DaveM

**** UNICORN DANCE PARTY! **** The game's bonus round is now partially implemented and fully playable (and without using any extra RAM)! Welcome to the Unicorn Dance Party! You'll trigger a Unicorn Dance Party in Arcade Mode after successfully completing two levels, and then every three successful level completions thereafter. The object is to hop around the grid, trying to land on the lit square. Each time you do, you'll earn 1000 points, and you'll have 2 penalty points deducted. So if your penalty count gets high, here's a chance to bring it back down again! Joining Snuggy in the Unicorn Dance Party are his little sisters, Snowy and Rosey. One's a bit faster than the other (I'm too lazy right now to look at the code and see which one I made a tad quicker), but other than that and their color, there's no difference. Snuggy's a bit of a clumsy dancer, so you need to avoid bumping into your sisters. If you do, the music will speed up, and they'll turn red and run off. Be careful, as Snowy and Rosey aren't quite like the other enemies. Sometimes, they'll randomly reverse directions, making it a bit tougher to dodge them! The Dance Party ends when the music has cycled through 3 times, or you have bumped into your sisters 3 times, whichever comes first. You'll notice the top grid disappears during the bonus round. That's because something else will be going there once I'm done with it. But for now, the game is completely playable without it. I've made some other minor changes, and it looks like I've solved the problem with the Game Over tune not playing that I mentioned in an earlier post. I hope to have this game complete by early next week, then get it into the hands of my playtesters. If you'd like to be a playtester for this game, message me and let me know! I'll have to have a quick turnaround time though, and I need to get this thing all wrapped up by June so Al can get it ready in time for for PRGE! Frazzled_20240506.a Frazzled_20240506.bin

The audio is complete! For some reason, the game over tune occasionally will not play. I can't figure it out. If anyone wants to look at the code and have a crack at it, go for it. I'd truly welcome the assistance! Otherwise, all the audio is now in the game. I'm going to try to implement the bonus round over the weekend. With PRGE rapidly approaching, I have to wrap this thing up in the next couple weeks or so. Frazzled_20240503.bin Frazzled_20240503.a

First few sound effects added. Game now has sound effects for Snuggy bouncing around the grid, objects spawning and de-spawning, and boxes getting switched. One thing I wanted to do with this is adjust the volume on the sound effects based on how close to the "camera" the event occurred. I was able to do this with Snuggy's bounce. When he's in the lower row, his bounce sound will be louder than when he's in the upper row. However, I may have problems doing this with the rest of the audio, so for now, the bounce sound effect is the only one that adjusts its volume based on location. It looks like I'm out of RAM. This shouldn't affect the implementation of the bonus round, as I have a plan to re-use some variables to get around that, but it may affect some of the audio stuff I wanted to do. The volume offset I mentioned above, for example. There are a few other things I have planned that I'll have to find a work around for now. On the plus side, I think I've finally solved my scanline issue. I moved a large procedure from the overscan to the VBLANK, and in the process, opened up a good amount of ROM in one of my banks, which makes life a lot easier. Enjoy the current release, and I'll be adding more sound effects very soon! Frazzled_20240421.bin

It took a few weeks, but I think I managed to put together a decent version of my wife's song. For now, it's the only audio in the game. It plays upon startup, and any time you go back to the title screen. I think it didn't turn out too bad considering I have absolutely no musical ability. Now I can concentrate on adding the rest of the audio to the game. This release also fixes a bug related to the right difficulty switch. That switch controls whether or not wild cards appear in the Practice and Time Rush game modes. It just wasn't working right when switched to the 'A' position. This is now fixed. When in those game modes, set the right switch to 'B' to play with wild cards, or 'A' to play without wild cards. You can switch back and forth during the game, but the change will only take place when a new puzzle is loaded. There's still some rare scanline issues present. I've optimized the code a bit with this release, but the screen will still occasionally roll. I'll worry about that later. Gotta get working on sounds and adding the bonus round. Previously unmentioned, I think: As you may have noticed, when you score points or incur penalties, the points/penalties are briefly displayed on the scoreboard. What you may not have noticed is that with less than ten seconds on the clock, this doesn't happen. You'll still be credited with the points and penalties, but with less than :10 on the clock, the scoreboard stays focused on the clock. Frazzled_20240409.bin Frazzled_20240409.a

Anyone here good at music and willing to help out? My wife was going to work with me on the music, and she hummed a little tune into her voice recorder a couple weeks before she passed away. I've been trying to write code for her tune, but it sounds horrible. I can do sound effects ok, but I'm totally lost with music. I'm hoping someone here can help out and do her tune justice. Thanks!

