So the past couple of days I began work on a version of Pac-Line for the Intellivision.
Yesterday my eye hurt really bad, yet I still went to the used game store. I walked out with Blues Brothers 2000 for the N64 because I didn't see anything else to catch my eye and I wanted to support. I saw the first issue of Nintendo Power in there. Too bad they wanted $200 for it! They also had some Fun Club News issues, the cheapest one being $40. And then I went to Popeye's and got some delici
I discovered that the explosion sound didn't play when the autofire was happening. So I made it so you can't shoot until the sfx is done playing. Then I had to shorten each sfx so it doesn't sound and play awful. I also made it so if you touch the boss, you'll die. This was another change that had to be done with autofire. You can still get up right to the boss's face and autofire, but you'll risk getting hit by one of the boss's onion rings. I changed the colors to level 6's background so they'
This morning was spent working on adding autofire. To use it, you hold down the button. Someone suggested that. I ran into some more bugs when I put it in, but I think they may be gone now. I thought about adding some lines in the grass, but I decided I didn't want it to look really busy, so I didn't. I'm using 15 colors, so if I wanted to, I could have even made them a different color.
I noticed the life counter was flashing 0 for a frame or so when it went to the game over screen.
So there was a 20% eclipse here. Not anything like the 2017 one. I went outside with some 2017 glasses to see if I could see it. It doesn't look amazing over here. I heard on the news it's supposed to end at 12:19, but the peak was at 11:25. So I went out there and it wasn't impressive at all. Oh well.
I made some changes to the hamburger game. Level 5 especially. I changed the background. I made it look like this:
I added some trees and more mountains behind them. I thoug
I decided to go back to working on Game Gear Flying Hamburgers even though I deemed it finished. I thought of something I could do. So I worked on making the onion rings not disappear during the boss screen. I made it work. It got harder. And it's a good thing I worked on it.
During my other testing, I found a major bug. I don't know what it was at first. I tried various things until I discovered that if the enemy is shot and his projectile keeps going, it gets a new enemy at that pl
I got a bouncing banana. It bounces around the screen. Then I got the crazy idea of a Tapeworm-like level. I got it able to do this as well, but with a little extra code. I don't know how much code the Jaguar can handle for each vsync. I also got my .raw files to play correctly.
So now with a banana bouncing around the screen, the next step is to add the pineapple in. So that's what I'll do next. I plan to have odd-numbered levels be the open field and even-numbered levels be this. I
Last night I played my Jaguar for the first time in a long time. I played some Wolfenstein 3D. I discovered something: The Jaguar has battery backup capabilities! I was poking around the number pad and when I pressed 1 it said "SAVE TO FILE 1". So when I was done, I turned the Jag off and back on again and sure enough, it saved my game at the level I had left off at. I discovered the map comes on if you press 5. I played it in God mode because I'm not very good at games like this.
So
For a while, I haven't been doing my comics, so the website was on a temporary pause. I'll be back at it again on April 7 and again on April 14. It makes me wonder how the cartoonists who do the comic strips think up new ideas over and over again for each day. Perhaps that's why Gary Larson quit. If you're doing a new strip each day, they can't all be good. I just drew, scanned, cleaned up and colored a couple of comic strips and if I think of any more, then that'll be great. But I've been doing
For as long as I've been making music compositions, I've always used Anvil Studio. I thought I'd change things up a little and compose a new epic song using a program called "Aria Maestosa". It's similar in that you can place notes on a bar by clicking on it, but there are many other different changes I could use if I could understand them. One of the more frustrating options omitted is you can't change the key signature mid-song. I just spent 45 minutes trying to find a way but I couldn't. So I
I have been working on Pot o' Gold a lot today. I got so angry at it because I was trying to make the trees 2 tiles instead of just one. It kept repeating the sound of the tree getting over and over again. So when that was solved, I'm trying to use channel 3 for the takeaway of the trees. All I can get just now is a soft hiss. I'd like something more like a "pop!" type sound effect. I'll try to work on it some more when I get all the sprites in.
I wanted to continue making some mini
Awhile back, I had this idea of a grand Odyssey 1 project called "I Need to Escape the Aliens." Then I forgot about it. Until last night. I woke up at about 4 a.m. with a fully fledged idea for an Odyssey 1 game. But I was too tired to get up, so I went back to sleep. I woke up at around noon. A few hours later, I decided to try to flesh out the idea to see what is possible and if I could add anything to it. The second (or perhaps third?) game doesn't need an overlay, but I think I'll make one f
So I think I have everything done on my part. I have 1 byte left, so anything else would have to be bug fixes or changes to what I have already. My game is going to get a release, so stay tuned for that. Just not from AtariAge. It's been 9 months since I ordered from the store and nothing ever came. It'd be nice to get a refund, but I guess I won't.
