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atari2600land

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Blog Entries posted by atari2600land

  1. atari2600land
    So I decided that the thing to do after spending all day and failing at that, is to split the 8-bit number into 4 2-bit numbers. So, if I ended up with, say, 95, it would print
    %01, %01, %11 and %11 on the screen (or 1, 1, 3, 3). But I'm having trouble with even this. I figured all that was was a matter of shifting numbers left and right, but I shifted them left and right in various ways in an attempt to make it work, but to no avail. I wish I was smart like you guys.
  2. atari2600land
    So last night I tried my game on a real Game Gear. It had some weird graphical glitches when you died. I was able to fix that by turning the screen off. Then, all of a sudden, I had a bunch of weird problems pop up. I had discovered why I quit working on it. Stuff just wasn't working right. I started work at about 10:30pm last night. Into the night I worked on the game. Sometimes I thought I had fixed something when it happened again. I tried tons of different code patterns trying to fix a myriad of problems.
     
    And then, finally, at about 3am, I think I have solved each and every one of the problems I was having. I had to make a new explosion noise for shooting a milkshake. And sometimes it won't play if the next milkshake has just shot an onion ring, but that's to be expected since both sound effects are on the same channel, so I'm not going to worry about it. So then I went to sleep. I keep having to switch between pillows. I thought my MyPillow was flat, so I switched it to my other MyPillow. Then, while I was making that one flat, the other one puffed up again. So now I'm using that one.
     
    I woke up at 1pm. Now I'm going to change the channel the explosion is on to channel 2 so it won't be as noticeable. Wish me luck.
     
  3. atari2600land
    As amazing as 7-Up is, I decided to get rid of it and it was time for a change. But to what? Why, watermelons, of course. Why watermelons? About a year ago, I started composing a song about watermelons. I quit on November 19. And then I got sidetracked with another musical project. Mind you, I just do these for something to do, just biding my time, waiting until I die. I got about 30 minutes into the watermelon song called "Watermelon Surprise (part 1)" and quit. New Years Day I started what I hoped to be a grand piece in the vein of King Crimson's "Lizard", I got about an hour into it.
     
    But it wasn't clicking the way my watermelon song was. It felt like busy work and not much fun. I was having fun with my watermelon project. At least watermelons have something funny about them. So I jumped back into the watermelon song yesterday and composed about 6 minutes' worth of music and now it's 40 minutes long. My goal is 160 minutes, so I'm 1/4 of the way done. And it is fun thinking of lyrics about watermelons to go along with my music I write. Most of it is about how good they are. It's fun thinking up of weird key changes and time. About half of the music I did yesterday and today is in 3/4 time. It goes from one sharp, then moves to two sharps, and finally three sharps.
     
    I mentioned lyrics. What I do is play the newest part of my MIDI and sing the lyrics. It's sort of like karaoke only I am using my audio recorder. Then I take my audio of me singing, put it in Audacity and record the MIDI I just played. Then I have a nice part (today I did part 19) and I paste it to the long Audacity project and hit convert to MP3 (I do this when I add a part so if my computer dies, I won't have to do some parts over.) Then I put the huge MP3 file and MIDI file on my SD card for backup, again, in case my computer dies. The MIDI has 8 instruments. I pick and choose when and where which ones play. I like being in control of music, instead of doing MIDIs of other people's songs, unless I have sheet music for it.
     
    So eat some watermelons and wash that down with some 7-Up.
     
  4. atari2600land
    Bad news: We have to replace the "dinosaur" ac/furnace.
    Good news: I spent some time trying to fix my Game Gear game "Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland 2", and I think I fixed it.
     
    I forgot what the problems were, but after fiddling with the code and running it, I got rid of the problems up until the boss part. If you died at the boss part, it made the 'boss got hit' noise when the action resumed. So a bit more fiddling with the code fixed that. I think the problems were with the sound effects. So I made a new 'milkshake shoots out onion ring' noise. So now I can continue programming the game like I wanted to. Next up is trying to think of an idea for where level 5 can take place. I e-mailed the people who made the first one how the sales were doing, but they never answered me. Oh well, at least I have a copy.
     
