Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga community support ideas => Topic started by: Michael V. Parent on November 01, 2011, 04:19:31 PM
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Hi everyone. I'm a life-long Amiga lover who learned pixel art on the Amiga (DPaint and Brilliance) who eventually became a professional game artist.
You can see my portfolio online here: http://www.holymonkeystudio.com/sprites.htm
Throughout these years of making games for mobile phones, GBA, DS, Iphone etc, I've never lost me dream of some day making the most stunningly beautiful (and actually fun to play) game for Classic Amiga's.
I'm enlisting help in not only eventually making a couple of full blown professional (and commercial) games for classic Amiga's, but to create a collection of super useful libraries and tools along the way. (I'm targeting CDTV and CD32 as the two major platforms )
I'm looking for some Amiga programmers with VERY STRONG knowledge of Amiga's amazing hardware and the tricks that game makers and demo makers have used for years.
Most specifically I'm looking for two things up front:
1) To have a program made that loads in tile maps, and allows the user t scroll around the tile map, and then designate vertical coordinates with little arrows at the side of the screen...these arrows would signify a vertical coordinate where some color indexes would be changed via the copper. The program would need to load tile maps, allow scrolling, allow the placement of these arrows throughout a tile map, and have an editor for editing the palette for that region as well as saving and loading palettes into that region (designated by the arrows)
2) A program and useable "library" (re-useable code) to use the repeating sprite trick to create a back play-field for a game. (as seen in some later Amiga games like Jim Powers)
I can offer small financial incentives for the creation of these tools etc...and hopefully we can get together bounties to make thing move along even faster...
The goal is not just to eventually make my dream Amiga games, but to empower all Amiga nuts like me to make the games they want better and faster.
Anyone interested in joining to finally create the ideal set of OPEN SOURCE tools to create super impressive Classic Amiga games, please contact me @
mail@holymonkeystudio.com (mail@holymonkeystudio.com) and/or respond in this thread.
To help entice you,here are some still super rough mock-ups of some of the games I want to make:
(http://www.holymonkeystudio.com/amiga/preview_Mike_parent.png)
(http://www.holymonkeystudio.com/amiga/brawler.png)
I look forward to getting this rolling... It's a LONG TIME over-due.
PS. For those interested in helping to on a long term basis to help create my finished games, I plan on simultaneously creating versions of the game for PC, IOS devices, Android devices,X-Box Live and Mac using a cross platform dev tool that I'm already very comfortable with....My hope is we could generate enough income from these major platforms that we could release the Special, Amiga Only versions for free to the Amiga Communities...
thanks
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I wish you luck, but its a lot harder to find dedicated people who arent just dreamers on the amiga. Ive been trying to find people to collaborate with for 5-10 years (since commodore's demise) and all Ive ever found are people who are more interested in the "romantic" notion of games making and not so much the work itself. (Im a coder/gfx artist and muso).
I could be interested myself, but its not much fun to code what others already have preconceived in thier head. For collaberation to work on anything but something basic those involved need to agree on things from the ground up.
Apart from that though your thoughts seem to parallel mine pretty closely and Im definately interested in at least discussing this further with you.
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Hi fishy,
The key to making collaboration flake proof is to break it into tiny "milestones" that are mutually benificial. It also helps to round up financial incentives. I plan to do both.
My hope is to get enough hardware bangers together to first make a couple of tech demo's that can do these awesome tricks, and to make the code open to the whole comunity...so everyone can use and add to it.
Then scult the demo's into actual playable levels for a game.... then share that, develope more tools, code, etc.
I hope you can pitch in and/or benifit from this. I know the pains of projects constantly falling victim to flake-deaths. Its another reason to make it open and community-wide and Not dedicated to a specific persons games.
I think anyone who wants to make an amiga game (on Classic Amiga's) would love to be able to use:
1) Translucent tricks similar to SNES (I know how to do that)
2) Super tight palette and copper control for gorgeous levels. (we need some better tools to make that accessible to everyone)
3) Use the repeating Sprite trick to have dual playfield without the horrible 7 color front playfield limit (this too needs to be made more accessible)
Anyone who knows any hardcore Amiga hardware bangers, pleasse direct them to this thread. I can't pay a ton, but I hope the comunity can pitch in with me to make it worthwhile to get this stuff readilly availible to the comunity.... for all or dream-game projects.
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To Michael V. Parent:
Perhaps you should also check out EAB: http://eab.abime.net. Seems more classic Amiga oriented than Amiga.org. Be sure to check out the coders forums at the bottom of the main page.
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Sorry, you already did :o
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The Amigas "on paper" specs are quite different to what can be realised. For instance the 16 color per playfield (or 8 for ocs/ecs) limit is technically per scanline and palette registers can be changed multiple times. Hardware sprites are also more flexible than most people give them credit for. Even on ocs/ecs Ive had dozens of 16 color hardware sprites happy moving around (and this of course doubles for 2bit color sprites). AGA sprites are even more powerful (although have some restrictions that ocs/ecs dont too unfortunately, like it being nigh on impossible to have more than 1 16 colors 64 pixel wide sprite on a 4+ bit color screen without narrowing the screen (can multiplex that sprite though).
