Underthreat - Shootemup - WIP

[invent]

Hi Everyone,

Below is an early concept image for a Shootemup Game in 16 colours (I'm aiming for every Classic Amiga to be able to play)



Copper Effect (Is this possible?).
If I had a 4 colour background can each scanline be changed (darker/lighter) to give the illusion of a gradient like shading? The left panel is the original image, the second panel has shading every 16 pixels, and the third panel is every 1 pixel scanline.

Does this copper effect slow down games in anyway or are there particular limits I need to be aware of.




Many thanks in advance


---
I do have or am working on a full HD version here

[mjnurney]

looks great , what are you writing it in or with ?

mike.

[Toni Galvez]

Originally Posted by invent

Hi Everyone,

Below is an early concept image for a Shootemup Game in 16 colours (I'm aiming for every Classic Amiga to be able to play)



Copper Effect (Is this possible?).
If I had a 4 colour background can each scanline be changed (darker/lighter) to give the illusion of a gradient like shading? The left panel is the original image, the second panel has shading every 16 pixels, and the third panel is every 1 pixel scanline.

Does this copper effect slow down games in anyway or are there particular limits I need to be aware of.




Many thanks in advance


---
I do have or am working on a full HD version here

I have to say, your sprites look good but the background tiles are strange, bad color palette you choose, I invite you to visit this web, this people manage to make so good color palettes that combines almost all the colors to make 5 tones gradients very well.

http://wayofthepixel.net/index.php?topic=4306.0

Please do not forget to make good game design and MUSIC&FX at the same time.

Good luck.

[Leffmann]

Originally Posted by invent

Copper Effect (Is this possible?).
If I had a 4 colour background can each scanline be changed (darker/lighter) to give the illusion of a gradient like shading? The left panel is the original image, the second panel has shading every 16 pixels, and the third panel is every 1 pixel scanline.

Does this copper effect slow down games in anyway or are there particular limits I need to be aware of.

Sure, a lot of games do this. The Copper has no built-in concept of backgrounds or gradients, and what you're doing is giving the Copper a program that basically says change this and that palette entry on this and that line, which means any other graphics using those palette entries will be affected in the same way.

The Copper programs do eat up a little amount of time, but unless you're changing f.ex. 16 colors on every single scanline (which is about the limit before it flows into the beginning of the next scanline so to speak) it won't matter much. In your case, changing the shades of blue one at a time at every 5 scanlines would probably look good enough.

[Mrs Beanbag]

yes indeed, this is easily possible. in fact as Leffman says you don't even need to change all the colours on one line, you could change them one at a time, in fact i think that might even look better, if you staggered the colour changes you wouldn't see the point where it changed so easily. If they all changed together you might notice a "step".

although looking at that particular background image, you only need to change one colour per scanline anyway since you could just cycle the colours around on the image, like in a ring buffer. in other words, instead of a transition from a palette "001, 002, 003, 004" to "002, 003, 004, 005" one could simply change the first colour to get "005, 002, 003, 004" but remap the image to look the same.

[Steve T]

looks good, i like the art style, those are 3d rendered sprites?

[Amigajay]

Looks very good, i prefer this over any HD version! Keep us updated.

[Gzegzolka]

Background looks good, but I'm not sure about ships palette, they look like at first they were rendered with more colors and next reduced to palette that do not fit them well.

[Mrs Beanbag]

yes, consider using hardware sprites for player ship and/or bullets, then you can have an entirely separate 15 colour palette for those things.

[Gzegzolka]

Anyway there are also some good things too like background is bit darker so it's clear what's on first plan and where You can fly. Bullets are also well visible.

[Galahad/FLT]

Originally Posted by invent

Hi Everyone,

Below is an early concept image for a Shootemup Game in 16 colours (I'm aiming for every Classic Amiga to be able to play)



Copper Effect (Is this possible?).
If I had a 4 colour background can each scanline be changed (darker/lighter) to give the illusion of a gradient like shading? The left panel is the original image, the second panel has shading every 16 pixels, and the third panel is every 1 pixel scanline.

