atari2600land

I think I figured out the problem. What I need is a uniform NoseHairCutMark value (way to get a value that works) to compare to the NoseHairLength value. But this might be hard since the NoseHairLength value increases and the NoseHairCutMark decreases as it's drawing the screen going down. I went and cleaned up the code a little. If you compile this as is it will not work correctly, because it needs a NoseHairCutMark value to cut the hair. nosehair45.asm

Interesting ad on eBay. What's with the name "Casino Royale" for Casino Poker?

I mixed up the pass code (pass number?) a little bit. Quite literally. I jumbled some numbers around to make it harder for people to know which digits pertain to the health part of the pass code. And, with help from e5frog, I think I got rid of that bug I was talking about in yesterday's blog. But it does mean you might have to type all ten numbers before you know if it's valid or not. And I also had to move some code around to get the stuff I had working before but quit working back working again. I think this is the hardest I ever worked on this game the past few days. You'll notice that the file size is now 16kb. I could make it any size I wanted it to. I chose 16 because it's divisible by 2. But I think I could fit it within 8kb if I tried hard enough. But I don't want to. I need to take a break. And with that bug gone, now is a good stopping point to pause and think about what to do next with it. I have a copy of a release candidate of Trimerous. It is 30kb. I definitely want it to be that big at least. So that means I have tons of work to do. After all, that's why I put a passcode system in the game to begin with. I am envisioning an epic game, like my Frank the Fruit Fly game I did for the Pokemon Mini. Also, the Channel F needs a game title beginning with Q, which is why I titled it as I did. That, and it fits nicely on the title screen.

I found a lovely bug pertaining to the passcode system of Quest of the Cranberry. What's that number to the left of the five? You tell me. Normally, the player would only see this bug if he were just randomly inputting numbers for entering a passcode in the hopes one would find one that works. But apart from that, I did make the beginning of level 3 okay. I am wondering whether to drag Craig lower while he's swimming (like in Super Mario Bros.) and the player would have to press fire (pressing down on the Channel F joystick) to make Craig move up, or whether that would be awkward. The one part I don't get if I would do this is what would happen if he got to the bottom. Nothing? Make him lose health? Add code to make him have to go up for air once in a while? Do cranberries have lungs? This is hard.

So I put in a fireball in Quest for the Cranberry. It took tons of hours, but I finally did it. I don't know how I did it or what was wrong, but it kept doing strange things when it got to the fireball screen. Freezing was the most popular thing, followed by making the % sign weird colors for no apparent reason. I was going to make a dragon the source of the fireballs, but it looks like I can't do that. I'm going to start on level 3 instead. Like I said before, level 3 will be underwater, which means that the number displaying the passcode will have to be not blue. White perhaps? With the problems I've been having with the fireball screen, I don't know if I'll be able to make the game I was imagining (a "Frank the Fruit Fly"-type game), but I'll try my best until I just have to give up altogether. Perhaps the dragon could be a sea monster. It will be green. It is kind of tough to do things when you only have 4 colors. And I want to have a green fish in there as well. So apparently there's a limit of 255 different sprites you can have. Unless I'm wrong. Because I passed 16 (there's 18 in there right now).

Odd eBay find: A cartridge holder. Probably homemade with a 3D printer or something.

I am back working on Quest of the Cranberry for the Channel F. Last time I got discouraged because something wasn't working right. Well, I worked on it for a couple more hours and finally the dumb thing started working right. In order to move the sprite up or left, apparently I MUST do this: lisu 3 ; move x position right 2 lisl 1 lr A, S ai 2 lr S, A lisu 3 ; move y position up 2 lisl 2 lr A, S ai 254 lr S, A I was trying to make a grape bounce around the screen, like in Jezzball. A couple more screens and then I can move on to level 3, which will take place in the sea because it will have a blue background. I know, I have been working on this off and on for 2 years and I only got as far as being about 75% done with level 2. But now I can work on something new for the level now that I have this problem solved.

Thanks! I figured out how to register a hit. It's quite simple, really. First, you put a white dot on the screen and a white dot in the lower right hand corner of the screen where you place the sensor. Then go to the next frame (at 30 fps) and put in black dots on the screen. If you do this fifteen times in a row, you'll have a detectable flashing light to hit that is on screen for about 1 second. The longer you want it to stay on screen, the more frames with dots you'll need to put in. If you want to subtract points from it, make sure the dots are opposite (i.e. white dot on the screen and black dot in the sensor area.) I guess the sensor area can be anywhere on the screen, but since the original games put it there, I decided to put it there too.

Yes, it's like the Mario Paint minigame. I haven't heard of Flyswatter for DOS before.

