atari2600land

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 Channel F can handle. But hey, at least e5frog can now buy the parts he needs so we can move forward on Kevin Vs. Tomatoes. Does Channel F have a Combat game similar to the Atari 2600? Perhaps I can do that if it hasn't already been done. And don't forget to buy a copy of Alien Greed 5.

The other games have cartridges. 1-3 were made by neotokeo2001 and 4 was made by 2600 connection (timdu).

Yes, I did. So I got rid of player1colors and just made it one color.

I did some fooling around and this seems to work good: please_end_level if player0y=200 && joy0fire then goto game_main if player0y=200 then l{0}=0 : goto title_screen player1pointerlo=1 player1pointerhi=255 COLUP1=$1A if !missile1x{0} then player1height=player1height+1 : player1y=player1y+1 temp6=player0y+2 if !missile1x{0} && player1y=temp6 then missile1x{0}=1 if missile1x{0} && player0y<>200 then player0y=player0y-1 goto game_main (I'm using missile1x{0} since I ran out of variables.)

I think this is what you're looking for:

So I am making a game where the player gets beamed up, and there's the classic light beam ray that comes down and picks the player up and beams him up. But surely there must be a better way to do it than this: please_end_level if player0y=200 && joy0fire then goto game_main if player0y=200 then l{0}=0 : goto title_screen player1: %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 %11111111 end player1color: $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A $1A end if !missile1x{0} then player1height=player1height+1 : player1y=player1y+1 temp6=player0y+3 if !missile1x{0} && player1y=temp6 then missile1x{0}=1 if missile1x{0} && player0y<>200 then player0y=player0y-1 goto game_main Can I use the player1pointers in this case, or do I have to do it like this?

Update: All the copies have been sold.

OK, I'm making a list now. 1. me 2. e5frog 3. kyljoy 4. Blazing Lasers 5. stupus 6. Spare 7. Lazzeri 8. Sunnyvale CA 9. ianoid 10. VectrexRoli All copies have been spoken for!

I just let e5frog know that I have decided I would like a small batch of 10 games made. So this means if we go ahead, there will be 8 games for sale (I get one and e5frog gets one, the rest will be put up for sale.) This also means I need 4 more donor carts. Any of you have spare dupes of Channel F carts to send to me? By the way, the game's name is "Kevin Vs. Tomatoes."

Why not just call it Wonder Boy and the Cursed Kingdom?

How odd. I got Bowling and I pressed and held down 1 when I turned it on and it went to regular 1-player mode. So why can't I play Tic-Tac-Toe when I do the same thing with Videocart #1? I have also been working on my game some more. It now looks like this:

At about 10am yesterday, I decided that I was going to lay in bed with my eyes closed because I was tired. I fell asleep, had a few crazy dreams, and the next thing I know it's 10pm. Anyway, before that, I worked on Killer Heads of Lettuce, trying to make it randomly select whether the lettuce attacks in a sinus wave or straight. I finally got it the way I wanted. I don't know why, but I have felt super tired these past few months. While I was asleep, the mail came. I got a box. I opened the box. Inside the box was Bowling for the Channel F. It's good that I got this because I am able to play it after all. But I have to hold button 1 when I reset the game or else it will pick 2 player mode. It plays a lot like the Bowling for Microvision only the physics are a little wacky. I still haven't figured out a way to get strikes, but I had got a few. What would end up as a strike in the Microvision would give you a nasty split in the Channel F game. And because of the weirdness of it, I was able to pick up a couple of splits. Can't get above 130 or so. It's fun, but in the end, Videocart #17 (Breakout) is better. I got the weird grassy-type land again while working on Killer Heads of Lettuce. I don't know why it happens. I'm guessing it's because I'm using too much code. But I got it to go away. And if anyone can think of another attack pattern for the lettuce to do, please tell me it. I wish there was an LTO Flash-type thing for the Channel F, and I'd buy one. Just one of the problems of people coding for systems that don't get very much homebrew attention.

I am busy adding some stuff to the game. For example, I added a way to make the lettuce heads move in a sinus wave. A variable determines whether it does or just moves in a straight line. The only trouble with this approach is that if the lettuce isn't shot and the player stands still, all it does is just go back and forth between sinus wave and straight. But what's the fun in that? And you're not supposed to do that anyway. I was going to have one life anyway (It would be easier to program.)

It took me a few hours but I made it so the lettuce moves up and down in a sinus wave. I did it but then the rocket stopped working so I had to work on making it work again, which took more extra time. I think I'm using too much code though. Perhaps that's the reason why the ground was uneven and looked like it was grass. But it's a good look though, so if it happens again I may keep it. Then out of curiosity I wanted to know if the score would work if someone got 100 points or more. It took me about 10 minutes (I'm a poor shot at video games like this), and this is the resuit: Success. So now what I need to do is enter levels where it waves or doesn't, or perhaps randomly selects whether it does that or not when each lettuce is starting. I think I'll do it randomly for every lettuce. That would probably take up less code. I was working on my game when the dog came in and started whining at me. So I need to go be with the dog now until Mom comes home.