Anyway the point to all this I guess is a set of universal tools for accessing the amigas custom hardware is never going to get the most from the system. Use one trick and other things are closed off while other things are opened up, and so on and so forth.
In part I guess this is why demo scene coders still use amigas, there's no real definite restrictions/limits, it's almost an artform unto itself.
p.s. Speaking of transparency, one of my efforts to do a streetfighter2 remake for amigaos ended up with one of the characters ended up transparent. Was actually a bug rather than intentional, but was "free" transparency nonetheless. One of the most interesting bits of code I did for ocs, and it was accidental :)
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Hi again fishy,
Yeah, I know alot about these tricks, and that you cant use them all at once;)
But the first step is getting them each individually accessible to the majority of Amiga game makers, then start organizing a game authoring system which lets you choose which tricks to use where and lets you know which ones can't work at the same time.
You ever use Amos? If you set yourself up with Amos Pro I can give you acual example files which explain how to get perfect translucent effects (not acidents). hint: It's a matter of careful palette index organizing and setting which bitplanes to blit while drawing your bob.
thanks
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I love your idea and the best of luck to you.
I looking forward to playing these games some day. :-)
Keep up the great work.
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Yeah, good luck with this. I wish I could help somehow, as I've always wanted to work on games for the Amiga, my specialty now is in 3D, not 2D. Still, it would be nice to see new games for the Amiga. Look into Backbone. I've played around with it and enjoyed it quite a bit, but it was limited in what I wanted to do. Now, if I could find someone who had an engine similar to the Ultima engines....something simple but robust.
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Michael, this sounds pretty noble and amazing. Good luck with it.
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Already making progress...two excellent programmers have volunteered to "manage" this project. Also, we've already hit paydirt via the following super knowlegable and helpful fellow:
http://www.codetapper.com/amiga/sprite-tricks/
Please help keep this project alive. :) Spread the word. I promise to help make some of the most stunning classic amiga "demos" (game levels etc) ever so long as programmers can make my art move. ;)
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There's a load of Amiga scene coders over at http://ada.untergrund.net/
They know their stuff. Good luck with your games!
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Thanks much Khephern. These are exactly the sort of folks we need to get in on this. I'll post on their forums asap. :)
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Yes, codetapper is a Kiwi ;-)
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Hi Michael, I'm very glad you came along. You've got very similar ideas to what we have been talking about already, and I have begun working on a GUI for the IDE/Game maker program. I am using MUI so it can be used on OS3, Aros, MorphOS and OS4. I'm also trying to work on a map editor. The idea was to make a modular game maker engine that lets you choose from pre-coded engines, and then tweaking all of the options from the GUI. The code output can then be edited and refined. We also wanted to make it possible to mark locations on the map where palette changes would occur, and possibly let you define how many blocks you would have to move across for the palette fade to occur, which would be useful for when you enter caves.
I've had a bunch of games in mind for years, one of them I've always imagined to be on the scale of Castlevania Symphony of the Night, but with my own characters and plot, not a copy of anything. Just a massive platform adventure game with character interaction and a deep story that unwinds as you play on, with non-linear gameplay where you can choose your path and return to some previously-completed levels.
I got into the Amiga through the CD32, so it has always been one of my favourite target platforms. I'm also interested in self-publishing our games if we need to, I've already started stocking up on brand new double-density floppy disks to use for our smaller games. My friends and I had an idea to quickly try and make a game in Backbone in our free time in a couple of weeks leading up to Halloween, a few years ago. I came up with a basic story for the single-level demo and designed the level layout, while Rebel pixelled most of the graphics, while we had some friendly contributions from a couple of other online friends with some extra graphics and the title screen, and I was very lucky to meet a music composer on IRC who whipped up a couple of tunes for us to use. The whole project was rushed and incomplete, but we wanted to get something playable to upload to Aminet by October 31st, which we did fully on time. Anyway I'd like to finish it some day, we've redesigned the character and a lot more about the game, but it's just one of the games I want to make over the next few years. Here's the only video I could find of it on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W50QQKD1wAk), you can download it from Aminet (http://aminet.net/package/game/demo/HalloweenNightmareDemo) and try it yourself though if you'd like.
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Hi Cammy,
It does indeed seem like we're on the same page. Your project sounds great. I too think one of Amiga's still untapped strengths is on the fly palette changing...like you said, into and out of caves...but also imagine for quickly flashing the screen brighter, then fading back to normal for during big explosions, or lightning etc...of course time of day, etc. Or when entering a paralel dimension, or slowing down time... so much potential to make games look so much more atmospheric and impressive and so few have really used it.
I'd very much like to test your editors as they evolve.. Is your editor project going to be open source so others can easily add to it, etc?
A castlevania SOTN Style game is something I want to make too.. hopefully we'll both benifit from all our investments. For now I can offer you the trick I mastered for a SNES type translucent effect. Do you have Amos Pro? I'll post example files explaining exactly how to do the trick in the very near future.
