Pro game artist looking for help/collaboration

[Michael V. Parent]

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 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:



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

[fishy_fiz]

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.

[Michael V. Parent]

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.

[Thorham]

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.

[Thorham]

Sorry, you already did

[fishy_fiz]

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  

[Michael V. Parent]

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

[crawff]

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.

[Methuselas]

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.

[hishamk]

Michael, this sounds pretty noble and amazing. Good luck with it.

[Michael V. Parent]

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.

[Khephren]

There's a load of Amiga scene coders over at http://ada.untergrund.net/
They know their stuff. Good luck with your games!

[Michael V. Parent]

Thanks much Khephern.  These are exactly the sort of folks we need to get in on this. I'll post on their forums asap.

[slayer]

Yes, codetapper is a Kiwi ;-)

[Cammy]

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, you can download it from Aminet and try it yourself though if you'd like.