Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: hbarcellos on December 04, 2009, 05:52:51 PM
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Just to take the other communities that I participate, the MSX community have at least three contests each year:
Passion MSX
Konamito Basic Game Contest
And finally MSXDEV
For MSXDEV (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/), community produce several new games every year. Just for this contest, the total number of entries (for all years) is an amazing 83! (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/gameindex.htm)
Any ideas about why that's not too common in the Amiga Community?
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It takes a very long time to make a game worth playing on the Amiga, much of the time people give up after offering to help, lose motivation, or their Amigas blow up and they never find a replacement.
I wish the Amiga had a super active game making scene, I've been trying to motivate people to help out with the Amiga games that are currently being worked on, but so far no one has offered any real help, or they offer to help then never speak to you again.
Here's the current state of the Amiga games development scene - http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=41556
:(
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Could it simply be a case of the MSX scene being much bigger?
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Could it simply be a case of the MSX scene being much bigger?
Not only that. Amiga scene has splitted into small groups. Bang HW directly or use OS calls? OCS or AGA or CGX? Paula or AHI? 3D or not 3D and if so, which 3D API? OS1, OS2, OS3, OS4, MorphOS, AROS? The target HW can be anything from Amiga 500 to WinUAE...
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Could it simply be a case of the MSX scene being much bigger?
Probably, the 8-bit scene (Atari, Spectrum, C64, MSX and others) has been a lot more fun and interesting than the Amiga scene over the last couple of years and it's still growing. They all have game and demo contests, lots of interesting hardware projects and they don't fight among each other. People just have fun with their old hardware and software.
8-bit power forever :)
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I think if there was a real competition with maybe some kind of prize people would join in, there maybe the difficultly of making a game for an OCS, AGA or OS4 machine but you could always just create 3 different competitions within the same competition. If somebody could really organise an event like this each year perhaps with help from companies like AmigaKit I am sure people would entry. Just need to get organised. :D
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It is much easier to create playable and decent looking game for the 8 bit machines, than for Amiga for more than obvious reasons. It is the same as it is much easier to create decent looking game for Amiga 500 than for Playstation. That is why they have competitions for 8 bits and many entries received. The 8 bit gamemakers easily use crossdevelopment tools and test rapidly their result, or even directly type in the BASIC prompt. For the 8 bits it is very easy to create graphics (in low color, low resolution and it is okay if your graphic is not made by graphic artist), the music is not requiring lots of effort like on the Amiga, where finetunning is must.
I remember when I first released new versions of my games, I got slammed because of the graphics (made by me) and lack of music, then I contacted graphic artists and they created better graphics with which I replaced the old ones, then I found music, but I got slammed again that my graphics were OCS quality, no matter that the A500 was my target for the games.
On the 8 bits, the playability is the goal, the graphics and the music are not that important, so I can easily create game for 8 bit computer or console and release it, without being slammed about the result.
The Amiga had very big indy gaming developing scene in the 1990ies. Much bigger than all the current retrogaming development scenes together. I remember in Amiga Format they announced a AMOS game coding competition that they received thousands of floppies full with games of all sorts. Wasn't Worms one of these games? Aminet is a good indicator how active the bedrooms programmers were in the past years.
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yes, this is a good idea I think ! How about amigakit organising such a contest ? the great prize being something like an indivision ? (or a gift coupon from amigakit ?) and the winner gives distribution rights to amigakit so that they sell or bundle the game with their products ...
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I don't know if it's such a good idea to host a competition. There might not be enough entries. I'm sure the people who actually want to make Amiga games will want to make them without needing to be offered the chance of a reward from a competition. If someone makes a decent game for an Amiga system these days, we just need to promote and digitally distribute it successfully to earn the authors enough money to buy themselves an Indivision or a RAM expansion or whatever they need for their Amiga. This is why we've been working hard to build Underground Arcade, it will be a place for any Amiga games makers to hook up with artists, musicians, coders and playtesters, then promote and distribute their game from the one united site.
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I forgot to mention, there HAVE been Amiga games comptitions held over the last few years, and as far as I know no one entered them. What ever happened to the competition to win $1000 for simply creating a single-level demo of a platform game featuring DiscreetFX's character Hottie? I'm pretty sure that's what the deal was, if you won they'd turn it into a full game or something.
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I think CountZero is onto something there, sometimes to get individuals going there needs to be an incentive and I for one would give it a go for an Indivision, even though I don`t have the experience. A bit of friendly competition would probably be a boost to the Amiga community, it wouldn`t have to be limited to individuals, how about like the demoscene where you have groups, get groups together to make a game and have it submitted, BUT it would need to be advertised properly on the right websites and publications. Anyone game?
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I don't know if it's such a good idea to host a competition. There might not be enough entries. I'm sure the people who actually want to make Amiga games will want to make them without needing to be offered the chance of a reward from a competition. If someone makes a decent game for an Amiga system these days, we just need to promote and digitally distribute it successfully to earn the authors enough money to buy themselves an Indivision or a RAM expansion or whatever they need for their Amiga. This is why we've been working hard to build Underground Arcade, it will be a place for any Amiga games makers to hook up with artists, musicians, coders and playtesters, then promote and distribute their game from the one united site.
I agree with Cammy's logic and reasons. If anyone wants to promote an Amiga game competition, do it for the fun of it, not for a reward of some prize or amount of money. If the programmers want to code for money or to get a prize, let them sell the game when it is done and buy their own prizes. Maybe Cammy's group, the Underground Arcade, can start a game "idea" contest that the Underground Arcade programmers and artists will judge and pick the winner. The winner would then get an equal share of any money made from the sale of the completed game after it was coded by the Underground Arcade programmers and all the art and music were created for it. Each programmer and artist and music creator would count as one equal share, plus the contest winner as one additional equal share holder of any profits made from selling the game. That way, after nine weeks of hard work, they would each get $5.72 from the 3 copies of the game that got sold for $29.95 each. :roflmao:
Seriously, I do like the idea of the Underground Arcade and I hope that more people will use it to get more Amiga apps and games produced and published. It is a great idea and a great service to those who might otherwise not be able to complete an entire programming project by themselves.
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Just to take the other communities that I participate, the MSX community have at least three contests each year:
Passion MSX
Konamito Basic Game Contest
And finally MSXDEV
For MSXDEV (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/), community produce several new games every year. Just for this contest, the total number of entries (for all years) is an amazing 83! (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/gameindex.htm)
Any ideas about why that's not too common in the Amiga Community?
