Slightly scraping the barrel you might say with our next entry, but honestly there is a game behind this and one which we need to get hold of the game’s author to shed some much needed light.
Jason Kelk first highlighted this game and pointed GTW64 in the direction of a Graphical Techniques demo which Tony and Jason did for Commodore Zone issue 06. In the Sprites demonstration area is an example bi-plane sprite which animates and circles with a hi-res overlay. It looks pretty impressive.
What many people don’t know is that the plane was to feature in a game being developed by Tony Gibbs. We got in touch with Tony, and he confirmed that the sprites were for a game being developed that was inspired by the Amiga PD game Skyfight.
Tony felt that there was nothing quite like the game, and decided to make a version of it. There was to be up to 4 players, open borders for larger play area, zooming play area and a choice of 3 planes. The plane in the screenshotis of a “Sopwith Camel”.
Although the sprites were ready and zooming workign, shot impact, damage levels and explosion bits – as well as music and titles were never completed. It seems that Tony got sidetracked with real life, and the game was ultimately shelved – which is a huge shame.
Tony does offer hope that he may be able to recover the game in the future in its final state, so watch this space!
Contributions: Jason Kelk, Tony Gibbs
Supporting content
Available downloads
- czone6 (zip)
Gallery
Creator speaks
Tony Gibbs talks about work on his game:
“I saw a PD game on the Amiga called Skyfight which I thought was cool, but there was nothing like it on the C64 so decided to look into getting something together.
Key features were:
– Up to four players (two joysticks and two on keyboard)
– Open boarders for larger play area
– ‘Zooming’ play area – this was achieved by determining whether the four players were close enough, and enlarging or reducing the size of the drawn sprites, effectively giving the impression of a larger dogfight arena than Skyfight.
– Choice of three planes with different play features:
– Paper plane (flys slowly, tight turning circle, medium damage absorbtion, special ‘wind’ move allowing a boost to speed)
– Sopwith Camel (see screen shots, although I have no idea where that was dug up from 
) (flys medium speed, turns tightly to the left, less so to the right, high damage absorbtion)
– F-15 (flys fast, wide turning circle, light damage absorbtion)
I completed the colour and hi-res overlay sprites, and had the proximity zooming working, but never got as far as calculating shot impact, damage levels, explosion animations…
I had no music, no sound effects, no title screen, and no name.
The chances of me coming up with any of this from my very dusty archives are slim, but if I do get to go through my stuff one day, I’ll do my best to remember that you’re after anything you can get your hands on…”
