Sheepy Goes 'A Shootin'

31st August 2011

Wow, quite a stroke of luck I had today. Winning 1st prize in a quiz at the work place (6 bottles of wine) and also getting a new Sheep sprite up and running. I converted the image of Shaun's sheep into Sprite Pad V1.8. It flippin' worked too. Awesome!! Once I got the sprite frames, etc.

I took on board some of Shaun's suggestions that the sheep can jump on to boxes and barrels too. I loaded up Arkitec and checked out which characters should be used to make the sheep jump on to the barrels. I added the characters, which represented the value of the character sets that form the boxes and barrels. I also managed to get the jump routine working slightly better. The player cannot jump too high in one go. The player can also jump outside of the game screen :)

Now the bulk of the background scrolling / collision code was virtually finished. I decided to work on getting some nice effects into the game. Well, not really effects, just explosions. This is for when the player shoots an enemy. It will then stop the enemy and let the enemies that get shot, explode. Then after the animation, remove the enemy off screen. I had to program an animation engine per enemy for this, because if I actually made the explosion animation on the player's bullet. It just wouldn't work right - plus there'd be a delay with the bullet firing. Since I was happy with the enemy blasting and the enemies are exploding quite nicely. I decided to call it a day with this game. For today. :)

The next task (Which will be some time this weekend) will be to get the enemies shooting bullets in one of 3 directions. Also I will be working on enemy movement formations, according to a random table (Depending on what the enemies will be). Stay tuned on Sunday, to see what happens. :)

Kung Fu, POW!

27th August 2011

I was going to do a little more on Woolly Jumper today, but decided to leave that until Wednesday afternoon :). Instead I received some text and graphics for the ending of 2000 Kung Fu Maniacs. The hardest part was actually getting the actual .C64 file to save in CCS64. The best option I had was to store the all data (For the ending) and put that on to a .tap image. Load in the Sideways Scrolling SEUCK in WinVice, and then load the .tap image into it. That method worked quite nicely. I watched the example of the end. It looked interesting, and I thought to myself that it was most definitely worth a try.

Before I got into the programming side of things, I had to try import the charset from the SEUCK ending into Cuneiform. Then import the font that Alf made for 1000 Kung Fu Maniacs. We imported the files okay into the PC C64 char editor, and I copied the background chars (which formed the Master of Exposition's HQ) and put it into place with the 1x1 charset, which I used for 1000 Kung Fu Maniacs. I save the charset data, and raw data as well. Now was time for the next phase.

Because I can't really use more SEUCK background for the ending, I decided to import the character sets into the Graphic Editor by Firebird Software. It is quite an interesting piece of kit for the Commodore 64. So I loaded it up from the original .tap file that was created using the DC2N. Set Vice to warp speed so that the program loaded quicker. Then loaded the charset in. I also opened another window with VICE, and the Sideways SEUCK with the work file which Alf originally made. I then designed the background (Made it similar to the SEUCK background) although found a slight glitch in the FB Graphic Editor. The white pillars should have been hires, but they seemed to have ended up in multicolour instead. I then captured the image with the Retro Replay and used the MC monitor to transfer the screen to $2000 and colour to $2400. I then saved both files and then imported those into the ACME SEUCK Enhancements project file for 2000 Kung Fu Maniacs.

Next I copied Alf's text and I input it into the ACME cross assembler source. I saved and imported the sprite data into Spritepad 1.8, and I selected the sprites that were used for the ending. I also used the sprites of one of the enemy ninjas as well as the player - for the Get Ready and Game Over sequences. That will do for today, as I'm off out in a few minutes time :)

28th August 2011

Today was probably the most important of the day with 2000 Kung Fu Maniacs, where it comes to the end part. I have decided to program it in today. Mainly because the end part will probably be one of the longest parts to make in assembly before the Front End, Get Ready, Game Over and High Score entry parts :). So I programmed each frame, checked the ending out. Had a few problems at first, but they were resolved. The ending features the Master of Awesome and the Master of Exposition. But I will not tell you what it's all about though. It's a big secret and pretty much a funny ending :) There's still something that needs sorting out with this ending. Getting the background's pillars the correct colour. That should hopefully be no problem. :). On to Woolly Jumper on Wednesday. :)

Let's Shoot!

