atari2600land

Centipede?

That didn't help any.

Is this going to be kept at 2k? Like I said in the Don't Go thread, I love 2k games. I was playing it and the colors started flashing. I'm guessing that is a cue that the game is over. Here is my highest score:

Version 43. Worked a lot with the colors. I wanted to make the title fade in and out, like a pulsing effect, brighter and darker over and over again. I finally saw my problem I was having. It had to do with the FlashTimer variable not being reset whenever the b&w/color switch was pressed. I changed the b&w mode colors. I can change stuff, but if I were to add things, something would have to go because I have 0 bytes left. In version 42, I changed the title because I wasn't liking how it looked. I don't like the fact that the title now has a space between the D and S, but I had to make it this way since it looked the best. midspace43.bin

No, once movingtimer equals movingspeed (which is set at 10), then move the ice. But either way it still won't work.

I'm trying to make a game where Santa is moving down on a bunch of ice floes moving left and right. But sometimes if he lands on one, it acts as though he died. I tried everything and I can't find out why it's happening. If onland=1 that means he successfully landed on a floe and he can move on it left and right (depending on which one he's on). In the code part "ihatethis" (I named it that because I'm frustrated) is the code that happens when he dies, if onland=0. But even though if onland=1, it still does the death code sometimes. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?! if movingtimer<movingspeed then goto ihatethis movingtimer=0 ice1x=ice1x-1 ice2x=ice2x+1 ice3x=ice3x-1 ice4x=ice4x+1 ice5x=ice5x-1 ice6x=ice6x+1 onland=0 if COL0 and HIT_SPRITE2 then santax=santax-1 : onland=1 if COL0 and HIT_SPRITE3 then santax=santax+1 : onland=1 if COL0 and HIT_SPRITE4 then santax=santax-1 : onland=1 if COL0 and HIT_SPRITE5 then santax=santax+1 : onland=1 if COL0 and HIT_SPRITE6 then santax=santax-1 : onland=1 if COL0 and HIT_SPRITE7 then santax=santax+1 : onland=1 ihatethis: if santay=80 then onland=1 : goto toporbottom if santay=17 then onland=1 : goto toporbottom if onland=0 then VOICE PLAY argh : goto new_life goto main niceice2.bas

In a bit of frenzy (and quite really odd), I decided to finish making the rest of the manuals. The next step is finding 24 cardboard boxes to ship the game in. And THEN it will be finished. Here's what will go in each cardboard box: 1 Trimerous cartridge 1 (unfolded) box to make yourself since I don't want to screw it all up. 1 lovely 8-page color manual

Trimerous update: I finally got my butt over to the copy store and got some copies made of the manual. I got home and cut a few out. I have 18 manuals left to assemble. I think I did a good job on them. e5frog helped me out with the layout. I did the text and all the illustrations and stuff. I like it when my video game things work out well. It's an 8 page color manual.

I started working on an entry and ran into a problem with the voice.playing variable. buttonheld=2 titleloop: wait if cont.button and buttonheld=2 then buttonheld=1 if cont.button=0 and buttonheld=1 then buttonheld=3 if buttonheld=3 then VOICE PLAY phrase : buttonheld=4 : goto main_setup goto titleloop main_setup: if voice.playing then buttonheld=4 else buttonheld=5 if buttonheld=4 then goto titleloop ...set up the rest of the game... It will say the phrase once and NOT go set up the rest of the game like I want it to. Is there a problem with my code? I'm going crazy.

