Ryan Witmer

I love 5200 Space Invaders, and I was so excited to find my copy. I actually prefer the joystick to the trakball for that one, although Galaxian is trakball all the way.

I bought my first 5200 around 2008 or so, shortly after I moved to Seattle. I ordered it with four or five games that I remembered from when I used to play the 5200 at other people's houses. I definitely got Super Breakout, since it was the original pack-in, it seemed appropriate. I also know that I got Qix, Star Raiders, and Countermeasure since those were some of my favorites from back in the day. I'm pretty sure Berzerk was also in that initial purchase. I had been messing around with some 5200 games on my computer and after sitting there for hours playing Berzerk, I realized that I needed get my hands on the real thing. So yeah, blame Berzerk.

The game that really boggles my mind is the 5200 version of Vanguard. The arcade game had four fire buttons, and you'd think that with the plethora of buttons on the 5200 controller, they'd have come up with a better firing scheme. I loved the arcade Vanguard, and I'm so disappointed with the 5200 port because the firing controls are so stupid. I'm not into hacking ROMs, but if someone fixed Vanguard and gave it sensible firing controls, I'd probably pay for that.

No, the top button on all four ports corresponds to the same shift bit. You have to rotate through the controllers, reading a different one each frame, and remember which one you were looking at when you check for key presses. I always wondered why so few 5200 games used that second button. The real reason is probably because so many games were ports from the 8-bit line and there was only one button there, but I like to pretend that it's because the second button is just such a pain to read.

From what I've learned from writing 1, almost 2 games for the 5200, the keyboard circuitry is present, but is heavily modified to support the controller keypads and the top fire buttons. The twelve keypad keys and the Start, Pause, Reset buttons all register as keyboard presses in the 5200, and the top fire button is read as if it were the shift key. Furthermore, the key scanner can only read one controller port at a time, which is a major pain when dealing with simultaneous players, like I did in Ratcatcher. I'm not sure how much additional functionality is there, but given how much they changed things for the 5200, I'd wager not much. Someone more experienced with the hardware side of things would know better than me, though.

So I have some nifty non-gameplay related things to show off. The first is my fantastic title screen: I made the logo by firing up the GIMP, finding the fanciest looking font I could, and then just typing out the word "Curling." I then scaled it down to Atari 5200 resolution. I painstakingly converted the first two letters into binary, pixel by pixel, before realizing there was a better way. It turns out that GIMP can output images as C header files, so I started dumping the individual letters this way and wrote a quick and dirty C program to output the data in the assembly format I was using. Great! There's also a snazzy animation connected to the title screen, but I'll save that for my next ROM release. I also have this plain looking, but very important screenshot: Like Ratcatcher before it, RealSports Curling is fully open-source, under the GNU GPL3 license. This means that the source can never be hidden, and will be available to anyone who wants it for eternity, give or take a few years. This is something that's very important to me as a developer. I want my code out there for people to use, and if someone manages to learn how to write 5200 games from my code, I think that would be the best feeling in the world. I'm not claiming that my code is great or anything, but it's certainly better than Ratcatcher was and I think it's helpful to have complete games out there for aspiring programmers to look at.

I can't take the 5200 seriously because it doesn't have a curling game.

Well, I guess it's time for the big reveal. When I started this project, there was one killer feature that I just knew I had to do. It's taken a long time, but I've finally reached the point where it can be implemented. From the beginning, I wanted to have customizable shooters. The details of the customizations have changed over the course of development, but one thing never changed because it's so important it couldn't be dropped. This is the shooter customization screen: Behold, we have Norwegian curling pants. If you don't know about Norwegian curling pants, a quick web search will bring you up to speed. Here are the pants in action on the improved shooter sprites: Of course, with the 5200's relatively low resolution, this checkered pattern is really all I can do. Still, I think it looks great and this is the signature feature that will make RealSports Curling the best curling game on the 5200.

I'm hoping to get it on cartridge in the store, but in any case the ROM and source code will be freely available. Tonight I started working on the shooter configuration. I got the handedness selection in place, more to come!