Thursday 25th August 2011

Okay, so I got the Sheep to jump, got the background to scroll. So what now? Well, this phase was quite a short phase for yesterday, but it was worth the effort. Since I last worked on Woolly Jumper, I got the player to jump, and also shoot, but there was still something missing. Yes, that's right. No collision or animation.

The first thing I worked on was the collision detection. A simple software Collision routine which uses the box-type collision (Sometimes that cannot be reliable, but if adjusted correctly the box collision should work okay. That's the method that I used for Sub Hunter :). The first thing I did was to write a subroutine that would read the player's virtual/ghost position and store it into a table of four bytes. I did this for the player's collision, and I also did that for the player bullet collision.

Now for the most interesting part. To get the collision working, I had to type in a string of code (quite a long string to be honest) for the player/enemy collision and enemy/bullet collision. Mainly by simply comparing whether or not the player, the bullet or the enemy collides into the target range of each other. If that happens, then something happens. At the moment I got it where the player crashes into an enemy, the border flashes (a temporary indicator to show the player dead). Also if the player bullet's sprite hits the enemy, both bullet and enemy disappears.

I got the aliens to move at different speed, but that was just a temporary thing. I also added temporary animation frames for the enemies and their bullet as well.

I received an email from Shaun about the jumping, it still does not seem to be right yet. Also the player stops at the very top border when jumping. It has been suggested that the player should be able to leave the screen if jumping at a high position, otherwise it would make the game unfair. I have a possible solution, but it could probably affect other sprites (after being shot). Basically open the top border, which the player can jump over.

He also suggested to me that the sheep should also jump on to the barrels (and possible crates as well). Which I originally thought was just simple background. Also the player seems to sink in part of the background by a few pixels. Well, those should hopefully be no problem for me to fix. As on Saturday (Because I'm taking a programming break tomorrow) I will be fixing this, and also (if I have the time) make the enemies trigger happy. Then it's the random movements for the enemies - some bouncing ones too) . This should then turn into a game to play :)

Prepare for more awesome!

23rd August 2011

Heeyaaaaah! (Smack!). Another new project. Well, it's not really that new as I had it earlier on this year. Yes, it's 2000 Kung Fu Maniacs - Way of the Exploding Fish. Yet another game for the Shoot Em Up Destruction Set. I was originally having a laugh working on 1000 Kung Fu Maniacs, but 2000 KFM promises to be more silly and hilarious compared to the first one.

Today was my day off work, so I decided to work a little on this game. Well, actually the majority part of the in game enhancements was done to be honest. First of all I explored the sprites and discovered some sprites which were not used. I also replaced a sprite of the Van Damne type of character with a 2 - way Poodle boss - which requires 5 hits before it's defeated. The idea was to have the big dog guard

ing the tinned fish while the master of awesome was at the Moose Mart. I also copied some of the power up sprites and mirrored those so that the player will be able to have power ups when it comes to the enhancements.

The next task was to do the enhancements of the SEUCK game. Just like with Super Tau Zeta, the player gets a new weapon/surprise. This will only happen if the player picks up a scroll. I programmed a small routine that cycles through the 7 power ups in which the player could have. If the player picks up a scroll, the power up gets randomly picked. So either the player could have something useful, or probably useless, or even something very daft. I will not let you know what the actual power ups are. You will have to wait until the full game's finished and released on SEUDS 2 :).

Power ups have been sorted out now. So next was to add the linked explosions for whenever the boss gets hit. Well, I had one slight snag with the boss death. If the boss died, other enemies would explode as well. I then came up with a solution to that problem. The bosses could carry a smart bomb with them, so the enemies will explode if the boss has been defeated. This can be a reward. Of course that will not happen to the little dog boss, guarding the tin of Exploding Fish.