Not to be confused with "Lemons in August." So I wondered today while looking at my incredibly long code about the banana movement in my pineapple game, if I could shorten it by adding a couple of extra variables. As a result, the code is a lot shorter with only three variables added. Right now I'm up to var47. The highest I got on GoSub was var39. So while it may seem that there's a lot less involved in this game, there actually is a lot more happening. This is the banana moving code. movementtt_of_banana if bananadir=1 && bananay>150 then bananadir=3 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=1 && bananax<8 then bananadir=2 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=2 && bananay>150 then bananadir=4 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=2 && bananax>144 then bananadir=1 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=3 && bananay<18 then bananadir=1 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=3 && bananax<8 then bananadir=4 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=4 && bananay<18 then bananadir=2 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=4 && bananax>144 then bananadir=3 : bananawall=1 if bananadir=1 then bananax=bananax-1 : bananay=bananay+2 if bananadir=2 then bananax=bananax+1 : bananay=bananay+2 if bananadir=3 then bananax=bananax-1 : bananay=bananay-2 if bananadir=4 then bananax=bananax+1 : bananay=bananay-2 return To use it, I call up a banana's x, y and direction, feed it into the code, and then put the result back, like so: bananadir=banana1dir : bananay=banana1y : bananax=banana1x gosub movementtt_of_banana banana1dir=bananadir : banana1y=bananay : banana1x=bananax Pretty clever, huh? The way it was before was having code keep track of each banana this way. Now there's a lot less code. While I was at it, I also changed some colors. I thought the purplish-brown color was too dark, so I made it pink. Now it looks like strawberry ice cream. I made the papaya a darker green. So now at least I can add more bananas way easier. My limit of the number of stuff I can have in a certain ZONE is 31. I just think of that as the entire screen because I doubt that I'll add 22 extra bananas bouncing around. I think the limit to the number of variables I can have is var99, so I'm good with that. Now I'm bored again.

I love it! The sounds are fine the way they are. The only thing that bothers me is the shape of the 5 digit. I think it might be confused with a 6.

Is the full version 2k?

I totally revamped the banana moving code. There's now a lot less of it. Just one chunk of code for changing the bananas' movement and separate variables for each banana to have. I also changed up the colors a little. I made the background brighter and changed the papaya color.

When you die, you need to press fire for the game to resume.

I give you...version 41! Changes: The chances the speed of the cashew or pretzel will be faster increases at 200 points and again at 400. Different sound effect for getting a cereal piece Enemy missiles won't go away when an enemy is hit, it can still hit your ship. Let me know what you all think. I have 5 bytes left. midspace41.zip

IMHO, without playing a recent build, I would think just 2 extra balls would be too few. I would count the extra ball getting to depend on stage completion, if just only to save space.

This blog entry begins in the unlikely year of 1862. When I get bored, I sometimes work on personal projects, like music CDs. In 1862, the epic poem "Goblin Market" was published. It was brought to my attention in an old issue of Playboy or something that my grandparents had. It was dated before I was born. I don't know why they had it. A few years after reading about it, I found the old poem online. Man it's long. So began the task I challenged myself of putting it to music. Like almost all my projects I had before, I quit about halfway into it, distracted by other things. A year ago, I had found what I had done on my website for some reason. I sometimes keep odd things on my website for storage. So I downloaded it, because the computer it was on had died. And I continued working on it. I made it into a MIDI. I record the MIDI in Audacity and me reciting the poems (to the music, it's like singing, but I can't sing, so I talk-sing) with an audio recorder and then I blend them together. So I finished the whole thing. It is 42 minutes long. I was going to put in on a CD, but I realized that if I did, I would have 37 minutes of unused storage on it. I went to work on an epic poem of my own, which - like most of my stuff - is strange and silly. It is called "Floyd, the Can of Spam From Northern Idaho." The name Floyd was chosen long before George Floyd. I just thought it was an interesting name. It is about a can of Spam that grew arms and legs and a head and was walking around. So I finished my own composition and it was 37 minutes long. I put it on the same CD as "Goblin Market" and titled it "Tales of Whimsical Fantasy" and burned myself a copy of it. Right now it is sitting on a pile of SNES games I have on my desk. Last night I began to work on a CD called "Tales of Whimsical Fantasy 2" and its first song called "The Adventures of Steve, a Hair On Top of Bob's Head". While Floyd had 16 or so parts to it, I worked on part 1 of this new song. It takes up 2 minutes' worth of music. This song is about a hair. I was inspired by this hair I had in my mouth that got there for some unknown reason. After getting it out of my mouth and throwing it away, I wondered about what would happen to it. (I think about weird stuff like this.) The epic story begins when a baby was born and began to grow hair on its head (like most babies.) I want it to be at least 40 minutes long like "Goblin Market" was. That and waiting for that phone call, and working on Pineapple for the Atari 7800 is what I have been doing lately. I have been going to sleep at about 7 p.m. and waking up at 7 a.m. consistently for almost a week now. After I finished part 1 of that song, it was about 6 p.m., so I thought I had better get started trying to go to sleep since it takes at least a half-hour to finally fall asleep. I got up at 7 this morning. I have been awake for about an hour so far today. And then I finished typing this blog entry.

