Category: Uncategorised

Thankfully, 6474…now 6481…now 6486… now 6419.…now 6061 bytes of free space remain also. Win!

Had a redesign of the ending sequence this week and whilst going through the game I noticed a few bugs that had cropped up which I’d forgotten about or thought wouldn’t really happen.

Yes.. Yes they will happen. sort them out!

So, you can game over… on the title screen.
Yes, I know, I kinda wanted the title screen to be a little bit interactive so you could fly Flappy around whereever and nothing bad could happen but, that’s just not the case, so, gotta reign that in.

Flapping momentum carries post death.
Not a big thing you’d think. Unless n enemy is over your spawn location and you still have some upward flap momentum to go ,in which case, wave good bye to all your lives pretty dang fast! Should be easy to fix mind. Just a couple LDA, STA commands I bet. – Done!

You beat the game. but..the high score didn’t update?
That clearly needs to be sorted out. – Done!

The level name generation always contains Dungeon.
I was being a lazy developer and just sorta left that in there from early days. Again, just a couple LDA, STA commands hopefully. – Done…ish, need to shorten some level names, no worries, caterpillars now become unicorns. Layla, this is for you 😉 Done!

Ending Colour Screen still has issues.
It loads up and plays through happily from the initial screen but somehow not on the actual gameending screen. The colours get borked and the music plays double speed somehow. Gonna be an annoying logic bug in there I reckon. – Done!

On level load Flappy has no head for a few moments.
Should be easy to fix again, just inject the right code in the right place. – Done!

Ending Sequence needs a rectify of the credits.
Things have changed, gotta sort them out again. No biggie.

Lunar Enemies aren’t looking where they’re going initially.
I guess I’ll just have to init their directions to be north initially… or something, not sure, again shouldn’t be much hassle. – Done!

Lumar Enemies Hotboxes are too large
They are just too large. by a couple pixels either way. should be easy to fix with a quick case check – Done!

On the plus side, it’s feature complete, not adding any new features to it now, it’s getting a bit risky with space reamining and there’s a few bytes scattered all over the place so we’re looking at more like 5kb spare I’d imagine. Here’s hoping I can cram some code in this week during the evenings after the day job.

Sent a demo build out today, think I’ve settled on the levels for each mode now. Just left with the issue of fixing the Ending Screen up. But, it’s nearly midnight now, so I’m gonna getsome sleep so I’ll be able to focus on this tomorrow evening after work.

It’ll be interesting to see if I get some feedback regarding difficulty settings also. I’ve likely made the game way too hard as I normally do, can’t help it!

2020 was virtually a dead end for me with regards to this passion project. I was struggling with doubt in my own abilities as a programmer and other areas of my life through chunks of last year.

Life and crazy lockdowns simply must not get me down anymore, to which end I’ve chosen to live this year as if it were my last, which means accomplishing as many of my personal goals that I can. Where they’ll lead me to, I have no clue. Not planning on dying mind you! More planning on self-improvement, including a certain NES game that I’d neglected until the turn of the year.

I’m getting into the habit of writing little goal lists the night before I accomplish them, so I have a little list of things to attack on my code. Two nights in and it seems to be working pretty well, loads of little bugs fixes made and just two things left to do.

Number 1:

Decide The Level lists for tougher game modes.

Number 2:

Fix the issues with the ending sequence, which are numerous.

It seems that my sprite Zero hit routine is lagging the music and everything up, making it all rather out of pace, if I remove it then, it’s a lot more consistent. But I really want that routine working, it’d be my little piece of icing on the Flap Happy cake.

After that, the game is essentially, complete. Yeah. Not adding any more to it, not compensating between NTSC and PAL Hz, sorry, it’s taken a long time to get done and it runs really nicely for NTSC but should still be okay for PAL regions. I’m still hoping it will entertain some people, even if it’s just my kids.

I may retry cartridge production myself later in the year but will probably try to find some people for support when it comes to publishing, we’ll see about that though.