atari2600land

So I got into dabbling with the Oric again. I am working with BASIC. Once I master it, then I will attempt to work with assembly. But for now, I made it play a little song on the title screen. I also made it so pressing a key stops the program. I think I can get the handle of drawing a sprite by changing an ASCII character to resemble one. But in the end, the burger will be yellow due to the color constraints. So one day I hope to make an Oric program. I doubt I will ever see it run because I am in the United States and I think the Oric is PAL (I don't think any Tangerine products were released here.) The manual, although in English, spells words like 'center' as 'centre'. Which suggests that it was released in mainly Europe. I had to figure out the emulator and make it save my progress. I eventually downloaded a better version or Oricutron that enables me to save "tapes". And the milkshakes will be magenta, which is good because that's the color of strawberry milkshakes. What made me decide to do this? I was bored and looking through the many folders in my website, I stumbled across one that is www.atari2600land.com/oric/ that had a few simple programs I made about 10 years ago. So it's about 2:30 a.m. here and I am not sleepy at all. If you have an ORIC, please let me know if it's possible to run programs made by computers on it, how this does. http://www.atari2600land.com/oric/burgersoric.zip has a .tap file for use, at least on Oricutron.

Cruising eBay. Came across two things I have no idea what they do. This first one and This other orange thing. Excuse my stupidity, but curiosity got the best of me.

I worked some more on the minigame and the bee moving code. Before I had it the bee moved every frame, but now it only changes direction when the fly does. Also, I made it so the bee flaps his wings better. There are two ways a game can end in the minigame: touch a bee, or make the fly swatting timer be 0. You have nine seconds to try to swat the fly without running into the deadly bee. I also took a few tries at redesigning a smaller bee. In the end, this is what people liked: The fly animation has three frames, while the bee only has two. I feel that if I designed a bee sprite with its wings in the middle, it would look too much like the second one. And the bee looks good flapping anyway. I was going to include an animated gif of the bee, but the background was black, even though it was transparent in Discord and looked fine there. I ended up going to sleep at about 4 a.m. and waking up at about 5 p.m. I don't know why. Also, every day feels like it's Saturday for some reason. I must remind myself it's Wednesday so I can live like a normal person.

Today I spent some time working on the minigame portion of Frank the Fruit Fly for the Pokemon Mini. I think this will be my first full-fledged game NOT to get a cartridge release. There's just too few Pokemon Mini cartridges out there apparently. Someone told me it wouldn't be cost efficient to make a cartridge release of this. So I put a bee in the minigame where you swat flies. Yes, that's right. In the minigame, the object of it is to swat flies. I couldn't think of something to do involving flies and have it to be easier to program other than this. But I fear the bee is too big. I say that because he's hard to avoid and my high score is 7. I made the timer start at 5, but it was still too easy, so I decided to try and see if I could put a bee in it. I succeeded, but I need to make the bee smaller. The minigame is only accessible via password. So you have to be fooling around with it trying to make words out of it in order to see it if you don't know the password for it. The game is almost done, so I think it will definitely be done by September like I wanted it to be.

So I had to go to the doctor's office today at 8 a.m. I stayed up until 4 a.m. Got a couple hours of sleep and then woke up at 6 a.m. Got there at 7:40 a.m. The check-in lady was asking me a bunch of questions I had no idea what to answer. Went and got a blood test. Right hand yielded nothing, but left arm got some, so they took some out of there. Afterwards, I stopped at Burger King. To my surprise, they told me they no longer have strawberry milkshakes. That is so sad because they are the best. So I got a large fry and went over to Carl's Jr. They fortunately still had a strawberry milkshake, albeit in a tiny cup and costing $4. So I had fries and a milkshake. A good way to end a fast I think. I had to fast for this blood test. The last thing I ate was a bunch of nachos at 8 p.m. So when I got home I went to sleep. I woke up at about 4 p.m. It's almost 6 as I'm writing this, so I've slept most of the day and have only been awake for a couple of hours so far. I talked with Uncle Tusk and we are at the beginning stages of putting together a small run of Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland for the Virtual Boy. Luckily I had been working on a manual. I just got done coloring the logo of the game for art purposes. (Of course, the game is still in shades of red.) Because red meat is good for you.