Your Haloween game is really clean and impressive, especially for a very fast made project. Well done everyone involved! The only thing that I see that would make it a lot better very quickly (if its easy to add in backbone) would be visual feedback for when you are sucessfully hitting enemies..like a quick animation that flashes the enemy white etc.
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Hi again,
For now, here are the two examples. (they are Amos Pro projects) The one calles trans explains exactly how to make the translucency trick work.
The older demo:
www.holymonkeystudio.com/amiga/trans.zip (http://www.holymonkeystudio.com/amiga/trans.zip)
The second, prettier demo:
www.holymonkeystudio.com/amiga/a_demo.zip (http://www.holymonkeystudio.com/amiga/a_demo.zip)
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I've posted a bit of unfinished pixel art here...free for anyone to use. :)
https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/amigaarcade/index.php?sid=e4879a29770641259a25cf09cdfb99a6
It's in the 2d pixel art section.
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Hi Michael, I can't believe how much we're thinking along the same lines. Using the palette fading for big explosions and lightning and fog was something else we wanted to do, it makes the games much more visually dynamic when there's more flashing going on and it's pretty much a free effect on the Amiga.
As for the game editor it will certainly be open source, I believe there's no point in being greedy about sharing secrets to making good games with the Amiga, it only holds the platform back. If there was readily accessible code for all those effects used in the very best games, any games coming out after them could have improved on the formula rather than the coders having to work out all the tricks from scratch. So if I ever make a discovery on how to make the Amiga do something good, I want to share that with other people so they can do it too, including code.
I love how you worked out a translucent colour effect, it's something I always wanted to use in my Amiga games but wasn't sure if I should plan too much on it if it was going to be too heavy of an effect, so I'm very glad you have found an efficient way of applying it. I do have Amos Pro but I've honestly never given it a go, I was considering it for a while but settled on AmigaE as a programming language to learn. I will install it and check out your example however.
As for the Halloween Nightmare demo, well there's quite a bit we couldn't finish in time, and that includes adding animation to the enemies. Unfortunately Backbone has no option for visual feedback/confirmation of a successful blow on an enemy other than the bullet stopping and exploding. They will continue to move forward until their hitpoints are decreased to zero, the same goes for the player character unfortunately. One trick I've toyed with since though is making each enemy a multi-object enemy, made up of stages. Instead of having three hit points, for example, it is an enemy with a single hit point who dies when hit, but turns into a duplicate enemy after the death animation, which in turn is replaced by a final duplicate when it is killed. This way the 3-stage enemy could change each time, perhaps becoming redder in the face or running faster as he gets madder.
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Great way to overcome a limit in backbone. I can't wait until we're all finished with a super flexible Backbone substitute thats more optimized and allows for all these tricks (if not all at once ;) )
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Where are you from/based ?
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i do not know what you would use for it. When you need Amos-Extensions I have most of them...
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I'm American (grew up on the east coast, in Providence RI, lived in NY for a year, California for several), but now live in France.
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Use what for? A drastically improved game authoring system/engine like Backbone? Lotsw of people could make really fun games if they didn't have to do all the programming legwork that even great langualges like Amos require.
It's about freeing up people to be creative. To use their time with what they can do best.
i do not know what you would use for it. When you need Amos-Extensions I have most of them...
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I am not an Amiga coder. I do work in pregramming. I could help with Amos and Blitz basic. Where it comes to ASM though i have no idea. I know basic but not amos or blitz. So I am not sure what help I could be
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What would be great is if we could get some really talented coders to do thing not present in the chipset from mid 80s arcade technology. eg proper overlaid parallax in software without crippling limitations of dual playfield, scaling graphic routines as good as Lotus 2, scrolling 3D textured floors in perspective (think dpaint rotating image 45 degrees into Z plane via X axis through its centre). Hell isometric engine would be awesome so I could finally code something like the unreleased Big Engine F1 arcade game.
I have had to think outside the box a lot for my 16bit scaling psuedo 3D Oblivion forest engine, Blitz will give me a rough guide but it might not be enough. We shall see.
My other game will just cheat by using a 2mb A500/1000/2000 but will have big bold very subtly animated objects. I will shrink them later to tweak chipset/CPU bandwidth used up by the textured 3D floor.
Of course none of this (or Gradius/Vulcan Venture/Salamander 1 level ports) will start until I can support myself without doing this soul destroying job AND I have atleast one fully networked Amiga set up 24/7 with a way to drop files in and out of WINUAE environment to real Amiga as easily as you can on ST emulator + emulated hard drive.......and find a few missing pages from my Blitz 2.1 manual :)
If you can do this in STOS just using original STE CPU power to do everything (scroll, animate soft sprites etc) just think what is possible in Blitz etc on feature rich Amiga chipset.
[youtube]zqjNSF5M0tQ[/youtube]
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Yeah, look at games like Xenon 2 Megablast... the ST version is all processor, right? Thats a full screen 16 color game with lots of shots, enemies and a simulated 2.5 playfields (counting the back stars as 0.5 playfields ;) )
[youtube]od0B1EQw47I[/youtube]
The A500 version looked the same (sounded WAY better)...so, if the Amiga could do all that with just its processor, what about all that blitter power on top...Then the Sprites...Amiga games should have incredible visual potential.