Because there are hardly any Amiga developers left in our community. In fact, with the split of the Amiga community into three, or more separate directions, I think the number of developers has dropped dangerously low and threatens to be a potentially life ending cause to all Amiga variants if we can't turn things around very soon.
With such low numbers of developers left, it is only a matter of time before the low number of new apps and games leads to a steady decline of users too, which will then lead to THE END! We have been on life support for several years already (some would say that it is already over and the Amiga community has been dead for years).
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If anyone wants to make an Amiga game quickly but doesn't know how to code, you should check out Backbone on Aminet (provided you have a hard drive set up). With it you can make platform games like Turrican and overhead shooters like Alien Breed. It has an easy to use interface, you make the games with your mouse!
It's so easy, a small group of us made a single level demo of a game in less than a month. Check it out here if you want to see the results - http://aminet.net/package/game/demo/HalloweenNightmareDemo
So maybe a Backbone competition would be easier for people to join in on. You can easily download sprite sheets from thousands of Sega, Nintendo and arcade games on the net and use those to make a quick game. Same thing goes for music (Backbone uses soundtracker mods) and sound samples (convert wavs or mp3 sound effects to iff, it's easy).
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The problem with writing games for the Amiga is the great variation in hardware and the small community there is to use it. I've recently started writing software again and decided to work with the iPhone, their development support is phenomenal and even a completely unsuccessful program that actually makes it into the App store pays far more and is seen by more people that an wildly successful Amiga app.
So bottom line, it's a very hard slog compared to other platforms and when you succeed the rewards aren't there...
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Best solution would be create OS friendly 68k games, so they would be playable OS3.0, OS4 and Morph OS
There is lots of consept guides in www
1. Create consept
2. Plan story line
3. start coding
4. create graphics
* DON'T changes your plans about consept and story
* figure out what is realistic
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Maybe because it takes way too much time? At one time I wanted to develop for these little machines, but when I got ahold of some of the development documents to do it, I found I would be spending precious time trying to learn alot of very archaic tomes.
It's kinda like this spend time trying to make a game that a few people might enjoy or put food on your table. Slave at what would be a labor of love that you probably won't get any money from, or spend that time saving up to get medical insurance.
Unfortunately I have to pick work over "fun" anyday.
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I think at the end of the day the Amiga is a dead platform, it is only hobbyist machine now, and if people are looking to make any decent money out of it they are not on the same page as the rest of the world. A competition with a decent prize would probably offer more than could be made for a developer than if they sold it, also take into consideration that most people would probably just copy it anyways. If people are looking to make decent money making software then create software for the pc or iphone, but just as in the 8 bit community people have competitions because they love the hardware and can accept it as a hobby, there is the element of fun in partaking in a competition. At the end of the day, people who worry that the game won`t make enough money are seriously not taking a realistic look at the situation of Amiga.
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Why we dont have GAME development contests
My guess is that the MSX was popular in Japan, and the Amiga was not.
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I don't know if it's such a good idea to host a competition. There might not be enough entries. I'm sure the people who actually want to make Amiga games will want to make them without needing to be offered the chance of a reward from a competition.
I'd bite if the competition had some sort of a challenge, or interesting twist to it. Well, other than making a game.
For example: 4k, boot block, text based, no bitplanes, etc.. :-)
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My guess is that the MSX was popular in Japan, and the Amiga was not.
Astute observation, but it hardly answers the question. As far as I understand, the participants in the MSX game contests are mostly European and South American.
My own idea is that the Amiga community in its bulk consists mostly of hardware collecting end users, and on the creative side we mostly have OS developers and some demo coders + Amiga musicians still active. This in its turn is possibly a result of the relative complexity of the system (compared to the more active 8-bit machines) and the hardware modularity/expandability.
The Amiga community might be divided in too many ways for game competitions like these to ever be possible, not to mention hardware. Amiga 1200, Amiga 500, AGA, ECS, graphics card, no graphics card, RAM expansions, register fiddling vs APIs, OS3, OS4 MorphOS, Power PC, 68k. In an already small community, differences like this can be devastating for collaborative effort.
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It's a bit of a paradox, I think. Amiga has the tools that make easy to creae fancy-looking programs for non advanced programmers, but 8-bit fans are much more active with their machines. In Spain Spectrum, MSX an Amstrad CPC people are making quality games even if that requires digging into machine-code, which itself requires high programming skills. We have AMOS, Blitz... but somehow we lack the enthusiasm (or maybe the free time ^^')
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The problem is twofold I think.
1 of course, time. It takes a while to write a good game.
The other is quality. There are already a LOT of good games out there. So, anyone starting will have a hard time coming up with something that hasn't been done or looks better.
I know when I started trying to write a few games back in the day, it was related to that. I started writing an Ultima clone, and I got my basic game map with a jump scroll and non-animated characters moving. No game logic or double buffering yet, but it was a decent start, and then Zerg was released, which was almost exactly what I was going for, but better.
My second attempt was for a solitaire game with some flexibility. Got that one all the way working (when you selected cards to move, it outlined them, you didn't "pick them up", I was just starting to work on the BOB routine for that) and Klondike came out. MUCH better than mine..
(Although, Asha DeVelder (an Amiga fidonet chum) liked it, and told me she was still using my version in either late 90's or early 2000's, I can't remember which. That was nice.)
But I remember, except for Asha, when I showed people what I was working on, there wasn't much support. People were always saying "This game is better" or "that demo does that, you need to add that".
So I stopped and went in to other stuff..
Getting back into the Amiga, part of me would love to throw something together, but I don't see that I could write anything better than what is out there.
With the old systems, (8-bits) you are trying to do something that hasn't been done or shouldn't be able on an 8-bit.
With the Amiga, part of me would love to write a top down RPG engine(maybe somewhat ISO), but I know it wouldn't compare with whats out there. On the 8-bit side, I see people supporting projects, whether or not they are new or better. On the Amiga stuff, I see people complaining about commercial game quality on the forums and I know I couldn't even get to there...
Now, if you put up money, that won't effect me at all... :-) But I suppose you might find some retired amiga game/demo coders out there... I'd doubt it tho...
desiv
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Could it simply be a case of the MSX scene being much bigger?