    Other than that, it hasn't been a very interesting weekend. I went to the video game store yesterday. They were open. It said masks were recommended but not required. I hate masks. It seems like putting one on doesn't really help. You'd think the stupid germs would go right through anyway if they really wanted to. Plus, it seems kind of silly to stay 6 feet away from people if we didn't have to do that before and hardly anyone got a flu. So why now?
  5. atari2600land
    I have this weekly webcomic. It is a lot like the Far Side. I sent it to syndicators but they turned me down. I thought it was pretty funny, I guess they didn't. Anyway, yesterday was a horrible day. My toilets weren't working. This started at about 10 a.m. I had to go down to the clubhouse a couple of times to use their toilets. Someone came to help at about 5 p.m. after we called for help. They fixed it. I was so glad. That little episode inspired this comic, to be posted on my comics website July 12 (It updates every Sunday.)
     

    Ah, the old desert island gags. They never get old. After I drew this, I thought about following it up with another one with one guy saying to the other "Jerry, I've always wanted to say this, but I didn't want to hurt your feelings, but I gotta say it: I've always hated that stupid orange shirt you have on." But that'd be an awful big speech balloon, so I decided not to.
    Not only that, this comic follows another one about Hawaii, so apparently I want to go someplace tropical. But they have huge bugs and lizards and scorpions and crap, so I think it'd be best if I stayed here.
  6. atari2600land

    Success!

    By atari2600land,

    So I finally worked for a few hours and finally got my TI 84+ responding to the computer. But the bad news is the software used to make assembly files is too old and won't respond to 64-bit Windows computers. So I went back to work on my Basic program.

    A plus sign multiplying itself while trying to avoid an asterisk doesn't really make for good gaming, so I guess I'll go back to working on my other stuff. When that cable comes I am going to try TILP with it. TI Connect software only seems to get screenshots when there's not much going on. I want an in-game screenshot of the "action" going on. I also want a way to get rid of those four dots on the right side of the screen.
  7. atari2600land

    How TI-pical

    By atari2600land,

    So I woke up at about midnight. Not very rare, I often wake up in the middle of the night. But this time was different. I decided to start programming the TI-84+. Spent two hours trying to hook up the thing to the computer with a regular USB cable. Nothing was working. I apparently need a special one. So I began looking for it. No success. So I bought one off of eBay. It was only $5. And it's supposed to come June 4. (I want it NOW though!) So apparently it's either find the one I had or wait until this new one came. I know I had one because I found some screenshots of my TI-84+ in action. Unfortunately, when I turned it on, the RAM cleared, erasing all my saved programs on it. All I did was replace the batteries. I haven't been using it for so long I was surprised they hadn't corroded it.
     
    I looked at some sample code and I think this might be doable. I've done stuff in Basic before, but I want to go do something bigger and better: Assembly. It looks a lot like Game Gear assembly. So I downloaded some programs, but they wouldn't work at all, probably due to me having the wrong cord, which is weird because my computer recognized it was a TI-84+ when I plugged it in (well, most of the time.) I downloaded TILP and kept getting this message:

    Yippee.
     
    In other news, I got the Game Wizard to run. Putting in the cartridges is a hard task. I put in X-Wing Fighter. Started playing it. What you do is shoot enemy spaceships and dodge their missiles (hey, this is just like MidSpace, I'm stuck on the lower part of the screen!) Surprise, I only got 200 points because I kept missing a lot and crashing into missiles. So can Princess Leia be rescued from the evil Darth Vader? If I'm playing it, probably not. But that's what I plan to do next.
     
    So I went back to sleep. I had spent about 3 hours in the middle of the night trying to work on something that I couldn't get working. Then I woke up and decided to try and find that wire again. I doubt it's anywhere because I looked everywhere and can't find it. So I guess it's time to play the waiting game.
  8. atari2600land
    No, no YouTube video. You deserve better. Today I'm going to talk about what came in the mail. I finally got my copy of Lady Frog for the Odyssey2, but that isn't what I'm going to talk about. I also got something called a Game Wizard. It came with three cartridges. Mine is Star Wars-themed. I know nothing about Star Wars, but that was the only choice I had. Looking through eBay I saw a Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers-themed one and a VR Troopers-themed one. I wonder what would happen if I put a Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers cartridge in my Star Wars Game Wizard. Anyway, the thing looks to be similar to basically a Tiger Handheld from the mid '90s. Only this company (Micro Games of America) decided to make cartridges for them.
     