There's a stage that features a gallery. I've added some interesting twists to exhibits in the gallery. Some are good, but some are bad. Again the player should pick up the scrolls. Inside the gallery are two other collectables, but I have added two surprises there. One item triggers a smart bomb, while another triggers a punishment, where the player loses 1000 points due to collecting the object. There is also another twist involved as well. You will have to wait and see :)

The enhancements seem to be shaping up quite nicely. I shall send Alf the work that has been done so far to this game - and see if he can give me tips on bullet speed and duration for the power ups. :)

The squadron invades the loading screen

21st August - 22nd August 2011

Yesterday as well as doing some work for Woolly Jumper, I also have been a busy man (As Sundays are indeed boring TV wise) and I worked on some loading music for the Super Tau Zeta tape loader. It was composed using DMC V5.0+ and is basically a rendition of my composition, which I originally did using Madtracker for the Super Tau Zeta promo video on YouTube. I thought the music sounded quite good for one reason or another.

Later on I stumbled across a loading picture which was made for this game drawn by STE'86. The loader pic was uploaded on to the CSDB and I was very impressed with the work he made with the pic, so I downloaded it (As I know that it'll be exactly the same loader pic for the game) and saved the image to koalapaint format, ready for the next tape master.

Alf Yngve got back to me with a text for me to put down for after the game has been complete to replace the original ending which hardly fit one screen - and that was all I had left memory wise. Manually typed in the end text finding it to be quite a sad ending, but would suit the game nicely, although the ending is a remix of the Super Tau Zeta video tune (again). Once I tested everything the game's working fine, the ending works - no crashing. So I mastered the whole thing to tape using the same loader as I did for Bloodwheels (All of those games except for the bonus game by Alf, himself will be using the

Ocean style loader colour cycle scheme). Finally it's done :)

My next project for SEUDS 2 will be 2000 Kung Fu Maniacs. Alf Yngve has given me ideas for the new power ups (Which I will be implementing into the game this week) but I shall not tell you what they are anywhere in the blog ... They're really a big surprise and guaranteed to have you gamers laughing as well :).

Through old pastures new

21st August 2011

I received some nice new graphics from Shaun this week and imported the data into the source code for Woolly Jumper. The graphics were nicely drawn in Arkitec (For those of you who want it, it was on the Cabana User Tool Disk CSDB ID 42413). However, I had hit a slight snag after importing the graphics data into the source code. It was nothing too serious of course. Just a little thing where I was required to update the platform land routine corresponding to the characters which the player's sprite landed on. So I called up a few subroutines which will manually check for which characters (which result as the top platforms) will stop the player from falling. I even set some of the characters for where the player will die if it hits a deadly character. I have a video here of the new map. Enjoy :)

Now that I am quite happy with the platform chars which the player can land on, or die when touched, I can move on later on this week by programming the main game attack waves engine, which will be executed according to a sequence of numbers through a data table. Once happy with all of those, it'll be time for the animation engine. I shall also get the player to do some shooting as well. :)

Get ready for some real carnage

14th August 2011

Sundays are boring, I have to admit. Well, only one thing for it. MORE PROGRAMMING. Well, that's what's been happening today? I have been very busy on a project for Psytronik Software. Since Super Tau Zeta has been finished (Only awaiting Kenz or Ste's loading pic) I decided to work on another game. In fact a very long awaited title, which appeared in Games That Weren't. What game am I talking about? Well does Bloodwheels ring a bell? This game was written back in 1994 originally for Psytronik Software. Perhaps Alf was waiting for someone (before I got involved with SEUCK enhancements at the time) . Sadly it never got enhanced for a commercial release back in the day.

Yesterday, Kenz contacted me via Email asking me if I could implement the logo which he painted for this game on to the front end. Well, I gave it a go, but when I checked out the old title screen I originally did for it back in 2010, I felt that the front end was just too plain. So I decided to make a brand new front end for this game today, and feature some amazing animations and add some extra stuff to the game as well.