I'm not sure about the Amiga community size, but MSX scene is not that big. Most of those games are made by a small European group (Netherlands and Spain mostly). I should say no more than 20 ppl, divided into coders, musicians and gfx artists.
My thoughts are:
1) Developing a game on Amiga is much harder than it is on MSX
2) There is a lot of other things you can do with an Amiga than you can`t do with an MSX. (i.e. WEB, 3d modeling and etc...)
3) I think, that mostly due to complexity, emulators for MSX are far better than WinUAE and others. They are simple and filled with hacking tools like debuggers, rewind feature and several others.
4) About ppl talking about making money out of a hobbyist platform, at the msx scene, all of the games are freely available to download. Some guys who tried to sell .ROM files were deeply criticized by the community. Normally the best games receive reals versions on cartridge with fancy labels, manuals and box. Those are sold, and everyone happily pays for them.
just my two cents.
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2 Billion Peecees vs around a thousand Amigas. And about 10% of them may like the game. That is very generous of someones time to reach 100 fans.
I will say that there is a complete lack of originality in PC games. Not too mention all those MMOs (which I avoid). The only PC games I'm going to buy in the forseeable future is: The Sims 3 and Cities XL.
There are a number of great Amiga titles from the 80s/90s that just need some 24 bit(or 8-bit) graphics to be awesome games.
I like the cinemaware style of having various arcade mini games wrapped into the one package.
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The iPhone is addictive, they're hard to put down and I'm playing more of my Amiga games there now. A rich development environment, Obj C, which I find more fun than C, people willing to pay money for apps. Really the iPhone in 2010 reminds me of the Amiga in 1986. I live in 2010, my mortgage is in 2010, the mortgage on my retirement house in Sunshine Coast is in 2010, my work is in 2010. Much as I love tinkering with the Amiga, it's the past, I can't dwell on it, life in the present calls.
(http://www.buderim.com/images/beach_alex_sunset.jpg)
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... I live in 2010, my mortgage is in 2010, the mortgage on my retirement house in Sunshine Coast is in 2010, my work is in 2010. Much as I love tinkering with the Amiga, it's the past, I can't dwell on it, life in the present calls.
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Yet, you're posting here...
Hmmm...
:roflmao:
desiv
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I'm not sure if this thread is finished now, or if I should get back on topic. I was feeling enthusiastic about it for a while...
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Best solution would be linuxppc games, so they would be playable on AmigaOne,Sam440,Classic+ppc,Pegasos,eifka.
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Don't dispair Cammy, keep hoping that Amiga programming will improve a little anyway. I am still working on that plan to get kids/teens interested in programming and using Amigas that I told you about.
I have to add that I am typing this post from my A1200 using IBrowse2.4 and Miami via my wireless card. That is something that I have wanted to get set up and working for a long time.
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Just to take the other communities that I participate, the MSX community have at least three contests each year:
Passion MSX
Konamito Basic Game Contest
And finally MSXDEV
For MSXDEV (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/), community produce several new games every year. Just for this contest, the total number of entries (for all years) is an amazing 83! (http://msxdev.msxblue.com/gameindex.htm)
Any ideas about why that's not too common in the Amiga Community?
Hi,
@hbarcellos
I have already been flammed for this, but at one time I mentioned to a person that he should buy a PC and just run an amiga emulator on it because:
1. No software is being developed.
2. The only thing you can do with an Amiga is put on a new OS and look at it.
Now we all know that a computer without software is just another doorstop. If you don't like a doorstop look on aminet and see instructions on how to turn a MAC into a fishbowl, now apply that to an Amiga.
Now for everone to flame me again:
Do you think this bunch of loonies can really program? I am surprised that most know how to use a keyboard. (oh thats right the Amiga is also mouse driven).
Most of them have already moved over to the MAC because all they want to do is just turn on a computer and surf the web.
These guys program!!!
Oh well thats why I keep comming back to Amiga Org. It brings a bright spot back into my day.
smerf
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smerf, people like you make me not want to come to amiga.org.
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I
1) Developing a game on Amiga is much harder than it is on MSX
That's not always the case. I've met lately a guy developing a couple of MSX arcade games, just for the sake of it, at retrocomputing meetings here in Spain. He talks about complicated machine-code routines and hardware registers hacking in order to achieve smooth sprite movements and scrolling. His demos are impresive... but are the kind of things you could do with an Amiga using high (and easy to learn) level languages.
So I guess the machine give us the resources, but we just feel like we have better things to invest our free time in!
As my MSX friend, I'm writting a text adventure in AMOS (targetted to most classic Amigas, but unlikely to have an english release ^^') just for the sake of it. There's a slim chance that later I get into some (even if it's a brief one) graphic adventure or RPG. I asked last week in another Amiga forum how far homegrown Amiga authors reached into those two genres, but the topic died XDD
Anyway, I just hope people consider my little initiative was an interesting one (wether they love, hate or ignore the adventure itself, which is ultimately irrelevant) even considering the Amiga is as comercially dead as 8-bit machines. If not even that... well, I enjoyed my time! :-)
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@Cammy
I think using Basic or Hollywood could be a good start.
I wish there was some open games pieces made for them.
Maybe Hollywood could be used to make a game creator software.
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smerf, people like you make me not want to come to amiga.org.
Don't let him push you away from here. He must have a sad life to feel the need to constantly come here and put down the Amiga developers that are still left writing games and other apps and utilities not only for AmigaOS4.x, but for AmigaOS3.x, MorphOS2.x and all variants of AROS.
I agree that there are too few developers, but there are still many that create useful programs for us. I am very thanful for one in particular, Fab, who has done such a great job on the MorphOS version of OWB that I am browsing and typing this message into.
