Doctor Who: Timestreams

Publication: Game Room
Date: January 2007
Author: William Pfutzenreuter
Page: 15
Language: English

We use our own time machine to chronicle the creation of a unique Williams pinball machine

The amazing story of a programmer, a cult TV show and a pinball company

It's a dream every pinball player has had at one time or another: the chance to design your own pinball machine. For William "Pfutz" Pfutzenreuter, that dream became a reality back in 1992, when he was given the chance to design a pinball machine based on the long-running Doctor Who television series. Think it's easy to design a pin? You won't think so after you read Pfutz's amazing chronicle of his adventures in designing one of Williams' most...well, Eccentric pinball machines.

The Doctor Who Pinball Chronicle

The Start

After about 10 years as a programmer, Williams gave me the opportunity to be the "Game Designer" of a pinball game. All I had to do is come up with a game idea and "sell" it to management. Several unsold ideas later, Ken Fedesna knew that I was a Doctor Who Fan (and I suspect he was too!) and suggested that I design a game with that subject. So, I went back to the drawing board and designed (in sketches) the main feature and the game story.

For the "plot; I did not want to make a "rerun" of an existing Doctor Who story, so I tried to make one from scratch. I always liked time paradoxes, and I wanted to get all the Doctors back together again (like the "3 Doctors" or the "5 Doctors" episodes). I also wanted a companion for each doctor (and speech from each Doctor and companion). Next was the conflict, so I added the Daleks and (my favorite) the latest Master. The story was that the villains had compressed time on earth, (hence the continental drift back to the one large continent, Pangaea) but the Doctors (who visit Earth a lot at different times), escape Earth only to be flung into different situations represented by the playfield.

Then, with this concept and sketches of a 3-level 'mini-playfield' known as the Time Expander, management approved the game. After the licenses for the Doctor Who show (the BBC) and the Daleks (owned by Terry Nation) were given preliminary approval, it was then that the project was made official and a team would be assembled to make Doctor Who: Timestreams.

Since it was a license game. that meant it would be under the Bally name, which meant it would be produced after the Bally games "Addams Family" and "Black Rose".

The Team

Now that the project was approved by management, the team members could be assembled. The members were a Mechanical Engineer (Zofia Bil), an Graphic Artist (Linda Deal), a sound Engineer (Jon Hey), and a Dot Matrix Display Artist (Scott 'Matrix') assigned co work for me. There were others, like Roger Sharpe from marketing, and my contact for Licenses. (Plus a lot of other people helping, but this was the core.) Next was the task of explaining what I wanted each of the team members to do (and the 26 years of Doctor Who episodes).

The Mini-Playfield

Zofia started on the 'mini-playfield' (patent #5,226,653) from the sketches. Her task was to design it with the smallest footprint possible, make it 'indestructible,' and still have it not cost a fortune. Several motor designs were suggested, and a few were simulated, but Zofia liked the offset cam. The motor was chosen to last a long time. Its strength was strong enough to break pencils (fingers would be an easier target). I even demoed the pencil-chopping (please do not do this at home!) for management.

This concerned a lot of people. Just opening the coin door (which cut power to the solenoids and mini-playfield motor) was not good enough, it was decided, so a playfield glass switch was added, and I programmed it to only move the mini-playfield if it was closed. There was even an obnoxious alarm sound, a Dot matrix display warning 'sticker', and speech in 2 languages (English and German) warning the operator.

The Initial Artwork

I gathered up my entire Doctor Who collection (magazines, books, video tapes) and brought it to work. Artist Linda Deal had the time to look at all of it. We also had access to the BBC Archives, bur this took several weeks. And despite the descriptions of the poses Linda desired, she was never too happy with chosen profiles.

For the backglass art I gave Linda the requirement that the 7 Doctors, TARDIS, and the Master had to be on the backglass. She also added the Daleks and the Doctor Who logo. The BBC had the requirement that the faces had to be all the same size (so that no one was more important that the other). This somewhat restricted the design, so she looked at my collection and came up with the design of the 7 doctors around the Doctor who logo. On the Bottom left was a silhouette of the TARDIS, and on the bottom right was a silhouette of the Master flanked by the Daleks.