Lets make it happem :)
PS, how do you imbed a youtube vid like that?
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Use what for? A drastically improved game authoring system/engine like Backbone? Lotsw of people could make really fun games if they didn't have to do all the programming legwork that even great langualges like Amos require.
It's about freeing up people to be creative. To use their time with what they can do best.
AMOS is an easy language but the compiler generates absolutely pathetic code. That's why I had Cammy start out on AmigaE instead of AmosPro. There's a new rendition of E out called PortablE that supports all of the next-genration Amigas.
I'd like to get some engines out that use PortablE as a basis but the current betas of PortablE release 6 require C++ as a backend. Chris Handley (the author of PortablE) assures me that he's interested in doing another version with C as a backend for the Amigas. It seems he is less interested in teaming up at this time than figuring out some of the techniques himself. We'll see how PortablE goes.
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I'm American (grew up on the east coast, in Providence RI, lived in NY for a year, California for several), but now live in France.
Paris, Lyon or Montpellier? I said that because it's where French games developer companies are located. Kamel
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I work remotely as a freelancer for predominently American companies, so I can live anywhere.. I live near Vannes, which I find absolutely beautiful.
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I work remotely as a freelancer for predominently American companies, so I can live anywhere.. I live near Vannes, which I find absolutely beautiful.
Hey not far away from where I live, Vannes is a nice city :) Kamel
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Yeah, look at games like Xenon 2 Megablast... the ST version is all processor, right? Thats a full screen 16 color game with lots of shots, enemies and a simulated 2.5 playfields (counting the back stars as 0.5 playfields ;) )
[youtube]od0B1EQw47I[/youtube]
The A500 version looked the same (sounded WAY better)...so, if the Amiga could do all that with just its processor, what about all that blitter power on top...Then the Sprites...Amiga games should have incredible visual potential.
Lets make it happem :)
PS, how do you imbed a youtube vid like that?
Same 16 colours on Amiga but faster. Why is it ambitious early games like Sword of Sodan are better? Big bold Neo-Geo style graphics is where I start. We must all exceed chipset limit and scale it back.
Chase HQ is my dream project, but maybe only Magnetic Fields team for Lotus II could do it justice. Too many ST ports!
I see you worked out the youtube thing ;)
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I'm glad you mentioned Sword of Sodan, large graphics, and exceeding chip limit.
Please check out my "Sprite" animating tool "Spriter".
http://www.brashmonkey.com/spriter.htm
For ECS Amiga, you'd have to create the animations without the alpha, rotation and stretching of parts, but still the potential for fitting super smooth animations of large characters is mind blowing.
One of the projects that I'm trying to get going is a "library" capible of loading the data from Spriter and recreating the animations on Amiga.
[youtube]Pfhlsfc-EDM[/youtube]
This is how we can create drastically better animations for game effects and characters and use a very small portion of the memory and file size.
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You know, if you guys are serious about this, I'll pitch in with graphics, UI elements and sound, should this actually see fruition.
[edit]
I would, however, like to see something similar to Unity. Side scrollers, Top scrollers and adventure-type games, similar to the Ultima series all combined into one engine.
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You know, if you guys are serious about this, I'll pitch in with graphics, UI elements and sound, should this actually see fruition.
[edit]
I would, however, like to see something similar to Unity. Side scrollers, Top scrollers and adventure-type games, similar to the Ultima series.
Unity the Lionhead Llamasoft unreleased Gamecube game?
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Unity the Lionhead Llamasoft unreleased Gamecube game?
http://unity3d.com/ (http://unity3d.com/)
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I would, however, like to see something similar to Unity. Side scrollers, Top scrollers and adventure-type games, similar to the Ultima series all combined into one engine.
I am so glad that you are not overly demanding :)
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Everything is better in SEGA style scaling graphics for 2.5D :)
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Everything is better in SEGA style scaling graphics for 2.5D :)
Id give my right arm (well, maybe not *my* right arm, but Id happily hack someone elses of and *hand* it over (no pun intended)) for a new "sprite" based "3d" racing game (ala outrun, etc.).
Most modern racing games are all way too similar, and serious for my tastes.
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I am so glad that you are not overly demanding :)
Nope. They just want to do something different from what I wanted. Simple logic. Help them on their quest and they help me with mine. Back scratching so to speak. ;)
Backbone couldn't do what I wanted and my limited coding abilities don't allow for my creating what I wanted, hence offering services to those who do, in the hopes we could kill two birds with one stone.
Currently, I'm working on graphics for a fantasy mod for CivIV and V and I do graphics for BTBuilder, a BTCS clone, though I've lost interest as we still don't have a proper editor so I'm not really getting anything out of it.
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The A500 version looked the same (sounded WAY better)...so, if the Amiga could do all that with just its processor, what about all that blitter power on top...Then the Sprites...Amiga games should have incredible visual potential.
Lets make it happem :)
The Amiga can do way better than Xenon 2, checkout "Mega Typhoon" (http://aminet.net/search?query=mega+typhoon), it's technically a really impressing game ! The game is very smooth, and there are many sprites on screen. I dream of an Aleste 2 (or maybe a "Raiden"/"Twin Cobra" like shooter) version for Amiga using "Mega Typhoon" engine !