Of course, after hours of playtesting and not finding any bugs, I did the previous upload, and immediately afterwards, got a scanline bug and encountered another issue. This update should correct those issues. Fixed: 1. If Snuggy was sitting on the Panic Button when a match was made, he wasn't jumping up and down. I swear he did that during my initial testing, but he decided to stop doing that. Found the bug and fixed it. 2. I think I resolved the scanline issue. I cleaned up the large number of branches in my collision detection logic, eliminating some 25+ cycles or so. Hopefully, that should take care of any scanline issues. And here's some stuff I forgot to mention before: 1. Hopping on the Panic Button will immediately disable all Wild Cards. With the Wild Cards turned on, the Panic Button tested at something like an 86% success rate. This made the game far too easy. And while the 56% success rate mentioned above is a good deal lower than what I was initially aiming for, I had originally envisioned the Panic Button only completing the current puzzle, not the entire level. While testing it out, it made more sense to the flow of the game to have the Panic Button complete the whole level, regardless of the number of puzzles remaining to solve. With this added benefit, I'm OK with the lower success rate. 2. Speaking of the Panic Button, hopping on it will also increase the difficulty level of the game. A successful solve by the Panic Button will increase the difficulty more than if you had actually solved all the puzzles yourself. There's 64 difficulty levels in the game, with each determining not only how many puzzles to solve per level and the amount of time on the clock, but it also determines the speed of the enemies, how much time Mr. Grumpy will growl for, and how much time Snuggy has with his one-square special ability he gains after stomping Mr. Grumpy. Failure to complete a level will actually decrease the difficulty level a bit. I probably should map these all out and see exactly what occurs at each difficulty level. 3. Ed is nowhere to be found in the object spawn matrix. Some objects in that matrix have certain conditions that must be met for them to spawn. For example, for the Wild Card Power Up to spawn, there must be no Wild Cards already on the board. If an object tries to spawn and its conditions aren't met, Ed will spawn instead. He's the default object. OK, onto the audio. Enjoy! Frazzled_20240309.bin Frazzled_20240309.a

Finally ready for another update! The regular levels in Arcade Mode are now complete, albeit without audio. I gave a rundown of the various objects a few posts ago, but I'll do that again here, as things may have changed a bit. We'll start with how to play the game, then I'll go over the technical stuff after that. The object of Arcade Mode is to solve the required number of puzzles before time expires. Failing to solve all required puzzles before the clock hits zero, or getting hit by one of the enemies will add to your penalty total. If you accumulate 50 penalty points or more, it's game over. This is Mr. Grumpy. He'll walk slowly across the board, and if he runs into you, you'll spin around for a few seconds and be assessed 10 penalty points. Every now and then, he'll stop, face forward, and growl (albeit without audio for now). While growling, he's vulnerable to attack. If you can jump on him while he's growling, you'll pick up 500 points and start flashing for a few seconds. During that time, you'll be able to switch one box at a time. In other words, the adjoining boxes will not switch. So, you'll have a few seconds where you can quickly solve the puzzle! However, if you don't stop Mr. Grumpy, when he's done growling, the box he's standing on will switch, and he'll walk off the screen. Note that if he stops on a Wild Card box, there will be no change to the box when he's done growling. This is Ed. If you touch him, you'll spin around for a few seconds and pick up 10 penalty points. While spinning as the result of a collision with an enemy, the joystick will be disabled. You have to wait until Snuggy stops spinning to move or swtich boxes again. This is the Bonus Apple, it just adds points to your score equal to whatever the bonus for solving the current puzzle is. That bonus starts at 1000 points, and increases 200 points with each successful solve, up to a possible 5000 points. Apples may appear up to twice per puzzle. Here are the Power-Ups, worth 300 points a piece: This is the Wild Card Power-Up. This will add Wild Cards to the board (Duh). Time Power-Up. Picking this up will slow the clock to half its normal speed. Both these Power-Ups are affected by the Left Difficulty Switch. With the switch in the 'B' position, the effects of these Power-Ups will only reset at the end of a level. In the 'A' position, they will reset at the end of each puzzle. This is the Panic Button Power-Up. It will only appear with less than :40 seconds on the clock, and if you have 5 or fewer puzzles left to solve in that level. Picking it up will enable the Panic Button, a large, red, circular button that appears at the bottom center of the screen. If you jump on top of that button, the game will attempt to solve the puzzle for you for a few seconds. If successful, you'll not only receive credit for successfully solving that puzzle, but, if there's still more puzzles to solve, you'll be given credit for completing the entire level as well! Be careful though, it's not a sure thing. It tested at a 56% success rate, so it's just a bit better than flipping a coin. After a few seconds, the button will disappear, and Snuggy will be bounced back onto the grid, left to deal with whatever the computer has left for him. So you may only want to use this as a last resort! So that's about enough on how to play the Arcade Mode. I think the game is bug free at this point, and I haven't noticed any scanline issues in a while, but if you find a bug, or a scanline issue, please do let me know! Some other stuff... The grid now has 8 color combos instead of 4. I'm not completely sold on all these, so let me know which colors you like, and which you don't like. At the start of a level, or at the start of the Time Rush Mode, the scoreboard used to say "ROUNDS", with a number next to it. I've changed that to "PUZZLES TO SOLVE", as I felt it was less confusing. Collision with any object will clear all objects from the screen. This not only made things a bit easier to deal with, but because of the perspective, Snuggy will always be drawn in front of any other object. By clearing everything immediately, this avoids any situation where Snuggy is supposed to be further back in the distance, yet is drawn in front of an object in the foreground. As for collision detection, the game does use the hardware collision detection registers; however, if Snuggy is a row below an object, his graphic may actually be drawn over an object in the background. So the game also checks to make sure Snuggy and the object he collides with are on the same horizontal plane. While you can't jump over an object horizontally, when you jump vertically, there are some scanlines where the game determines that Snuggy is between rows and he won't collide with anything. Next up is adding audio, then adding the Bonus Round, then that's about it! Hope you enjoy it! And please let me know of any bugs you may find! Frazzled_20240307.a Frazzled_20240307.bin