Once approved by myself and management, she make a full sized color magic marker drawing. Next, it was sent out for the approval of Bally and the BBC. While this was happening, the playfield and cabinet art was being designed. After that was done it was also sent out for approval. The real painted backglass was started and completed. then 12 translates (temporary backglasses made by a quick process to see the colors and arc) were make for the 12 test machines. During all of this, Linda designed the cabinet artwork, the "magic motion" artwork, the playfield artwork, the playfield plastics art, the playfield stickers, and an assortment of free handouts (Bumper Stickers. Coasters. etc.).

The New Playfield Designer

Since I was responsible for the playfield layout, I looked around and found a discarded drafting table in the hallway. AutoCAD was still not really popular at Williams back in '92: it and the computers with all the extra memory needed for it were very expensive. So I dragged the drafting table into my office and exchanged my programmer's keyboard for a pencil. I found out that I was a better programmer than draftsman, but I did have a lot of help from other game designers (they always drafted their playfields themselves!). The first playfield was designed and built, but the play action was missing. Shots did not work, you could not hit a thing—it was not fun at all. Williams (rightly so) rejected it, and I was beginning to think Doctor Who was going to be a canceled pinball game.

The New Playfield Co-Designer

Well, I dragged my ego down to Roger Sharpe's office and dumped my "problems" onto his lap. He gave me a pep speech about his game design days, and still thought the game had a chance (with all those neat features). So he suggested that I ask Barry Oursler if he would co-design the game with me. So I left Roger and made a bee line directly to Barry's office (I had programmed many of his games) and asked him.

He accepted, and now it was time to convince William management. It took them a little while, but they accepted and Barry took my gadgets, added a few of his own, and made a real game. His play action on a whitewood (the playfield without artwork, just the wood) worked great!

Perhaps too well, in fact—the "sonic boom" ramp shot (left Ripper to right ramp) was so popular and so easy (for the William's game designers, and let me say that there arc some real players that arc way better than Williams people) co loop forever.

I had to modify the rule and on the 10th loop divert the ball from this loop, give the player a bonus, and force the player to use the bottom left flipper with the diverted ball. Of course, a skilled player would immediately shoot the "W" ramp and then use the right flipper to shoot under the left ramp, which would set things up for the sonic boom ramp again. It didn't stop the looping, but it did slow them down a bit.

The Dotwork

Scott also had access to my collection of Doctor Who photos and tapes. I originally wanted each ball to represent one part of a Doctor Who complete episode, and that starting a game would start at Part 1. But I also wanted all the different video effect and themes of all the doctors. This would be selectable depending upon the selected doctor at the start of a ball. However, just doing one theme (and there was more to a game than the start and end of a ball) in a low resolution dot matrix display was time consuming.

So I abandoned the multiple themes (the sound system had limits as well) and stuck to one theme. While Scott was working on the display effect he discovered that "faces" were staring back at him in the Doctor Who "rime vortex" tunnel from the early Tom Baker opening credits. There were many other visual effects in the pinball game.

Multiball was the most complicated part of the game, both visually and with the speech, primarily because it involved telling a story during the play of game controlled by the player and not the actors. (And you actors think you have it tough to talk while running down an infinite corridor—try getting hit by flippers, rolling on the ground, bouncing off posts, and talking in the middle all those sounds and changing rules!)

The sound design and display also interacted with you, as you removed Daleks/Davros, they started to panic, getting more nervous and desperate as you defeated them.

The Video Mode

This was perhaps one of the must fun video modes to play on a pinball. The concept was simple: a Doctor was running away from the Dalek that was chasing him. But there are obstacles in his path that the doctor must jump over. The narrow obstacles only need one flipper press minimum, while the wider obstacles require 2 flippers to be pressed at the same time.

