New Amiga Multiplayer Game: Battlebrush

[Shatterhand]

Today I streamed the first time my own multiplayer game was played by people other than me testing:

https://www.facebook.com/rafael.lima...8523762495584/

It's on my Facebook Profile, but I believe its open to everyone.

Everyone is speaking portuguese (sorry), but it was very fun to see other people playing my game.

I'll probably release it during this week (I still need to iron out one small bug with the start button not appearing on the menu, and add the Raliza Software logo somewhere).

[Shatterhand]

Download Link:

https://ralizasoftware.neocities.org/amiga.html

It's a multiplayer game for up to 4 different players (AI will control any non-player character). The goal is to paint the biggest area of the screen with your own color. When powerups shows up on bottom of the screen, press the fire button to activate it (The player who press it faster will get it)


Yesterday I made an event with friends to debut the game, it was really fun, and most of it was streamed online. I imagine most people won't find it fun as we are all speak in portuguese, but it's here if anyone wants to watch it:

[ Show youtube player ]

Hope you guys have fun with the game, we had a blast yesterday with it

[Shatterhand]

This deserves some back-story.

I begun working on this back in 2017, when I was still finishing Quasarius. I had the idea for the game, but I wanted to know if a stock amiga could count how many pixels of each color there are on screen fast enough so the players won't keep looking at the screen for a long time waiting for results.

I wrote the routine to do it and I found out it didn't take that long, so I could go on with my idea. I finished Quasarius and then begun coding this. After the game was very "ready", I asked a friend to draw an animated brush. I liked the brush I had drawn, but I couldn't animate it. He had the idea of making them 4 different characters, add more animation, we then discussed an animated intro for the game.

He delivered 3 of the 4 characters, and without the fully animation. Months and months went by, I begun working on other stuff as I waited for him. This end of year I decided I wouldn't wait anymore (And he was fine with it), I finished the last character myself, asked someone else to make a title screen for the game and that's it

I would have coded some stuff diferently now as I understand the Amiga hardware better, but I just didn't feel like redoing stuff again, so the game is as it is. It worked very well during live testing yesterday, so I don't think there will be any bugs. Anything strange, please tell me

[vulture]

Looks like great multiplayer fun, very good idea! Thumbs up!

[jayminer]

Cool, looks like a great party-game!

[Shatterhand]

Did anyone actually tried it out?

[Gzegzolka]

Looks interesting, might be cool for party games.

[manossg]

Gave it a spin (with 3 AI's, as I didn't have any friends around) and it looked like a really fun game!

[breech]

That looks fun, great job!

[E-Penguin]

How are you counting the number of pixels of a given colour? Just scanning the bitmap or something clever? (if were me I'd keep a separate counter per player and increment / decrement with each pixel drawn)

[honx]

since sweepout is dead now, i don't trust amiga multiplayer games anymore.
once i begin playing and liking such game, it's offline and not playable anymore...

[Shatterhand]

How are you counting the number of pixels of a given colour? Just scanning the bitmap or something clever? (if were me I'd keep a separate counter per player and increment / decrement with each pixel drawn)

Scanning the Bitmap, yes. The thing I did is that when the ring plays at the end to say the match ended, the game is *already* scanning the pixels When the third ring plays it's at around 3/5 of the screen if I recall correctly. . So that sound effect kinda masks it on slower machines, and the remaining time feels it's just suspense being built (No, the computer is still scanning ). On faster machines it goes so fast it doesn't make any difference

I thought about counting while the pixels are being drawn, but I couldn't find a proper way to do it, I'd need to know what color is "below" the area each brush is painting, and how many pixels it's actually erasing of that color, and there was no fast enough way to do it.

since sweepout is dead now, i don't trust amiga multiplayer games anymore.
once i begin playing and liking such game, it's offline and not playable anymore...

I don't know what's sweepout, but this game here is local multiplayer only.... it will only be dead if you don't have friends around to play

[MBry0]

Looks funny!

[E-Penguin]

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

I'd need to know what color is "below" the area each brush is painting, and how many pixels it's actually erasing of that color, and there was no fast enough way to do it.

Smart to do it only at the end

Maybe you could get the blitter to do it for you - you could create 4x 1-bit bitmap views of the screen (BitplaneBitMap) and do individual blits for each colour, then test the blitter zero flag BZERO.
http://amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD.../node0170.html

Although that's 4x the blits so probably not worth the complexity.