Ryan Witmer

68100. This ain't gonna last.

This guy might still need a little work, but we got something, so here goes... Xorex Age: 35 Likes: Arctic blasts Hates: Commitment The mysterious ice wizard Xorex lives high in his remote mountain fortress, developing new and powerful magic and generally ignoring the world around him. He looks like a dork, which is why he shuns outside contact, but Zevasha's invasion provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his powers to the world. The only question is, whose side is he on? Notes: Xorex is based on my old Phantasy Star Online character of the same name. He was a FOnewm, and one of the great weaknesses of PSO was that it was impossible to make a magic-user character that didn't look like a complete dork. This version of Xorex also incorporates some elements of Noon the ice wizard from Shining Force III, who also looks like a complete idiot but can mess you up with spells and terrible voice acting. "Now bear my arctic blast!"

I was planning to show another character before this one, but we ran into some trouble with the design so he's been delayed. Need to keep the hype-train rolling though, so let's meet: 7ZC-BX Age: 0 Likes: Frooty Hates: Enemies of Queen Sugar The robot fairy prototype, model 7ZC-BX, is the first operational unit to come from Queen Sugar's secret military research program. Intended to be a soldier, a bug in her programming caused her to take on the role of a maid instead. Although now obsessed with cleaning, her prime directive still functions and she will drop whatever she's doing at the slightest threat to Fairy Land. Commanded by Frooty and simply called "7" for short, her weaponry is extremely powerful and she will be an essential aid against Zevasha's evil. Notes: The name 7ZC-BX is actually a very deep inside joke that a handful of my military buddies would get. Maybe one of them will see her someday. This character is actually inspired by Huitzil from Darkstalkers, who is a robot in a game full of monsters. I feel like every game needs some totally weird design like this, not that any of these other characters are normal, or anything.

Well, that's a little better. This seems to be one of those games I get worse at with experience. I swear those towers actually chase me sometimes.

I've owned this game for a long time, but never really liked it. I think I still don't like it, but at least I learned how to play it.

Blaster is amazing. I'm so glad I bought a copy of that.

No problem. You'll have to race Bob from the podcast for the first signature though. I'll be there just about all day on Saturday. I work on a PC using an emulator. I also have an Atarimax cart that I use to test on real hardware. For graphics, it depends on the nature of the task. Sometimes I just sketch things out on graph paper, other times I use some small programs I wrote to convert images. Music is kind of tricky. I have a tracker program I downloaded that can do square waves. I like to figure things out using that and then convert to POKEY values by hand. I found a table somewhere for doing that.

I've been known to do that, from time to time.

No contest, it's Qix. It was the first game I ever saw or played on the system and it totally blew my mind. The look, the sound, the gameplay... I was no older than 6 when I first saw it and it's fair to say it changed my life. My obsession with the 5200 springs from this one game. No game impacted me like Qix until the first time I saw Space Harrier on the Sega Master System, but that's a story for another time. If I'm allowed to include my own games, then RealSports Curling. Ratcatcher was cool because it was my first, but Curling really felt to me like my first truly solid game. I don't really play it, but I still love the fact that I actually made it happen.

I can answer this from a technical perspective, since I had to learn how the trak-ball works for my current homebrew project. The normal Atari joysticks are basically the same as a pair of paddles. You read a position value from each axis. That value in is the range of 0 to about 220 or so. Games typically set boundaries on this range where it decides "that's far enough, you're pushing left now" and react to the values that way. The trak-ball also reports these numbers when you read it, but in this case the number indicates how fast the ball is spinning in a given direction. The "rest" value varies from trak-ball to trak-ball, and there's a way you can get the rest value from the controller. When the controller is read, the farther the numbers are away from the rest value, the faster the ball is spinning. The problem is that the values from the trak-ball don't wander very far from the rest value. They will usually be in the zone that a joystick would consider "centered" and you'd have to spin the ball really fast to get the sort of numbers a joystick game is looking for. Because of this, games need slightly different code for handling the two types of controllers. So, to sum up: For most joystick games, the trak-ball will do next to nothing because you can't spin it fast enough to register as joystick movement. If your particular trak-ball's rest value is really high or really low, you might get some movement in one direction, but not much more.

Once that's ready, I'll be posting my stuff there.

By what date do you need the ROMs for the demos? I'd like to plan my feature set around how much time I've got.

Ah crap, I think I tossed the one from last year. Would you mind making another? Rumor has it that I might have some adoring fans at this year's show and they need some way to recognize me. RealSports Curling cartridges will be signed. Ryan Witmer Average Software Burien, Washington

My two homebrews are available here: Ratcatcher RealSports Curling

It will probably be decent, but I really think they need to find better guests.

Thanks for the interview last night, it was a lot of fun. I could have gone on talking for another couple hours, if Bob didn't have to leave. Can't wait to hear the finished product.

We're getting a little ambitious, and got another character ready for the demo. Frooty Age: 24 Likes: Candy Hates: Boredom Captain of Queen Sugar's royal guard, Frooty is loyal, powerful, hyper, and ever so slightly insane. As the one charged with the defense of Fairy Land, she carries an enormous responsibility as she leads the queen's armies into battle. She also oversees a number of secret research projects in Fairy Land, some of which are finally starting to produce results. Notes: This is a character that just popped into my head one day, although my artist's design ended up nowhere near what I had in mind. I like his ideas better, so I ran with it. I figure a game about fairies needs a character like Frooty, she's sort of the generic fairy archetype. I love the lollipop weapon, that was entirely my artist's idea.