The first thing was preparing the files to import into the source code. Those of which were the SEUCK files, music, new charset (which I used from the Pour Le Merite SEUCK game - my charset of course) and also edited the charset to make some frames for the title screen animation. Once all preparing was done, I worked on the programming side of the project. First I programmed a few routines which will hack SEUCK to do amazing things and play music during play. Then I programmed routines that could animate the water (2 chars rolling downwards continuously) and also fixed the score routine, so in 2 player mode, the correct player gets the points per hostage rescued.

As soon as I was happy with all of the in game features, I programmed a new front end, which featured Kenz's cool Bloodwheels logo (from the loading picture) and also got the front end animating and playing music, flashing the "Press fire to start" text. I also added the ability for the players to press fire in either joystick port. Joystick port 2 allowed the player to start a game for 1 players only. Joystick port 1 allowed both players to participate in the action. I also added GET READY, GAME OVER and MISSION COMPLETE scenes. I was really happy with what was done so far.

To end the session, I decided to work on the tape master. I decided not to play around with the loading stripes this time round. An Ocean style loader would be perfect for this compilation, but I used the tape loader source by Martin Piper. Nice loader system, displaying a neat loading picture, based on Alf Yngve's original artwork.

Let's bounce

Saturday 13th August 2011

I am feeling afresh from my 2 week break in Somerset. Now I am ready for some more programming and music composing. On Thursday (Although I didn't mention it in the blog) I have been drawing some test graphics and sprites for the "Horizontal scrolling platform framework" for the 16KB cartridge game for the RGCD competition, which is currently in progress (And I am aiming to get it released down there in November). I also designed a map for the framework. Looks very basic and sort of rubbish graphics, but well, it's not the actual game graphics for Woolly Jumper. As Shaun's working on those :)

Today I felt like doing some more programming on the platform scroll engine. Although on Thursday I did add the new map to the project, I decided to update the scroll engine slightly. It appeared that I was using the KERNAL IRQ vectors, using #$37 as the $01 value. Because this was limited. I decided to switch off the basic KERNAL vectors, by simply changing the value of $01 to #$35 and then I changed all $0314 and $0315 vectors to $fffe and $ffff. I also add pointers to $fffa and $fffb to disable the RESTORE key from crashing the program. As soon as I was happy with the interrupts, I added an extra interrupt in which uses a standard multicolour for the water, and also a different colour scheme for the platforms. I made the default map colour to use a red scheme. Okay, not really bad. :) I tested the scroll and the scroll seems to work well.

There appears to be something missing. Those of which are SPRITES :). I imported the test sprites into the source code, as raw sprites. Then I got the sprites to display on to the screen. Well, just the player sprite for now that is :). Next I worked on the joystick read routine, so that the player can move up/down left or right (no shooting yet). Once I did that, the next job was to program in the self-modifying Sprite to background collision detection. So I check the value of the character sets which were being used for the top of the platform. The basic idea is to test to see if the player touches any part of the upper charset that represents the platform (anywhere on screen). If the player touches it, the sheep will flash until it is off the background.

After testing the routine was working, I programmed some additional routines that will make the sheep jump continuously. So that I could get the jumping slightly more at an accurate level. After a lot of tweaking with the jumping routine, I altered the joystick routine even more and got the player jumping and falling perfectly. Finally I added the moving aliens (Which still require a variety of movements, which will be implemented later on this week.) I also enabled the player to be able to fire bullets as well. After assembly of the framework so far, things are starting to take shape quite nicely. Enjoy the video! :)

Let's Scroll It!

15th - 16th July 2011

Well, there's one kind of game I have not really done before, which my 16kb cartridge game will require. That is a block and map horizontal scroller. I have noticed that this type of technique is quite popular with shoot 'em ups. Anyway, I needed to learn some new stuff, so I decided to try and experiment with something. Before I started programming the map scroller. I loaded up SubChrist's CharPad64 V1.8 and I took a look at one of the examples which was ready made. It was a horizontal scrolling map, called "Sooperdooper". I extracted all of the data as raw binary files, into the ACME cross assembler sub folder. Then I took a look at a tutorial which was one of the rants on the Covertbitops web site. It was about the dissection of the C64 CGC 1999, game Escape from New York. I took a look at the tutorial and noticed that it was for the DASM cross assembler. I have always disliked using DASM, and converted the source to ACME cross assembler, then I implemented the routine into the ACME cross assembler.