If the doctor does not jump over an obstacle or he jumps into an obstacle, he trips and falls and loses (the Dalek catches him, and this obstacle pattern repeats on the next video mode). If the doctor does not trip, and reaches his TARDIS, he is safe and he leaves in the TARDIS. There are some secret extra points if you jump into the TARDIS rather than run into it. The points accumulated on each successful video mode are added together for a bonus at the "end wave" (which is reached after multiple video modes). Remember that the playfield multiplier can also multiply this score, and the timer for the playfield multiplier is temporarily stopped during video mode.

All the 7 Doctors (depending upon who you are at the time you start video mode) can run. However, I only had speech from Sylvester McCoy, so, I had to limit the dialog. Every other time (I think) the Doctor made it into the TARDIS, there was "funny" line that the Sylvester would say—I loved the lint that went like, "(Exhausted Breathing) I do not mind the running or a Dalek or two, It's the obstacles that I hate!"

Of course a Dalek would not dream of jumping over an obstacle, he merely blasts it into tiny bits. But! At the end of a video mode wave, too many Doctors have escaped, and the Dalek must report his failure. This is something that Daleks do not accept. There arc several of these cut scenes, each getting progressively worse. I do not remember them all, just the final one because I could not decide what to do. Finally, I gave in to the "Big Gun" theory (this is a decision that I am not happy to admit.)

My Favorite Video Effect

...is the entering of High Score to Date initials. It is really a silly idea, that all Time Lords already have your initials and score in their record book. All you do is flip the pages until you find your score and initials. Remember that they know the future. But then, has the future really been recorded in this book accurately? You'd better double check...

The Cow

Yes, there is a cow. In case you did not know, Williams has been putting cows in the dot matrix display animations of their games for a long time. The trick is to discover what makes it appear. I did not want to do it (I am serious about my Doctor Who!), but Scott Matrix made me do it. He was fascinated with the Transmat, and knew my pinball rules about charging the Transmat when the Jet bumpers arc hit, and if the charge is large enough when you hit the target you can Transmat in a new Doctor. Of course, you can also activate the Transmat without enough power, and every so open (actually rarely) a cow's head would appear with a Tom Baker-style hat on its head. Sorry about that, Tom!

The Sounds/Music

Jon Hey had the job of reproducing the sound effects and theme music of the Doctor Who show. My video tapes of the TV show helped him a lot—the sound effects were easy for John to reproduce by ear, or at least approximate. Some of the sound was digitized directly from my video tapes.

However, the theme music was a problem. I originally wanted all the different themes to play, depending upon which Doctor was selected in the game. But just creating the Tom Baker theme took weeks, and a lot of the available EPROM space was going to be taken up by speech.

So in the end we just used the one theme, with uninterrupted music from ball to ball. (a first for Williams) Each ball is supposed to represent one part of a "Timestreams" Doctor Who episode, and you do not have to wait until next week to see to play it!

I did ask the BBC for a copy of the sheet music to the Tom Baker Theme Music. It was then that I found out that there is no sheet music for the music.

The Speech

My original concept was to have as many companions and Doctors as possible. Unfortunately, there were not enough rules and playfield sections for everybody. But of those who made it onto the playfield I planned for at least one line of dialog for everybody. I actually wrote up about three lines (on the average) for all the companions, and more for all the 7 Doctors, the Daleks, and the Master. Williams management started with an open mind, but there is one overriding detail—money. Williams would have to find the actors, get the actors to/from a recording studio, and pay all the actors something. At the time this payment was not very much and usually there was only one actor involved on a pinball project. I was dividing the pot by about 20. Well, it was a nice idea.

The Actors

So a choice had to be made and the three characters chosen were: Sylvester McCoy (Doctor 7), Dalek speech, and The Master (Anthony Ainley). They were all available and agreed to participate without seeing a script (it was not written yet!)

