The year was 1972. Magnavox had just put something on the market the world had never seen before: a video game console, The Magnavox Odyssey. I am lucky enough to have one of these things. It had been sitting in the corner of my room collecting dust though. While I was going through the files of my computer, I came across the instructions for a one-player game I never used. I tested the game with the instructions. They needed tweaking so I tweaked the instructions. But the story begged the quest
So the past couple of days have been spent working on Craig the Cranberry for the Virtual Boy. Yesterday I worked on the boss of level 1, went to the store, and went to sleep. I didn't sleep my usual 14 or so hours, though. I only slept about 7 or so hours, which is a lot better.
After I woke up, I worked on adding boss music to the game. It took a while to get it sounding not like a bunch of random notes even though it looked okay when I typed it out.
I mentioned I finished lev
Since my copy of Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland for the Virtual Boy came in the mail yesterday, I decided to work on Craig the Cranberry some more.
Since the graphics for the title screen and level 1 were about the same, I decided to try to make the level 1 graphics displaying code match the title screen. This took a couple of hours, but I finally got success. I also added a mountainy background since there was room in the level 1 graphics left. The mountains scroll at a slower ra
I decided to add an option where the nosehair starts really fast. If you start it when it's slow, it still will gradually get faster. This will be the last option I will do because: a.) the game number must be 1 digit due to the way the score is drawn, b.) I have 0 bytes left, and c.) I can't think of any other option.
I wonder if I could make a second number below the first one so the score can be 6 digits instead of just four.
I got bored, so I decided to work on Uncle Hairy's Nosehair again. Just to see if I could (and I did), I took out the code pertaining to the difficulty switches and turned the options into game numbers, much like the old Atari 2600 games. To select a game, use the select switch. Much ado happened when I tried to do this. In fact, much of my programming this early morning was ado, mainly because I wanted to get 2k or below, which I eventually did. Also, trying to make the screen not jump around o
So I wondered whether that webpage that had a list of one letter book titles was still around once I was looking through various crap stored on my website. To my amazement, it still is there, and what's more, has grown considerably since my last visit a long time ago. Also there is a "close but no cigar" section. (I wonder if I should tell him about the Joel Goldsmith book "The Mystical I.") Anyway, I looked through eBay since the fake disease COVID has made it nearly impossible to go to a huge
I had another bout with insomnia. This time I forced myself to lay in bed until I went to sleep after a half an hour instead of getting up and doing stuff. Three hours later, I decided it was enough, so I went in the kitchen and fixed myself popcorn. After I ate the popcorn, I went to my computer to see if I could fix my Hamburgers game that was broken. Two hours later (it was now about 6 a.m.), I hit success. The game was fixed! We had done it. So then I went to sleep. I woke up a half-hour ago
I found the most unwanted song whilst surfing YouTube.
And it occured to me that I can do weirder stuff.
So I am starting one of my weirdest projects ever. It is called "Wisteria Worms." With my eye hurting, I composed the first of what I expect to be many more odd minutes of music. Like if John Cage took LSD. I eventually recorded the first minute, with this in mind:
"1. beautiful man voice says "The Ballad of Earl." Then he starts singing "lumps in my oatmeal,"
The insomnia I had Wednesday night pushed my sleeping back to being awake all night and sleeping all day again. I was just about finished with Hamburgers when I noticed the game froze at certain times. For instance, whenever I set the number of hits needed to advance to the next level 1, it always crashed at level 4. Setting the number of hits needed to 20 made it crash at level 3. I have been trying various things to try to make it stop, with little success.
Except when I set a cert
Last night I couldn't sleep. I tried and failed at about 1 a.m. I just couldn't stop thinking about comic strip ideas for my comic strip nobody reads, which is really funny because I want to resume them. So five comics later, I finally fell asleep after 5 a.m. Yes, I worked for four hours to make 5 comic strips. They are Sunday-type ones. I replaced my handwriting with Arial font. I cleaned up the drawings, I colored them. A lot goes into it.
I woke up at about 3 p.m. The tree people
I'm surprised at how close I can get a piano sound on the NES. It actually sounds like a real piano. Instead of making the music like the castle music in SMB, I made some (hopefully) spooky music for it. And I tested the last level on my Everdrive. I have an N8 Everdrive, and the light inside it turns on and off randomly. I don't know if that's okay or not, but it seems to be working fine. So anyway, now with that done, I can begin work on the ending. The code ends at B2E0, with a couple of byte
So while designing the castle, I wanted to make it look similar to the castles in Super Mario Bros. I did this last night. This is the first attempt:
It looks, well, interesting. The red blocks do look quite odd, though, so I redesigned it earlier today. This is what it looks like now:
A little better. I like the fact that it's like the All-Stars version of the castle because instead of pictures of Bowser hanging from the walls, it's pictures of a chocolate milkshake. And n
So I added a Vut to the game. He floats across the screen, so the only way to avoid one is to jump over it. I spent last night coding the jumping part and this morning coding the Vut part.
