I thought the only DS game released in 2014 was "Lego Friends". Apparently the game is for lonely tween girls. But I went to Wal-Mart and saw another DS game: "Big Hero 6", apparently based on the 2014 movie. I did not know about this game that came out last year. So that makes two. And here I thought the Frozen and the Barbie games in November 2013 were going to be the last DS releases. So the DS lasted 9 years, unless there's an official DS game coming out this year (I doubt it.) This is remin
I awoke with a game idea for the 2600. I suppose it can be done on any system. But I chose the 2600. It's a cross between Squeeze Box and Golf. It's a pill-sorting game. The pills move from right to left and your job is to steer the pills up or down to the hole of the same color. If you hit the sides or put a pill in the wrong hole, the hole will grow larger and take up more room. The game ends when a hole gets so large it fills the whole length of the screen. The pills have FOUR colors. Red, ye
...in case you have to move! I only got A-I of my Atari 2600 collection moved yesterday. Tomorrow, I'm gonna go back and get J-Z. I'll probably have to put it in 2 boxes, but I hope to have all my 2600 collection at my new home tomorrow. I got 3 games in the mail the past 2 days (Coconuts, Gangster Alley and BMX Airmaster), so that brings my total to 223. Since I don't have to move my TV and my 2600 console (I did that yesterday), I think I can get the rest in one trip. And then, sometime else,
Mom has decided she can't care for the dog like she should because she works all day. I don't have the stamina or energy to keep an eye on the dog because she keeps walking around and won't do anything I say. She just keeps walking around the house and won't lay down. I guess because she laid down all night, but I just can't keep an eye on her for much longer. Lucky for me, Mom's leaving work and coming home at noon to take the dog back to the humane society. Lucky for the dog, she has a second
I recieved my copy of the CD "The Devil Glitch" by Chris Butler in the mail yesterday. I discovered what the Devil Glitch is: They cut the song into 16 pieces! So in order to get the 68 minute long song I was promised, I had to go into Audacity and "glue" them all together. While I was doing that, I found my copy of "The Way Up" by Pat Metheny which was about the same size but in four pieces and "glued" them together as well. So now I have 5 songs longer than one hour. I'm now looking for "Absol
I went to the dentist earlier today. i didn't have any cavities, which is good because i don't brush my teeth like i "should". I mean, who brushes their teeth twice a day anyway? And the funny thing is, when i got there i didn't have any pain in my mouth and when i left i did. i thought dentists' offices were supposed to reduce pain, not increase it. and of course, i left with a roll of dental floss and toothpaste that i'll throw away. That, and the Blazers lost. So i had a pretty crappy day tod
Something I've been dreading for a few years now will happen soon. "Disney's Planes" will be released August 6. This will be the last DS game released. And even though I will probably never see the movie in my lifetime, I will get the game, to mark the sad end to the DS's life. Right now I'm wondering why FIFA Soccer 14 will not be on the DS, yet it will be on the PS2. Strange. To show support, I dug out some DS games and played the system. I played a little bit of Mario Kart DS and New Super Ma
Tomorrow will be horrible here. Because that's the day they're going to install the new air conditioner. They have to go up in the attic and bang on the walls and stuff. The poor dog will be locked up in my room with me most of the day. She likes to bark at people.
So anyway, before that is today. I took some time to work on my MidSpace game to try to make the dome centered. It's a good thing I did that. I discovered a few bugs. I was playing version 30 without my headphones on. I di
I got 17,000 legit points in Crossbow. I did. I did absolutely nothing wrong and played by the rules. I should have known better than to post that 33,000 score. Because usually, I find weird things in video games, like how to not bounce on the fruit stand covers in Super Mario Sunshine, how to have all three players in Wheel of Fortune be controlled by the computer, you know, weird stuff like that. This is the first day I've played Crossbow. The control is horrendous, some of the stage are very
...for the most part. I still have to change a few things, but it is for the most part listenable. My MIDI of The Count of Tuscany is online here. The guitar part near 15:00 is awkward, I know. You know those notes called "triplets"? Well, the sheet music has "quadruplets." (I don't know if that's the technical term or not, but you get the picture.) Yes, and I don't think Cakewalk (what I used to make this) supports quadruplets. It does triplets and sextuplets just fine. I just have to go throug
Well, I'm a little over 4 minutes into my newest project: A MIDI of Dream Theater's song "The Count of Tuscany". I've completed "A Nightmare To Remember," if you remember. "The Count of Tuscany" runs about 19 minutes, but has one less page of music than "Nightmare." What makes it up is the amount of notes is significantly larger. I've only got four minutes, and it's already 1/4th the size of my final "Nightmare" MIDI. I have no idea what instruments to use when it says stuff like "Moog Synthesiz
Last time I was working on it, I exceeded the 512KB limit. I was wondering whether I should just cancel the project altogether since I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to make a 1MB ROM. Then something happened. I swear I tried to do this before, but in the make.bat file I put the padding number from 18 to 19. Tried the file again, and for some strange reason, it decided to work! I must have done that in the make.bat file in the wrong place or something. So now I can make 1 MB (8 Megab