Let me also explain that I did not talk to the actors directly. I talked to William marketing (i.e. Roger Sharpe), who talked to an international licensing company, located in California, who talked to the BBC in England, who talked to the actors agents, who talked to the their represented actor. This was six "filters" of talking, and it took a while to arrange—the actors probably never knew my name...

Now it was my turn to go back to the drawing board—remember that not only is there a certain amount of recording time that can fit on an EPROM (and I was not going to waste a millisecond!), but that the speech uses lossy compression that trashes the quality of speech. (S's and T's are not heard, C's turn into H's—remember the videogame Sinisrar and hearing the phrase "Ron Howard"? It was really "Run Coward!").

This is another reason why we ask for more than we can put in a game, because some of it may not be understandable. I quickly re-wrote all the multi-ball speech so that all three characters could interact in the game, and added more funny lines for video mode, and a few variations. I only had one chance to get the speech and get it correct (and I am a better programmer than a writer!)

But the script for Sylvester turned out to be about 1.5 pages long, mostly instructional with some of the funny lines. The script for

The protoype playfield the Daleks was less than one page, and had their usual "kill" and "destroy" lines, with a little dialog and funny lines from video mode. Only the Master had about three pages of script, cause I found it easy to write for him (perhaps because I liked his character!).

Then Jon Hey quickly packed his bags and flew from Chicago to England to record the actors. All of this happened very, very quickly—schedules for each of the actors was right and on short notice, and I am sorry to say that all did not go very well. Even today I am not sure exactly what happened, but Anthony did not record the Master speech. Panic gripped Williams (and me as well!)

But, let me first explain about the rights of actors/movies. For Doctor Who in England, The BBC owns the actors' faces, characters, and most stories. The actors do not own much. In the case of Doctor Who, the Daleks are owned (mostly) by Terry Nation (the creator). Here in the US usually an actor usually owns his face, but the Movie studio owns the character and story rights.

Now, back to the story. The Dalek speech was the last item to be recorded. Many ideas were discussed, like a sound-alike Master (after all, there was another master before Anthony Ainley, and Jon Hey was still in England!) But a suggestion came (I think from England) that the person recording the Dalek voice could also do and was willing to do a Davros (the creator of the Daleks) voice. Well, back to the drawing room I went and super-quickly re-wrote the Master speech into Davros speech. Then we faxed the new speech to Jon. Both the Dalek voices and the new Davros lines were recorded! Whew!

But the Master issue was not over yet—rumors were flying at super sonic speeds, and there was new talk about removing all traces (playfield and backglass artwork, dot matrix animations, etc) of the Master. After a couple of weeks this died down to just a face lift of the Master on the playfield.

The Master is now is supposed to look like the first Master (played by Roger Delgado). And instead of the Doctors battling the Daleks with a surprise appearance of the Master being the real villain, Davros is now the surprise real villain. And at the time, with the Bally backglass, he truly was a surprise! (Davros was not on the Bally backglass, bur the Master was on it as a silhouette)

More weeks later, and sanity was back at Williams. Jon knew that I missed the Master character and he recorded a sound-alike voice for the Master's laugh. I put the laugh on the outlanes and a few other places in the game. More weeks went by, and I was talking to Roger Sharpe and told him of the sound-alike laugh in the game. He showed me a letter from Anthony written in his own hand, explaining a bit of what happened. (Which was extremely nice of him! He did not have to write it.)

Backing up the time line, when Jon Hey returned with the speech tapes, both Sylvester McCoy and the Dalek/Davros speaker had added a few more ad-libbed phrases. This added a nice personality touch that I liked, so we used them. Here's Jon's recounting of the trip:

The pinball script was sent to the BBC in London and taped "wild' onto DAT then shipped back to Chicago - I grabbed (using Sound Designer II at the time on a Mac - then converted through a Williams-custom built CVSD encoder) the best and we put them in the game. Pfiaz and I experimented with Daleks' voices - Daleks sound bad enough to start - much less trying to get them to sound correct after CVSD sampling - so wearied, but ended choosing the real ones. All the game voices are from the real BBC actors. The music was recreated on the Williams Yamaha FM chip sound system by yours truly. It was a real challenge making FM synthesis sound like older analog synthesis. The Tardis was sampled and played directly from the DAC. All the rest of the effects (except drum hits - DAC) were Yamaha FM. — Jon Hey

The New BackBox Feature

The Dalek head on top of the backbox was an afterthought. The game had a great white wood, it was playable with a lot of rules, and the artwork sketches were approved. Then management asked me if I could decorate the top of the backbox.