@smerf, You are really starting to get very boring and tiresome. For your information there have been 50 new software packages uploaded to Aminet in just the last 14 days. That is over 3 per day from your "Non-existant" Amiga developers who are writing the "no software is being developed" that you claim. That also does not count the numbers of other Amiga software projects that are currently being worked on that don't show up on that list. Not bad for a platform that you claim in your signature as being "dead, dead, dead". Of course now you will come back and say that all of those software packages are crap so they should not be considered real as another way to slap the few remaining Amiga software developers in the face, or some other such nonsense. I wonder how you would feel if we all turned on you and made light of, or made fun of the work that you do? Tell me, why are you here? Is it because your life is so pathetic that you have nothing better to do than to come here and try to stir people up for your enjoyment? (to the moderators, that is a valid question, not a statement or direct attack on smerf. I really want to know why he feels he needs to repeatedly come here and try to put down the Amiga and Amiga developers over and over and over again)
Edit: @trekiej, Using Hollywood could be a very good idea to create a game creator similar to AMOS Pro, which had a huge following at one time. The advantage of using Hollywood is that it can easily compile to so many different platforms, which could make it interesting even for some developers that are only interested in making a buck from their spare time coding. Of course it won't be as good as Assembly language, or Machine Code, but almost nobody uses those languages to make games these days. Look at all the crappy games that are made using Visual Basic on Windows machines. I wonder how Hollywood compares to Visual Basic for speed and versatility?
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smerf, people like you make me not want to come to amiga.org.
I think you should just ignore him. Think of all the other Amigans :)
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If anyone wants to make an Amiga game quickly but doesn't know how to code, you should check out Backbone on Aminet.
Cool, had not heard of this one, looks good though. Hope to make a simple game over the next couple of weeks :-) Thanks for pointing it out.
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I think that creates a deadlock. Check this thread:
http://www.msx.org/forumtopic10560.html
BTW, about the MSXDEV games, almost 90% of them were assembly games with direct access to the hardware chips VDP and PSG.
About this part:
That's not always the case. I've met lately a guy developing a couple of MSX arcade games, just for the sake of it, at retrocomputing meetings here in Spain. He talks about complicated machine-code routines and hardware registers hacking in order to achieve smooth sprite movements and scrolling. His demos are impresive... but are the kind of things you could do with an Amiga using high (and easy to learn) level languages.
That's one of the differences. MSX sceners found very fun tweaking the hardware to it's maximum producing things that would seem impossible at the 80s. Things that you could easily do with an Amiga using high level languages were for sure already made in the past (and probably much better).
I think that the first step is this (as discussed at the msx.org topic above):
So, IMHO, they need first to accept the classic Amiga (500 with floppy and 512 kb of ram) as the Amiga machine to develop for as we did with MSX1 in the MSXDEV in order to try to create an environment that stimulates people to create freeware games that can be done in the time people have these days to be able to meet a deadline.
How nice it would be tweaking OCS to it's maximum?
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I can see how tweaking an Amiga OCS computer to it's maximum potential might be a rewarding experience that a few others might appreciate, but the majority of Amiga users would probably look at it and criticize it for many assorted reasons. Other Amiga users would criticize it for being a waste of time and tell you that you should be using your programming talents on AmigaOS4.1 programs, since there is so little native programming happening for the Next Gen Amiga systems.
But if seems like fun to any of you, I say go for it and ignore all the negative comments you might get during or after you are done. It is a sad fact that you need a thick skin to be an Amiga user these days.
My hopes are for more ambitious Amiga programming projects to appear, ones that will require at minimum a 68030/40MHz, or 50MHz with 8mb or more RAM and a graphics card. Then let us see just how far those resources can be tweaked to amaze even the most jaded of Amiga users. Hopefully such games or apps could also easily be ported to AOS4.x and MOS2.x since the program is aimed at RTG from the start.
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Backbone looks cool. It reminds me of a game maker prog. for the Apple IIE back in the day.
Once I get my Miggy up and running I think I may just have to give this a try... :-D
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Backbone looks cool. It reminds me of a game maker prog. for the Apple IIE back in the day.
Once I get my Miggy up and running I think I may just have to give this a try... :-D
That would be a good way to give back to the Amiga community, now that you have a new A4000T to participate in said community. There are plenty of free development tools for the AmigaOS. I just gave away some Amiga programming books to the AmiWest organizers SACC club, or I would offer them to you.
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The only reason you want a game development contest is because there is no commercial game market. That is the real problem. You want to motivate game developer's via ego rather than money. That's fine, of course, but ego won't put food on the table.
Sorry, if I keep rambling on about this in every forum.......but I see this as the MAIN problem we have.
To get a commercial game market the Amiga community needs to start paying for games (and apps). As there is an insufficient Amiga user base you will never have professional game development. One way to to get professional game development is to leverage a larger user base. This was one of the promises of Amiga Anywhere (but I digress).
The optimal user base to leverage at the moment is.......... the iPhone. It has relatively low hardware requirements for a next gen Amiga and an established distribution model. You would program to the iPhone's limitations and optionally enhance for next gen Amigas. Depending on the type of game you might even be able to get things to work on high-end classic machines also.
If we had a cross platform API for iPhone this could make a difference, as Amiga devs could leverage the iPhone market to make a living.
As I don't currently do iPhone development(but I see it in my future) I am not entirely sure what we would need but I imagine it would entail: an Objective C port, or near enough to make porting easier, enough of an API wrapper to flick some sprites around, do some scrolling and play some music and sounds. OpenGL 3d would be a bonus. Even if the API/library or dev tool was commercial it would still make sense. Failing this, porting an existing Amiga games making library to iPhone might be enough. There's an SDL library for iPhone I see. Why aren't we on that!!!
And if things went well, and it was made easy enough, you might even be able to convince some iPhone devs to back-port their games to Amiga. Ya neva know?
Just curious, is a SAM capable of running a version of PPC OSX? (I don't want to argue about the legality of this... I am just curious). This would allow existing owners to have an IDE to do this on the one machine at least.
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The only reason you want a game development contest is because there is no commercial game market. That is the real problem. You want to motivate game developer's via ego rather than money. That's fine, of course, but ego won't put food on the table.
There is no commercial game market, because no one wants to pay for a game on such an antique platform. And, even if everyone did, it would not even cover a fraction of the efforts required. I say we keep things free, we're all friends here.
In my opinion, one of the problems is that the Amiga is too easy to program. Compared to the C64, you don't need double interrupts to get a stable raster, and you don't need to time the hell out of a loop to open the borders or multiplex a few sprites. Coding the Amiga is in fact so easy, it's no fun making "ordinary things" on it anymore. That's one of the reasons I'm sticking to the demoscene, to push the hardware instead of just scrolling playfields and checking for sprite collisions.
That's what I was hinting about in my previous post, find a way to attract idiots like me. Introduce limitations, and I'm all in.
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There is no commercial game market, because no one wants to pay for a game on such an antique platform. And, even if everyone did, it would not even cover a fraction of the efforts required.