Apparently Tandy Computers and Radio Shack made these comic books in an attempt to make Tandy Computers look cool. And every kid knows how cool it is to say no to drugs! In the back is an advertisement for stuff for kids like a VHF kit and stuff like that. But a part of me thinks this issue would have been better if it was titled "The Computers That Said Yes To Drugs!" This would, of course, get more people interested and only to find out that the computers were bad and Alec and Shanna reprogram
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 was thinking that I have had my fill of doing corny jokes on my comics page, so starting Monday, November 4, I will introduce a woman superhero serial on M, W, and F called "Violent Violet," about a gal who fights crime. I've written 6 of these so far. All of October has been made, as well as half of November. Episode 1 is called "Viol," and is about Violet becoming a superhero after gaining her super might and going after her beekeeper neighbor who is trying to take over the world. I have the
So I woke up at 10pm. At midnight, I got an urge to work on the Celery game for the 2600. The 2k one that I was working on using assembly. I gave up because I was having some problem. I forgot what it was. So at 1am I kept on going. I worked on and off on it for the past 6 hours (!) and I think I have it doing what I want it to. Not only that, it seems to be a solid 262 scanlines with no jumping. Apparently it can be a solid 262 scanlines and still jump on Stella. Note the problem I was having i
I have decided that programming a cartoon with the Atari 2600 will only yield 15 or so minutes of animation if you go to 64k. I completed scene three of my Celery movie and it's only 50 seconds long and there's only 79 bytes left in my one bank. Perhaps I will do a series of these instead of just one long movie that I was hoping to do. I will call it "the Mr. Celery Show." I just tested the short on my Harmony cart and everything is OK. I was a little worried because I used a pfhline off command
The celery movie (called "Mr. Celery") is officially under way. I don't know what will happen next, though. I have writer's block. But I did add some music to the movie, as well as sound effects for the UFO. I woke up with this tune in my head and kept repeating it until I got awake enough to figure it out on the keyboard. Then as I was inputting it into the game, I ran into a few bad 2600 notes, so I had to change the melody's notes a little. As it just so happens, one round of the song fits in
All this talk about celery made me dig up the old mr. celery game I was making. That's right, I was making something you can play and not just watch featuring our old stalk pal. This was almost 4 years ago, the last time I worked on it was june, 2012. I guess I got fed up or forgot or something, but I never returned to it. Until now. I worked, tried on a Harmony cart, worked, and tried it again. It lives! The first Harmony cart attempt, the first level was jumpy. I found the reason and fixed it.
had a little idea for level 3. I put in an extra life icon in and it's at a hard, but hopefully not impossible, place to get. I've decided though, that this isn't snow since the hill would be broken up. So what is it? What else is white besides snow? Clouds. Level 3 is a cloud world. I have some more work to do before you get to play level 3, though. And I'm not going to work on this for the rest of today (need a little break.) I also need to change what were penguins to airplanes. I've decided
I found out that I had broken the custom sound code by adding more code to the game. I had to go back to using the premade sounds. But I had to keep the custom sound code in the game, otherwise the game won't compile and work right. Since I was sick of the jumping sound every time the guy landed on the platform, I changed it so the game will stay silent unless an item falls from the screen or the player interacts with the item falling from the screen. The reason I say "item" instead of "banana
Today I worked on adding some new, non-built-in sounds. It was, like programming the rest of the game, hard. It took a few hours of rearranging code sections. At one time, I thought I had it done, but the game froze in O2EM when the banana scrolled off screen. But I found the cause and tried again. And a few more times before I think it is working. Rafael suggested I do this on the Videopac.nl forums. He is notorious to me for hating the built-in sounds, whereas I like them because they're easie
After working on trying to get collision detection so the platforms don't touch each other, I think I finally did it after 2 DAYS of trying. It was hard. Very hard. To aid myself, I put in a noise for each time a collision happened and the offending platform moved off screen. Aiding further were giving the platforms their each individual color so I could tell which platform was which. But I think I finally did it. This little bit of code:
colllll movx a,@r0 ; get Y pos of sprite 0
Last night I attempted to put a banana in. When I finally did and tested it on real hardware, it flickered like crazy because it couldn't handle it. Well, I thought it COULD handle it, so I had to do a second rewrite of the code. It was about 5:45pm when I tried to (I gave up on trying to going to sleep because it was too hot in my room). It was about 9pm when I finally got everything working.
I tried it out on a real Odyssey 2, and no flickering. I went to sleep for 12 hours. Woke up. Tried
Yesterday I tried to make it so the platforms didn't move when the player stopped. It ended in failure. But one thing I did do was make it so it works good on real hardware. I kept noticing it having some static at the top. My game was making the Odyssey 2 work like crazy. So I cut out the landing sprites so it's just showing the guy jump up all the time. This seemed to please the Odyssey 2 god. I have some room left so I think I'll put in fruit to get for extra points. I have some more room l
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