I thought of that, but why does a computer that runs an emulator (or the emulator itself) not run afoul of patent infringement?

Try this. I think it's a bit more fair. nosehair58.bin

Hmm. Let me check.

Hm. That's sad. I wonder why nobody ever made an Atari 2600 using the parts they made when it was first made.

OK, I think I figured it out. I added a mode where if the left difficulty switch is set to A, the nosehair demon moves faster. B is his regular speed. You can switch between A and B during the game if you want. nosehair57.bin

The demon and the scissors move faster when the box is on the screen. WTF?

Perhaps I just need a new controller or something? I made it so vertical movement is faster and you can actually move diagonal instead of partially diagonal. nosehair56.bin

Tried it on my Atari 2600. It won't move correctly. I tried with two joysticks. They won't work correct.

Questions. Is this just the same as an Atari 2600 only 40 years newer? And should I get one? I skimmed the thread and it mentions firmware. Why would a 40 year old console need that? I'm asking because my Atari 2600 vader has poor reception and my light sixer is worse. It would be cool to see all my games crystal clear like they should be.

I haven't posted anything to my webcomic for the past 9 days. This is due to the power outage I had for 6 days earlier this month. Not only could I not scan anything, I couldn't think of anything. I was too depressed to because there was no electricity. Well, once I got my electricity back, I decided to continue it even though probably no one reads it. I have to fill my day with something to do so I don't get bored, right? The previous comic is this one, from February 19: I have been typing the words out, but recently I tried to do this with better handwriting. But I failed, as you can see here. The caption is that because the previous 5 comics were all about leopards. Not really a very funny animal to begin with, but I tried to bring humor to the leopard mammal. But beginning Monday, I'll be posting comics there again at chrisread.comicgenesis.com for anyone to read. You can view my past comics there as well. I think it's really akin to "The Argyle Sweater." And sometimes I think the guy who draws "Pearls Before Swine" peeks in on my life. Starting March 1, I will type out the words permanently. The only thing I'll write in handwriting is my signature. ("read" is my last name, not a plea to read the comic.) And I just drew 4 more comics. I can fit 6 on a page. If they were actual STRIPS, 8 can fit on one page. And, as usual, drawing tips are very appreciated.

I took the time to write more detailed instructions in the style of those white Atari 2600 game manuals. I find it amusing that this text file is larger than the game. unclehairysnosehairmanualtext.txt

It would be really interesting, if possible, to make an 8-player game using four sets of paddles.

I put 66 in VBLANK. nosehair55.bin

from the guide: So what I did was set it at 48, and I set VBLANK to $C2 (it was set at $82). I also set a number set at 48 to 49, which caused it to go and be port three, so I lowered it to 47. I don't know about the Quadtari, perhaps if this doesn't solve the problem, someone could look into it? nosehair54.bin

How odd. I grew up with my first system being an NES and have no problem using an Atari joystick.

More good news: I fixed the scissors direction facing problem.

I think I see the problem and I attempted to fix it. I also corrected the problem of the scissors direction facing and slowed down the nosehair growing speed top value a little bit. nosehair53.bin

First the bad news. I was eating some nachos when I started choking on them. I tried drinking some water but it wouldn't go down my esophagus. So I stuck my finger down my throat and a few coughs later, this red glob plopped in the toilet. I have no idea what it was. I don't remember eating something red whole. After that, I tried drinking a sip of water again. I could drink it. This is extremely weird because often when I choke on food, a huge red glob of something doesn't come out. Oh well. Now the good news. I asked SpiceWare about the possibility of having the score be like the batari Basic games, made with player sprites instead of the playfield. He came through and did stuff for me. Not only that, he kept it @ 2k like I wanted. If I ever get this published, I'm going to want to give him a programming credit. I think the game looks a lot better. One caveat though is that I can't flip the scissors sprite. I'll try again, but I don't think it's possible due to the way the score is using the sprites instead of the playfield now.