Pro game artist looking for help/collaboration

[Digiman]

What would be great is if we could get some really talented coders to do thing not present in the chipset from mid 80s arcade technology. eg proper overlaid parallax in software without crippling limitations of dual playfield, scaling graphic routines as good as Lotus 2, scrolling 3D textured floors in perspective (think dpaint rotating image 45 degrees into Z plane via X axis through its centre). Hell isometric engine would be awesome so I could finally code something like the unreleased Big Engine F1 arcade game.

I have had to think outside the box a lot for my 16bit scaling psuedo 3D Oblivion forest engine, Blitz will give me a rough guide but it might not be enough. We shall see.

My other game will just cheat by using a 2mb A500/1000/2000 but will have big bold very subtly animated objects. I will shrink them later to tweak chipset/CPU bandwidth used up by the textured 3D floor.

Of course none of this (or Gradius/Vulcan Venture/Salamander 1 level ports) will start until I can support myself without doing this soul destroying job AND I have atleast one fully networked Amiga set up 24/7 with a way to drop files in and out of WINUAE environment to real Amiga as easily as you can on ST emulator + emulated hard drive.......and find a few missing pages from my Blitz 2.1 manual

If you can do this in STOS just using original STE CPU power to do everything (scroll, animate soft sprites etc) just think what is possible in Blitz etc on feature rich Amiga chipset.

[youtube]zqjNSF5M0tQ[/youtube]

[Digiman]

Yeah, look at games like Xenon 2 Megablast... the ST version is all processor, right? Thats a full screen 16 color game with lots of shots, enemies and a simulated 2.5 playfields (counting the back stars as 0.5 playfields )
[youtube]od0B1EQw47I[/youtube]
 
The A500 version looked the same (sounded WAY better)...so, if the Amiga could do all that with just its processor, what about all that blitter power on top...Then the Sprites...Amiga games should have incredible visual potential.
Lets make it happem
 
PS, how do you imbed a youtube vid like that?

Same 16 colours on Amiga but faster. Why is it ambitious early games like Sword of Sodan are better? Big bold Neo-Geo style graphics is where I start. We must all exceed chipset limit and scale it back.

Chase HQ is my dream project, but maybe only Magnetic Fields team for Lotus II could do it justice. Too many ST ports!


I see you worked out the youtube thing

[Digiman]

You know, if you guys are serious about this, I'll pitch in with graphics, UI elements and sound, should this actually see fruition.

[edit]

I would, however, like to see something similar to Unity. Side scrollers, Top scrollers and adventure-type games, similar to the Ultima series.

Unity the Lionhead Llamasoft unreleased Gamecube game?

[Digiman]

Everything is better in SEGA style scaling graphics for 2.5D

[Digiman]

Id give my right arm (well, maybe not *my* right arm, but Id happily hack someone elses of and *hand* it over (no pun intended)) for a new "sprite" based "3d" racing game (ala outrun, etc.).
Most modern racing games are all way too similar, and serious for my tastes.

If I had access to such an engine then remakes of Chase HQ, Outrun and Power Drift would be first out the blocks

And something like Galaxy Force II!

[Digiman]

The Amiga can do way better than Xenon 2, checkout "Mega Typhoon" (http://aminet.net/search?query=mega+typhoon), it's technically a really impressing game ! The game is very smooth, and there are many sprites on screen. I dream of an Aleste 2 (or maybe a "Raiden"/"Twin Cobra" like shooter) version for Amiga using "Mega Typhoon" engine !

A video of "Mega Typhoon" is available on youtube too (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-iapekmpng), but better try it on a real Amiga500, it's far more impressive !

Battle Squadron dumped on Xenon II, super smooth AND 2 player co-op. It's sad to say but back in the day ST or Amiga artists were generally nowhere compared to coin-op artists, and why did many western artists draw outlines around sprites from arcade conversions too? Jim Sachs quality was an exception.

I had sprites for Nemesis/Gradius on my ST screen in 1986 which I had no use for as I am not a 68k programmer.

That game looks very good, will have to check it out thanks.

One day I will finish a 1 level demo of Lifeforce/Salamander for OCS.

[Digiman]

yeah, Battle Squadron was great, but the reason I mentioned Xenon 2 is that it has 2.5 layers of scrolling and seems all processor done (at least on the ST) so I'd figure Amiga wit hthe aid of blitter should have been able to do so in 32 color instead of just 16...since the ST had no blitter and theres only a 1 bitplane diference between 16 and 32 colors.

Double whammy, ST and Amiga shared too much code and they didn't want to redraw all the graphics, and so we had a 16 colour version. The CDTV version doesn't even change tracks in sync with level changes looking at youtube videos.

The real pi$$take is they did the graphics on Dpaint I think.

[Digiman]

Did you ever play the old Salamander MSX version (done by Konami themselves !) ?

My inspiration was the Commodore 64 version, which considering the C64's specification was really quite a miracle. But I spent whole summers in the mid 80s playing Nemesis and Salamander in the arcades.

Way back in the mists of time I knew graphically it would look good and also the Amiga would do a good version based on my initial tests on an ST with zero hardware assist. I got a reasonable two layer parallax vertically scrolling engine out of the ST with my then Salamander test graphics in STOS Basic language. Probably a good thing Imagine/Ocean didn't convert it themselves back in the day as it probably wouldn't have been more than an ST port

First game I will do is something simple but with something to prove. Level of 1.3 of Micky Mouse-Castle of Illusion from Sega Megadrive/Genesis on Amiga. If I can get that out the door hopefully means I can blow out all the cobwebs from my brain years later. Plus it would make a fun little game to pass the time with and prove Amiga games should look more like Sega 16bit games and a lot less like ST games!

My dream conversion though is Gauntlet 1.

[Digiman]

Yeah, I'd like to see more development for baseline systems as well. (Though it would be nice to see development for expanded systems that isn't just a bunch of SDL ports...)

I will do 7mhz 68000 OCS. Possibly 14mhz OCS palette for 020 or AGA 14mhz 020 as extra but mostly for 512kb-1mb 1985 Amiga A1000 spec is MY target.

So A500-2000 is covered. Accelerators are too rare and too expensive! Even I don't have one.

[Digiman]

One of my ideas is something 2.5D (ie Sega Afterburner/Outrun type scaling graphics engine) so unavoidably it has to be technically good otherwise it will fail.

My plan is to test it works, then get help making it ASM code from my working algorithms. Think SEGA arcade hardware from late 80s meets forest areas of Oblivion game.

Could be horrible could be awesome. Who knows

[Digiman]

Well yes I won't show graphics until I can see them working at 25fps so I guess that is a dream

Also I foolishly squander my meager earnings on bills and food not overpriced A4000 setup from ebay to code on so dreaming again I guess.