    Which I like the concept a lot. But it is too bad they only made 3 of each. So I want to make more. Too bad there isn't a way to do that. The three cartridges I have are "Darth Vader's Revenge", "X-Wing Attack" and "Princess Leia's Rescue." I guess I have to get busy watching Star Wars. I used to have a DVD trilogy somewhere but I lost it. But anyway, it would be a good movie (ANY movie would be a good movie to do this), to watch on VHS. And when I get bored (and my attention span screams to do something else), all I'd have to do is stop the tape and it saves my spot for me. Wow. What an interesting concept. No more fiddling through dumb menus and watching the forced previews and movie titles every time I put a disc in.

    Well, I guess it doesn't HAVE to be Star-Wars related. But I'm basically wishing here. Someone would have to get a cartridge, figure out the chip inside and how it's configured, make a 3D printer of the shell, make sure it fits in the Game Wizard. How do you measure something to make a 3D printer file to tell the 3D printer what to print? It would be pretty cool just to have a 3D printed cartridge shell that fits right into the Wizard. The cartridges are very difficult to put in. Tomorrow I will attempt to turn the game on and play it. Now it's time to do something else.
  9. atari2600land
    I was looking through the special section of last Sunday's paper. Our local newspaper is owned by USA Today for some reason. Sometimes we get these special sections filled with puzzles. I came across these things called "wuzzles." I googled it and sure enough, it is a thing. I think it's a portmanteau for "word puzzles." I mean, how else could you get the name wuzzle? Anyway, a loooong time ago (like when I was a kid), I remember starting this book of some, but I didn't know what they were called. Eventually the papers and idea were lost to time. So I started a new book.
     
    The original plan was to come up with 1,001 of them by Christmas then put them in a book and give them as Christmas presents. Until I did the math and that if there were 12 on one page, the book would be 83 pages (not including the answers section), way too big to staple. Anyway, for some examples of "wuzzles" I've done, you can see the pdf of the book I started here. I swear there's something weird going on with my website. I eventually got that Jaguar game downloaded, but not the assets file. Every time I try to put it on the website and then download and then open it on my computer, it says there's something wrong with the zip file's name. Which is really odd. But my wuzzles thing works. Which is really odd.
     
    I have an idea for the cover art of my book. Which, if I ever get all 83 pages done, is a cartoon guy under a bunch of wuzzles against a white background. The plan is to do this in black & white, which meant I had to omit one of my wuzzles (I). Last night I was laying in bed and ideas for some popped into my head, but I didn't want to get a paper to write them up, and I thought I would remember them today. It took a while, but I did remember them. I think I'll start putting a paper and pencil next to my bed. I always want to be up, active, doing things, so it's hard to shut my mind off and go to sleep. But once I fall asleep, I stay sleeping for 12-13 hours. Like last night, I fell asleep at 7 p.m. and woke up at 8 a.m.
  10. atari2600land

    Jaguar mood

    By atari2600land,

    Today I'm in the mood for the 64 bits of powa. I worked on Zyx Game Collection #1 even though it has practically no chance of getting released ever. I wonder if Songbird would like to? Just to make sure my Jaguar worked, I plugged it in, plugged the cord to my TV, and pressed the button. The power light didn't light up. So I tried again. Nothing. I was beginning to think my Jaguar had died after each attempt. I unplugged it, made sure the power strip was plugged in, made sure it was plugged in firmly. Nothing. Until I took out the cartridge and stuck it back in again. The power light lit on. But I got the red screen of death. Hey, it lives! So I tried a few more times and voila! It works now. I can hear the Jaguar chant "Earth-Crushing Beans," or whatever it says on the Jeff Minter Classics title screen. It sounds like "Earth-Crushing Beans." Got some Hawaiian pizza leftovers to eat later. Red Baron does make a good pizza. It's too bad he can't stop harassing Snoopy to just focus on his pizza-making skills.
  11. atari2600land
    Or perhaps it's just a case of using too much brain power. I finally solved the last 4 puzzles of Polarium on the DS. Without using a cheat sheet. I was so frustrated back then that I had to resort to one back when it was new. But now, only using hints, I solved the last 4 puzzles. I was trying to get some good ideas for my 1-Line game I was making for the Atari 2600. I got this one idea, and so I tested it and solved it, but now I can't solve it again. Nor can I the other 3 puzzles I made. But I know they're solvable because I did it before so they're staying in the game.
     
    Methinks it's just my brain thinking too much that made me stupid. Let's hope it's just temporary. So for now, no coding because I'm resting my brain, that is, unless someone finds a way to help me with the problem I was having. I figured that I could get rid of 75% of my puzzle data to free up some more room, but I ran into a snag because the puzzle drawscreen code is meant for displaying full screens, not 1/4 of the total playfield, which is what I'm trying to do. Because I have no use for 3/4 of the total playfield area, I just wrote the words "1-Line" there. But since I had done that on every single puzzle, I thought I could save a lot of data by omitting that part and having the screen draw just 8 pfblocks, then skipping 24, then writing the next 8, then skipping the next 24, and so on, but I can't figure out how to make it do that. Here is bogax's code I used for Castle of Doom and am attempting to use in 1-Line:

     rem  dedicated multiply by 44 routine   rem  multiplies level by 44 and adds PF_dat   rem  leaving the result in temp1,temp2   rem  It will fail if level is more than 63   rem temp2.temp1 = level * 44 + PF_dat  ballx=level  if ballx=4 then ballx=0  byte3=ballx+1  rem ballx is the level number.     asm   lda #$00   sta temp2   lda ballx   asl   adc ballx   asl   rol temp2   asl   rol temp2   sec   sbc ballx   bcs *+4   dec temp2   asl   rol temp2   asl   rol temp2   adc #<PF_dat1   sta temp1   lda temp2   adc #>PF_dat1   sta temp2 end load_new_level3  asm  ldy #43 load_loop  lda (temp1),y  sta var0,y  dey  bpl load_loop end    return otherbank
     
  12. atari2600land
    I found out that if I left the missile in and you shot the enemy and a new one came from the other direction, the missile would switch directions. So I had to take that out. Now it's back to disappearing once the enemy gets shot. I did a lot more bug fixing and stuff and I think I have just about completed it. I had to set the # of lives you start with to 3 (it was dependent on other code.) I have to group things together to save on bytes because I only have 1 byte left. Even though I had to get rid of the missile problem, I did improve some things.
    screen does not go crazy on startup. This one is important to me. The reason it was was because I hadn't set the overscan number and do the overscan code at the start. got rid of a nasty bug that had the game sometimes do a missile shot sound when there was no missile shot. This was due to a variable's value not being set correctly. Went through the code and cleaned it up, removing commented out code and unneeded spaces. I removed about 180 lines, most of them spaces with nothing in them. I think Al has me on ignore, so I think I'll have to look for another person to release this for me. If no one steps up, I'll just do a limited release of 9.
  13. atari2600land
    So I have been working hard on MidSpace lately, along with a couple of other 2600 projects. I've made some changes that I think improve the game. Mainly bug fixes and stuff. But I did make one change that is kind of important.
     
    When you shot an enemy food, its missile went away. I thought that shouldn't happen, at least it wouldn't in real life (if some rocket was stuck in space with laser shooting foods attacking you). So I changed it. The missile does not disappear when you shoot an enemy. Instead, the missile either touches the center and disappears or hits your ship.
     
    In order for me to do this, I had to make it so the missile could appear when the cereal bit was on the screen. Minor rewrite, but needed because the code didn't allow the missile to be shown if the cereal was on the screen. The cereal still doesn't shoot missiles, though, the missile would be on screen from a shot enemy.
     
    Usually when I'd been working on this, I have between 0-4 bytes left. Sometimes it takes too much room and I have to free up stuff by rearranging and/or rewriting the code. Right now, I have 3 bytes left. In case you're wondering, I'm using assembly for MidSpace. I don't think it would be possible using bB. I'd have to use no_blank_lines, which gets rid of missile0, for one thing. And I couldn't have part of the rocket slide up and down, for another. It's been 12 years, I think I should gradually move to using assembly instead of bB (which I should have done 11 years ago.)
     
    A thing that has been bothering me is: When should I call this finished? I guess I'll know when I come to the point where I don't find any bugs and all the stuff I want has been included. I may have to make some sacrifices though. I really want to fit this into 2k because there aren't that many 2k games being made right now. It's a frustrating-yet-fun challenge to keep this inside of 2k.
  14. atari2600land
    So while Frank is in this house, he discovers the fireplace.

    I tried to make the fire flicker, like it was when I was attempting to display it, but to no avail. I finally got to sleep even though it felt like there was something in my eye. It still feels that way. Anyway, before I went to sleep, I was working on this even though I was really sleepy. So if Frank moves to the right side of the screen, you'll find that it won't automatically move to the next screen. So how do you clear it? You have to go into the fireplace while avoiding the flames that turn on and off. And you go up into the chimney until the screen switches. But since I haven't made the next screen yet, it will just go to the title screen.
     
    I worked on this after a long time trying to fix the hamburgers game which is broken. I doubt I'll ever make it work again, so I'm quitting. But I will never give up on Frank the Fruit Fly. I've spent 18 months on it, so if I ever get to a seemingly impossible place, I'll have to ask for help. The problem with this game though is that the code is 14,867 lines long. And I'm only half way done with it.
  15. atari2600land

    Busy

    By atari2600land,

    So now I have a ton of projects going simultaneously. Every day, I pick which one I'm going to work on.
    Frank the Fruit Fly (Pokemon Mini) Hamburgers En Route to Switzerland 2 (Game Gear) Craig the Cranberry (Virtual Boy) 4-mula (Atari 2600) Frog Crossing (Channel F) The first two are about 50% complete, but the other three I just started on, so it will take a while for them to get done. Rev announced the Peter the Pea game (f.k.a. Pea-Man). I was glad to get that one finished and crossed off the list.
    This new one I just started is Frog Crossing for the Channel F. I figured if e5frog can do a ripoff of Pac-Man for the Channel F and not get a C&D by Namco, I could make a ripoff of Frogger and not get a C&D by Sega (is that who owns the Frogger brand now?)
    Anyway, mine will have a few differences. Due to the underwhelming power of the Channel F, I doubt I could make it a full game anyway. 
    I could make it be like the Odyssey 2 version and have two separate screens: One for the cars and another for the logs. Yes, I think I'll do that.
     
    Right now the log code is set up so if you only hit a certain pixel x-position it counts as a point. Since the log will only move the frog one pixel at a time instead of 5, it will be difficult to get a frog into a space. That would add to the challenge in case I thought the game would be too easy.
     
     
  16. atari2600land

    4-mula

    By atari2600land,

    Steve Jenkins has an enormous problem. He was from the 3-up corporation and successfully obtained the formula for 4-up from the 4-up corporation (this is before the days of 7-up). But now he can't get out of the place! Seems the 4-up corporation planned for someone like Steve to break in and get the secret formula because robots and other stuff have blocked his path. How will Steve ever get out of the 4-up HQ alive?

    "4-mula" is a game I started on the Atari 2600 using batari Basic over a year ago. And then I quit. While looking through my computer because my county got denied stage 1 status (argh!) and found this. I thought it was a good idea so I decided to continue work on this. I plan to add a lot more stuff to the game, it is still in its early stages. It looks to me like a cross between Berzerk and Entombed. Fortunately for Steve the scrolling isn't forced.
     
    My hair is way too long. I think I'll have to cut it myself.
  17. atari2600land
    I guess that's what happens when you blog continuously since 2006. Actually, this is blog entry #4,003. I was waiting for #4,000, but it snuck by me. Hm. Auto spell is underlining the word "snuck". It's in the Scrabble dictionary, though.
     
    Anyway, I went to bed at 3 a.m. and slept all day. I woke up at 4 p.m. I intended to not do that, but I was so sleeeeepy, so I had to go back to sleep because I couldn't force myself out of bed. So after I forced myself up at 4 p.m., I went to work on the banana sprite someone sent me. It's animated. Well, I had to code the animation part, but it's there. I think I may have to "fine-tune" it a little, but it took about a couple hours for it to actually animate itself the way I wanted it to.

