Ryan Witmer

20310, this is definitely farther than I've even gotten before. I was seeing some crazy enemies I'd never come across before! This game fascinates me because if you showed it to me out of context, I would swear it was an Intellivision game. It looks and sounds exactly like one in my opinion.

It's time for a basic explanation of the game screen so you know what you're dealing with. Here's a nicely labelled screenshot: So here's the deal: Player 1 is on the bottom, player 2 is on the top. You scoot around your half of the screen, hopefully with a trak-ball, shooting things and trying to stay alive. I'll talk about the things you can shoot later, but for now let's look at the various screen elements that I've labelled. Awesome portraits: The label says it all! Aren't they great? Fairy power: Fairy power can be accumulated by shooting certain things and your current level is displayed on this gauge. Fairy power is used to launch character-specific attacks against your opponent. None of these are in place yet, but I'm trying to think of them and how they will be implemented. I'd like to have a "light" attack that consumes part of the gauge, and a "super" attack that requires a full gauge. Health indicator: These four dots represent the four hits you can take before you die. Not everything you touch will hurt you, some objects will affect you in other ways. Right now there is no way to regain health once you've lost it. Perhaps one of the characters will have a way to do this, not sure yet. If you run out of health, you lose. Flight power: These two lines represent your ability to stay in the air! Each player's flight power will reduce over time and also in reaction to certain game objects. Flight power can be regained, and I'll explain how later. If your flight power runs out, you lose! Since it is constantly dropping, you always have to be thinking about how to maintain it.

I do all the programming myself, and some of the graphics. I work with an artist who helps me out with some stuff. I did everything in RealSports Curling, since that wasn't exactly a graphics intensive game. I do all my own sound, but I'm really bad at it. I'm hoping to get better for my current project.

They only got the exclusive scoop because Bob kept telling me Curling was great.

Oooh, I'll listen to this tonight after work. I'm sure I sound like a dork.

There are 8 sprites. Four of them are called "players," these ones are 8 pixels wide. The other four are called "missiles," these are two pixels wide. All of the sprites fill the entire height of the screen, they're basically screen-high columns of pixels. Each player sprite has only one color, and each missile corresponds to a player and shares its color. There is a mode called "5th player" that allows you to make the four missiles an independent color. There are a number of programming tricks you can use to get more color and to make it look like there are more objects than there actually are. Anything but the most basic of 5200 games will rely on lots of these tricks. There are actually several other sprite details, but it's too much to go into here. There's a lot of information out there on the ANTIC and GTIA chips that can explain it better than I can. As many as you have ROM space for. Sprite data is really small, each byte contains eight pixels, so it's not hard to cram a lot of them in there.

Magical Fairy Force, my upcoming 5200 title, will be demoed at the AtariAge booth at this year's Portland Retro Gaming Expo. This thread will track the development of this demo and also explain how this game works. I will be in attendance at PRGE for most of the day on Saturday, so if you see me hanging around, hit me up and I can show it off in person. The game is very heavily influenced by Twinkle Star Sprites, an awesome Neo-Geo game that you should go look up if you aren't familiar with it. Twinkle Star Sprites is a competitive top-down vertical shooter featuring a cast of cutesy characters blowing each other up. If Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo and a game like Strikers 1945 had a baby, it would be very much like Twinkle Star Sprites. My game has the same basic gameplay concepts as TSS, but the details are very different. In this game, you will select one of eight characters, and attempt to defeat your opponent's character by shooting things on your half of the screen. Each character will have a set of unique abilities that can be used against your opponent. The last fairy still flying wins the game. For the Portland demo, the game will be locked into the two-player mode, so you'll see a character select screen like the one above. The game is compatible with the trak-ball, and hopefully we'll have two working trak-balls hooked up for the demo. The full release will include a single-player mode, hopefully with simple character endings. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do the single-player AI, but if I could make a 5200 beat me at curling, I'm sure I can figure something out. For a more detailed look at the eight characters, check out my previous character thread. For the demo, the gameplay should basically function, but a lot of details will be missing. In particular, I'm not sure how specialized the characters will be at this point. Currently the only difference between them is the size and shape of their character sprites. None of the special attacks are in place yet. At best, I might have a basic character ability set up for each character, but I wouldn't count on that happening by October. I will continue to post here with more information and gameplay details as the PRGE demo evolves. I will also be posting the demo ROM once it's ready so anyone that isn't attending the show can give it a try. At this point, I expect the game to be completed early next year. As is my style, the ROM and complete source code for the finished product will be freely available so people can play around with it or perhaps port it to the Atari 8-bit computers, as some kind folks did with my last two games.

The final character is revealed at last! If you've been following along, this one should come as no surprise... Zevasha Age: 332 Likes: Crushing her enemies, seeing them driven before her, and hearing the lamentations of their fairies Hates: Queen Sugar The ancient foe of Queen Sugar and the tormentor of the good citizens of Fairy Land. Zevasha was defeated by Queen Sugar centuries ago, but has returned with a new army and new powers. Have Queen Sugar's subjects become too soft in the years of peace? Does anyone have the strength to resist Zevasha's evil? Notes: Well, this character is inspired by just about any evil queen character you can think of, but in particular she's modeled after Queen Nehelenia from season 4 of Sailor Moon. The final boss of the game, but too cool to be unplayable. Her name comes from a completely different game that I had in mind about 20(!) years ago, but never did any real work on. The name came back to me while designing this and I really wanted to use it, so here we are! And with that, the cast is complete! I was only planning two characters for Portland, but it looks like everyone will be in attendance. As this thread has served its purpose, I plan to start a new one covering how this game actually works so that those of you making the trip to PRGE won't be completely confused. If you're lucky, you'll bump into me there and I can demonstrate in person.

Yes, right now I'm working on Magical Fairy Force. An early version will be at the Atariage booth at PRGE this year. Well, I keep getting faster. Ratcatcher took about 3 years of calendar time, Curling took two. I expect my current project to be done in about a year and a half. Not very much, I squeeze in time around my real job. It actually isn't. River Raid is my favorite game on the system. I don't have a definitive list, but Berzerk, Ms. Pacman, Kaboom, and Countermeasure are among my favorites.

It's time for our first true villain! Kitty Age: 15 Likes: Corn chips Hates: You Zevasha's trusted pet and bodyguard, the nefarious Kitty is a mighty force to be reckoned with. Cruel, sadistic, and always hungry, no fairy is safe from Kitty's claws. Everyone in Fairy Land knows that if you want a shot at Zevasha, you'll need to get through Kitty first. Notes: Kitty was my wife's cat, who joined us shortly after we moved in together. Age finally caught up to him in February of 2018. I was still working on RealSports Curling at that time, but was already putting plans together for this game. I was trying to come up with characters and decided to memorialize good old Kitty in this game. He was a mean old cat (the best kind!) and we still miss him. Kitty, wherever you are now, I hope you have all the corn chips you can eat.

Time for another character! Queen Sugar Age: 338 Likes: Goodness and light Hates: Nothing The mighty queen of Fairy Land enters the battle! Not one to allow her followers to fight her battles for her for while she cowers in her castle, Queen Sugar brings her impressive magical abilities into the fight against Zevasha. Queen Sugar has ruled Fairy Land for centuries and is nearly immortal. Inspiring hope wherever she goes, her magical powers may be the only counter to Zevasha's evil. Notes: Queen Sugar is mostly based on Queen Memory from Twinkle Star Sprites, the game's final boss and one nasty character to fight against. Fortunately, Memory's stage music is awesome, because you'll be hearing it a lot while trying to beat her.