Very excited to announce that Frazzled has been nominated for Atari 2600 Best WIP Homebrew Original Game in this year's Atari Homebrew Awards! You can vote for all the Homebrew Awards at this link: Atari Homebrew Awards! - AtariAge Forums It's been a while since my last update, but I'm still hard at work on the game. I'm working on collisions right now, and with such a variety of objects, and each having their own effect when you collide with them, it's just taking some time. I'm almost done with it though, so I should have an update in a few weeks. I'd like to release a stable, bug-free update, so I'm taking my time with it. It should be coming soon, though. The game is nearly complete. After the next update, I'll start adding the audio, then I'll add the bonus rounds, and that's about it! Thanks for your continued support!

Mr. Yo-Yo (NTSC) works!

OK, I think the scanline issue is resolved! Big thanks to Dennis Debro who gave me some suggestions to resolve the issue. I moved around a bunch of code from the overscan to the VBLANK, and that took care of it! All appears to be stable now! Other changes in this (and the previous) update: The left difficulty switch functions have been moved to the right difficulty switch. The left switch, for now, does nothing. I have a plan for that switch. Added a fractional speed effect to all objects, so an object will take the same amount of time to cross the play area, regardless of which row it spawns in. Updated animations for some objects, notably Mr. Grumpy's walking animations. I redid his legs, borrowing the legs from the guys in my failed game, Kick Ice, which in turn, borrowed their leg animations from the chefs in the arcade game Food Fight. So, if you go frame-by-frame, Mr. Grumpy's legs will match the legs of the chefs in Food Fight. Added a color change effect to the power-ups. Numerous other minor changes. One of the tough things to figure out in this game is how to deal with the pseudo-3D effect I decided to go with for some ungodly reason. Graphics-wise, each object has different animations for each row. Objects on the bottom row are 16 scanlines tall, and the pixels are 2x wide. Objects in the middle row are 12 scanlines tall, 2x wide, but are only 6 pixels wide (except Snuggy, who I think goes 7 wide). Objects in the top row are 9 scanlines tall, 1x wide, and use all 8 pixels in width. Using those restrictions, I couldn't come up with a decent-looking forward-facing Snuggy for the top row, so while he's up there, he'll only face to the side. Then there's the movement. I wanted to make sure I compensated for the different widths of each row. Snuggy takes 20 frames to hop between any two squares, so his speed is nice and constant. For all other objects, I had to come up with a fractional movement routine, and it seems to work pretty well. While some objects move faster than others, if one particular object uses X number of frames to cross the bottom row, that object will use the same number of frames to cross the top row. So now a little introduction to the various characters and objects you'll find in the game. Keep in mind, I haven't implemented collision detection yet, so these objects don't yet do what I describe below, but they will in the finished product (fingers crossed). Also, with this particular release, I have stuff spawning at a much faster rate than they will in the actual game. The current spawn rate is just for demo purposes. This is Mr. Grumpy. He's the owner of this hyperspace trampoline park, and doesn't like Snuggy bouncing around in it. He'll slowly walk across the play area, stop, let out a growl, and change whatever square he's standing on. While he's growling, he's vulnerable to attack. Snuggy can hop on top of him for some bonus points, plus Snuggy will gain the ability to change just one square at a time for a few seconds. This is Ed. He just quickly hops across the grid. I wanted this character to be a charging moose, but I couldn't draw a good moose using the constraints described above, so I came up with this guy instead. He's still referred to as "Moose" in the code, but his name's Ed. Ed may be a temporary employee, but he's in the game for now. If you get hit by Ed or Mr. Grumpy, you'll spin around for a few seconds, costing you valuable time, plus you'll be assessed ten penalty points. These are Snuggy's little sisters, Snowy and Rosey. They will only appear in the game's yet-to-be-implemented bonus round. If I can't get that to work, they'll show up in the regular game in roles similar to that of the last family in Robotron. Bonus Apple. Points. Wild Card Power-Up. Catching this will enable Wild Cards on the board. Time Power-Up. This will slow the clock to half its normal speed. Panic Button Power-Up. This will enable the Panic Button, a large red button that will appear at the bottom of the screen. Hopping on that button will give control of the game over to the computer, which will then try to solve the puzzle with a series of random moves. I've got a few ideas on how to implement this logic, with the intent to give the player about a 2/3 success rate of solving the puzzle this way. It'll be a bit of a gamble, but if you're stuck, it could save you! So those are all the objects in the game and what they will eventually do. Hopefully, that will give you a better idea of what I have in mind with the Arcade Mode. Next up is implementing collision detection, and then start working on the logic behind each of these objects. Hope you're enjoying the game! Thanks! Frazzled_20231220.zip Frazzled_20231220.a Frazzled_20231220.bin

Still need some help. I've re-written the object spawn and move section starting on line 4735 to make it more efficient in hopes that it was a cycle issue, but I'm having the same problem. Occasional scanline jumps to 264. I've confirmed this wasn't an issue in a previous version, so I'm guessing something in this section of code is causing the issue. I would think if I was using too many cycles in my overscan, the issue would be more consistent, but the game seems to run fine for a while, then the extra scanlines appear for a bit. This only happens in Arcade Mode. I've also changed the animation of the red enemy, who I'm calling "Mr. Grumpy". Once I get the scanline issue resolved, I'll explain the various roles that all the characters and objects will play in the game. Frazzled_20231211.a Frazzled_20231211.bin Frazzled_20231211.zip

Same here. That's the problem that brought me to this thread.

Got an update, and need some assistance. I now have all objects in the game, and have them all spawning (although no collision detection). But now I'm having occasional scanline issues. Not sure what's causing it. I had it running perfectly fine with only a few objects in there, but with everything in there, it's occasionally jumping over 262, and I'm not sure what's causing it. If anyone could take a look, I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance! Frazzled_20231208.a Frazzled_20231208.bin

My wife, BJ Myers, passed away last week after a long battle with cancer. BJ helped me so much with the development of Mr. Yo-Yo, and the game would never have been completed without her. She wrote the music that you hear in the cutscene following a successful completion of the bonus round, and more importantly, she provided me with so much encouragement and support throughout the entire development of the game. There were so many points along the way where I thought it was just too difficult, and got so frustrated, that I told her I wasn't going to continue. She always responded by telling me I could figure it out and would give me the love an encouragement to go on. As a tribute to her, I hid her initials in the game as an easter egg. It's one of two easter eggs that are in the cartridge version of the game as sold in the AA Store. So if you just have the downloaded ROM, sorry, it won't be in there. But if you bought the cartridge, you can find her initials. I've kept this a secret until now, but with her passing, I now want everyone to see it, so that her contributions to the game can be remembered. But before I tell you how to get the easter egg, I have one more announcement. I talked about this in more detail in the Frazzled development thread, but I'll mention it again here. Going forward, I'll be publishing all my games under the name "Beezy Games". "Beezy" was a favorite nickname of hers, and I thought this would be a fitting tribute to this incredible woman that I love more than anything. OK, back to the easter egg. It's not easy to get, but you can do it. When I try to trigger it myself, I'm successful about half the time, but with a little bit of luck, you can do it. Start the game on any level. I don't think it matters if it's a 1 or 2 player game, but honestly, I can't remember. But it does work for 1 player games. Starting on Level 1 is obviously the easiest, but this will work regardless of which level you start on. Complete that first level that you start on. Remember, a level consists of multiple caves, and perhaps a bonus cave. The first cave of your next level will be a purple cave (this will be the 2nd purple cave you encounter). In that purple cave, you must complete that cave without losing a life, and also without firing a single shot. So how the heck do you complete a cave without firing a single shot? By picking up coins and power-ups. That will trigger the Notelies to appear. If you can get some coins and power-ups rather quickly, the screen won't have a chance to fill up with the Blue Bouncers, and you can rescue the six Notelies you need to complete the cave. If you can do that, starting with the next cave, the Mr. Yo-Yo icon next to the lives remaining will be replaced by her initials, "BJM". The initials will remain there until you lose a life. You can get them back by doing the same trick on any subsequent purple cave. There is another easter egg, that I've explained earlier in this thread, but I'll give it to you again here anyway. If you can complete level 9, Mr. Yo-Yo will be very surprised. 😮 So those are the easter eggs in the cartridge version of the game, that are not in any of the posted ROMS. Hope you enjoy the game, and if you haven't tried my new game, Frazzled, head over to that thread and give it a download. Thanks!

