. But I think I'd use the rest of the 4 banks pretty quickly if I need to put in more level data in them.

With "Swat Those Flies" finished, I went back to the Ugly Uppity Umpire. I made a new level. But I still didn't like the title screen. So I decided to change it. It now looks like this: Now I'm happy with the title screen.

I finally figured out how to make the bugs move behind the clouds. It should have been just a simple change for the CTRLPF register, but I changed it and then the scanline went crazy again. So I had to fix that too. And then I had to even out the clouds and make them uniform. That took about an hour or so. One thing, though, if the flies move behind the clouds, the fly swatter has to as well. There is no way around that. Say, changing the player1 fly swatter to a missile or something. It would still be behind the clouds. I never dreamed that when I first got my Atari 2600 in 2005 or so, that I would become proficient enough to program something like this. I credit batari Basic (which I stayed in way too long). I can understand what certain code does, but I still don't understand the "racing the beam" thing people talk about. I drew a fly for promotional purposes. (read: because I was bored.) I hope to get this finished. It is finished now, unless someone has a suggestion I could work in in the 138 bytes I have remaining. I wish I could get it published somewhere...

No, the fly goes in front of the clouds.

I worked a little more and I got this: But as you can see, the fly sprite got bigger. Now I'm wondering if I should keep it like this wih the big sprites, or cloudless with the smaller sprites. I tried to put the two close clouds together to make one cloud, but a line was jagged so I kept it like this. What do you think?

As an experiment, I wondered whether I could put some sort of clouds in this game. I worked and got one. Then I went to sleep. I woke up and discovered for some reason the scanline dipped to 261 when the fly was going towards the bananas at the bottom of the screen. So I fixed that. I even fixed a bug pertaining to the upper left corner cloud which was thicker than the other upper clouds. But I'm not going to keep these square clouds in because they're square. If I were to make them rounded, that would take more code and then I'd break the game.

I made a little webpage for the game with ROM and instructions on it.

I've been working really hard for the past 5 days on this little Atari 2600 game where you control a flyswatter and swat flies and avoid bees and hornets. I think I'm close to, if not already, finishing this game. So I'd like some feedback on it. I really wish I could post .zip files on here. But since I can't, I had to put it on my website. That is a direct link to the ROM. Should I make changes to it? Did something weird happen? Please let me know what you think. The original goal here was to create a fun little game using only 2k space, like the earliest Atari 2600 releases. I have ~ 170 bytes left.

I thought it was possible given the simplicity of the idea. But it took a few days to do it: I now have a steady 262 scanlines (on Stella). I am going to quit programming for a few days because the heat wave is expected to begin tomorrow. And when it's hot, I call my room "the oven" because it's hot. I don't like being really angry and hot at the same time because it literally hurts. And I'm at a good stopping point now. I don't know what else I can do with the game. I have ~170 bytes left. But I think the game is pretty much complete. I put in all my ideas. I even got the bee to move in a straight line. I put in a hornet that chases you around for a little bit. And the flies are there to swat. And it's 2k. So now what? I don't know. After the heat wave, I will test my game on a real 2600. It's really too hot to do it now. How hot is it? A few days of 90+ temperatures they're predicting. But it's May. We have an excessive heat watch. And I'm tired. My wrists hurt because I was typing in code for long periods of time.