It doesn't mean you couldn't subsidise the games development by porting the game for iPhone.
If you used SDL to develop your game you could, if you wanted, pay a one-off $100 SDL licensing fee and port it to iPhone and potentially get some return on your investment of time. I really don't see why anyone would consider that a bad idea, unless you would only consider utilising truly native APIs, rather than a wrapper, which is your choice and imposes limitations of their own.
You could sell your game for nothing on an Amiga(or alike) platform if you wish, even if I personally think that is a bad way to kick-start a commercial game market and encourage future Amiga game development (which, granted, is not your stated intention). OS4 and Amiga-like OSes are a new start..... and we don't all necessarily think of them as antique platforms.....although I think I know where you're coming from. ;-)
Commercial game development promotes professionalism and a certain amount of slickness in product and quality is required for sales. Why do you guys want to continue to work for nothing or for charity(bounty donations)? Am I being greedy for wanting to be paid for my efforts? And paying for the efforts of others?
I say jokingly that you gotta decide if you want to be a development capitalist or a development communist. Not everyone wants to be Mother Teresa.
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Commercial game development promotes professionalism and a certain amount of slickness in product and quality is required for sales. Why do you guys want to continue to work for nothing or for charity(bounty donations)? Am I being greedy for wanting to be paid for my efforts? And paying for the efforts of others?
I say jokingly that you gotta decide if you want to be a development capitalist or a development communist. Not everyone wants to be Mother Teresa.
Do you know what the word "Hobby" means?
I work on a executive position in a large US financial IT services company. My cost per hour is considerably high.
In my (-very few-) free time, last year, I converted some asm z80 games from Coleco Vision and Sega sg-1000 to MSX. It consumed me a huge amount of dedication. And I released all of them entirely for free. I'm a communist?
Everytime you go fishing you try to sell the fish you capture?
Everytime you go hunting you try to sell the meat?
Everytime you go drive a go-kart you try to find a sponsor?
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That's what I was hinting about in my previous post, find a way to attract idiots like me. Introduce limitations, and I'm all in.
Congratulations. That's exactly the point being discussed at the MSX community. MSXDEV is limited to MSX1 productions, even almost all of the community members having MSX-TurboR's (16 bit MSX)
PPL are attracted to challenges.
I should vote, as said before to: Plain OCS Amiga 500, 512k RAM 880k floppy. It's already a marvelous platform for games.
And to the capitalists, why not doing exactly like the msx community? ADF is free to download, but the retail version (box, manual, disk, poster, etc...) is available to collectors for a price enough to cover costs. I'm pretty sure a lot of users would buy those. It's a lot easier to produce disks than it is to produce msx cartridges...
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I should vote, as said before to: Plain OCS Amiga 500, 512k RAM 880k floppy. It's already a marvelous platform for games.
I think it would be more sensible to actually find out what the most commonly used base specification is rather than just assume vanilla A500.
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Do you know what the word "Hobby" means?
I work on a executive position in a large US financial IT services company. My cost per hour is considerably high.
In my (-very few-) free time, last year, I converted some asm z80 games from Coleco Vision and Sega sg-1000 to MSX. It consumed me a huge amount of dedication. And I released all of them entirely for free. I'm a communist?
Good for you, I hope you got some enjoyment out of it and that it was appreciated. I really do. I must apologise for using the C word as it is a highly charged word (especially in America). Still, it was your choice to do this for no monetary gain as people do when they work on hobbies, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Others may or may not feel the same way, and it takes all types. But it doesn't change what I believe to be the reason that we don't have Game development contests(the title of the thread). We don't have Game development contests because people don't feel it is an effective use of their time. Adding money to the equation, may change that proposition. Contests attract a certain type of individual, that's all, while others may be encouraged by something beyond it being just a hobby.
But imagine if working on Amiga games for a living was viable, imagine how great things would be, and we wouldn't be talking about game contests for lack of games, because we would be awash with games. By leveraging the iPhone user base and market place, and utilising the SDL API for you game creation, you could potentially make a living off it and have produced Amiga games at the same time.
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Good suggestion, Amiga programming will never be profitable, but if you could easily port the game to iPhone, you've got a winning combination. I like win-win scenarios....
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As far as I know, OSX PPC does not, and cannot run on the SAM440, but it does run on some people's Pegasos2 machines and they can run both MorphOS2.4 and AmigaOS4.1.
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It would be much easier to have a game creation competition if we had better/more game development tools. BigBentheAussie has suggested SDL, which is a start, but some sort of game engine would enable people to get started with creating their games instead of having to build their own engines from scratch.
My suggestion for someone organizing an Amiga game development competition would be to find a bunch of game engines, and create installers for them so that people can easily install them and get started. Even SDL can be a pain to get started with, because you need libpng, etc., in order to load images.
For the classic Amiga, maybe selecting something like Backbone (is it freely available) would be an idea. Is Backbone stable enough? Are there any others?
For OS4, I've seen Kore Engine, and SDL Game Engine (SGE2D) on os4depot. AmiDark (http://www.amidark-engine.com/) also looks promising, but wouldn't be ready for use in a competition just yet.
I realize that those 8-bit guys probably don't have all that many tools; the difference is that they already have a community of people that take part in these competitions. Most of those have probably already built up their own library of code/tools.
A few other ideas:
- make it a "build it in a week" competition, so that people don't feel that they have to create a fully finished professional product
- Pick a simple game type, e.g., space invaders, and make the goal reinventing that game (i.e., not a simple clone)
- give people code for a basic working game (don't ask me where to get this from), and make the competition, polishing/hacking/enhancing that game
Hans
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Backbone looks like a cool program, but it does have its limitations. No RTG and AHI, but it did have that, it could be really cool.
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Do you know what the word "Hobby" means?
I work on a executive position in a large US financial IT services company. My cost per hour is considerably high.
In my (-very few-) free time, last year, I converted some asm z80 games from Coleco Vision and Sega sg-1000 to MSX. It consumed me a huge amount of dedication. And I released all of them entirely for free. I'm a communist?
Everytime you go fishing you try to sell the fish you capture?
Everytime you go hunting you try to sell the meat?
Everytime you go drive a go-kart you try to find a sponsor?
Software for the Amiga should be paid.
You are a communist.
The Communists demanded that everyone has delivered according to the possibilities and took necessary.
Just like you.
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Making software for iPhone and crosscompiling for the Amiga is a great idea.
