Something struck me, urged me to continue work on Quest of the Cranberry for the Channel F. Last September, I deemed it too ambitious and gave up. But there was just something that was telling me, "no, this isn't as ambitious as Adventure, and that was made." Albeit for the 2600, but still. I tried to make a heart that gains back health upon touching it, but somewhere along the line I broke the collision detection, and at about 9pm, which is way past my bedtime, I gave up and went to sleep with
An alien invasion will be happening at my house soon. So I just happened to be on eBay at the right time. Earlier there was also Video Poker, which I would have gotten as well, but I clicked on it and it said it was "out of stock." There was only one and someone else must have bought it, which I don't blame them because it was only $40. So I bought the other one Alien Invasion, which was $80. So I will get in the mail sometime soon one of the rarer Channel F games. I went to get my Channel F o
Almost finished with another game. I am about to break the 2k barrier, which is good because I don't know of anything else I can add or change to it. Just got finished typing out the instructions for it. I even have a publisher for it, so don't ask to do so. So what is the game? Right now I'd like to keep it a secret because not everything is finalized (like the game) just yet. But I hope to have everything in line for a Spring release. Right now the code has over 2,000 lines. It's really frea
I made an options screen in Fast Food for Game Boy. You can turn off the in-game music (the sound effects still play), and start on a different level. The levels progress as you get deeper in the game, as more pickles and faster food come by. With this option you can start at the highest level and have these enabled at the start of each game. The worst part of coding this was trying to find out why there was a small sound at the beginning of the game, but I think I figured it out. As soon as I d
So I got Bicycle Casino. I thought it was a weird name. Do you ride a bicycle to the casino? (I know, Bicycle is a brand of playing cards, but that's an odd name for a playing card company too. So is Nintendo.) Anyway, I took it for a spin. Lady Luck was on my side in the Video Poker segment. I kept getting lots of 2 pairs. I like this casino game better than the other Video Poker ones because it lets you win with a pair of tens or better. All others I have you need at least Jacks for a pair to
So I've decided to make Frank the Fruit Fly on the Game Gear again. This time it will closely resemble the Pokemon Mini version. What inspired me to do this was wishing it was in color. Then I thought "Hey! The Game Gear has color! I should go back and do the Pokemon Mini version on the Game Gear!" This doesn't mean I won't work on the Pokemon Mini version, though. The first problem I had was a wall to build with tiles. I thought I shouldn't waste a whole screen just to add a wall. So I hid two
In a previous blog entry I described how both M$Paint and Adobe Photoshop both have the somewhat hidden power to make icons, the little pictures that show up before the web URL. (For example, AtariAge's is a blue circle with two chevrons). Well, I learned today that if you put an icon in a website, its name can be no longer than 8 characters long. I spent a long time trying to put an icon named "rowsgardenicon.ico" in my Rows Garden page I just created. I kept getting angry. Then I had the brigh
I guess I work okay with coding and stuff, but when it comes to drawing stuff for the games I want to work on, well, I just plain suck at it. I tried to give the face on the title screen a major uplift. I gave him all sorts of new features: Eyebrows (hairy ones), lips, chin, eye veins, etc. This is what it ended up looking like. I'd like to ask someone for help. Who here can make a good title screen? There are limits I have to adhere to, like the number of different individual 8x8 tiles mus
So I tried making an Intellivision game. I knew my skills were rusty as I hadn't done any in a long time, but geez. I guess I should just keep doing all the various things and not go weeks without skipping programming a console I know how to program for. I was trying to figure out what to do with the Fast Food game for the Game Boy. Then it hit me: Games usually get tougher and tougher the more you play a round. I figured this should be true with Fast Food as well. So I made it so the only spe
So I did a bit of coding before I went to sleep. I got three foods in the game now. But I discovered a couple of bugs. #1 - when the score reached past 255, it went crazy. I discovered this was due to me trying to add different types of variables together. Which I don't understand why it wouldn't go crazy before it reached 255. So I changed food speed variables from a char to an int (which the score was) and the problem went away. I went to sleep and woke up. I'm trying to switch my life aroun
So I decided to have the mouth floating around on a different planet. After designing my own moon world, I decided it looked really crappy, so I stole an image from the moon on the internet and Game Boy-ified it. Went to sleep at 11am and woke up at 11pm. I went to work on the game again. I successfully got a second food item to appear. But I don't know about a third. Well, I know how to do a third, and a fourth, etc. But the randomness of the y position would be a big problem. Right now I've
For decades. Not just years, decades, people could freely record stuff off of TV. And then suddenly, the new cable boxes have forced people to not record stuff off of television any more. My question is why do this to people? The only possible way they could lose ANY money is if people record stuff off of TV and then sell it. And yet, I haven't seen little if any of this happening. For decades, people didn't have to do this. Just now with our "improved" technology, Comca$t and kin force you to g
This is for all the people who have wanted to play Fast Food while going to the bathroom after eating fast food but didn't have a TV in the bathroom. I am busy making Fast Food for the Game Boy. I had 8x8 sprites but they were so tiny on a real Game Boy it was hard to see what they were, so I bumped up the size to 8x16 and they look better. I have been at work on the title screen. I wanted to have 7 food choices (and the evil pickle) to be chose at random by the computer, but somehow ended
