Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga community support ideas => Topic started by: Cammy on October 16, 2007, 09:44:01 AM
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I'm posting this on several forums to reach the largest audience possible. I've been developing this idea for a while, and I think it's something we really need for the Amiga community. My idea is for a new Amiga games company/developer/producer/publisher made up of anyone who wants to join. At first it will most likely be non-profit, but there's always the potential to earn money down the track if we manage to put out some good games.
I'll call it a team rather than a company from now on. So the team will be run through a website and forum where Amiga games coders, artists, musicians, playtesters and anyone else interested in developing games can come to discuss the games they're working on and help each other out. There are plenty of Amiga users out there with talents in a certain field but who don't know how or where to apply their skills. There's no use being an artist if you can't think of anything to draw, or a good coder whose game may go unrecognised because they couldn't find someone to draw some good graphics for his game. And I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who may not have the time or skills to make games at all, but who have lots of ideas for cool new games or just like to play and test them out.
The forum would be a part of the site itself, and themed the same way. It wouldn't be a part of Amiga.org or any other Amiga forum. I think it's best this way because it allows the group to be a little bit more private, but isn't biased towards or against any Amiga sites (because there are too many wars and rivalries going on in the Amiga community now). The forum will be private, so people can only read it if they've signed up, but anyone who is genuinely interested in helping out is welcome to join. The main site will have a main page with news and updates on upcoming games, as well as separate pages for each game in progress, complete with screenshots, demos and any other downloads we want to share. As well as a page for each game, we could have a profile page for each member of the team, listing their skills, talents, and other portfolio information for any team member wanting to advertise themselves. And also we would have a guest book, for people to comment on the games or whatever.
Underground Arcade is the name we've chosen. We'll have our own logo and intro screens, as well as a set of standards that games must require to be published under the Underground Arcade label. It's just a way of keeping some quality control in the games, and making sure nothing is released until it's finished and nicely polished. Hopefully with all the help from a large, international team of Amiga enthusiasts, the developers of the game will have the backup and support to push them forward and finish their games properly, rather than releasing them half-finished. We will need lots of playtesters to sign up!
If anyone out there has a game they're already developing, we're very interested in bringing you onboard. I myself have been trying to help out with a few games for a few different people, and find it sometimes hard to come up with new ideas (I've been pixelling graphics, but can't always come up with ideas for characters to draw) and can't draw fast enough to keep up with the demand, and I know other people are trying to get their games made but really just need a bit more help and support before they can go any further with their games. The more people we have onboard, the faster we can get these games out there.
Ultimately we would be releasing full commercial quality games with an assortment of payment and delivery options, including printed, boxed games with extras as well as immediate downloads. We'll have PayPal payment options as well, and people can donate towards games in development if they want to encourage us to finish them (we could even offer discounts to people who prepaid or donated towards games). We would also offer freeware games as well.
Here is an idea of the kind of people we need to join the team:
Coders (Any language, as long as you can make an Amiga game with it)
Pixel Artists (For sprites, blocks and anything else in pixels)
3D Artists (Game intros, rendered graphics, or 3D polygonal games)
Real Artists (Box artwork, backgrounds, character designs)
Mod Musicians (For most ingame music)
Other Musicians (For CD32 versions of the games)
Dreamers (For some good ideas of what to put in a game)
Gamers (To test our games and tell us how crap they are)
Designers (If anyone can help out with designing a website, for example)
Wealthy Investors (Why not?)
Amiga Games That Weren't (And someone to finish them so we can release them)
We hope to have our first game demo available by the end of this month. It will be a simple, freeware platform game, and a Halloween present to the Amiga community.
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I accidently just posted that without logging out of Cammy's account first, so just pretend Optimus Prime said everything above and not Cammy.
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Have you got two accounts or do you share a computer or something
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Well, judging by your user pix, I'd rather talk to Cammy! :)
Sounds like a cool idea - just wish I was more of an Amiga coder.
Speaking of games - anyone remember an old Commie64 games that you had to type in...top down view,low-res screen, each player controlled a diamond shaped thingy, you picked up a red ball and shot it towards the other player. There were pryamidal shapes, some were hills, others were holes. There was a sinlge portal to jump to another part of the screen.
Spheroids! (Just remembered the name!) I'd love to see that on the Amiga. The most basic shoot 'em up, I had hours playing that with my oldest son.