I was shocked! Usually they took off features! (of which I tried to be prepared to defend!) And I had spent a lot of the budget on the mini-playfield for the player, rather than decoration. However, in that era, most Williams games had a backbox feature. And with the continuing success of "Addams Family," it looked like it would never end!

So, I decided on a Dalek moving head, with an eye ball that would flash in time with the speech. I even devised an simple electronic circuit and software program that would give me the flash rates for any speech phrase that I could play back. This was a last minute design that had to be created quickly. Several motors were tested, and broke. Meanwhile, Four Styrofoam models of the head were made. Then I made and sent a video tape of the prototypes for Terry Nation's approval (he was the creator/owner of the Daleks). Finally, a reliable motor was found. A mockup was made since the real parts would arrive just before out scheduled test dare (and I still needed to develop the software!)

The Field Test

The issue of where to test a game has always be been a hot one. Here is the "logic" that was used:

Criteria #1: Marketing/Sales wants to sell as many as they can of the next game. But they do not want to impact the sales of the current game. As you know, Williams sells to distributors who stock the game, and the distributors sell the game to operators (operators of arcades and/or a "route"). So typically, they like to test a game as close to production as possible. However, in this case, the "Addams Family" was an bigger hit than expected, and no one knew when it would stop (and "Doctor Who" was the 2nd game after "Addams Family"). So, unfortunately, the "hurry up and wait" syndrome happened.

Criteria #2: Test it in a low profile venue (so that no one knows about it) but a place that can generate a high number of plays (i.e., a popular arcade). Now, how do you get a lot of people to play a game, but nobody know about it?

Marketing/Sales had the answer: They tested it at an average arcade called Dennis's Place in May of '92. This was an pretty good place to test the game—they had about two walls of pinball machines, mostly videos, and a couple of sir down video games. At the time there were more high profile (i.e. Gala North Arcade) and low profile (i.e. a bar) locations. All locations were well known test sites for manufacturers. And usually when we went to observe our own game on test we met employees from "other" manufacturers, and sometimes they even beat us to our own test locations!

The New BackBox and Backglass

After 12 prototypes were build and being tested, Williams decided that they wanted the Bally pinball cabinets to be more like Williams Cabinets. This would allow Williams to order the same parts in a higher volume, thus qualifying for discounts on part prices. I knew that this was coming, but I just never predicted when. The situation was that Doctor Who pinball was ready to be produced, and was just waiting in line, probably for a long time. Then the decision was made by Williams to change from the Bally-style Backbox to the Williams style backbox.

The Williams backbox was a lot shorter, and Williams management suggested that we just cut off the bottom of the backbox art (even the artist complained). But a mock up was made, and it looked terrible. It was then that the artist and I went back to the drawing board, and whatever we can up with it had to be fast. I had suggested that we do a scene with the time expander, all 7 doctors, Davros, Daleks. Then Linda took over the composition, and the final backglass was generated. We even had to rush and re-get approval from the BBC. I want CO thank Linda for re-doing the backglass so quickly!

Cost cuts

Well, it happened to Doctor Who: the "bean counters" came, calculated the cost of the game, and decided that it cost too much. After many hours of "negotiation," the moving Dalek head motor had to go. The head itself was cheap and could stay in the game—it was just some plastic and a flasher, and I did integrate it in the effects of the game, probably more effectively than other games. So the head stayed, bur the motor had to go.