A video of "Mega Typhoon" is available on youtube too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-iapekmpng), but better try it on a real Amiga500, it's far more impressive !
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Id give my right arm (well, maybe not *my* right arm, but Id happily hack someone elses of and *hand* it over (no pun intended)) for a new "sprite" based "3d" racing game (ala outrun, etc.).
Most modern racing games are all way too similar, and serious for my tastes.
If I had access to such an engine then remakes of Chase HQ, Outrun and Power Drift would be first out the blocks :)
And something like Galaxy Force II!
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The Amiga can do way better than Xenon 2, checkout "Mega Typhoon" (http://aminet.net/search?query=mega+typhoon), it's technically a really impressing game ! The game is very smooth, and there are many sprites on screen. I dream of an Aleste 2 (or maybe a "Raiden"/"Twin Cobra" like shooter) version for Amiga using "Mega Typhoon" engine !
A video of "Mega Typhoon" is available on youtube too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-iapekmpng), but better try it on a real Amiga500, it's far more impressive !
Battle Squadron dumped on Xenon II, super smooth AND 2 player co-op. It's sad to say but back in the day ST or Amiga artists were generally nowhere compared to coin-op artists, and why did many western artists draw outlines around sprites from arcade conversions too? Jim Sachs quality was an exception.
I had sprites for Nemesis/Gradius on my ST screen in 1986 which I had no use for as I am not a 68k programmer.
That game looks very good, will have to check it out thanks.
One day I will finish a 1 level demo of Lifeforce/Salamander for OCS.
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yeah, Battle Squadron was great, but the reason I mentioned Xenon 2 is that it has 2.5 layers of scrolling and seems all processor done (at least on the ST) so I'd figure Amiga wit hthe aid of blitter should have been able to do so in 32 color instead of just 16...since the ST had no blitter and theres only a 1 bitplane diference between 16 and 32 colors.
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yeah, Battle Squadron was great, but the reason I mentioned Xenon 2 is that it has 2.5 layers of scrolling and seems all processor done (at least on the ST) so I'd figure Amiga wit hthe aid of blitter should have been able to do so in 32 color instead of just 16...since the ST had no blitter and theres only a 1 bitplane diference between 16 and 32 colors.
Double whammy, ST and Amiga shared too much code and they didn't want to redraw all the graphics, and so we had a 16 colour version. The CDTV version doesn't even change tracks in sync with level changes looking at youtube videos.
The real pi$$take is they did the graphics on Dpaint I think.
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yeah, Battle Squadron was great, but the reason I mentioned Xenon 2 is that it has 2.5 layers of scrolling and seems all processor done (at least on the ST) so I'd figure Amiga wit hthe aid of blitter should have been able to do so in 32 color instead of just 16...since the ST had no blitter and theres only a 1 bitplane diference between 16 and 32 colors.
The problem with 32 colors is that you can't move so much objects on screen (well, less than when in 16 colors mode) and for a shoot'em up it's quite cool having many sprites to shoot ! ;-) In lowres 16 colors, the Amiga blitter can move +64 bobs (16x16 pixels, 8 colors per bob). That's why I mentioned Aleste 2 (it's a MSX2 game), this game is in 16 colors and it displays 32 sprites on screen. The gfx are nice, the game is fast, smooth and the music is really entertaining (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKaCvG51E8k&feature=related).
Well, anyway your game projects for the Amiga look promising. I like your drawings, particularly the Streets of Rage like mockup, well done (I'm really looking forward this one !!) !
I have been working on a game for some time now, but unfortunatelly, I can't code, so when all gfx and rules will be done, I will probably ask someone to help me to code it. :-\
That game looks very good, will have to check it out thanks.
Here are the technical features from the MegaTyphoon readme file :
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* more than 100 objects moving on screen
at the same time
* 50 (!) frames per second (fps)
(all conventional games with comparable number,
size and complexity of moving objects run at 17
or at most 25 fps only )
* Full performance on ALL AMIGAS (including A1000,A500)
* pioneering new graphics engine featuring
64 BOB's, 48 Sprites, 16 Colors
* copper driven blitter
* virtual sprite engine
* virtual playfield scrolling
* asynchronuous multi-process animation algorithm
* animation/control process separation
In other words:
The fastest arcade action game ever made for the AMIGA !
---
:-)
One day I will finish a 1 level demo of Lifeforce/Salamander for OCS.
Wow, I'm really looking forward to this one as well, I cross my fingers ! An Amiga version would rock !
Did you ever play the old Salamander MSX version (done by Konami themselves !) ?
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Did you ever play the old Salamander MSX version (done by Konami themselves !) ?
My inspiration was the Commodore 64 version, which considering the C64's specification was really quite a miracle. But I spent whole summers in the mid 80s playing Nemesis and Salamander in the arcades.
