Why is the homebrew scene on the Amiga not as impressive...

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by trydowave

Why is the homebrew scene on the Amiga not as impressive as the C64 etc?

The C64 has been getting some great releases, Metal Dust the amazing looking Sams Journey and a game I brought recently, Knight n Grail. (great game btw)

I recently played the new Castlevania on the Speccy and I think its the best game on that system.

I wish the Amiga homebrew scene was like this.

I understand that it takes a whole lot more effort and time to make 16bit games but since there's so much interest (and love) in the Amiga community it would be good if some games could be produced and then sold, maybe via Kickstarter or something.

Im sure most of us would shell out for a new polished game, even if it was download only.

Thoughts?

Quite simply, time and past releases.

It simply takes more effort on Amiga. Amiga was the first machine where single bedroom coders doing an entire game were the rarity and not the norm.

You want to do a platformer? Fine, then you have to compete with the efforts of Factor 5 20+ years ago.

You want to do a shoot em up? Fine, then you have the likes of Cope-Com who did stellar work in 1988!!

You want to do an adventure game? Fine..... take your best shot at Core Design and their Enchantia engine, or Lucasarts and their plethora of SCUMM games.

Fact is, An A1200 AGA can do a very close approximation in static images of todays hardware, people will expect it to move also.

Its not that people can't compete with the likes of Factor 5 et al, its simply a case of they took nearly a year to do Turrican on Amiga as their FULL TIME JOB........ and you want to do something that competes in less time before people get bored and leave the project????

Amiga releases take longer because people expect so much of the machine, and expect much of the people still using the machine.

[Shatterhand]

That's why I want to do a scrolling Beat'em up on the system. I don't think this genre has ever been done properly on Amiga, and not because of the lack of good programmers or lack of hardware power, but the lack of people who had any idea of how to do a good game on this genre. I have an idea of what the system can and cannot do, and I think it's possible to do a good Streets of Rage alike game on the system.

I also don't think the Vs Fighting game genre (Like Street Fighter) has ever been done properly either, but not only this takes a SHITLOAD of work to do, I don't think I'd be the guy who would be able to do a good game on the genre either.

[spud]

Shatterhand, take a look at http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=66639

[Shatterhand]

Yeah, I know that, I even said if that Final Fight was completed and released back at the time, it would be the best beat'em up on the system.

[Locutus]

I think that the standard limitation of 1 button controllers will make all beat em ups on Amiga mediocre compared the 'the big ones'

[Shatterhand]

My idea is to have 2 button support, and I already thought how to implement 1 button controls and have a nice moveset. Golden Axe on Amiga, IMO, did it pretty well.

Not that I even begun working on anything, it's just ideas, and I am still learning about how to code on Amiga (Which is being a lot of fun )

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by spud

You do get the impression that Amiga users expect higher production values and that may put people off trying.

The way I see it there's a LOT of stuff being produced that in my view barely is passable but people express happiness about it just because it runs on an Amiga.

With this I disagree with Galahad in that I don't think anyone is trying to compete with commercial-level games of back then and they really SHOULDN'T and people aren't really expecting that level of quality from homebrew development. If anyone was set on their own to do, on their spare time, a game of AAA level on the Amiga, well, they'll never finish it.

But they can do games of a very good level like Mr. Beanbag, Solid Gold or Solomon's Key, that you cannot put, technically, on par with something like Mr. Nutz, but they are great games on their own and ooze good quality and attention to detail. That's the kinda game I want to see and cherish.

With this I would like to again say that people should be more encouraged to create their own games. Start with a simple concept but develop it very well and paying attention to detail. The Amiga isn't harder to work with than any other platform despite what people say here.

I think collaboration would be key and I said it before. Perhaps that's a thing to do here, as an initiative in the coders forum, to post people willing to do this or that and start networking those of us with an interest in producing Amiga software. Connect the people that want to do a game that do different things, connect the people that want to create utilities, connect the people that want to do drivers, connect the people that want to improve the OS, etc.

[vulture]

That's why I feel that a good game creator will allow the amiga scene to flourish anew. Even in our limited numbers, there are way more artists (gfx + music) than competent coders willing to undertake the huge task of creating a really good game from scratch.

[Shatterhand]

Is there a way to do a game creator on such underpowered machines (for today standards) that will not feel like SEUCK or something like that?

i've heard there's one for Spectrum and all the games made with it feel and play the same.

[vulture]

I don't think the game creator itself needs to run on an A500 for example. It just needs to produce good enough code that runs ok on a base machine (A500/1mb or vanilla A1200). It doesn't even need to include fancy stuff like parallax et all, just plain old good 8 way smooth scrolling at 320x200 or 320x256 (or about). Many good platformers and shooters would come out with this kind of system in place. It might even be a good idea to get a bounty going for something like that, I believe it could be a success.

[edd_jedi]

Galahad pretty much summed it up. Making Space Invaders or Pong is a couple of hours work in any language. Making Monkey Island or Mario, you need a full time artist for a year, let alone programmers, music producers, testers etc. Making a 16 bit game of the quality people expect would need serious money behind it even if done not-for-profit.

If somebody opened a Kickstarter for an original Lucasarts/Adventuresoft style game on the Amiga I would happily put £50 in the pot, but it would require about 5,000 others to do the same! And there just aren't that many active Amiga users, only a couple of hundred left IMO (and by this I mean people who use their Amiga regularly, not the people who buy an A1200, get all excited and then sell it again 3 months later that every forum is full of.)

[JudasEZT]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

Is there a way to do a game creator on such underpowered machines (for today standards) that will not feel like SEUCK or something like that?

i've heard there's one for Spectrum and all the games made with it feel and play the same.

I saw this video last christmas.. it was quite promising.
[ Show youtube player ]

[AF2013]

I saw this video last christmas.. it was quite promising.
[ Show youtube player ]

When he going to release it?

[JudasEZT]

Originally Posted by AF2013

When he going to release it?

I dont know really. I saw it last christmas, and I remember the author tolds that rest him two or three months to release a first version.

anybody else of EAB has more info??

[Amiga1992]

That looks really good. But an Amiga game maker running on a PC/Mac/Linux would be really great, it'd be a lot easier to use for many reasons.

But to start, even though there are a lot more musiciand and graphics people than there are coders, I would urge anyone interested in Amiga gamemaking to start connecting with each other and collaborate.

[Lonewolf10]

It does take alot of time to make games on Amiga... some of my AMOS projects took anything from 6 months to a year or so to complete.

My current project (made in assembler) has taken me erm... I think 3 years or so thus far (6 months to create level editor in AMOS, 6 months to create raw sound editor in AMOS, 6 months to learn how to decode .png files without using the png.library - I wanted to do it properly and the rest of the time was used to draw graphics and code the program).
I'm at the stage where I need to tidy up the front end (title screen), add sound and draw yet more graphics before I'll be in a position to maybe(!) release a demo...

[Amiga1992]

Loneworlf, buy now you have a set of tools you can re-use. That time you spent creating development tools can be "recovered"in your next game's production.
And you are alone, of course it takes a bunch of time to do on your own!

[spud]

Took me a year I think to do Goatlizard, and with no dev tools such as you have to show for it the next project I have in mind could well take the same amount of time, or longer! I at least have lots of reference code I can work with that will speed things up a little though.

Well played indeed for creating the toolset first!

[john1979]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

It simply takes more effort on Amiga.

[invent]

I have been enjoying this thread and have been playing around with the C64 colour palette. This is not a real game just experimenting. Of course the limitation could be the user not the palette

Nice to be able to blend the C64 and Amiga in some way