Do not worry about some morons.
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The Communists demanded that everyone has delivered according to the possibilities and took necessary.
This gets my vote as best sentence of the year!!!
:)
desiv
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I wish the Amiga had a super active game making scene
:([/QUOTE]
16 bit coders went back to the 8 bit scene banging hardware old amiga owners come back for amiga os like aros like havin a vw camper with a saburu engine its just cool i duno to fit real slimed down code into 64k is a challenge or the boot block of a amiga floppy we dont need all this c++ nonsence i say bring back kseka assembler with a ramdisk an cygnes ed thats all u need ! oh an dpaint an a tracker prog ! oh hang on thats the demo scene or real amiga game writers !
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Don't really see why you'd want to change the engine on a T5, just order the Turbocharged Direct Injection 1.9 L I4 or the 2.5 L I5. Turbocharging really helps these vehicles. Most of the Trakkadus (Campervans) have the diesel engine though, which are cheaper to run. Last year we were looking at getting a people mover and thought about getting a VW camper van, but at around AU$100K for a 2010 they're really out of my league.
I wish the Amiga had a super active game making scene
:(
16 bit coders went back to the 8 bit scene banging hardware old amiga owners come back for amiga os like aros like havin a vw camper with a saburu engine its just cool i duno to fit real slimed down code into 64k is a challenge or the boot block of a amiga floppy we dont need all this c++ nonsence i say bring back kseka assembler with a ramdisk an cygnes ed thats all u need ! oh an dpaint an a tracker prog ! oh hang on thats the demo scene or real amiga game writers ![/QUOTE]
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This gets my vote as best sentence of the year!!!
:)
desiv
You mean second best...
"What we're witnessing is the sad, lonely crowing of that last, doomed cock."
wins it for me!!
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I think going down the route of limiting the hardware to the Amiga OCS or ECS would be fine, you could even just have a segment for OCS, ECS, AGA, for me the real Amigas are the ones that were made by Commodore and I for one would be well up for making a game on the Amiga. Anyone want to team up? I think that the problem is that people still feel that the Amiga should be viewed as a viable platform for selling games ... not any more, we are now in the same boat as MSX, C64 and Spectrum users so lets enjoy that status and start making cool games that run on old hardware which everyone has. Even better limit the competition to using only certain tools. Give people contraints and they start to think around the box. So come on you old farts! Lets get the Amiga gaming competition going and stop sitting on our arses complaining that there is no real value to it. I am busy working but I will still find time to do my music which brings in no money to myself but I enjoy it and I can give something to the Amiga community.
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@ami_junkiet
I think going down the route of limiting the hardware to the Amiga OCS or ECS would be fine, you could even just have a segment for OCS, ECS, AGA, for me the real Amigas are the ones that were made by Commodore and I for one would be well up for making a game on the Amiga.
Yeah, I hear you. It's hard to think of an Amiga as anything other than Commodore. Wish the names would somehow re-unite, if only for nostalgia. Say if Commodore could at least release a decent case for next gen AmigaOS machines. Can't say I like their current desktop cases covered with stickers...yuck. But I digress.
Anyone want to team up? I think that the problem is that people still feel that the Amiga should be viewed as a viable platform for selling games ... not any more, we are now in the same boat as MSX, C64 and Spectrum users so lets enjoy that status and start making cool games that run on old hardware which everyone has.
We're only in the same boat if you totally ignore next gen systems, which do have some sort of future. Not entirely sure what it is yet, but they are here and they are likely to be around for a long time, if only because of development delays. ;-)
Even better limit the competition to using only certain tools. Give people contraints and they start to think around the box. So come on you old farts! Lets get the Amiga gaming competition going and stop sitting on our arses complaining that there is no real value to it. I am busy working but I will still find time to do my music which brings in no money to myself but I enjoy it and I can give something to the Amiga community.
Ok. I'll give you a constraint or limitation. Get your newly constructed game working on an iPhone and win a prize. Not what you want to hear, I grant you. Look guys, I wish you the best of luck, whatever you decide to do.
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The Communists demanded that everyone has delivered according to the possibilities and took necessary.
Well, I happen to know a thing or two about communism, and... well, just... uh, no. Stop talking.
Politics aside, and (almost) back to the thread: I like the idea of a time or size limited production; where quality isn't necessarily top priority. No reason to raise the bar too high just yet.
- How many out there are capable of making a simple game? If it's just one or two, there's no point in having a compo...
- To make things interesting for everyone, should we have a bounty? I can contribute with a couple of €'s or some old hardware.
- What set of rules, limitations? Who will decide the winner?
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Fine, let's do it then. How's this for an idea?
You have two weeks to make a Christmas themed game using Backbone. It only takes a few hours to understand the program, it's easy to install, and games will run on any classic Amiga system (RAM permitting, depending on the bulk of the game), or through UAE.
The theme is Christmas. The limitation is Backbone. The time you have to complete it is two weeks. Whoever makes the best game at the end (we'll have a poll in the forum so people can download the games and vote for their favourite) wins some prizes that we can donate to the prize pool. I have a few spare bits and pieces I don't mind giving away for prizes, like doubles of a couple of CD32 games, some new control pads, Amiga/Aros/MorphOS-compatible USB Missile Launchers, a box of unopened floppy disks... You get the idea. I think from all our left-over junk we can come up with some nice prize packs.
I know not everyone is into Christmas, but the game you make doesn't have to be religious or anything, it's just for fun, and you've got some good royalty-free characters to use like Santa Claus, Christmas Elves, Snowmen, or just a kid in winter clothes. Collectables could be presents, toys, candy canes, tree decorations, roast turkeys. If you want to be a smarty pants and give Santa a machine gun and have him riding an angry mutant reindeer feel free, be creative.
So, how about it? It's just over two weeks until Christmas, and seriously you CAN make a few levels of a game in that amount of time with Backbone, it's that easy!
If others like this idea, we'll make a new thread about it and everyone can get to work.
Imagine having a few extra games to play on Christmas day on your favourite computer!
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@Cammy
just ignore the troll :-)
@skurk
In my opinion, one of the problems is that the Amiga is too easy to program. Compared to the C64, you don't need double interrupts to get a stable raster, and you don't need to time the hell out of a loop to open the borders or multiplex a few sprites. Coding the Amiga is in fact so easy, it's no fun making "ordinary things" on it anymore. That's one of the reasons I'm sticking to the demoscene, to push the hardware instead of just scrolling playfields and checking for sprite collisions.