Today I worked on the pineapple game. I switched from a zone height of 8 to a zone height of 16. While this enables more sprites on the screen, I doubt I will put any more on it. I did this just to see if I could do it. I like the way it looks anyway, so I did it. I would like some suggestions and feedback on the game because I'm getting almost 0 interest in it. I also apparently had a dream a year ago about making crosswords about apples. Something I kept doing once a month. I'll just post this here, and if anyone wants the answers, well, I'll be very surprised. It's hard making these, this one took about an hour. I am proud to say all the 3 letter words going down are (somewhat) common. So all in all it's been another very boring day, just working on the computer waiting for those people to call me, although I have a feeling they never will. I did poop out a pounds' worth of poop (I lost a pound). But then I ate food. But at least I'd be fatter if I didn't. I am bored and want something to do. It is kind of odd that I have all these video games laying around in my room and yet I'm still bored. Perhaps I should play them...

Really hope you can fit this in 2k. I love 2k games.

Song fixed, but I don't know how.

I set the zone height to 16. A bunch of my free space vanished. Instead of having 9997 bytes in the main area, I now only have 2175. But I read that having the zone height be 16 means that the 7800 doesn't have to work as hard (which I don't know why since everything would be bigger instead of smaller.) So now I could add a ton more bananas, but I won't because then the game would get super hard. I had to move the score down though, so both scores are on the same line, but player 1's score is on the left while player 2's is on the right.

I still need to get the manuals for Trimerous done. I bet Kinko's is open on the weekend. I need to do it on the weekend because I'm waiting for a phone call that could come at any time during the day. Thus I spend all my waking hours waiting for that call. While I was waiting today, I decided to delve into the Channel F and program my next game. Quest of the Cranberry is on the front burner now. I made screen 17 a minefield. I'm taking lots of ideas from Frank the Fruit Fly and implementing them here. What is weird though is it has to be screen 17. If I try to make it screen 18, the game goes berzerko and won't work. I do have an idea for level 3. I need to finish level 2. My idea for level 3 is a school of fish that is swimming coming from the right and moving left, trying to get the cranberry. Level 3 will be underwater. Cranberries can swim, you know.

I decided to change my avatar. With me programming a game about pineapples, it seemed silly to have an avatar of a watermelon up there. But I like silly things, so it wasn't all bad. I can't think of too many things left to do with this game, I think I'm nearing its end, which seems odd since I still have 9,997 bytes of data left, and the DMA holes to work with. So let's hear some suggestions. The latest binary will from now on always be on the pineapple website. I finally figured out how to change my signature, so I did. For now, the pineapple website link is in my signature. The 2-player game option was a suggestion, and it worked out well. My eye hurt a lot yesterday, so I had to go to sleep early, at 2 p.m. I woke up at 4 a.m. because my throat was extra dry. So I woke up and my eye quit hurting, so I ate breakfast. I'm expecting a phone call which could come in the next 2 weeks (they didn't want to tell me any time more specific than that!) so the door to my room is open and I'm not listening to any music so I can hear the phone when (if?) it rings. Which leads to a question: Do any of you still have land lines? I do. I have a phone. It's plugged into the wall in the den. My room is down the hall a short ways from the den so I can hear it. Hopefully even when the dryer is on because it is now. I also have a Samsung Galaxy 3. I last used it a month ago. It doesn't hold a charge very well though, so I probably need to charge it now. I don't know its phone number so when it rings it's probably either a wrong number or spam call because I didn't give the number to anybody because I don't know it. And I don't really have many people to tell it to anyway. So anyway, here is a new picture of the game. I wonder why .bmp files are so popular with emulation screenshot pictures. Why save it in .bmp format? I ask because this picture is like 200 kb in .bmp yet only 5 kb in .png format.