Richard's
C64 game projects:
Time for the
flight of your life

The Up in The Air Team
Richard
Bayliss - Programming, compiling, disk/tape mastering, sound effects
Richard Bayliss / Andrew Fisher - Music
Wayne Womersley - Graphics and game project head gaffer
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Project
Cancelled
1st
April 2012 - It's no April Fool - Enter the tank (Richard)
After Friday's confusion, I realised that it was the second
tank, which Wayne wanted to be used for the game. Well, I did exactly
that. I added a few additional sub routines to the BOSS source code and
also the animation subroutine. Then I got the boss tank to display. I
repositioned the tank. After I was quite happy with the tank's
position. It was then time to get that giant green hunk of junk moving
left/right at a slow speed. The tank moves a charm. My next step was to
get those missiles firing out of the tank diagonally. So I created some
subroutines to get the tank shooting. Avoiding the missiles will be
quite hard, due to the velocity I set for the missiles. However,
shooting the tank at the bottom of the screen is quite easy, but the
player still has to avoid collision with the tank. It's very weird to
have the tank moving left/right on the water, but I have a little trick
up my sleeve to turn the water into grass. :)

5th
May 2012 - UITA at RetroVision 2012 (Richard)
It was the weekend, and
Wayne surprised me by turning up. At first he thought that on the
RetroVision 2012 day he had to go to work. Luckily he booked the day
off. We were talking to Frank and Vinny about the C64 in general, and
also I showed Trance Sector. Wayne then started talking about future
plans for Up in the Air. He told me that he wants Up in the Air to be
dedicated to someone special. His father, who loved seeing the game
preview in action in front of the Commodore 64. He also said how he
used to spend hours trying to get the graphics just about right. There
have been some reactions about Up in the Air, which sort of got me
wondering - should I continue with this or should I not? Hmm. We all
made an agreement to share the latest build of Up in the Air after the
event to see where to go from there.
7th
May 2012 - Entry Deleted.
Basically it was about
the cancelling of the project and how I felt about it (under pressure).
After getting an email back from Merman and Wayne, they have motivated
me to continue - but this time round, just take my time on it. Not get
rushed around, due to being really busy! ... But also get Trance Sector
finished first, which is my main target project. Less pressure. :)
22nd
May 2012 - Going the Right Direction (Richard)
I have a 12-8 shift
coming up later on, a couple of hours of spare time. Now what shall I
do with it? I know, I'll get the "Get Ready" and "Well Done" sprites to
how Wayne would want those. I just read the strip of paper he passed to
me at RetroVision earlier on this month. It reads "When you start the 'Ready' cloud
comes on and then scrolls to the left and sits there. Press fire it
moves right. It needs to be moving left instead.". I altered the
the Get Ready cloud to follow on until it leaves the screen, before the
game comes on.
The second thing which Wayne pointed out at RetroVision was that the
"Well Done" sprites were in fact the incorrect sprites. I had a plane
flying across the screen with the Well Done flag attached to it.
Apparrantly, this was meant to be for the end of the game itself. So I
had to change the sprites to the "Well Done" cloud. It looks odd, but
what says goes :). Now it's time to go to work ... Boooh!
15th
May 2013 - Project is cancelled, but there is a positive note
Although I have
left this project for about a year or so. I have decided to cancel the
entire project. The concept was basically meant to have been another
Sub Hunter, but with 1985 style graphics and based in the air. The game
really had me stressed out - fitting everything, due to so much
graphics and leaving me less room for code and data. I know Wayne
mentioned about use of Multi Load, but I couldn't see the point with
this. The plan was to make it a single load game. Sadly the game didn't
turn out well as we were hoping.
Another problem which I had was that the graphics, which were produced
for the game were all created using Firebird Software's "Graphics
Editor" and were frozen with the Action Replay. So I had to keep
manually capturing every screen with VICE monitor or Action Replay.
Then of course compressing the data with Exomizer's Level Cruncher
option. Although 20 screens were compressed, there was still hardly
enough room for the game code. As the sprites took over MOST of the
area. There was a lack in design for the game, as Wayne didn't have
access to any PC based graphics/level editors, such as CharPad or
Endurion's Element editor (Which would have been a huge help for me :).
This was the main reason for why the Firebird Graphic editor was used -
and Action Replay.
Johan Janssen was also involved with the project, and he created a nice
UITA logo, which I already used for the preview.
I have been discussing to Wayne however, that maybe later on this year,
as soon as the "Shoot Em Up Destruction Set #3" and "Invert" are
all finished (Hopefully those will get done much quicker). We can do a
brand new 'Up in the Air' game (With exactly the same name), in which
may involve Smila, to help Wayne with graphics, some of Wayne's work
might be left in the game. There is planned to be a complete overhaul
of this game. Wayne and I have already agreed that I can build the
game, the way which I hoped it should be produced (More variation in
attack waves, and variety of enemies on each level). Also, Yes, I shall
be featuring Johan's logo. If this does happen, keep an eye out for the
TND blog - as I'm no longer doing game diaries here.
The 8 level preview may be coming its way soon. So stay tuned.