That's what I was hinting about in my previous post, find a way to attract idiots like me. Introduce limitations, and I'm all in.
I don't agree with you completely. I think that making Amiga games may be easy but making high quality amiga games may be quite hard. E.g. you can count the games with AGA quarter-pixel scrolling with the fingers of one hand.
Of course you can do a smooth scroll game with a few sprites with just 4 colours that don't look pretty. Or you can do a smooth scroll with microscopic sprites. Or a jerky scroll with big sprites. But you won't see many games with smooth scroll, big and colourful sprites that take almost full screen and also move with quarter pixel scrolling.
What about colours? I don't see many games with ham8 sprites/backgrounds.
What about the frames of animation? Having decent big animations could require hundreds of different images being decompressed realtime to chipram.
What about special effects like neogeo-like zooming done with some help of blitter help perhaps (like the author of brian the lion did with the rotozoom)? And transparency? Perhaps adding some textures to the floor like streetfighterII did?
You are probably assuming the use of lo-res but why not make a hires or hires-laced game? With hi-res you could still make half pixel scrolling. You would have to be careful writting to chipram when the screen is not being drawn to gain chipmem speed and
I think that if your set quality level to 8bit standards it may be easy to make a game but making a quality amiga game can be very hard if you want to make something more than scroll a pityful small sprite jerking at 2 frames.
I think that even with a 060 accelerator you would have hard time making hires-laced games.
-making a 640x480 diablo clone. You could have basic tiles in chipram and apply a mask to make darker or lighter the sections and copy the tiles with the blitter but it would still be a challenge due to the high number of frames from the main characters.
-making a neogeo like fighting game with a decent number of colours fullscreen zooming, animated background, a texture in the floor, parallax scrolls and lots of animations would need decent coding skills. All moving with quarter pixel scrolling, not just the background.
-making a good horizontal scrolling game with lots of parallax, transparency for smoke, big sprites that take the entire screen with animation... with 256colours and/or ham8. And quarter pixel scrolling!
-making strategy games like starcraft run at 640x480 and 256colours/ham8 with smooth scrolling, fog...
I think that coding for >= 16bits requires breaking some limits. 8bit games are quite simpler than >=16bit ones and you can't content yourself making a scroll that would be hard to do on a c64 and saying "oh I have made a scroll that is hard to do on a c64 so my game is done". Making high quality amiga games takes more than a single-pixel scroll with 2 diminute 4-colour sprites jerking at 2 frames.
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Downloading and printing Backbone docs!
Ooops! Amigaguide only, cannot print them here at job ^_^'
...No, wait. Winguide can save the day. Messy format, but it will do!
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-making a 640x480 diablo clone. You could have basic tiles in chipram and apply a mask to make darker or lighter the sections and copy the tiles with the blitter but it would still be a challenge due to the high number of frames from the main characters.
Doing isometric tile scrolling requires transparent blitting ability for the blitter. The blitter has very, VERY poor performance doing transparent blits. We'd need a CPU-blit routine like GameSmith used.
-making a neogeo like fighting game with a decent number of colours fullscreen zooming, animated background, a texture in the floor, parallax scrolls and lots of animations would need decent coding skills. All moving with quarter pixel scrolling, not just the background.
Fullscreen zooming often requires chunky-pixel graphics. Quarter-pixel scrolling requires it be done in low-resolution graphics.
-making a good horizontal scrolling game with lots of parallax, transparency for smoke, big sprites that take the entire screen with animation... with 256colours and/or ham8. And quarter pixel scrolling!
Alpha-blending for fog requires chunky-pixel graphics at the very least (if not hardware accelerated alpha), AGA sprites aren't that wide (only 64-pixels maximum and 16 colors shared between them), parallax requires dual-playfield mode (which limits the display to 15 foreground and 16 background colors), and HAM8 doesn't support horizontal scrolling (if you try it gives you weird color fringes at the edges).
-making strategy games like starcraft run at 640x480 and 256colours/ham8 with smooth scrolling, fog...
I think that coding for >= 16bits requires breaking some limits. 8bit games are quite simpler than >=16bit ones and you can't content yourself making a scroll that would be hard to do on a c64 and saying "oh I have made a scroll that is hard to do on a c64 so my game is done". Making high quality amiga games takes more than a single-pixel scroll with 2 diminute 4-colour sprites jerking at 2 frames.
4-color sprites are more numerous than 16-color sprites. Doing chunky-to-HAM8 requires at least a PowerPC accelerator. Doing 640x480 with sprites requires interlaced sprite support which is not available in AmigaOS 3.9 or earlier.
Almost all of the special effects you have named would work better on a graphics card than on AGA or would require a 500+ MHz PowerPC to implement. IMHO, if you need a 500+ MHz machine to implement those features, you're better off using something other than an Amiga. :(
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Doing isometric tile scrolling requires transparent blitting ability for the blitter. The blitter has very, VERY poor performance doing transparent blits. We'd need a CPU-blit routine like GameSmith used.
You can use the blitter to draw just the pair or odd tiles and draw the middle ones using the cpu.
Fullscreen zooming often requires chunky-pixel graphics. Quarter-pixel scrolling requires it be done in low-resolution graphics.
I think it's possible to do half-pixel horizontal scrolling with 640x480. Anyway I was thinking about lo-res for that kind of game, for diablo or strategy games hi-res is more useful than for these.
I could live with low res if other features are implemented.
Alpha-blending for fog requires chunky-pixel graphics at the very least (if not hardware accelerated alpha), AGA sprites aren't that wide (only 64-pixels maximum and 16 colors shared between them), parallax requires dual-playfield mode (which limits the display to 15 foreground and 16 background colors), and HAM8 doesn't support horizontal scrolling (if you try it gives you weird color fringes at the edges).
The fun is about making something exciting regardless of these well known limits. Ham8 games were released like Olofight. You can do parallax without using dual-playfield mode. You don't have to draw everything using hardware sprites.
4-color sprites are more numerous than 16-color sprites. Doing chunky-to-HAM8 requires at least a PowerPC accelerator. Doing 640x480 with sprites requires interlaced sprite support which is not available in AmigaOS 3.9 or earlier.
