I've decided to give up on Killer Heads of Lettuce. Apparently what I want to do is too advanced for the poor Channel F. Apparently I can't have three different types of lettuce coming at you because it likes to reset the game and do all sorts of stupid crazy crap at random. So now I'm going to work on My History Teacher Ate Lemons for the Intellivision now. And apparently Kevin Vs. Tomatoes is the only Channel F game I'm going to make unless I think of a REALLY simple project, one that the Chan
So I worked on my spaceship game for the Channel F. It's similar to Space Jockey for the Atari 2600. You fly a spaceship, moving only up and down, to shoot at stuff coming towards you. Now I have the lettuce head in the game. It doesn't move yet nor can you destroy it, but it's there. Yesterday I worked on making the spaceship shoot missiles. Then I went to sleep for all of yesterday. Woke up at midnight and went back to work on it after eating breakfast. I've decided to start working in smal
So I've been playing with channel F programming today, seeing if I can get an object to move without a trail behind it. I don't know why, but it seems as though apparently it doesn't clean up previous bitmaps after drawing them? This discovery was used in Kevin Vs. Tomatoes. So I made a second object trailing behind it the same color as the background. This technique works pretty good. So I made this program of a spaceship travelling left across the screen in a dusk sky with the ground below. It
So the missing channel F games I bought have been found. I have carts 1, 3, 5, 9, 12 and 17 plus 6 duplicate cartridges ready to be made into Kevin Vs. Tomatoes cartridges. I guess I'll keep a #3 even though it won't work in my Channel F (the f stands for "flaky"). So it's safe to say out of the ones I have, #17 is the best game. I can actually play it. But yes, something is wrong with the buttons. I'm not sure, but in cart #3 it acts like a button has been pressed and goes straight to the built
So I got out my Dreamcast. The mail came and they stick it in a hole in the garage. No mail. Going through the garage, I saw my Dreamcast and games. So I decided to take them in and plug in the ol' Dreamcast. I played Looney Tunes: Space Race for about 45 minutes. Now my right middle finger hurts from me clutching the controller, I guess. The game is okay, it is way better without the weapons though, as most of the time all the computer players gang up on you and you finish last. I discovered th
So talking with e5frog, it sounds like everything is go with making 18 copies to sell (well, technically 20, but he gets one and I get one.) Too bad he's in Sweden and I'm in the US though. This also does mean I have to buy 16 more duplicate Channel F cartridges. Kevin Vs. Tomatoes has no final price quite yet, but it will be lower than Pac-Man since there's no box for the game (to keep costs down.) But it will have a lovely instructions sheet which I haven't designed yet. So if you want one, le
Second blog update of the day. I put noise in Kevin Vs. Tomatoes. I added a simple quick 3 note cue that a tomato has been eaten, and a small ditty when the game ends. I also made a little "thud" noise when you bump into the wall. So right now I guess what I'm doing is polishing the game up for a possible release. Which means I have to buy some donor cartridges. If you have any spare duplicate Channel F cartridges, PM me so I can buy them from you. I don't really know how many people would be
So I finally did two things that I wanted to do to my game. First up, I increased the size of the hit detection for the tomato. This took a lot of attempts to do, getting the code just right so it would do it. Second, with help from e5frog, I made the timer start at 99 and count downwards instead of it starting at 00 and counting upwards, I don't know why but the way I did it is when the timer reaches 8F, then I force it from 8F to 89. The previous way I didn't have to do that. How odd. e5frog
So I went back to the store where I had purchased the Channel F that I took back a few years ago. I asked if they still had it. Surprise! They did. So I rebought it. And this time I intend to keep it. Even though it has some problems. First off, the only game I can access on cart #1 is doodle. When you turn on the game, you have to press 3 as you turn it on, or else the "G?" message will flash on screen for about a second before it switches to the built-in game. Even that has problems. It keeps
So I was working on Killer Snake again. I got a score in the game. But a problem has arisen. Barf. Why does this keep happening? Anyway, the problem is with the score. When Ken gets the tomato, the score is increased by 1 point and the screen clears and regenerates the snake back to its starting position. Except when you get 8 points, the snake doesn't appear at all. What's more odd is the fact that the tomato appears. Why would the tomato appear and the snake not? I am really baffled by this
For the first time in I don't know how long, I decided to plug the Atari Jaguar back in and see if it works. I figured it was just laying there on the floor, with a game in it. I figured I might as well test it to see if it worked. So I plugged it in and pressed on. Like magic, it worked. My Jaguar is still alive. Earlier, I worked on my Ants game. My goal there was to reduce the time it took for the game to start up. I found changing the game from a ROM (which it was) to an ABS file did it. But
So I was looking through all the stuff I had stored on my website when I came across this: http://www.atari2600land.com/okochobonosolobo/ It was a long MIDI song I was making a few years ago when all of a sudden I had stopped working on it. I guess I just forgot about it for a few years. Shame, too, since it was over 85 minutes long. This was at about 11 last night. So I started working on it again. I was working away composing and programming the song. I looked at the clock on my computer. I wa
I got a bunch of stuff for Christmas. - Super Mario Odyssey for Switch - Pac-Man and Ghost soap - Toilet paper, keychain and pen with the poop emoji on it (yes, I got poop on my toilet paper.) - 3 issues of the Keizertimes - 2018 Old Farmer's Almanac (my 20-year streak is unsnapped. I have every one since 1997.) - 3 orange shirts and 1 red shirt - a Minion Bob Giant PEZ dispenser - Activision socks - Cookies, popcorn, and Chex Mix and, my favorite thing, a 2018 wall calendar of the original Supe
So after trying for a million years to try to save variables in an Intellivision game, I finally did it. One of the major problems was I didn't put "-j" in the batch file I use to open it. Nobody told me to do that. I looked in the help file and noticed that. I thought I'd try it and voila, jzINTV no longer had a JLP error. But the variables still wouldn't save. So the thing I tried to do is write the variables and then read them. I don't know how or why, but that managed to save the variables.