I went and worked on my Channel F game again this morning. Today's goal was to make the lettuce heads shootable. This required more time than usual. Once I thought I had it, but then realized that just because I made the bullet blue didn't necessarily mean it was off the screen. So more work had to be done. At one point, the ground was uneven. It had a grassy feel to it. Odd because I didn't do anything to make that happen. I figured it might be because I was using too much code. Eventually that problem fixed itself. You can now shoot the lettuce. The bullet disappears once it hits the lettuce. I had to tweak some collision code to make sure it actually hit the lettuce when it was supposed to. One time, I hit the lettuce and it didn't disappear. Lots of hard work this morning. I think I'm going to take a short break from programming the game. My copy of Bowling is supposed to come in the mail soon. I need to hook up my Channel F to test it to make sure it works. Right now my Jaguar is set up. I figured I needed to test it to make sure it still works. Because Jaguars are really expensive, even without CD units. It still works. Also, I made the score go up by one when you hit a lettuce head with the bullet. I'm thinking about making some waves to the game. Wave 1 would be just ordinary lettuce like what's in the game now. Wave 2 would make the heads of lettuce move up and down, etc. That is. if I can fit it into the game.

Yeah, I know. That was something I would have liked as well, but I don't think there is a way I could do it. And if there is, I probably wouldn't understand any of it.

I was planning on making the lettuce be fully eliminated but then having a new one pop into place once that happened. I also have some code into place to speed up the lettuce, I just have to put code in to make it happen, which will be done at some point. I could do a video of what I have so far, but it would be of emulation, like the Kevin Vs. Tomatoes video I made.

I'm making a second game for the Channel F called "Killer Heads of Lettuce." It's sort of like a cross between Asteroids and Space Jockey. In the game, you shoot heads of lettuce in your spaceship. You can move the spaceship up and down, and I made a variable for lettuce speed and it seems to be working okay now. It's set to 1, but if I set it to 2, it goes faster. The object of the game is to keep the lettuce from reaching the far right of the screen. I'm still working on this game. You can shoot with the fire button, but the missiles can't shoot the lettuce because I haven't gotten that far yet. So, what do you think? moving7.bin

Channel F was extremely hard at first, mainly because I didn't know the sprites' previous positions stay on the screen as well as their current positions. In fact, that was how Kevin vs. Tomatoes came to be. But when I wanted to make a game where the sprites didn't do that, I had to switch how I draw sprites. Now I use a method where I draw a sprite and another one atop it which is the background color and the hole is the sprite. This seems to work out pretty good.

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 smaller increments, with goals to set. Smaller goals, so I don't have any troubles or outbursts of anger for not getting things working the way I want them to. So after I was done getting the lettuce in the game, it occurred to me that I don't need separate X and Y positions for the blue borders around objects. I thought this before when working on it yesterday, but today I took them out of the game and they share the same coordinates with the objects. I made a website for the game. You can check it out here. You can download the latest binary and also glance at the code. My Kevin vs. Tomatoes game was more of an exercise to see if I could understand how to program the Channel F. Now that I have discovered how to do stuff, I hope to have Killer Heads of Lettuce be a greater game than Kevin Vs. Tomatoes.

I just bought Bowling #21 for about $30. I figured since there was only 1 more at that price and the rest were really expensive that I should buy one at that price, so I did. I doubt I'd be able to play the actual bowling game since buttons #1 and 2 don't seem to work on my Channel F, but I guess I should try anyway. As for Kevin Vs. Tomatoes, I don't know what happened, since Fredric stopped talking to me for some reason. I restarted work on my space shooter and got a spaceship that can move up and down.

I redesigned the game so it's not a cube at all, but a spaceship. It's actually a triangle. I redid the sprites so it was an actual shape. At first I couldn't get the program to decipher the shapes, it kept wanting to draw a square. But after about 10 minutes of trying various things it is actually a shape now. I think it's more detailed now than just simple blocks. I just got up about an hour ago after sleeping all day. I missed the Super Bowl. Anyway, the ship can move up and down. This method uses only two objects instead of the three I was using for the box. What I did was something e5frog told me to do: make the sprite, and then make another sprite overlapping the first one only have its color be the background color. So here are the sprites in the code: clearSpriteleft: ; 5x5 block to clear ; a drawn sprite .byte %11111111 .byte %11001111 .byte %11000011 .byte %11000000 .byte %11000011 .byte %11001111 .byte %11111111leftrocket: ; left rocket .byte %00110000 .byte %00111100 .byte %00111111 .byte %00111100 .byte %00110000 And here is the result in MESS's Channel F emulator. A little bit of flickering is noticeable on the nose of the ship when moving up and down, but it's the best I can do, so I'm putting it in there. So now that it's not a box any more, I can think of a different name for the game than just box puns. It is still going to be about the idea in the last blog (red thing guarding a border against invading green things.) Perhaps I can make the green things heads of lettuce and name the game "Killer Heads of Lettuce." And then I can have all my Channel F games have titles that begin with K. Hmm...