Way back in the mists of time I knew graphically it would look good and also the Amiga would do a good version based on my initial tests on an ST with zero hardware assist. I got a reasonable two layer parallax vertically scrolling engine out of the ST with my then Salamander test graphics in STOS Basic language. Probably a good thing Imagine/Ocean didn't convert it themselves back in the day as it probably wouldn't have been more than an ST port :)
First game I will do is something simple but with something to prove. Level of 1.3 of Micky Mouse-Castle of Illusion from Sega Megadrive/Genesis on Amiga. If I can get that out the door hopefully means I can blow out all the cobwebs from my brain years later. Plus it would make a fun little game to pass the time with and prove Amiga games should look more like Sega 16bit games and a lot less like ST games! :)
My dream conversion though is Gauntlet 1.
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Good luck guys, I'm a whiz with deluxe paint. but never had the patience or the mental capacity for programming. tried a few attempts with amos and blitz basic. but dont think i would be of any use.
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Good luck guys, I'm a whiz with deluxe paint. but never had the patience or the mental capacity for programming. tried a few attempts with amos and blitz basic. but dont think i would be of any use.
Don't let that get you down. It generally takes at least 2 artists for every coder in the gaming industry.
WoodChipper Games (http://woodchippergames.blogspot.com/) is a handle that 2 of my friends and I were going to start a small cross-platform games company but only one artist would work for us. That one is on the LavaDragons game (Joust spin-off). If you wouldn't mind seeing a game get ported off of AGA onto other platforms, you could join up on the FenceCheck project for making vertical Raiden-style shooter.
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Sounds interesting. but i haven't much time on my hands these days. Could contribute in my spare time tho. what do i have to do to join up on the fenceCheck project??
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@Jay
Send me a private message with your email address. I'll talk to Mike and Joel about it. If you've got some thumbnails of past artwork or links to it online, send me those in your private message too.
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Michael V. Parent: Man....
....has the community been waiting for someone like you to come around.
VERY IMPRESSIVE Images my man!
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Thanks much XDelusion. This is only the beginning... It's all about us all sharing work and ideas to make all of our projects end up WAY better. I hope lots of people start using the transulcent effect that my brother and I perfected.
I'll make demo's as I find the time and as I manage to get programmer help. :)
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I'd happily work on some music for you. I've been meaning to get a classic set up with sampler etc - this would provide motivation for me to do this.
An example of my (modern, not tracked) music which loops perfectly can be found here:-
http://soundcloud.com/steve_netting/platformer
This was written for a platformer that was never released :(
Steve
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I'd just like to say it's an awesome idea! I hope it comes to fruition.
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Hello all,
It is a pleasure to read that there are people even thinking about developing games for Amiga.
I few months ago I started developing a shooter type game called "AMIWARS" I'm currently developing on its own and the language I use is Amos Pro, from the beginning the idea was to craft 3D models from 3D Studio Max to then pass them on to the Amiga's how I'm doing this project developed.
In the videos you can see the first tests I have done with the game and its development continues, slowly because I do everything without help, but gradually, as seen in the videos the Bobs are quite large and even the attack and other are very old but now I have made new designs and I have a new update that you can see soon.
I like the initiative that is here to come together to make engines for game development and release those applications to the community so they can make use of them.
If I can help with anything here I am my email is clubamiten@gmail.com (clubamiten@gmail.com).
greetings and Amiga forever.
http://www.youtube.com/user/clubamiten#p/u/8/d6-8o8g61QQ
http://www.youtube.com/user/clubamiten#p/u/7/24ZHlpjF7qM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-0_gJQAHDM&feature=player_profilepage
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_AECCZGCnM&feature=related
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@Michael V. Parent
Don't forget AGA Amigas could make use of extra ram and cpu... if copper/blitter isn't enough it's possible to use raw cpu power to add any missing sprite/parallax you need, and cpu can also modify colour registers faster.
For OCS/ECS I can understand to limit the games to 1MB chip but for AGA using a 030/25 and 8MB of fastram would be the absolute minimum IMHO. After all Amiga 4000 was sold with 030/25 and 8MB as default in some configurations and 030s are very common.
With an accelerator it should be easier to create quarter-pixel scrolls for example. And also to modify more colours on each scanline... you could still use hardware scroll but when there are too many objects on screen the gfx composition could be performed by the cpu in fastram (directly in planar mode, skipping c2p)
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Hi Crumb,
My plan is eventually the games would detect more ram and/or AGA and automatically upgrade by using more art, and more colors etc...
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I'd happily work on some music for you. I've been meaning to get a classic set up with sampler etc - this would provide motivation for me to do this.
An example of my (modern, not tracked) music which loops perfectly can be found here:-
http://soundcloud.com/steve_netting/platformer
This was written for a platformer that was never released :(
Steve
Nice music Steve...it'll be along time before I can finsih anthing near a complete game... but if you're a patient man we can definately use some of your music. :)
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I am not an Amiga coder. I do work in pregramming. I could help with Amos and Blitz basic. Where it comes to ASM though i have no idea. I know basic but not amos or blitz. So I am not sure what help I could be
It could be the medication I'm on as I write, but....huh ?