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We share a computer, and usually I would be posting with Opera and Cammy with IE, but the board isn't working in Opera anymore.
That game sounds famiiar, I might have played it on the C64. Ports of older games are more than welcome too.
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The board works fine in Opera here? :-? v 9.23 if that's any help.
As for the idea, I think it'd be great if it happened. I don't like the odds of it working (anything Amiga related has poor odds these days) but I guess if the right people got together it would work. :-)
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Sounds great! I'd love to join, but unfortunately I don't have time to take care of my family, code demos *and* games.
I'd love to help on some small parts, though.
Just a thought: If you get a good idea for a game, split the project into as many small parts as possible. Let people assign tasks to self and see how it works out.
For example, if you were to make a simple version of tic-tac-toe, I'd probably split it up like so:
- Graphics: X and O, 16x16 pixels, 16 colors max. One red, one blue, no palette restrictions.
- Graphics: Background/board. Checkerboard-ish, 5x5 rows/cols with 16x16 gaps.
- Music: Short, laid-back, "thinking" tune. Minimum 1 minute, loops forever.
- Coding: Graphics initialization, system friendly. Must work on all chipsets/cards.
- Coding: Tic-tac-toe logic. Create a "map" in memory, let users place X or O on it, check for tie/winner.
- Coding: Graphics frontend. Use init+logic+map from above, keep track of who's turn it is, and place X or O's with mouse.
Or something like that - maybe this only works on small projects, I have no idea.
All I know is that if I had a few hours to kill, I'd maybe stop by to see if there were anything I could do.
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Sounds a lot like flying paper. What ever happened to that group. I remeber doing a logo for them at the beggining but because of life commitments I dropped off the radar
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great Idea, I Love programming in AMOS, am currently working on a racing game - like super hang on.
- do you see AMOS as upto the job?????
Thanks, Rick. (UK)
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No fair, CHEATING!
jaminJay
"Great minds think alike,
Fools seldom differ."
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Well, we need a graphician to help out with Worm Wars...
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I will be glad to offer my services and see if any of my employees would care to look into it also. Cheers!!!
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Good luck with this.
Andy
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JJ wrote:
Sounds a lot like flying paper. What ever happened to that group. I remeber doing a logo for them at the beggining but because of life commitments I dropped off the radar
The usual, lots of big ideas and not much else. I don't think there was ever any code developed.
The closest thing to activity was one guy who brought his 'completed' project to the group. I did a bunch of graphics for it, title-screen, cinematics, etc. But I don't think that version was ever released, I can only find the older version on Aminet. TBH, the game was crap anyway.
After that activity dropped off quite a lot. Coder then used the site to host some of the articles and interviews he'd written for the aborted Amiga.org magazine. Eventually, the whole thing went completely quiet and the only thing posted to the ML was the usual viagra spam. After a while I gave up on anything ever happening and unsubscribed.
flyingpaper.com still exists, but it's now all about Mattias Basic that I believe Coder was involved with some time ago.
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Hi. New user here, long time lurker, this topic encouraged me to sign up.
I really like this collaborative games creation idea. One idea I'd like to add to your concept is a tutorial section, as I'm sure there are plenty of Amiga fans and users that would like to help with programming, art, etc... but don't have the necessary knowledge. Once tutorials were written on the subjects teams could assemble themselves to create simple freeware games that made use of their new knowledge. As the competence of these teams grew, the volume of quality Amiga games would increase (and hopefully the amount of new tutorials also). What do you think?
Also, I'd like to know whether support of certain platforms would be encouraged, or will it be a free for all? I mean clearly games can and should be made for all Amiga platforms, but I would say to get the most benefit, support should be for OS 3.9/4 and AROS. All IMO of course.
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@Rebel-CD32
First: You need a New Optimus Prime in your Avatar :-)
Second: WHo is Cammy? is that her in that pic? Introduce man! Introduce! ;-)
Third: is she into Amigas?
fourth: This is a great idea.......I hope we can get some new Pixel games such as Street Fighter APLHA 3, Metal Slug, Dark Stalkers, Super Mario World. FInal Fantasy Tactics (all doable on an AGA machine by the way)
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@leirbag28
Second: WHo is Cammy?
Com'mon you know he just used that avatar to get you all to read the post. Would you have been as interested if he stuck with the robot? :-)
Nice idea, btw. I hope it comes to some thing.