The change was scheduled to happen after about 100 were produced. I changed the software to try and detect the head, then activate the moving head code. There is even a game adjustment (adjustment 49) to manually enable the head software. Years later, some People have even added a motor to their Doctor Who Game. Those bean counters can be a real pain...

Visions '92 in Chicago

I had been to previous Visions conventions: they feature Doctor Who and other television programs. Even some of the actors from Doctor Who came to the conventions. I proposed to Williams that we bring a couple of games there and have free handouts and a contest. We had plenty of free plastic handouts, and we decided the contest would award a backglass (or really a translite).

But there was a condition—the Doctor Who pin could only go to the convention if the game was actually in production. (There was this problem that Williams did not show games before production, since it might have bad effects on the current game in production). Since production of Doctor Who was being delayed by the success of the Addams Family Pinball, it was impossible to predict if the game would be able to go to the convention.

Even with these restrictions, I contacted the convention people. They we happy that I wanted to show the pinball at their convention, but I could not guarantee if we could bring it to the convention. Hence, there could be no announcement or advertisement about the pinball at the convention.

However, I was lucky: about one month before the convention, Doctor Who went into production. It was too late to tell the conventioneers, but time enough for us to organize the game for the convention.

It turned out to be well received, and people loved the free handouts. Although I missed the actors visiting the game, I hear that they liked it. In retrospect, I found out that there weren't many pinball players at the convention, but I believe that we may have made a few more pinball players.

The Market and the Production Line

If there is one impossible obstacle that a pinball machine must face, it is being produced after a mega-production-hit. I am of course, talking about Addams Family Pinball, about 20,000 units! It was a huge success that broke all records and raised the sales expectations for a popular pinball. The next pinball, Black Rose, actually had a very short production life at about 3,700 units, and sold slowly. Next in line was Doctor Who, at about 7,700 units, which was an above average production number (4,000 to 5,000 being about average for that time period). Doctor Who pinball started production in September of 1992.

Closing Thoughts

And that, in an nutshell, is the story of how the Doctor Who pin was created. Although there were lots of last minute changes that offered many challenges, the most fun was planning the shots (a first for me) and having the control to organizing the rules, effects and speech as a whole. I hope this encourages others to try.

Postscript: Questions and Answers

As an owner of a Dr. Who pinball, I still had a few questions even after reading Pfutz's excellent chronicle of his experiences. So, I did what any writer would do: I wrote him and asked if he could elaborate on a few points. Below are his answers!

How did you get the opportunity to design a table? Was it something that was presented to you, or did you ask for the chance?

Well, I liked the Beetlejuice cartoon when it aired 1989-1991. This inspired me to create and propose an idea for a Beetlejuice cartoon pinball machine. I started with some "napkin" sketches (small hand drawn designs) and some rules. And this was how the 3 level miniplayfield was created: It originally was Beatlejuices head, then brain, then a shrine to Lydia. From the sketches, I submitted them to Ken Fedesna along with the proposal that I be the game designer and programmer. The proposal got a lot of attention, bur was ultimately rejected because of the cartoon theme.

However, the concept of the miniplayfield (which reminded people of Pinbot) opened a lot of eyes. In talking with Ken Fedcsna about was to keep the project alive, Ken knew that I was a Doctor fan, and he suggested change the theme to the Doctor Who, after all, I had 7 doctors to represent, and I wanted them all, and the playfield is only so big!) and reproposed it.

The proposal was accepted, but I think that Ken did most of the convincing to the Sales/Marketing departments. The concern now was that the size of the Doctor fan base was not too big, that the show was off the air (although there were a lot of rumors abo t the show restarting again), and that this was a cult show. But the playfield and toys carried the project, and it was started.

You mention a "big gun" ending. to the video modes. Can you fill in those of us who will never reach it what happens?