So the PC that had Bubba's Buck Blastin' on it died. Luckily I made a copy for myself in case that happened. A couple people wanted it, so I tried to get it off the disc and on to the new(er) PC, but it kept stalling at about 20% ripped and it said it was done. Well, several frustrated attempts later, it finally ripped the entire thing. I had used Handbrake. So then I had to make a new menu for it. That also was hard since the software I use to make DVDs with is user-unfriendly. But I had done i
So I had a chance to stay up late. I was bored. So I decided to work on Ten Pest some more. I made the alien shoot at you. And he follows you. Shooting at the UFO's missile makes it but not the UFO disappear. Do you get a (brief) chance to shoot the UFO while it's not shooting? Take a shot! The highest score I could get on this version was 2,000. But there's no variety yet. But now I don't know whether I should make some aliens not shoot at you or follow you because that might make the game too
The guy who i tried to get to publish my Game Boy game said I needed to go back and start a new game from scratch with a better idea. Well, that is a problem because I don't have one. At least one I can fit into 32k. So I decided to go back to work on Oranges, even though it will probably never make it to a cartridge release. So I decided to update the colors of the Orange-O-Matic screen. I had come up with one but the score was printed on a white background and the rest was on a light gray. So
I guess the third time's the charm. I bought a copy of Atari 2600 Xenophobe off eBay a few days ago. The past two were PAL copies that rolled on my CRT TV. I was hoping this one would actually behave and be NTSC. Well, the dog woke me up to let me know someone was on our porch. I looked and there sat a package. So I got it. I opened it up. There were a bunch of foam peanuts, which my cat loves to dine on. Under them was a boxed copy of Xenophobe. I took it in my room. Thankfully my Atari 2600
Into the valley of death rode me. Here is the top half of a screenshot of the game I'm working on. It's a nice sunny day wherever this game is taking place. It was hard, but I worked on the bottom half of the game today, where all the game action is taking place. I don't want to reveal it quite yet because the sprites aren't finalized yet. There are two sprites and a ball. I am going to add missile0 in there sometime. It was a ton of work doing what I wanted to do, then a ton MORE work getting t
So I wanted to bring my N64 out from the cold cold garage and play it. Luckily I found it a controller and the games pretty quickly. I put in Super Mario 64 and turned the thing on. It still works. Hurray! I noticed that SM64 and Mario Kart 64 are some of the more pricier games for the console. I don't understand why having the word Mario in the title doubles its value. Copies of Mario Party are just as expensive if not more so. The only exception seems to be Dr. Mario 64. So anyway, I was pla
So for all of yesterday and today I have been working on a 2600 project which is frustrating the crap out of me. I hope to make this into a game that I can actually play and stuff but for now, I've been laying the foundation for it. While I'm wondering if I can do it in 2k, I think that I can definitely do it in 4k, and I should probably learn how to do a 4k game in 2600 assembly anyway. The hard part has been making the scanline count steady at 262. I've also been using the branch guide located
About a week and a half ago I wrote about how I finished the first of Ghosts from Nine Inch Nails. Well, a few days after that, I finished Ghosts II. The only song left was 14 Ghosts II. So even though it had a whole bunch of weird noises, I went to work on it and finished it. So I have half the double album done. It only took about 10 years to do. So here's what I have left: 19 Ghosts III, 20 Ghosts III, 23-27 Ghosts III, 29-31 Ghosts IV, 33 Ghosts IV and 35 Ghosts IV. I think I did the longest
So I got this game in the mail today. It's a Sega Master System game called "Quartet." I don't know why they called it that, since it's a duo of characters going through a quintet of levels. I think this would be fun if the Master System had a Game Genie released for it. I die too quickly. I can't seem to get past level 2, but I have seen past it with the demo. Standard run and jump and shooting stuff Mega Man style video game. But what sets it apart from Mega Man is the fact that TWO people c
So while I was looking through my 2600 manual collection, I came across a Desert Falcon manual. And I thought "Wow. They made new 2600 games up until 1990." Then it occurred to me: If people make homebrew 2600 games, then I should make another one, too. After all, my name isn't IntellivisionLand. So I began work on a 2600 version of My History Teacher Ate Lemons. While working on it, I decided to make the sky visible, so I could do some neat stuff with it. An example is a bird flying in the sk
So I got offered a thing to do with the Cedar Games intro. Between it and the title screen, put the word PRESENTS in. Just thought of a goofy thing to do with it. Make it change color with each new game. For the Oranges game, I will make it orange. Funny thing about the Oranges game for Odyssey 2: Technically, the color I'm using is its yellow. Which looks like orange, so I'm able to make the game at all. If it hadn't been for this fact, I would have had to make it something like "Giant Peas." A
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