My wife, BJ Myers, passed away last week after a long battle with cancer. I don't bring that up here to dwell on it, or to solicit sympathy, but instead to talk a bit about her contributions to my homebrews, and to make a bit of an announcement about my games going forward. BJ helped tremendously in the development of my first game, Mr. Yo-Yo. She wrote the music that you hear in the cutscene following a successful completion of the bonus round, and more importantly, she provided me with so much support as I struggled to learn how to program for the Atari 2600. I can't tell you how many times I said, "This is just too tough," only for her to tell me that I could figure it out and give me the encouragement to go on. I wouldn't have completed the game without her. As a bit of a tribute to her, I hid her initials in the game as an easter egg in the cartridge version as sold in the AA Store. After I complete this post, I'll post in the Mr. Yo-Yo thread about how to get that easter egg. As for Frazzled, we had planned on her again writing the music for this game. I feel so fortunate that a couple weeks before her passing, that she surprised me by humming a little tune into the voice recorder on her phone. When I get around to adding audio to the game, I will be adding that tune she hummed as the game's main tune. She was honored that Mr. Yo-Yo was nominated for best music and sounds for last year's ZPH awards, and whenever we talked about the music for Frazzled, she would always say, "I want that award this year, dammit!" 😂 So onto my announcement... Starting with Frazzled, and going forward for all my homebrews, I will be publishing them under the name "Beezy Games." "Beezy" was a nickname of hers that she really liked, and I felt that it always sounded like a "fun" word, and could lend itself to a logo rather easily. I came up with this idea a few weeks back, and did a quick sketch of the logo I had in mind to show her, and she absolutely loved it. Now, I'm not sure if I have to do anything legal-wise with this, or if I just ask Albert if I can slap this logo on the box somewhere, but I can figure all that out later. For now, here's the logo and wordmark I came up with. Just a simple, green, interlocking B and Z, with a unicorn horn. Green was her favorite color, and she absolutely loved unicorns (which is sorta how Snuggy the Unicorn came to be the main character in Frazzled to begin with). I wanted to keep these simple, so that I could render them onscreen in my games going forward. Not quite sure how I'll fit them into Frazzled, but I figure I could put the wordmark at the bottom of the screen in future games, much like Activision had its wordmark at the bottom of the screen for all their games. As for continued development of Frazzled, I stalled out a few weeks back when her health started to deteriorate. I've spent most of the last month sitting with her for 12+ hours a day in the hospital. I'm not quite ready to resume work on the game, but I will soon. I started making some real good progress in adding the enemies and whatnot to the game, so hopefully I can post something in the next month or so with a nice, big update. While in the hospital, she slept a lot, and while I wasn't able to actually work on the game, I played it a lot on my Flashback portable. I've come to the conclusion that the Arcade Mode, as it sits now, is actually a pretty good game as-is. It needs tweaking as far as difficulty and all that goes, but as a game mode, it's pretty good without enemies and power-ups and whatnot. So not only will I be looking to add the other objects to Arcade Mode, I'll also create an additional mode without all those extras. But that's just something to add on to the to-do list for now. Anyway, I hope you're enjoying the game. I've got many more planned after this, so if solving puzzles isn't your thing, I've got other stuff on the way. And if you have a Mr. Yo-Yo cartridge, head over to the Mr. Yo-Yo development thread, and I'll have instructions on how to trigger that easter egg shortly. Thanks!