When you completed the "last" video mode by escaping from the Dalek, the worker Dalek had to report to his superiors that the Doctor escaped. Well, Daleks never accept bad news, even from another Dalek. So the superior Dalek destroyed the worker Dalek. On the next "last" video mode, the worker Dalek takes counter measure to protect itself and fought back. The battle would rage on, with the 3rd "last" video mode featuring the superior Dalek taking counter measures. And this would continue to escalate until the worker Dalek finally blows away the superior Dalek with the biggest gun I ever seen! It was a cheap ending for the sequence. I tried to think up a better ending, but time ran out and the ending stuck in the game. If anyone ever sees this ending, they are either way too good of a pinball player or they are cheating?

What happened with Anthony Ainley?

Long story. but he wrote a letter explaining what had happened. Basically, he received little information, no explanations, a large script (larger than any of the others), short notice, and little pay. And in the end we did not record any speech from him. But he had heard that I was an overanxious fan and he did want to write a letter of apology. He was correct about those silent "agents"-- even did not know what was happening (Jon Hey was the only one to go to England_to record the voices, I was still at Williams in the US)

I only heard that Anthony did not do his lines. I tried to get this rescheduled, but my "agents" said it was too late. I was also told to never contact the actors directly, but to a always go through the chain of "agents". There were several "agents", one in the USA for overseas licensing, and the BBC, Anthony's agent, and maybe more.

At the end of the project, I violated this rule and mailed out "care" packages to most of the actors and companions (some I could not find). After all, the pay to do voices on pinballs is never very much, and those who did not do voices, just likenesses, did not get paid at all (the BBC owns this, not like in the USA were actors own more). This care package contained various plastic handouts, including coasters of each of the 7 Doctors. I even sent this to Anthony, who was kind enough to send back a thank-you letter. This letter (in the spirit of the character "The Master") also mentioned that he would get even with the Doctors by using the coasters as dart board targets. Hmm, I wonder which Doctor has the most amount of freckles" by now?

Any thoughts of updating the game ROMs in the future, such as Ted Estes did with the Twilight Zone? I'd love to see the pin updated with the new Doctors, but that's just wishful dreaming.

That would be wishful thinking. But the short answer is no. The EPROM's were jammed packed full of images, code, and sounds. There are other reasons, like: all the other team members are gone, and I do not have the source code, etc. Maybe it would be better if another pinball company did another Doctor Who pinball? After all, there have been several Star Trek pinball machines...

Your picture shows you working on Joust video game. Can you fill us in a bit on what your role was in that game's development?

I was the main game programmer. I worked with John Newcomer (the game designer), who was inspired by the movie "Wizards". John liked the idea of people flying on the hacks of birds and Jousting. Actually, the people turning to eggs and becoming a higher intelligence was my contribution to the game idea.

The original collision idea from John was that the lance had to impact the player (not the bird) and bounce off the bird. But the non-moving player was so small compared to the bird and hidden by the birds shape, that it was almost impossible to win or lose a conflict (it was mostly a tie). The final logic used to determine who won in a joust turned out CO be me trying different ideas and having a bug in the code one late night. It was not what I expected, but it was fun to play, and even John liked it!

I also wrote the running/flying physics (Pfutztonian physics as it was known, which was close to Newtonian physics), and fast code to do collision detections & DMA images to the screen (since everything was done by one 6809 8-bit CPU in 48K bytes, except for sounds & speech).

What are you up to these days? Is game development easier than it used to be?

I am hack in the world of Coin Op, over at Incredible -Technologies (IT). I have mostly been doing Linux Device Drivers for most of the boards that attach to the PC video games.

At times I get to do small portions of code for projects like "Golden Tee Golf 2005", "Silver Strike Bowling ". and even the video pinball "Orange County Choppers" (with Mark Ritchie as game designer).

This is a 3D environment, with program & data storage on 80 gig hard drives. So game development for this kind of game is a lot harder because there is so much more that can be done (along with plans for at least five updates) and you do not usually run into storage limits that require you to stop game development. Also, there are many more team members.

Pfutz (William Pfutzenreuter)

Doctor Who: Timestreams

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