I had a fun day. First I attempted to make a new Odyssey 2 game, but it didn't work out. Then at about 4am, I went to sleep because the cat wanted food and was acting crazy. I woke up about 12 hours later. Then I was cold, so I went back to bed. I didn't expect to go to sleep, but I did and woke up 4 hours later. So I spent most of the day asleep. The stupid fireworks ended at about 1am or so. So what do I have to show for myself? All I did today was think up of a Tom Swifty. Mine? "I had to p
So I discovered that the mint getting code for Fatso 2 wasn't working properly. I eventually solved it by instead of using the variable names, I just used their addresses instead. So instead of this:
mov r1,#titlescreenchar
I used this:
mov r1,#02fh
Since I put the titlescreenchar variable in the #02fh position at the beginning of the code. I don't know why, but that worked. Fortunately, all the changes were made just for the mint section and not the entire game, which part 1 has
And all I have to show for it is a lousy Altoid. Yes, I put in a mint in the game. You'd think it would take a lot less time, but everything went wrong. I actually had to give up the first time, but I worked on it today and I did it. First, I thought I had it done, but the game wasn't working on a real Odyssey 2, which I dug out from the garage to test this on. Then I got the mint in the game, but then it stopped coming after a certain unknown point. Then I though it was done again, but I tested
So I worked on Fatso 2 again today after sleeping until 1pm. I went to sleep at about 10:30pm last night, so it's no surprise I woke up as late as I did, especially with all the stress of it being Christmas and all. I added two new foods: the peanut and the dreaded pink pickle. Nothing happens if you eat the pink pickle now, but you'll lose a life from the life counter I haven't put in yet. I also added some blue borders. I figured I should put them in so the player knows how far up and down he
So when I got home from my sister's house to celebrate Christmas, I decided that I wanted to work on Fatso 2 for the Odyssey 2 again. Stuffing your face full of Chex Mix makes you think of your game you made if you made a game about eating junk food. So after a few tries, I had it down good adding another random junk food item on the screen. I also made two of them move at a randomly chosen speed. I also made it so that the faster the food is when you eat it, the more points you get. But there w
So I had a hard time working on this game for a few hours last night. I got up at midnight and went to work. Today's thing was adding a level intro screen and little tune to accompany it. Most of the time was spent figuring out why the game wouldn't start if I set the beginning screen to screen #1. I must have copied and pasted the screen 3 beginning code (which worked) and replaced the threes with ones a few times. And then there was the part before that where the little tune I made wouldn't wo
All of the following happened in less than one second. This message popped up on my computer saying that I had three viruses on my computer and I needed to act now. I saw there was an info box with an OK button and I wasn't going to click that. I tried clicking back on my browser, but nothing happened. So I tried clicking back about a half dozen times and it went back to what I was doing. So I acted now by getting rid of that stupid message I got for god knows what reason. That was the first
I have reached the end of Castle of Doom. I spent two hours programming an attempt at an ending. I hope it will suffice. I really want this to be in the AA Store the next time Al updates it. I plan to ask him after Christmas is over. The game has 47 levels. I was hoping for 50, but hey, 47 is my favorite number. And I was pretty burned out trying to think of new rooms for the guy to traverse. The maximum number of rooms I guess I could have is 63, but that would require the rom to be 16k, which
So I've been working on Castle of Doom a bunch after swearing off too hard programming. I'm going to continue work on Frank the Fruit Fly for the Pokemon Mini, as Pokemon Mini assembly doesn't seem to be too hard for me. Anyway, after posting version 51, I've been noticing that whenever it jumps back to the title screen, the scanline count goes above 262. I thought now is the time to do something about it since the game is almost finished. I also fixed a bug pertaining to levels where the bats
While trying to add stuff to Yum, it became apparent that there were so many problems too numerous to mention, so I quit. And not just Yum. I took a hard look at life, and the only time I'm happy is when I'm not working on a project that involves me telling a computer to do something and not having it do it. So I guess it's just back to me coding only for batari Basic. I need to finish Castle of Doom and some other game I was doing anyway. batari Basic is where I get the least angry, because I'm
I have been working on Frank the Fruit Fly again. Apparently I keep thinking of stuff I can't draw well to be in this game. This time it's an evergreen tree. It's odd though because I can draw them from far away, but not close up like this. The tree is about 50 pixels high. I tried to make it and this is the result: As you can see, it's not really all that good looking. It looks more like an arrow pointing up. Oh well, at least I don't need help PROGRAMMING the game. At least not this time. And
I worked a whole lot on this last night. I went to sleep at midnight. Couldn't get to sleep until 1am. Then I slept for about 14 hours. It's kind of sad when you wake up and realize the day is almost over. Anyway, I have changed the name of the game from "Eating" to "Yum". I enjoy looking at my old Nintendo Power issues (circa 1993 or so). Finding games in the Pak Watch section that never got released ("Mario Vs. Wario", anyone?) The object of the game is simple: To open the guy's mouth to eat
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord