atari2600land's Blog - The information

RSS Bot · March 12, 2019

While i was play-testing the Aaron the Aardvark game, I noticed that on some backgrounds, the white text was partly unreadable. I decided after earlier trying to change the color of the text that something else needed to be done. Then it hit me: Change the background! So I went and put in a black background in each of the four background images. I thought it diminished further the quality of the image by making it use less colors. Then another idea hit me: Put the background as a level. This way I wouldn't have to put the bar in each level. This is especially helpful since I want to put in more background images.

I put in Aaron's head on the first attempt, but it wasn't very viewable since I was using the Aaron CLUT. So I changed it to a red heart and the other CLUT I was using for the poop, ants, taco, etc. I think this version is the best looking one. But I am unsure if the whole thing will be put on the TV screen. I still don't know what that massive black bar at the bottom of Virtual Jag is, and from what I can tell on other people's skunkboard videos of the game in action, doesn't show up onscreen.

So now I have a red heart in the game, something I wanted from the beginning when I put the heart in. I don't think I could have done it since CLUT 15 seems to be associated with the text, and it only appears to have one color in it and I can't change it. And this is what it looks like now. The text is much more readable now, but I'm not sure if it's too ugly to stay in. I guess I'll keep it in. Come to think of it, it's what SMB3 had, and that was, for a long time, the best-selling video game of all time. Perhaps it's due to the info bar...

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