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The problem with 32 colors is that you can't move so much objects on screen (well, less than when in 16 colors mode) and for a shoot'em up it's quite cool having many sprites to shoot ! ;-) In lowres 16 colors, the Amiga blitter can move +64 bobs (16x16 pixels, 8 colors per bob)
This is for unexpanded machines though? And most Amigans still around either have expansions or use winuae.
I'd put the baseline at 4 possibly 8mb and 28mhz processor.
It would be nice to see what that spec could achieve, it didn't get many pro games, as we all had that towards the end of the Amiga's life.
What little time I have, i'm willing to donate. Iv'e been a video games artist (mainly 3D and texture maps, but could certainly turn my hand to paletted tiles). for the last 13 years, with some design credits also.
I'd certainly want to make games with a decent engine though, although my main love would be to do a dungeon master style Sci-fi game with rendered graphics.
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My personal goal is to actually make some butt-kicking NON-enhanced Classic Amiga games (stock OCS,ECS, and AGA), BUT that shouldn't stop everyone else from from contributing to engines and games for suped up Amiga's...clearly though for drastically more powerful Amiga's, the tricks we've been discussing are almost a non-issues...that kind of processing power could simulate several playfields in 256 color mode, no?
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Yeah, I'd like to see more development for baseline systems as well. (Though it would be nice to see development for expanded systems that isn't just a bunch of SDL ports...)
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Yeah, I'd like to see more development for baseline systems as well. (Though it would be nice to see development for expanded systems that isn't just a bunch of SDL ports...)
I will do 7mhz 68000 OCS. Possibly 14mhz OCS palette for 020 or AGA 14mhz 020 as extra but mostly for 512kb-1mb 1985 Amiga A1000 spec is MY target.
So A500-2000 is covered. Accelerators are too rare and too expensive! Even I don't have one.
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Basic accelerators aren't that hard to come by. But I have to wonder how many more people would get back into the Amiga scene if it were as active on the hardware they have sitting around in the attic as it is on pimped-out PPC boxes...
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Those are my thoughts too...allowing ALL owners of even the most basic Amiga to pull their systems out of the attics, and experience all new and even more impressive games...reminding them how truely amazing their Amiga's really were.
It's also just been my dream since my early teens to make the most breathtaking game for a stock Amiga 500 ever created. ;)
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Many Dreams and much to do... :sealed:
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It's also just been my dream since my early teens to make the most breathtaking game for a stock Amiga 500 ever created. ;)
You'll have to beat me to it!
...okay, that's entirely possible. I swear I'm getting around to it, really!
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I will do 7mhz 68000 OCS. Possibly 14mhz OCS palette for 020 or AGA 14mhz 020 as extra but mostly for 512kb-1mb 1985 Amiga A1000 spec is MY target.
So A500-2000 is covered. Accelerators are too rare and too expensive! Even I don't have one.
Yes, I have the same spec target for my game project, I limited myself to 15 colors(+transparant), no scroll, no sprites, no bobs, the only thing moving beeing the arrow to select different options ! ;-)
Actually, my main focus is the playability and the fun factor.
The problem with very technically game projects is that they require a massive amount of time to develop. So people with great ideas and talents often give up after some time, they lose their motivations during the very long time consuming development process... It's unfortunately a quite frequent case in the "retro comp scenes"...
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One of my ideas is something 2.5D (ie Sega Afterburner/Outrun type scaling graphics engine) so unavoidably it has to be technically good otherwise it will fail.
My plan is to test it works, then get help making it ASM code from my working algorithms. Think SEGA arcade hardware from late 80s meets forest areas of Oblivion game.
Could be horrible could be awesome. Who knows :)
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Yes, I have the same spec target for my game project, I limited myself to 15 colors(+transparant), no scroll, no sprites, no bobs, the only thing moving beeing the arrow to select different options ! ;-)
Actually, my main focus is the playability and the fun factor.
The problem with very technically game projects is that they require a massive amount of time to develop. So people with great ideas and talents often give up after some time, they lose their motivations during the very long time consuming development process... It's unfortunately a quite frequent case in the "retro comp scenes"...
THATS the whole point of collecting this info and making these libraries and open source code examples..(and tools)..
It will allow for any team to do drastically more and better in drastically less time.
I've already given the comunity the exact system for creating translucent/tinting effects on any Amiga...this can now be used by EVERYONE making Amiga games without needed to fumble around and try to figure it out themselves...in fact, NOW many Amiga game creators might stuble on my example and use the trick when otherwise they might never even considered it a posibility.
Same will be for the Sprite BG trick, Palette change tricks (within a level, not just copper rainbows etc), etc etc..
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So what is being aimed for Michael? a suite of libraries, or a game maker like backbone?
This looks like it would be handy:http://aminet.net/package/dev/src/ScrollingTrick
EDIT: I wonder if it would be worth getting hold of the source to backbone (if it even exists), and replacing key functions? Or would it be faster from scratch? I'm only a poor artist, so excuse me if it's a dumb idea.
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Backbone was written in AmosPro but the source has been lost. It will probably be faster from scratch.
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It could be the medication I'm on as I write, but....huh ?
Nope its me :)
What I am saying is that I can code, I do not know AMOS or BLITZ specfically but feel fairly confident I could pick them up pretty quickly and help.