Plaz
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Thanks to everyone who has replied. Hopefully anyone with any unfinished game projects can join up and share in our pool of resources once we've got more members. The whole large team idea should help motivate people to finish their games rather than abandoning them, and whenever someone gets stuck, they can always ask for help.
Cammy is a real girl who loves Amigas and Amiga games. She likes dressing up in video game and comic character costumes, and is currently working on a Halloween themed platform game, which still has a lot of work to do.
The game's title isn't complete yet, but at the moment we're calling it "Halloween Nightmare", although it will probably be "Someone's Halloween Nightmare" where "Someone" will be the name of the main character once we've come up with a name for her (any suggestions?).
Here are some early screenshots from the game, although it will have a panel (with lives, energy and score on it) in the finished game.
(http://www.spin.net.au/~amiga/Enemies.png)(http://www.spin.net.au/~amiga/SecretStash.png)
It should run on any Amiga with a hard drive, although we will try to make a floppy version and a CD32 version as well.
All graphics were drawn completely from scratch on a real Amiga, and the game is also being made on a real Amiga with Backbone.
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Looks really good! Will there be a demo?
(I could never get backbone to work on my A1200...)
jaminJay
"Thou shalt not announce announcements."
No, really, I'm sure that's in there, somewhere... :-D
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@Rebel-CD32
well then
1st: You must introduce me to this Amiga Chick
2nd: Can She dance any kind of Dance? (I'm a VJ)
3rd: The game looks great.especially the pumpkin head character. Learning from the past please make sure this game is OVERSCAN, Works in NTSC mode without cutting off the screen (Examine the game OUTFALL very carefully...it does PAL and NTSC switching better than anything I have ever seen in my entire life.the screen doesnt move!). Well at least there should be a LIST somewhere of STANDARD what NOT TO DO's in Amiga games, and WHAT TO DO's such as I stated above. I would love to contribute Names for characters, and Graphics.
The little witch you can call.........Cammy! :-) Cammy's Halloween Nightmare.
Is your friend Cammy trying to look like Cammy from StreetFighter in that pic?
She did a good job.
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I'm working as hard as I can to bring out a decent, playable demo before October 31st, which is Halloween!
But I really need more help, I need some music, sound effects, title screens and intro animations. Anyone is welcome to help out if they think they're up to the challenge. I can even let you download a work-in-progress demo if you would like to help or playtest it.
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@Rebel-CD32
Is that ocs/ecs graphics? Certainly looks very good if that is the case!
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@Cammy
That looks great. I love the Halloween theme. I've also sent a PM.
Plaz
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All the graphics are drawn in only 16 colours, we would have used 32 but it ran much faster with 16, so it also uses an OCS colour palette and is fully OCS/ECS compatible.
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Well actually I did a lot of code for Flying paper, but I had to abandon the project because of lack of time, from my side. I would still love to develop for the amiga, but I have to be realistical, and time is not what I have most of.
Atm, i "only" do development on my CMS, which is used for several webpages. But I hardly have time for simple ASP coding.
I still ahve lots of ideas for games, and still have code/gfx/sfx/stories and so on lying on my harddrive.
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All the graphics are drawn in only 16 colours
Wow.. The screenshot looks amazing in just 16 colors. To make something look this good with so few colors requires real talent. :bow:
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It's a good news that some people make again games for the classics Amiga ! I remember some years ago, when I had my first ADSL connection to the internet I spent my days on the Aminet servers downloading PD games and discovering real gems.
I miss those days...
But if people unite to develop some games it could bring back all the fun again ! :-)
I participated in the past to some game development, helping friends and trying to make my own projects too. Unfortunately it never went very far (a playable demo to test the game engine in the best cases).
Now I'm happy that development starts again, and most of all for the old Amigas.
If I had a wish, it would be to adapt some (old) games from other platforms, I particularly think about the MSX platform (one of my first computers) and it's real masterpieces like Aleste 2, Undead Line, Valis 2 and the MSX's Konami titles too : Yie ar Kung Fu, Road Fighter, Penguin Adventure, Maze of Galious, Salamander, Firebird, Metal Gear 1 and 2...