The first thing I did was to initialise everything, by clearing the screen, and zero filling it. Once I did that, I set up the colours for the scroll. Those of which refer to the border and background colour, multicolour 1, multicolour 2 and actual char colour. After that was done, I initialised the interrupts and the music, then added a CLI and synchronised timer routine. Then I typed in the scroll routines, which included converting the 4x4 blocks on to the edge of the screen, and scrolling it across inside a loop. I also had to manually type in the low and high byte addresses for where the block data lies, to place into the map on to the screen. After testing, I ended up with some silly things happening.

It took a while for me to get the map placing and scrolling to work, as I had some silly thing going on - a miscalculation of the block size and map size. Once fixed, I got the map to scroll and display nice and smoothly. I tried implementing the mixed colour data tiles into the source, which did work, but sadly there was one problem - using charset tile colours and putting it into the colour RAM can cause major loss with raster time. There is a way out of this problem, to actually implement something to stop that from happening would require some more research.

After finishing my scroll experiment, I decided to draw some test graphics and import them into the source code. Then make a little video of what I have done with the scroller. The reason for making and testing a 4x4 block scroller is because I want to make a horizontal scrolling platform shoot 'em up called "Woolly Jumper" for the 16kb Cartridge compo, run by RGCD.

Maybe some time in the future I can implement the scrolling routine to support SEUCK tiled maps from Charpad, then I can do a remake of another classic crap game for the Masterchronic label :)

Here's the video of the map running:

Hunter's Moon ending music originally by Matt Gray, DMC V2.0 version by Richard/TND

16KB Cartridge Game compo - Ideas. Now which should I choose?

26th June 2011

While I feel to have the urge to finish of Super Tau Zeta for Psytronik Software this week (If I finish from work at 4pm on an 8am - 4pm shift). Another game idea has come to my mind. It is also something for the 16KB cart game competition. I attempted a few things when it came to Commodore 64 assembly programming. It all started with moving sprites around and having to dodge them. The crappy "Target-X" series (I actually did do a Target-X 3 in 2001, but it never came to the light - the disk had died on me at the time), the Gravity series, and in 2004-2008, a pure milestone of a shoot 'em up with varied challenges called "Sub Hunter". I also did a couple of psychedelic games, like Sheepoid and Camels in Space, created in the Jeff Minter style mode (Except for the graphics, which used my own sprites and multicoloured all the way through).

There was however one type of game, which I never actually produced, and it is something retro gamers mainly loved in the 8-bit world. We have seen many of those, but this genre does not die out whatsoever. "What is this retro geek, called Richard/TND talking about then?" you may ask. Well, it is the "PLATFORMER". The question is what type of platform game could I write, and how would I come around it?

Well, I could I suppose, do a single screen which uses the Lode Runner style of mode, in which you're a player having to grab dots. Well, this could be quite appealing. Or perhaps I should do a platform game which uses the horizontal scrolling map. Come to thinking about it, I can only scroll 256 chars. Block/Map scrolling is very tricky. Thankfully I can refer to a framework source which was used for the Ultimate Stunt Boat Challenge source code. Or perhaps I could do a simple single screen platform game. Well, I have a few ideas, but I would need to think about what I could implement for the C64 16KB competition. Here are some simple ideas I have come up with - theoretically.

The Death Saw Challenge

An evil scientist has created several rooms, which consist of moving circular saws, which move along the walls, horizontally, vertically or possibly diagonally. Your player must move around the platform maze, climbing up and down ladders having to flick the switches to disable all of the saws. The only problem is that if you flick one particular switch, a saw may stop, but other saws may keep on moving. This would be quite a gory idea, but sounds quite appealing. Later levels could have faster moving saws, and also some trick switches, that will trigger traps.