I can code in VB .net, Amstrad CPC basic, and some other versions of basic.
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Don´t know what Michael really want, cordinate people from here?, make a new game company? or tell us his dreams?.
Regards
Amiten
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@Amiten
Good work. I really enjoyed checking out your stuff. First actual work in the thread too (apart from a few pictures). Im surprised no-one else commented on your work. Im a big 3dsmax fan as well. Star Wars however,....... really not a fan :)
I guess people are more interested in dreaming still usually. :)
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@AmiTen
I suspect he just wants to coordinate efforts. If it helps your perspective, he's a member of the NatAmi team as am I. We are trying to make software support new NatAmi hardware while still taking advantage of all the old tricks.
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I've already posted clear examples of exactly how to put translucent/tinting effect in even the most basic Amiga's with no performance hit, AND spent over a year creating a highly functional animation tool which creates game animations by combining multiple images for highly optimized game animation data. (www.brashmonkey.com (http://www.brashmonkey.com)) I'm also working on a new tech demo based on one of the images I've posted.
Beyond that, yes, I'm sharing what my dream is, trying to make it a reality and trying to help others achieve their dreams at the same time.
@Amiten,
sorry, I am stretched thin and didn't notice your link...great stuff. :)
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Well yes I won't show graphics until I can see them working at 25fps so I guess that is a dream
Also I foolishly squander my meager earnings on bills and food not overpriced A4000 setup from ebay to code on so dreaming again I guess.
:)
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Thanks for the information SamuraiCrow not know what part of the project natami nice meeting you clear as to the rest :)
Natami Well for me a new hope and I am saving since the news broke to buy one I want to create games for its SuperAGA chipset of natami.
The truth is that it was strange that no one said anything about my "Amiwars" for a few months I've been working on and have not seen Much games that use the technique that I use 3D animation to 2D past.
Amiwars make myself do it as little as a pyramid so desperately seek collaboration also, if anyone wants to help is welcome, especially someone who knows the 3dsmax so you can give me more animations and effects that I know the whole program limited progress this in my web www.amitenwebatu.com (http://www.amitenwebatu.com) use the system you can google for translation because the web is a native Spanish.
forgiveness by brick lyrics from google but my English but I speak well for me to express myself in enough trouble.
Currently Amiwars has changed considerably and now their sprites are smaller and there is already a small AI for enemies, and when I can show you the result only for the 1 level.
I need help I will send someone to the game's 3D models and animation as input to create a Intro for the game and many other things I need music that I'm good but as I make my time is not unlimited and little by little I'm just going forward the history.
greetings nothing but luck with your dreams and Amiga Forever.
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Nope its me :)
What I am saying is that I can code, I do not know AMOS or BLITZ specfically but feel fairly confident I could pick them up pretty quickly and help.
I can code in VB .net, Amstrad CPC basic, and some other versions of basic.
You love your Basics don't you ? (joke)
Seriously though, to me it makes no sense to provide 64289 different syntactic rules because there are 64289 different types of functionality provided. That's one of the reason I hated AMAL. Another reason was that (AFAIK) AMAL animations where linear and thus useless for my needs, so I invented my own "cooperative scheduler" scheduling object code (subroutines), to dance the dance and sing the song.
Being "slightly" off topic here I'll have to ask something (or I'll forget): I remember I had discovered that I could store a subroutine's reference inside a variable and then call the subroutine by dereferencing that variable (gosub SUB). Was this documented or was it a miraculous side effect ? Any AMOS gurus with wise words ?
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You seem to know quite a bit about animating on Classic Amigas Einstein. Would you be interrested in making basic Spriter files (without the transforms and alpha) play as efficiently as possible on Amiga?
www.brashmonkey.com (http://www.brashmonkey.com)
This will be the ultimate way to fit tons of smooth animations into the limited file and ram space.
If you might be interrested, I could start a bounty for you...
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@Michael V. Parent
Actually I'm not, not the slightest :)
The last (two) times I, progamming-wise, touched Amiga was 2004 and 1997, and at none of those occasions were I concerned about optimizations (or I wouldn't start my half-finished game in AMOS ;)). In 1997 I dug out my A500 (I did not have/use computers at home back then, and neither did so during the following 7-8 years or so) and decided I wanted to learn how to make a game, or the collision detection and interactions between characters and the environment to be more precise. So I sat down with a piece of paper and re-invented the technique that I later learned it's name to be "tile mapping". It was great fun doing that and started a platformer (in AMOS) ala Fuzzball and similar, which I left incomplete (because I wanted to re-implement in assembly) and sadly lost the source including all the graphics by the time I wanted to proceed/port to asm.
In 2004 I kind of re-discovered (in a primitive and rather ugly way) 3d vector rotations when I, again, dug out my A500 for another round of pain and pleasure messing with ideas.
Nowadays the programming aspect of my life is bound to C (system and app), and scripting in PHP, Python, JS (browser addons, mostly private ones). I do want to get back at simpler game programming at some point, but then I want to make own project :o
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I'm looking forward to the progress of your projects though. They look really interesting.