OK, I see what you mean, but I can't fix it. So I guess I'll have to give up. I sat here trying for a couple hours without making any progress. I'll attach the code in case anyone wants to look at it and help me. nosehair44.asm

What happened? Did I fix it or what?

I'm making a game for the Game Boy. It's called "Flies!" It's a game in which you swat flies. flies22.gb

Fixing more bugs in my Game Boy game I'm working on. Found a really weird one but I have been unable to replicate it. It didn't impede game play, so that's good. It was just the word "TIMER" showing up when the boss was around. And it only happened once. Made a fourth background. It's swirls. You probably can't tell, but the swirls are made up of two different colors. And this is my highest score so far: 1,120. I think I got to wave 5 that time. I'm amazed I can put this complex of a game in using only 32 KB. For those counting along at home, it's the same size as Tetris. Also, it's the smallest Game Boy game size you can have. Not that I'm trying to remain at 32 KB. I would really like to write a game larger, but I just haven't had the need to yet. I've come a long way in 4 years. I looked back at my first attempts just starting out. I don't think I'm quite ready to move from C to Assembly yet. And I doubt I ever will because I can't seem to find a discord Game Boy homebrew community. Kind of odd, though, that I found the Pokemon Mini community quite easily.

So I went back to work on Flies! for Game Boy, which I thought I had finished, but I found a few bugs. Took me about five hours. I added some stuff, removed some stuff. I added a new background. The game now chooses a background randomly at the beginning of each wave. I noticed that the bees always moved in from the bottom whenever the bug bomb wears off. I changed that. I also found an interesting bug where if you pause and unpause the game when you begin wave 2, it does weird things. I think I fixed that. I'm going to test this on a real Game Boy with my Game Boy Everdrive. I tried to download the program I use to make Game Gear games with, but it sent me to a PayPal donation page. Screw that. I'm not paying, especially since I didn't have to before. I am using C (so the GBDK) to make my GB games with. I would like a fourth background (since 4 is a nice round number in computer terms.) Here are the three I have so far: But I am out of ideas. Would anyone like to help make an interesting tiled background for me? An 8x8 pixel tile that repeats over and over again. In Game Boy colors. Also I had >200 views of the last blog I did. I don't know why. I guess I am close to releasing this one as well, only 10 copies though. Nobody submitted any label art, so I have to do that myself (what a surprise.) I am so sleepy all the time. This makes it difficult to know when I should sleep and when I should get up. I slept almost all day yesterday. My head hurts from thinking too much (either that, and/or looking at a computer screen for so long). I get so wrapped up in what I'm doing, the time flies and before you know it, five hours have passed.

I like to play Sierra Sports: Maximum Pool. Even alone. It lets you control two players with one controller, and there's even a nine-ball mode (sink 9 balls in numerical order.) I second Looney Tunes, but with the cheat 'cheesfish' which unlocks everything (also 'succotash' is a good cheat which removes the stupid "gags" which are actually weapons)

I haven't been working on any Game Gear games lately. Been busy with other consoles.

So I finally found the CD-ROM of that program that let me make videos and DVDs. I had to reinstall it. That took about an hour. And I couldn't just leave it on its own because I had to keep clicking on buttons that kept popping up. I got done with the program installing and took it for a spin. It works just as I remembered it did before it quit working for some reason (this was when I had enough and decided to factory-reset the entire computer.) Anyway, the point is I can make DVDs again. Why is that important? Because a few years ago, I released a couple of ActionMax homebrew DVDs. One was called Bubba's Buck Blastin' and the other was called Snowman's Land. The files were on my computer even though the program wasn't. I checked the BBB file and it loads up perfectly. So I'm back in business. Just in case anyone wants a homebrew ActionMax DVD. And you really should play Hydrosub: 2021 because it is actually 2021 now. I hope to later this year when I am up to it. I think I know where the ActionMax stuff is in the pantry.

Making sure I am on the list.

I go down to the bottom and I touch the demon and I keep cutting and every cut doesn't make the hair increase, so I have no idea what is going on. Nevertheless, I tried to fix the problem even though it is like shooting fish in a barrel blindfolded with a wolverine gnawing at my leg. So I put the code in as well in case this doesn't fix it. nosehair2021_01_29_v2.zip

I think I fixed it. Let me know if other bugs happen. nosehair43.bin

I did it. I got the color change in as well as the music. I also fixed a bug. As a result, you can only cut with the scissors if the scissors are touching the hair. Otherwise, if you press fire and aren't touching the hair, nothing happens. The bug was you could repeatedly press fire and move down and the nosehair would grow as fast as you were moving down. nosehair41.bin

Thanks for trying it. I fixed the letter T and made spacing changes on the letters. It now looks like this: Squaresville.otf