The vut flaps his wings as he moves. He starts at either the right side of the screen and moves left or starts at the left side and moves right. Why he flies is because I needed him to start not on top of the platform because the Zyx might be where the Vut starting point is. So I needed to move the
I decided to work on Zyx again because I didn't feel like working on the Burger game. This is now what it looks like:
One notable change is you must press fire to have Zyx open his mouth to eat the blueberry. If you go to the blueberry without pressing fire, it will fall down beside him and you'll lose a life. Some other graphic changes occurred. I changed the 2 graphic. I didn't like the way it looked. So now the 2 looks different (better, IMO). I still don't know what to do with thi
I made some music for level 9. Earlier I played a Game Gear game. I beat Quest For the Shaven Yak. I had to do it with a Game Genie though. But it gave me an idea of what to do if someone beats Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland. What is that idea? You'll find out if you beat the game. I remade Main Street of Burgersburg. It now looks like this:
So now the next thing to do is design Level 10. Which I won't do today because I don't feel good. I threw up earlier and have a horrible stom
Level 9 will be a metropolis. With big skyscrapers and stuff.
Downtown on Main Street. I spent all day on this, adjusting the buildings so they fit certain guidelines and all.
I need to make a song for this level and then make level 10 and an ending and then test it and then it will be finished.
So a couple days ago, I ordered a Super 20 collection of Micro Machines. Well guess what, gang? It came today. This after saying the ETA would be June 8-11. Crazy. So why did I do this? I found my original Micro Machines I had from when I was a kid. Somewhere along the line, they disappeared, but then came back in about 2001 or so. I bought a couple more, and then they disappeared again. Well, 20 years later and they showed up again. And since I'd like to have a lot more before they disappear ag
I had a level where they're underwater, so hopefully this isn't too similar. A tropical beach has been invaded by flying junk food.
Hopefully those are recognizable as palm trees and an ocean. I struggled with this one, trying to find the borders between tile sections. But I think I've done it now. The taco is now in the game. Level 10 will be the castle. Here's what's left to do:
make level 8 music.
figure out what level 9 is and make a background and music.
mak
I worked a long while yesterday morning on Zyx. I just feel that the way it is now isn't a very engaging game. It needs something. But I don't know what. Game designing is so frustrating sometimes. You think you have a good idea and so you make it and it turns out it sucks.
I tried to make it interesting.
random food speeds: Slow or fast.
missing a blueberry makes you lose a life.
cauliflower moves from left to right.
I don't know what to do with this.
Decided to make a version of Zyx for the Channel F. I figured it's not that complex of a game idea and the Channel F should be able to handle it. For those of you unfamiliar with it, food falls down from the top and the creature at the bottom (the zyx) must eat (or avoid) it. If it sounds like fun, there's a more complex version on Inty Basic Showcase #1. Anyway, I made a title screen that went through a few iterations before I decided on what the sprites would look like. The zyx originally had
So I woke up with a really bad stomach ache an hour or so. This time it appears to be nausea. So I took some Pepto Bismol. I guess I am the only person in the entire world who doesn't mind the taste of the stuff. Let's hope that gets to work so I can stop burping and feeling like I need to vomit.
Yesterday, I worked on my NES game some more. I thought of a new location: Space. I tried to draw the planet Saturn, but it looked really awful. So I windered if I could use NESst to import
Working on Channel F programming again. So I figured out how to make the background a light green, although I can't figure out how to make it a light blue. So I fixed level 1 to make it a light green instead of a dark green. Although the drawback of this is I can't use white if the background is a light green. So I changed the strawberry seeds to a stem.
It had been almost two months since I last touched this program. I still don't have any new ideas for the underwater level 3 which I
I decided to spruce up the trees (no pun intended) and make them look better. I discovered I have a whole other half to my tile set that I wasn't using. So instead of having less than half a tile set remaining, I now have more room than I thought. Which is good because the trees needed to look better. Here is the result:
It looks a little bit more detailed. Either the trunks or the leafy parts of the tree need to be one color since I only get three colors to color stuff in. I also mad
So it is time for the forest level.
Lots of various trees in the forest. Since the pizza gets introduced in level 5 (the forest), I thought ahead and designed a taco for levels 8, 9, and 10. I don't know if I'll have room for 10 levels, but I want to have 10 levels. I'm already up to almost address $B000 out of a possible $FFFF. I took the picture of the taco from Aaron the Aardvark, shrunk it down to 16x16 pixels and drew the result in the tiles file. Since the taco will have to shar
I got frustrated working on the Atari 2600 version of the game, so I went back to work on the NES version. I will likely give up the 2600 version because it wasn't being up to my high standards. The last time I was working on the NES version was a month ago. I thought about where I left off and I figured out that I needed a new song for the mountain level. I thought to myself "Self, what would be a good song about a mountain be?"
- "Billy the Mountain" Frank Zappa (too long)
- "First T
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