    The banana is angry, so it has a black cloud above it. It jumps up and down, so it's fairly simple animation (that took 2 hours). So now that I'm up and fully awake and all, it's 7 p.m. here. Yesterday was pretty uneventful, such as all the days have become here. Because the government forces people to stay home for no good reason.
  18. atari2600land
    It's always fascinated me that we have this B.C. comic strip about cave dwellers, but we have no opposite. Well, about a year ago, I rectified this situation and made the first comic strips of "A Future Comic":

    I put a few weeks' worth of them on my comics webpage and then moved on to something else. Well, the urge to do some comic strips hit me again (my website had been updating every week), so I decided to do a few more "A Future Comic" strips. In case any reader was actually reading my site and wondered what the heck was going on, I put in the words "A FUTURE COMIC." in the white spots, like so:

    Now that I'm looking at them comparatively, my newer ones are much smaller than the other ones. That explains why the font size wasn't working correctly. I'll have to fix that. In that last comic, I was making fun of inflation. Later in the week there's ones about COVID-19, pollution, and robots. You'd think robots alone would be a good enough pool of ideas for a daily comic strip. So Saturday was a boring day, which was why I decided to do this. I had no urge to work on any of my video game projects in progress. I woke up at noon yesterday. I woke up at noon again today, so that's what I did.
     
    I named it "A Future Comic" because it sounds like a comic strip that is coming soon but has yet to be titled. I guess I'll get busy on next week's ones.
     
  19. atari2600land
    I need help with sprite drawing again. This time it's for the Virtual Boy. As you might have guessed, it's for Craig the Cranberry. And as much as I love bananas, I can't seem to draw them very well. The VIDE program turns all the shades of color into the three shades of red and black the Virtual Boy can display. So in order to know what's going on, I use white for the highest red, yellow for medium, and red for low. As a result, this is what the banana looks like before I convert it with VIDE.

    And this is how it appears in the game:

    But I can't draw a banana that well, so I need someone else to make one for me. A jumping sprite and a standing still sprite. Bill just stands there for a few seconds before he takes a giant leap. This is the time for Craig to roll under him because he can't jump over him. My banana looks like something straight out of South Park though, which I don't want to have. So please help me.
     
  20. atari2600land
    So I was going through my site when I found my old Mr. Claylegs clay animation. All the files were in .wmv format, so naturally they quit working. I read somewhere that HTML5 does not support .wmv files, so I had to go into Handbrake and convert them to .mp4. I watched the new videos to make sure I did it right. I did, but one thing struck me: They look exactly the same as the .wmv files. No difference whatsoever. So what idiot decided to make .wmv obsolete? It took me at least a half hour to do that, then put the files onto the site, then read up on how to make the videos be able to play in HTML. Finally I got it all working.
     
    I want to do some more Mr. Claylegs shorts. And by short, I mean SHORT. The average "episode" is 11 seconds long. But first I have to find the digital camera charger. And make sure my Play-Doh hasn't dried up. And if it has, get more. I don't know if I can replicate the old intro style. But I'll try, because I really like its (plain) look.
  21. atari2600land

    Finally!

    By atari2600land,

    So I resumed work on Craig the Cranberry for the VB. I wanted to put in Chad and Chuck the cherries.

    My original idea wasn't going to work. So I had to come up with a second one. The trick to getting past the cherries is to get in the middle of them while they walk towards you, and then when you're in the middle, wait until it starts walking again and lifts its right "leg" to exit. You can't jump over them because if you jump, they'll jump. But when I was done with that, I wanted to put in something that was in Insecticide: scrolling backgrounds. In Craig, this would be in the level intro.

    This took ALL NIGHT. I started work on this at about 9 p.m. and finally, at about 4 a.m., I had everything okay. My initial problem was getting that word "craig" to scroll correctly. I discovered that if it was square, it would work much better. I also discovered that if I tried to put text in the game, it initially looked like this:

    This is where the "fun" started: Trying to make it NOT do this. I had tried so much, I actually was wondering at one point if what I wanted was even possible. Several redesigns of that screen later, and tens of attempts of trying to do different stuff in the code, I had it correctly done, like in picture 2. So I went to bed at 4 a.m. and just woke up now, at about 12:10pm. I went to test the game on a real VB. It works fine. It starts going crazy after the cherries, but this is due to me not coding any special thing for after that.
  22. atari2600land
    So today I just made my first episode of Mr. Claylegs in over 4 years. Yesterday I downloaded a program to make it. Since it is ancient, it makes .avi files. So I have to convert them to .wmv. Then I added the titles and converted all of that to .mp4. Earlier today, I found the Play-doh in the garage. It was hard. So I added some water to soften it up. This helped a lot. Then I went to work with my digital camera I had charged up yesterday. I figured out how to make the files not as huge as they first were with it. 99 pictures later, I put them into the computer and into my program. The program works okay, but I am worried about whether the day will come that .avi files aren't supported any more and I'll have to use more modern crap when my current computer breaks.
     
