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I have been working on this on and off for about a month (mostly off). It's a little game about swatting fruit flies. It's called "bananas are good."
"Oh no! A swarm of fruit flies has just discovered your banana and are attacking it! Armed with your trusty flyswatter, you only have 9 seconds to swat each fly. How many flies can you swat before the game ends?"

Note that this isn't really complete yet. I am looking for feedback on it. To start a game, press Start. To move the swatter around, press the directional pad, and to swat, press 2 right when a fruit fly is under your swatter.
http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/banana20160103v4gg.zip

banana20160103v4gg.zip (22.21 KB)

This is cool! I have an Everdrive now, so I'll try it on my actual Game Gear soon (when I get it to stop being broken). I played it in Fusion, though, and it's pretty fun. My only complaint is that the swatter is kind of slow, but that my just be an emulator issue.
Good job!

Thanks for the kind words. Let me know if the swatter is slow on a real machine, and I will attempt to speed it up.

Pulled out my half-working, kind of disassembled unit, and it's much easier to control. This is a fun game. Thanks for making it.

P.S. Have you seen a game gear like this?
http://www.smspower.org/forums/15854-GameGearLCDFailure
I'm using the one with the dead pixel to play your game.

Made a few changes. I've added sound for when the fly gets hit. I also made the fly go down once he gets hit. I made a separate title screen for the game, but all that differentiates it and the in-game screen are the words "bananas are good". I don't know why, but the banana goes weird for a split second during the two screen changes. So to not have an odd banana picture for this split second, I decided to make a palette be all white and thus displaying an all-white screen. It looks as though the banana is flashing but I don't know how to have the in-game screen be there while it's loading all the in-game info, because I've tried everything, different pictures, different code, and nothing seems to help. The code is in the zip file here if you want to take a look. So is the game in case you want to play it.
http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/banana20160105gg.zip

banana20160105gg.zip (28.48 KB)

I don't understand why or how, but I fixed the flashing screen problem. Apparently you have to say you have 32 colors in a palette even though there's only 8 for some reason. Otherwise, the screen may display stuff you didn't intend. In trying to fix this problem, I had a little black dot that would display instead of it flashing. I got rid of it by changing the numbers in the palette saying 16 to 32 even though there were only 8.
http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/banana20160106v2gg.zip

There are 16 colors in BG palette and 16 colors in sprite palette.
On a SMS, each color is 1 byte, on a GG each color is TWO bytes.

OK, I have tried everything to try and get this stupid problem to go away and nothing helped. For a fraction of a second between the game over screen and the title screen, this appears. I want it to go straight from the game over screen to the title screen without this displaying. I can't do it. I don't even know how this happened, but it is.

http://www.atari2600land.com/banana/bananahelp4.zip

barff.png (31.19 KB)

First of all, congratulations on your swatting/fly/banana game! It has a nice and honest micro-game feel to it :)

I have not looked at your code, but I suggest you always disable the display when swapping the background image and/or making other vram-writing heavy transitions in-game. You turn the display off (reset bit 6 in vdp register 1), do all the loading and stuff, and when you are ready, you turn it on again (set the mentioned bit).

How do I reset and set certain bits?

I often use the bit-related z80 opcodes set, res and bit when I'm tweaking and testing isolated bits.

I'm assuming this bit of code is related:

ld a,%11100000 ; turn screen on - normal sprites.
ld b,1
call setreg ; set register 1.

In the comments it says this:
; bit 0 = zoomed sprites (enabled).
; 1 = 8 x 16 sprites (disabled).
; 5 = frame interrupt (enabled).
; 6 = display (blanked).
I tried blanking the second 1 to 0, but a gray screen appeared instead of the picture below. What do bites 2-4 and bit 7 do?

For the register settings in particular - and also to get a good, general overview of the technical features of the console - I will warmly recommend Charles Mac Donald's vdp notes, and also the official developer documents (from SEGA!). I use these documents for reference all the time.

The newest and latest version of the bananas are good game. I added some fly swatting animation to the hand. And unless someone finds something wrong with this or has any suggestions, I think this is done.
http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/bananasaregoodgamegearv2.zip

I was just wondering if someone can add this to the homebrew games section.

Author	Message
Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	"bananas are good." - Game Gear game Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2016 9:55 pm
	I have been working on this on and off for about a month (mostly off). It's a little game about swatting fruit flies. It's called "bananas are good." "Oh no! A swarm of fruit flies has just discovered your banana and are attacking it! Armed with your trusty flyswatter, you only have 9 seconds to swat each fly. How many flies can you swat before the game ends?" Note that this isn't really complete yet. I am looking for feedback on it. To start a game, press Start. To move the swatter around, press the directional pad, and to swat, press 2 right when a fruit fly is under your swatter. http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/banana20160103v4gg.zip banana20160103v4gg.zip (22.21 KB)

Capt. 2110 Joined: 27 Apr 2014 Posts: 281 Location: Texas	Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2016 10:54 pm
	This is cool! I have an Everdrive now, so I'll try it on my actual Game Gear soon (when I get it to stop being broken). I played it in Fusion, though, and it's pretty fun. My only complaint is that the swatter is kind of slow, but that my just be an emulator issue. Good job!