I know the sprite limits but you can draw more "sprites" with the blitter or the cpu. You can also reuse the sprites. You don't need PPC to make chunky2ham8, lots of modern scene demos use HAM8 for the graphics (lo-res for 3d scenes and super-hires interlaced for static ones). Even 680x0 Mac emus could use Ham8 for display (although not very fast for hi-res).
Almost all of the special effects you have named would work better on a graphics card than on AGA or would require a 500+ MHz PowerPC to implement. IMHO, if you need a 500+ MHz machine to implement those features, you're better off using something other than an Amiga. :(
I don't think you got my point. It's possible to make better amiga games and you don't have to include all that special effects but you can include some of them.
BTW, the fun is about breaking the limits, otherwise we wouldn't have seen desert dream on c64 or any amiga doom clone. Brian The Lion AGA coder would have never done his rotozoom using the blitter despiting all people thought it was impossible
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What is important for a game is that it is fun. All other considerations are optional, I prefer to have a game fun to play that an attempt of a game done in HAM8.
Let's start with simple games, better than no games at all.
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Just in case you missed it, I posted about a games competition in my last post. I hope that some of you had the time to read it.
For those who don't know much about Backbone (nearly everyone), Rebel wrote a good review of the program which goes into detail about several of its features, and would be a good introduction to learning more about the program. His review can be read here - http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=36338
If you would like to download some example games made in Backbone to try on your Amiga (or UAE) to give you an idea of its capabilities, get this pack - http://www.spin.net.au/~amiga/BackboneGames.lha and this quick demo of a Sonic type game - http://www.spin.net.au/~amiga/Sonic030.lha
If you like the sound of Backbone, why not give it a go and try making a simple, fun game in time for Christmas.
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http://www.spin.net.au/~amiga/BackboneGames.lha and this quick demo of a Sonic type game - http://www.spin.net.au/~amiga/Sonic030.lha
If you like the sound of Backbone, why not give it a go and try making a simple, fun game in time for Christmas.
\(^_^)/
...downloads and plays Sonic on his a1200.
(( (O_O) ))
..this radiates awesomeness.
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Snapshots.
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I like the game contest idea. Set the rules!
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I wish the Amiga had a super active game making scene
:(
16 bit coders went back to the 8 bit scene banging hardware old amiga owners come back for amiga os like aros like havin a vw camper with a saburu engine its just cool i duno to fit real slimed down code into 64k is a challenge or the boot block of a amiga floppy we dont need all this c++ nonsence i say bring back kseka assembler with a ramdisk an cygnes ed thats all u need ! oh an dpaint an a tracker prog ! oh hang on thats the demo scene or real amiga game writers ![/QUOTE]
You'd probably love some of the stuff done by Inigo Quilez:
http://www.iquilezles.org/
and other demo coders, you can still do 4k demos on PC using OpenGL/DirectX.
Although I admit that is slightly off topic ;)
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I really like the sound of this idea, setting limits and themes is also a good way of getting people to think outside of those limitations. Wish I had time to join in!
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I guess most of you have noticed, but just in case, a free keyfile has been uploaded today to Aminet:
http://aminet.net/package/dev/misc/Backbone_Key
Just copy it into your Backbone drawer and off you go!
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Sound good! Post the rules!
Juan
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Definitely, I got Backbone now so I will have a mess around and think of a xmas game, anyone in the Tokyo area want to work together?
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You have two weeks to make a Christmas themed game using Backbone.
Can some please make Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games pleeease.
Thanks.
o/-
Skippy.
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Hey everyone, we have set out some rules for the contest and started a new thread for it. I hope that you will all find the competition fair and fun.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=50652
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Doing isometric tile scrolling requires transparent blitting ability for the blitter. The blitter has very, VERY poor performance doing transparent blits. We'd need a CPU-blit routine like GameSmith used.
Fullscreen zooming often requires chunky-pixel graphics.
Alpha-blending for fog requires chunky-pixel graphics at the very least (if not hardware accelerated alpha), AGA sprites aren't that wide (only 64-pixels maximum and 16 colors shared between them), parallax requires dual-playfield mode (which limits the display to 15 foreground and 16 background colors), and HAM8 doesn't support horizontal scrolling (if you try it gives you weird color fringes at the edges).
4-color sprites are more numerous than 16-color sprites. Doing chunky-to-HAM8 requires at least a PowerPC accelerator. Doing 640x480 with sprites requires interlaced sprite support which is not available in AmigaOS 3.9 or earlier.
Almost all of the special effects you have named would work better on a graphics card than on AGA or would require a 500+ MHz PowerPC to implement.
IMHO, if you need a 500+ MHz machine to implement those features, you're better off using something other than an Amiga. :(
You are wrong.
Optimization for the weaker Amiga is boring, tedious and meaningless work.
Why I am in my spare time, I have to do some shit, if I can do nice and cool games?
Because it will not work on slow Amiga?
Buy a faster hardware running Amiga OS.
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You are wrong.
Optimization for the weaker Amiga is boring, tedious and meaningless work.
Why I am in my spare time, I have to do some shit, if I can do nice and cool games?
Because it will not work on slow Amiga?
Buy a faster hardware running Amiga OS.
I have a MicroA1-c with AmigaOS 4.1 loaned out to another developer because I never use it.
The shader support isn't good enough on OS 4.x at this time to be able to implement even the classic Amiga features. The Radeon 7000 graphics chips on the MicroA1-c motherboard is only decent for fixed-function pipeline 3d. It sucks at most 2d graphics.
Tell me to buy a better Amiga when the Natami or CloneAA chipsets are available for purchase. The CPU is just a required peripheral. For true Amiga programming you need a good GPU and Copper/shader support.
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You are wrong.
Optimization for the weaker Amiga is boring, tedious and meaningless work.
You are joking, right? That's the *essence* of fun - tweaking the underpowered Amiga to do things you would never expect from it. Just like the C64 demos out there today. Have a looksie, you'll be surprised.
Why I am in my spare time, I have to do some shit, if I can do nice and cool games?
Because it will not work on slow Amiga?
Buy a faster hardware running Amiga OS.
...but, but, but not everyone have that kind of hardware. In fact, all such hardware in existence is already in use. What we DO have, however, is a basic platform - the OCS A500. If it is written well and runs there, it will run on every 68k Amiga. I think that's pretty fair.
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UP! :)
http://msxdev.msxblue.com/
Several entries just for this year...