Does this copper effect slow down games in anyway or are there particular limits I need to be aware of.




Many thanks in advance


---
I do have or am working on a full HD version here

Yes you could have copper banding for the background, and if you wanted to go a step further, you could reload the colours for the hiscore table to give it a bit more colour as well.

[invent]

Hi Mike, Thank you, it is not writing in anything, I have no coding skills

My focus is to develop all the graphics first then find an interested developer.

Hi Toni, good suggestion on posting to wayofthepixel site, will also look into http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/ for some palette optimising tips. I did look recently for another Classic Amiga game I'm working on at the moment.

Hi Leffmann/Mrs Beanbag, thanks for the Copper info, very interesting. I was aiming to lock out the background colour possibly which might then need to go from 4 colours to 3. Other level ideas might use one colour but change more, I'll concept up some ideas soon.
The staggered approach might be another idea. I have also thought of shifting the colour over time rather than the gradient/shading idea but at strategic points where not much is going on, (trying to optimise any potential slowdown). For example as you get to the end of the level where the end boss is, the blue could change to red.

Hi Steve T, Thanks, yes created in 3D, sample image of player and enemy.

Thanks, will do, Amigajay.

Gzegolka, yes true. I did a quick convert from 1920x1080 (24bit) to 320x256 (16 colours, not optimised). Once I have fine tuned the palette, I will tweak the player ship to fit better. Ideally I would also like to have more than 3 frames for player, but might prefer less if i need to customise the pixels and restrain for memory limitations, especially once weapon add-ons are rendered to the ship

The background is darker than I would ideally go for but the aim is to make sure you can clearly see everything else, bullets, aliens, objects to avoid.

Hi Galahad/FLT, I will optimise the score panel with a more custom palette

Sorry for the long reply.

[ransom1122]

I quite like the look if it, looks very X-out-ish. Good luck with the project

[Muzkat]

Looks fantastic! Nice work!

[Mrs Beanbag]

Originally Posted by invent

Hi Leffmann/Mrs Beanbag, thanks for the Copper info, very interesting. I was aiming to lock out the background colour possibly which might then need to go from 4 colours to 3.

of course you could always re-order the bitplanes and palette so that some other non-changing colour is the background colour. And you can calculate a bob mask to make any colour transparent, it doesn't have to be colour 0.

although i notice that the darkest blue seems to appear in the background and enemy graphics, which might complicate things.

another thing you could do, if you don't use sprites for the ship and bullets, is use sprites to render the 3/4 colour background, since it seems quite repetitive, and you could also do a parallax effect. Then you would get 3 more different colours to use on your foreground and enemies graphics. It seems the background is only 64 pixels wide? So it would only use 4 sprites, then you still have 3 sprites left for something else, or 4 if you manually load SPR7DAT.

[Adrian Browne]

Looks interesting and I hope you find a programmmer/developer.

[Mounty]

Nice looking sprites. It would be great if you could make a game similar to Cardiaxx.

[invent]

Thanks Adrian

Mounty, I have never heard of Cardiaxx for the Amiga, and recently watched the longplay of the game. Interesting fast Defender/Uridium type shoot em up.

A quick update. Redfined the Score panel with custom colours.



The Background also has more variety, always intended extra detail. This particular level is the InnerShip, so I wanted to be able to show outside space as well

Lots more to do but the colour palette is getting closer.


Also thinking about changing the 4 colours of background to different Hue, as you get towards end Boss, some colour are in the sprites but i don't mind that



I also noticed a nice colour trick on a C64 game Creatures

Might be a nice way to flicker alternate frames to give the illusion of a 3rd colour. I wonder if any Amiga games did this?

[Mrs Beanbag]

the graphics look really nice now! (well they were good before but they are much improved and cleaner looking in your latest version)

but i still don't know why you wouldn't use hardware sprites for anything and get more colours that way

[invent]

Hi Mrs Beanbag, I would like to use hardware sprites but need to get a better understanding of them. Time to do some reading. Any link or resource would be super helpful.