I gave you the source code, man! But seriously, here's a brief overview: You shoot in three stages. First you aim. You do this by moving the little arrow up and down with the joystick, and press the lower button to lock in your aim. Second, you set the weight of the shot. There are three weight modes, Guard, Draw, and Takeout. Select your weight mode using the 1, 2, and 3 keys respectively. You can also press 0 to cancel and adjust your aim. Move the joystick left and right to set the strength of your shot, then press the lower button to begin the shot. Third, you set the curl. This must be done before your shot reaches the line or else you foul. Press the joystick up to curl up (left) and down to curl down (right), then press the lower button to release the shot. Now you can sweep the shot by wiggling the joystick up and down. That's how it's played, if you don't know the rules and terms of curling, there are numerous online resources that can explain them better than I can. Note that this game requires analog joysticks. It won't work terribly well with anything else, although you'll be able to sweep like a madman with a digital stick.

Reposting from my blog: I've made some great progress recently, and I reckon it's time for a new demo. I've started working on the game configuration options, which at the moment means game length selection and multiplayer support. Here's the simple menu I put together for this: Here you can see the plethora of multiplayer options in the game. The CPU options are currently X-ed out, since I haven't done up the CPU play yet. In addition to the game length, the game also now detects the end of the game and also supports tie-breaker ends. When the game ends, right now it just hangs, but that's OK. I've also added left-handed shooters! Eventually, your team will be fully configurable but for now I've just made the third shooter on each team left handed. Here's a lefty in action: Also, sweeping is now fully functional. You sweep by wiggling the joystick up and down, using true Atari 5200 analog power. There are still some collision bugs and possibly some scoring bugs. I also need to tweak some of the ice physics a little, but at this point the game is fully playable. Here's a download, the complete assembly source is included, as always. rs_curling.zip

I've made some great progress recently, and I reckon it's time for a new demo. I've started working on the game configuration options, which at the moment means game length selection and multiplayer support. Here's the simple menu I put together for this: Here you can see the plethora of multiplayer options in the game. The CPU options are currently X-ed out, since I haven't done up the CPU play yet. In addition to the game length, the game also now detects the end of the game and also supports tie-breaker ends. When the game ends, right now it just hangs, but that's OK. I've also added left-handed shooters! Eventually, your team will be fully configurable but for now I've just made the third shooter on each team left handed. Here's a lefty in action: Also, sweeping is now fully functional. You sweep by wiggling the joystick up and down, using true Atari 5200 analog power. There are still some collision bugs and possibly some scoring bugs. I also need to tweak some of the ice physics a little, but at this point the game is fully playable. Here's a download, the complete assembly source is included, as always.

After much difficulty, I've successfully implemented the free guard zone rule. This rule stipulates that each team is prohibited from removing the other team's first two rocks, provided those rocks meet the definition of a guard. For this rule, that definition is that the rock is outside of the house, and forward of the button. After each team has thrown two rocks, this restriction no longer applies and rocks can be removed normally. If the free guard zone is violated, the rocks are returned to their pre-shot state and the shooting team loses their shot. The purpose of this rule is to allow the team that shoots first to set up some kind of a defense. Without it, the team that shoots last could just keep knocking out the other team's rock and even a one point lead would be unassailable. After implementing this rule, the game has now reached a point that I like to call gameplay complete. This means that every feature required to play the game is now in place. Those pieces aren't necessarily all final, there are still bugs to fix and adjustments to make, but the game is now completely playable. My attention now turns to the aforementioned bug fixes and adjustments, and awesome features. So far, I've only used about 8KB of the 32KB ROM, so I have tons of space to use for cool stuff. The list of things I want to do include: Left-handed shooters: Some of the groundwork has already been done for this, but I need to finish the implementation. Team customization: I want to allow the player to customize certain aspects of the four members of their team. This is mostly color selections, but also handedness and a male/female option. I plan to have a default team that you can pick if you don't want to spend time messing with this. Variable game lengths: The game length will be anywhere from one to ten ends. CPU play: This is the big one, and it will probably be quite difficult, but I really want to have this in there. Multiplayer support: Right now, everything runs off of the player 1 stick. I plan to support all four joysticks, including a cool mode where two of the non-shooting players have to work together to sweep the rock, just like in real curling! I can't wait to get started on this stuff, and I would love to have this game done before the summer.