    In this lovely episode, Mr. Claylegs has developed a scab. So he picks at it with his foot because he has no fingers. And then something horrible happens. What is that horrible thing? Watch it and find out. Later I may make a DVD of all the old Mr. Claylegs episodes. It'd be about 2 minutes long. The shortest DVD ever made? No, I made some movies that were a minute long and put them on a DVD. If you'd like a copy of the Mr. Claylegs DVD, send me a PM. It'd be free. This is to gauge whether I should publicize the project or not. Of course I'll make it, but if nobody cares, I'll just make one copy for myself.
     
    I was trying to come up with ideas for Mr. Claylegs. I have another one I can do called "Mr. Claylegs Gets Unnaked". But I'd need some fabric to sew some pants for Mr. Claylegs to put on. So stay tuned...
  23. atari2600land
    I have been working on Killer Bees so much recently that I decided to do something different. I worked on the beginnings of level 4 of Hamburgers En Route To Switzerland 2. Level 4 is the snow level. I didn't have a snow level in the first HERTS game, instead I put in a mountain background. But I made a snow level for this game.

    Lots of snow. It's in the arctic.
    Had some hard time trying to get back in Game Gear programming. All my troubles went away when I introduced stuff to make the game recognize that there is a level 4. Super simplistic graphics for the background, I know, but it was a necessity since the file sizes I were trying had way too many individual 8x8 tiles. I usually aim for about $C0. This one has $A1. Perhaps I'll go ahead and see if I can change it again.
  24. atari2600land
    Worked a little on it this morning. Introduced RoSHa ray code. This is what it looks like when its activated.

    Also, as you can see, the life counter is now not zero. I also introduced a way to die. I am thinking I need a way to let the user know you can use the ray though. The easiest thing to do (because I hate hard things), and what I will probably end up doing, is just change the score color to green. If you can't use the ray then the score will be red.
     


     
    I don't know if you can just hold fire forever and have the RoSHa ray be on forever or how that works. Also, I'm just going to have the RoSHa ray just kill the enemy bees only if they touch it. This should make the game harder instead of just having a cure-all button press. That stuff I'll do tomorrow. It was hard just getting the ray to show up and be the same x position of your bees. As it turned out, I had to put it in a special place in the code, right after the place where player 1 is drawn. If X is 3 then it should draw missile 1. If it's 2 then it should draw missile 0. But since I'm not using missile 0 for anything (It would have the same color as the Beebot, which is player 0). A thing I might do is change the color of the Beebot when it gets slower and slower. But I'll only do that if it won't make the screen all jumpy.
     
  25. atari2600land
    Game progression keeps on going. At one point I was so angry that I had to quit working on it because I couldn't make a solid 262 scanline count. But thankfully Splendidnut helped me out. If I ever get this game released, I'll give him a free copy of the game because it wouldn't be without him.

    So I have the colored killer bees that progressively get meaner and meaner, a Beebot that moves around the screen, your bees that go after the Beebot. But this is far from finished. I have to add in some other elements, like death, and RoSha Ray. I have a plan for that last one.
    In the original Killer Bees, the RoSha Ray goes horizontally. I however, will make my RoSha Ray (missile 1) go vertically because it will be way easier to program. That, and I only have 1,624 bytes left in my 4k game, so it's not like I have an infinite sandbox. Well, I do, but I don't know how to play with some sections of the sand yet.
    As you can see, I made COLUPF brighter. This is because the enemy bees were hard to see on my TV.
     
    I think it's going well, but it feels as though it's more of a Roman Colosseum fight to the death thing in my opinion since there's one Beebot and one swarm of enemy bees. I guess each machine has its limitations.
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