Sheepoid II - Wooly Jumper

A psychedelic platform game with a slight twist. You are a Sheep which has to get across several levels. The platforms will move at a constant pace, while your sheep is happily bouncing up and down. The player must avoid falling off the edge. Also to make things more interesting, alien ships can fly across the screen in both directions, sapping the player's energy. The sheep can collect laser pods to fight back the aliens.

Put the Kettle On

I remember a classic VIC20 game called "Wacky Waiters" by Imagine software. Now, I'd love to do a C64 conversion, but I had something completely different in mind. It's a funny game idea in the mode of Wacky Waiters, but instead, you are going to one of the kitchens, and then try and serve cups of tea to the customers who are waiting. The only problem is that you have to carefully enter the lifts which are moving up or down. There could be various objects appearing in the background to slow you down, such as banana skins, bottles, etc.

However, I think Wooly Jumper could be the game I may possibly create for this competition. It sounds like a good laugh and ... but you will have to wait and see what gets released near to November time for the RGCD 16kb cart compo :)

Building pipes

7th June 2011

I originally started to do some graphics for the "Pressure Pipe" game yesterday, but for some reason after saving the VICE snapshot in V2.23, I ended up with VICE crashing. So today it was back to the drawn board - Literally :) Okay, don't laugh. We do make mistakes I must however admit. Anyway, today while I was listening to some C64 media on the "Armalyte" CD, and Remix.Kwed.org, I have decided to work on the in game graphics and character sets. I had second thoughts about designing everything on Multi Screen Construction Kit, as it would take me longer. Also I had feeling that VICE may have a popup which could shut everything down.

I loaded up the cross-platform tool, "Cuneiform" and worked on the charset and graphics data. Then saved everything and exported the stuff in PRG format. Once I exported the .PRG file and imported into the .D64, I loaded up Jon Well's Multi-Screen Construction Kit and then loaded up the D64 with the graphics charset. It was then time for me to design and save the objects data, which I did. I had to play around with some of the graphics, as they didn't quite look like how I would have wanted those. So after a few alterations, I succeeded with it. Now all I had to do was for the screen, put everything together. Well, yet again, I succeeded with that. A screen's built and stored, and here's my result for the first level. Maybe I could do some more level designs later on in the project. The programming of the game will be more important now I have a graphics mockup ready for the game. I just need to paint some balls in a Sprite Editor (Might do this tomorrow) and then start programming the game.

Here comes Mario :)

5th June 2011

It's official. Mario is coming to the Commodore 64. Okay, I fibbed there. I bet that caught you attention huh? Well, I guess so, who else would be reading this? So then, I have a week off work this week (as I have to use up ALL my annual leave before 30th June 2011). I decided to work on a brand new game project, which should hopefully be a free download from my web site once finished and tested.

This time round it's a new genre puzzle game (or probably not new) for the good old Commodore 64 called "Pipe Pressure" (Probably would sound a lot better if it was called "Pressure Pipe". You decide for yourself :o)). The concept is a very simple concept, which could probably become an addictive puzzler if all goes to plan. The idea I come up is a very simple concept and was sort of an inspiration from those PC flash games you tend to get on line.

Anyway, the concept is pretty much straight forward. (Yawn). When you start the game, a series of four balls of a different colour will appear on to the screen for a few seconds. You must then memorize what colour balls should go into which pipe (indicated with arrows). Then you get to play the game. You have to race against the clock to get 40 correct coloured balls into the pipes within a certain time limit. To increase the confusion. There will be additionally different coloured balls appearing. If none of those match the ones which you had to memorize. The user would have to throw those into the disposal chute at the bottom (simply by pressing the fire button). To make the game idea more confusing if a wrong ball ends up in the disposal chute, or a wrong ball enters the pipe. A life will be lost. At the moment, it is planned to have 10 levels, but if I find that 10's not enough, then levels can increase later on in the game. Tomorrow, I shall work on the game's graphics. Then maybe later on, I shall program the game.