From other platforms :
- Antiriad (C64)
- Pacific (CPC)
- Alex Kidd Miracle World, Kenseiden (SMS)
- Bloody Wolf, Dungeon Explorer, Nectaris, Son Son II, Cybercross (PC Engine)
- Kung Fu Master, Kidd Niki, Wonder Boy in Monster Land (a real port not a crap one like the one existing on Amiga) (Arcade Coin Op)
Anyway I wish you good luck (and I cross my fingers !) ;-)
Cammy : You made a really good job, I'm looking forward to try your game !
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Cammy wrote:
All the graphics are drawn in only 16 colours, we would have used 32 but it ran much faster with 16, so it also uses an OCS colour palette and is fully OCS/ECS compatible.
I must it look really great judging by that screenshot then. Really looking forward to test it out one day.
Any chance of some video clip before that time?
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WOW! Impressive!!!
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Leirbag, sorry I missed your post earlier. To answer your questions.
1. Cammy's real name is Moya, she's 22 and plays Amiga games and reads comics all day.
2. I don't think she can dance, she really only listens to classical/orchestral music normally.
3. Whever possible, all our games will be as compatible as possible. At the moment, since this first game (the Halloween one) is made in Backbone, we can only work with the limitations of the program itself. Fortunately it supports overscan, but slows down the larger the screen is. Because of this, we will bring out a few different versions to download. One will be for expanded Amigas and will be in PAL overscan with a panel across the bottom (showing lives, health and score). Another version for NTSC Amigas with a smaller panel, running in NTSC overscan resolution as well. There will be a CD32 version and an A500 version with a smaller screen too, because the game doesn't run very fast on those systems at the moment.
Once we've got some coders working with us, hopefully they will try and meet all our quality standards, which will hopefully mean lots of full-screen games, without confining black borders around them.
We're not sure about using the name Cammy, just because Moya loves the character (from Street Fighter) so much, she might not want to reuse the name for an inferior character.
And yeah, she dresses up as Cammy a lot. She has the green costume from Super Street Fighter II (as well as a blue "Player 2" version of it) and her blue costume from Street Fighter Alpha 3 and the VS games.
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Rebel-CD32, are you logged in as Cammy again, or does Cammy always talk about herself in the third person?
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I did it again, but I swear I did log in as myself that last time, I blame IE. I'll have to figure out why Opera doesn't submit posts/PMs anymore.
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This game is the kind of thing that would be cool bundled with the Minimig if ever a company got hold of the idea.
It could almost bring new life to the OCS gaming platform!
I'm not sure if a bundled flash card to hold the ADF would be worth it though.
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Ide help with the website, and music side of things!
Ive done a few sites. most busy one is www.my-wii.co.uk.
I have over 200 users on that site now.
i also did www.amigabits.co.uk, but that never got finished as the server never supported the ideas I had!
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Your site looks really good, and we'd definitly appreciate some help getting our site up. There's just one thing though, the site needs to be coded in pure HTML and use really small and efficient images. It just makes sure the site is clean and works with all browsers, and loads quick enough for us poor dialup users.
I wouldn't blame you for not wanting to help anymore, I know coding by hand is a lot harder (I had my own Cammy site once which I coded and it took ages). I'd do it myself again, except I'm too busy making the game right now.
Music is also one thing we desperately need. The game needs some title screen music as well as in-game music, and a little sample or jingle for the Underground Arcade screen. Have you heard the music in Slam Tilt? Something like the bonus tracks in the Demon table would be cool.
If anyone wants to help out, we're setting up a developer forum, it's secure so we can share our ideas and work, if you would like to join, please send me or Rebel-CD32 a PM.
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If you get me some graphics over I can do a simple layout no worries.
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I accidently just posted that without logging out of Cammy's account first, so just pretend Optimus Prime said everything above and not Cammy.
That's ok, she can be our "amiga" Lady since it looks like she was born the same year the A1000 came out. :roflmao:
Dammy
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I think you guys are doing a great thing and if you need any help coding for your website i know html very well and I make a lot of layouts using tables. I also know php and flash but I sure pure html will be better for you type of site.
Examples
Tribal Futures (http://www.freewebs.com/4mula/)
Algorhythm Radio (http://algorhythmradio.net/)
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Any updates on the project? It has been quiet for quite a long time...
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I downloaded Backbone and the Halloween demo and will run that on another machine at school.
I wanted to know if anyone has done this in Hollywood?
Thanks.