Yesterday I was sitting on my chair and I moved my leg wrong and it started to hurt really bad. I guess I pulled another muscle. I don't
I thought about what I can do next. I tried to make this an indoor scene, but with a white wall, the bw/color switch would be rendered practically useless. And the scanline wobbled if the colors are changed. So I'll keep it like this: an outdoor scene. Although I don't condone going outside to swat flies. That's their home. They're supposed to be outside. I mean, how would you like it if some giant came into your house and swatted you to death? Well, I guess you wouldn't care since you'd be dead
So I discovered a strangeness on a real 7800 with my flies game. The scanline jumped. So I went back to work and attempted to fix it. I think I finally did so. I was wondering though why Stella said the scanline jumped when I pressed reset but it really didn't. I don't know why it would do that. So I went back and tried to fix that and in doing so learned that the scanline was 260 when pressing reset. Which was why the >#262 thing wasn't going off when I reset. So I think now everything is ok
So spring has returned. The ants are back on the kitchen counter. The temperatures are warmer. Since I was done working on my Game Gear game, just for fun I went back to work seeing if I could fix the scanline issue I had in the assembly version of Fruit Fly Fun. You might say it's a beautiful spring day (well, night). I hate the sun. But I woke up at about 7 p.m. so I missed most of it. I think I fixed it. Perhaps tonight I'll try it on a real Atari 7800 to see if I made it work good on actual
So I worked some more on my Flying Hamburgers Game Gear game last night. I think I'm done with it now.
I changed it so instead of it saying "level 1", "level 2", etc., it just says "new level." I didn't want players to get confused when they reach level 11 and it says "level 1."
I also took a stab at designing a label (like I'll ever get this released. Ha!) I took an old label and changed it to say "Flying" instead of "En Route To Switzerland 2."
I also found a bug in
I love party mix. I got a couple of boxes of them. I was horrified by the amount of pretzels they put in this. It's like 3/4 pretzels! I don't want that many pretzels!
I put in pretzels in my Hamburgers Game Gear game. The pretzels start appearing at level 11. They move randomly. Moldy pretzels shoot potato chips at you.
And it's almost 7pm and it's still light outside! I hate summer. It's horrible. I went to sleep at about 6am or so and woke up at 5pm. This is bad because
Sometimes I get so angry working on a video game that my eye begins hurting. When this happens, I have to lay in bed until I feel the urge to vomit. And then I go to the toilet and barf up all the food I ate that day. Well, that happened last night. But I discovered something: If I eat food while my eye hurts I don't have to wait as long for me to vomit.
What made me so angry last night was me trying to put in a pow! explosion graphic when the enemy got shot in Hamburgers. Oh, I coul
So I took some feedback. I posted the game over at SMS Power forums. I made some changes to the game.
levels 1-3 will have either a shooting (strawberry) or non-shooting (chocolate) milkshake.
levels 4-6 will introduce the pizza which shoots (green moldy) or doesn't shoot (plain). Also, the enemies can move faster.
levels 7-9 will introduce the taco that also comes in moldy or regular varieties. Also, the enemies can move move up or down in addition to a straight line.
So I finally got rid of the garbage display for a frame in the Hamburgers game. The solution was roundabout: I had to make a black, blank screen and have THAT be displayed for a frame or two. I don't know why it had to come down to that, but it did. I got this idea after trying to do it a "technical" way and failing. I'm guessing there probably IS a way to do that, but darned if I can find it out.
That work makes the game look a lot better than it did before surprisingly. So now I ca
So I thought I'd make level 8 be in outer space instead of in a beehive. So here is the hamburger floating in space.
I also added a little bit more detail to the tops of the palm trees.
I tried and failed to make the transitions more smoother. It seems like for a frame or two the screen has a horizontal line across it at least in my emulator when the game switches to the boss screen. I tried everything to fix it but I couldn't. Life gets so stupid all the time. Why can't so
The Little Mermaid arrived in, how fittingly, a clamshell case.
I worked on the palm trees in Hamburgers, making them more in-line and cartoonish than adding an actual picture of a palm tree cut down in colors.
Bank 7 got completely empty, so I cut the ROM's size down to 128kb so now there's only 8 banks, 0-7.
I've decided I'm going to keep the music the same from now on because I'm spent trying to compose new little 1-minute pieces of music using just 2 channels. (channel 2
The redo for level 6 is complete. A funny thing happened when I was compiling it: Banks 8-15 got completely empty. If this continues and I only need 8 banks to fit the game into, I won't add the other levels and just finish it as an 8 bank game.
So we'll see where this is headed as far as its size.
I just finished composing a new song for level 6. So now what I'll do is add new levels 7-9 (level 10 is okay) and add a game over screen and that will be it. Again.
Also,
I updated a couple more backgrounds and changed a couple more songs.
The first one is underwater (level 4) and the second one is a mountain (level 5). The first one looked a lot different because it had fish and a shark, but I redesigned the entire thing because I didn't like it. It looked like a 3-year-old drew it. Of course, all my drawings look like a 3-year-old drew it, but this especially. I replaced the fish and shark with rocks and seaweed. I've decided that I will add more l
It's the day that only comes on the calendar every 4 years today. Yep, it's leap day: February 29. Happy Leap Day everyone.
I was working on my Hamburgers Game Gear game again a little earlier. Not on redoing levels, but a game play change. I made it so if the fry hits an onion ring in the boss screen it disappears instead of going right through it and ignoring it. I had a little trouble with this because the game kept freezing, but I eventually found the problem (or it fixed itself.)
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