Richard @ RetroVision 2011 - Llamasoft jolly!

22nd May 2011

Well nothing new to show you at the moment, I did not even take any photos at this event as I really got carried away with enjoying myself (Oops, now that was silly). It started when my brother, Phil and I got up at 9am, had some breakfast and tea (Put the kettle on Philip). I was on the IPod Touch checking for new emails before setting off to the event. We both got ready and driven from Solihull to Oxford, getting stuck in traffic for about 40 minutes or so, due to an accident in one of the junctions. When we got there, we found parking to be really awkward, so we had to use the city centre multi-floor car park.

Anyway, after I got to the Foly Bridge pub, I bought a glass of cola for Phil and also one for myself, then I headed off to the function room and said "I have come for the Retro Vision event, I am Richard, Sheepoid programmer, and this is my brother Philip". Kenz was very surprised to finally see me in person at the event. I went over to the C64 and thought I surprise the people by playing Sheepoid, and then entering on the high score table "Richard Bayliss is here". This was where I then bumped into Vinny, followed by my co-op assistant of Sub Hunter. Frank Gasking. They both were also delighted to see me in person down there. One of them even bought me a drink and offered to buy Philip a drink, but he turned down the offer. Frank also got out his copy of Sheepoid and asked if I could sign it. Which I did. Kenz also came over to me and got a copy of Sheepoid out and asked if I could sign the inlay as well. Which I also did.

The computer, which I was mainly playing games on at the event was mainly on the Commodore 64C (Just like what I have). The C64C also had a 1541 Ultimate device plugged into the back of the machine, with LOADS and LOADS of Commodore C64 games on there, including Sheepoid. I might consider ordering one of these later on this year, as my 1541 disk drive keeps playing up. I also talked to Frank and Vinny about how I was involved in programming games. I even brought a disk with a couple of previews (Super Tau Zeta and Up In The Air), but I really should have brought it on an SD Card.

Later on, after looking around, I went straight back to the C64C and got Philip sitting next to me, and did something which brought memories back. We had a Vioris challenge :) After all these years (1993 or something like that), Philip and I were playing Vioris and he, unfortunately beat me at this game. Pah! Typical ... I'm not that good at gaming am I? ... I decided to then play the classic "Commodore Force" cover tape game, Relax ... Ooops, he beat me once again. Then afterwards, I played Trailblazer against him and I still lost at it! ... It goes to show that I am more of a games creator than a games player today :o) I was then interviewed by Paul Drury from Retro Gaming magazine, asking me questions about how I was involved on the Commodore 64 and why I was involved. I was happy to answer those questions, and as soon as the interview was over after 2 or 3 minutes or so, I went back up and played "Star Sabre" for the Amstrad CPC, as well as Drop Zone on Kenz's Specadore (Commodore 64 with a painted casing to make it look like a Spectrum). Man, that "Star Sabre" game was awesome, I wish there was a port of it for the Commodore C64. Hope a programmer (not me) would be able to take on this challenge).

RetroVision had some great competitions, I participated in only one, but I shall tell you about it later on. One competition, which I did not participate in was Hiper Viper for the BBC computer. I saw the game in action. It was one of those classic remakes of the traditional Worm/Snake style game.

The next competition was "Sheepoid". Vinny was the man in charge of the scores, and the game appeared on the big screen. Darn. I forgot to take some photos of this event. Pff! There were some players playing really well at this game, and there were some players who failed with embarrassment. Especially where one particular person scored NO points at all. There was one person who put their name down for this competition, but they did not seem to be present for the competition at the time, so I got my brother to cover for them. Oh dear. Bad move. He did not do good at all. He scored 30 points, and lost a life straight away. This really made me laugh!