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2016 11:52 pm
	Thanks for the kind words. Let me know if the swatter is slow on a real machine, and I will attempt to speed it up.

Capt. 2110 Joined: 27 Apr 2014 Posts: 281 Location: Texas	Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 12:16 am
	Pulled out my half-working, kind of disassembled unit, and it's much easier to control. This is a fun game. Thanks for making it. P.S. Have you seen a game gear like this? http://www.smspower.org/forums/15854-GameGearLCDFailure I'm using the one with the dead pixel to play your game.

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Tue Jan 05, 2016 6:44 pm
	Made a few changes. I've added sound for when the fly gets hit. I also made the fly go down once he gets hit. I made a separate title screen for the game, but all that differentiates it and the in-game screen are the words "bananas are good". I don't know why, but the banana goes weird for a split second during the two screen changes. So to not have an odd banana picture for this split second, I decided to make a palette be all white and thus displaying an all-white screen. It looks as though the banana is flashing but I don't know how to have the in-game screen be there while it's loading all the in-game info, because I've tried everything, different pictures, different code, and nothing seems to help. The code is in the zip file here if you want to take a look. So is the game in case you want to play it. http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/banana20160105gg.zip banana20160105gg.zip (28.48 KB)

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Wed Jan 06, 2016 8:20 pm
	I don't understand why or how, but I fixed the flashing screen problem. Apparently you have to say you have 32 colors in a palette even though there's only 8 for some reason. Otherwise, the screen may display stuff you didn't intend. In trying to fix this problem, I had a little black dot that would display instead of it flashing. I got rid of it by changing the numbers in the palette saying 16 to 32 even though there were only 8. http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/banana20160106v2gg.zip

sverx Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Posts: 3947 Location: Stockholm, Sweden	Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2016 2:17 pm
	There are 16 colors in BG palette and 16 colors in sprite palette. On a SMS, each color is 1 byte, on a GG each color is TWO bytes.

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Thu Jan 07, 2016 11:01 pm
	OK, I have tried everything to try and get this stupid problem to go away and nothing helped. For a fraction of a second between the game over screen and the title screen, this appears. I want it to go straight from the game over screen to the title screen without this displaying. I can't do it. I don't even know how this happened, but it is. http://www.atari2600land.com/banana/bananahelp4.zip barff.png (31.19 KB)

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2016 7:36 am
	First of all, congratulations on your swatting/fly/banana game! It has a nice and honest micro-game feel to it :) I have not looked at your code, but I suggest you always disable the display when swapping the background image and/or making other vram-writing heavy transitions in-game. You turn the display off (reset bit 6 in vdp register 1), do all the loading and stuff, and when you are ready, you turn it on again (set the mentioned bit).

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2016 5:52 pm
	How do I reset and set certain bits?

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2016 6:07 pm
	I often use the bit-related z80 opcodes set, res and bit when I'm tweaking and testing isolated bits.

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2016 6:13 pm
	I'm assuming this bit of code is related: ld a,%11100000 ; turn screen on - normal sprites. ld b,1 call setreg ; set register 1. In the comments it says this: ; bit 0 = zoomed sprites (enabled). ; 1 = 8 x 16 sprites (disabled). ; 5 = frame interrupt (enabled). ; 6 = display (blanked). I tried blanking the second 1 to 0, but a gray screen appeared instead of the picture below. What do bites 2-4 and bit 7 do?

hang-on Joined: 23 Mar 2013 Posts: 611 Location: Copenhagen, Denmark	Posted: Fri Jan 08, 2016 6:42 pm
	For the register settings in particular - and also to get a good, general overview of the technical features of the console - I will warmly recommend Charles Mac Donald's vdp notes, and also the official developer documents (from SEGA!). I use these documents for reference all the time.

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Sun Jan 31, 2016 10:09 pm
	The newest and latest version of the bananas are good game. I added some fly swatting animation to the hand. And unless someone finds something wrong with this or has any suggestions, I think this is done. http://www.atari2600land.com/bananasaregood/bananasaregoodgamegearv2.zip

Gamegearguy Joined: 06 Sep 2015 Posts: 276 Location: United States	Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2016 10:09 pm
	I was just wondering if someone can add this to the homebrew games section.

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