There were also some people speaking to me about Commodore 64 stuff. Colin showed me some classic games which he was involved with, or had friends who made the games - which unfortunately never actually got released. Colin also showed me his music editor, which he's working on for the Commodore 64. One particular game, which took my attention on the C64 was an unreleased blaster, which was written back in 1993. I cannot remember what the game was called, but it reminded me of Firebird Software's classic shoot 'em up called Galax-I-Birds. Another game was some kind of underwater platform game. I said to the person who showed me the two games, if those were released back in the eighties, they would have made great Mastertronic / Firebird releases. Also if the game was released in 1993 it would have made a great cover tape game for one of the two UK C64 magazines that were still alive at the time.

Another gaming competition come up. I signed my name for it, and I signed my brother's name for the compo. Not realising that it is a tournament for more than 5 players. I played my brother up by putting his name as "Philip/Pork Pie". The compare asked for the compo entrants, "Richard/TND" and also "Philip/Pork Pie". I was laughing when I heard that. We played a few bouts of the tournament. I lost completely, Philip made it to the finals, which made me a bit jealous. Well, as I have said before, I am more of a game creator than a gamer in general :)

Before I decided to leave the event and head for home, I was sitting outside speaking to Philip until Kenz come along and asked me to sign a Sheepoid framed poster for the charity auction. I was very happy to oblige to do this. The auction went on for ages, and in the lot sixty something was the picture, signed by me. Philip missed the picture being sold at the auction. After this, I went over to Kenz, Vinny, Frank and some other people. Shook their hands and said I had a great time and sure would love to come to RV2012 next year. What a fantastic event it has been.

Oops, I had a great time at RetroVision 2011, but I had forgotten a couple of things. One was to ask for a tape and premium disk version of Sheepoid, before leaving and another which was to show the work of Up in the Air (A project which I held back, due to feeling uncomfortable with parts of the project and also due to work) and Super Tau Zeta (Which is currently still under development). Sorry to Alf and Wayne for failing to show the previews from my floppy.

Joy-sticks :)

Tuesday 17th May 2011

Just as I thought it was nearly all over for Sheepoid (Baaaah!), I've had quite a big surprise today. First, when I was coming home from work, I bought two ice creams from the Ice Cream van. One for myself, and one for my brother. I sat down, relaxed enjoying my 99 with flake. Then my brother said to me "I have a done a surprise project for you, Richard.". I originally thought that Phil must have been secretly working on a C64 style game on his lap top for my PC or something similar. Well, How wrong I was. My surprise was much bigger. It's not a game this time, but something which I never expected. - A brand new, and pretty special joystick for my (Take a guess) Commodore 64.

I am guessing that Phil found it really difficult to use the SpectraVideo joystick, which I have had for so many years (and is still working today), while he was playing Sheepoid on Friday last week. He even failed to get past the first level, due to the joystick being pretty awkward. So I showed him how to play the game properly. Well, either last week or this week. He secretly ordered various parts and components, and he built a new arcade style joystick inside the garage, and also used some unused wood and boarding, and he coated it with white paint. It must have took him some time to do this, especially the electronics. The biggest problem would probably have been to find a suitable port for the joystick. So he found one of my old joysticks and wired that up to the new joystick. One problem ... The wire's too long :)

Phil also worked hard on making an additional feature for this special joystick by wiring the direction controls, to move the player according to direction of movement. The red button was wired to act as the usual fire button. Finally the blue button was something special, which joystick manufacturers failed to add for the Commodore 64. Especially for driving simulators and platform games. The blue button was used as an extra UP command. This is so that when playing platform games, the blue button could be used to allow the player to jump. What a clever chap ;o)

To finish off his secret project, Phil decided to test the new joystick on my Commodore 64. He had to fiddle around with loading stuff using the DC2N, while I was away. Then he managed to load up the cute and hilarious Thalamus game, Creatures and he tested the joystick on the game. Worked a treat.

I was impressed with the amazing work and time, which Phil spent on this secret little hobby project. I loaded up Hewson's Uridium and played the game using the new joystick. Hmm, it is something I would need to get used to. Mainly because I am used to having the fire button on the left and the direction stick to the right. Instead the buttons are on the right, and the main controller was on the left. That did not really matter because I played Uridium quite well with this device. Huge thanks Phil.