New action platformer for Amiga (sic!)

[Blackgoat]

Hello, just want some feedback and opinion about some graphic I made for my intended game. Until now, some work was done, and now it become not just fun, but also work, sometimes boring and difficult... So I need to know if it is not just pure vanity...

Also, if somebody can provide little help with coding in amazing and loved-by-everybody AMOS basic, do not hesitate to contact me

The aim is a dense quality action platformer that (maybe) bears (some little) comparison with commercial games of eighties and nineties, as well as with the retro games which are today released for the current platforms

IMHO is sad that such a beautiful platform, like Amiga undoubtfully is, with so much user friendly tools intended directly for game developing, and with emulators which run flawless even on nearly every mobile device, still have not something like Gunlord or Super Cyborg...

Thanx for your opinions...

[PortuguesePilot]

Looks great. Do you have some code done or just graphics?

[Retro1234]

Good Art

[Blackgoat]

Just graphics and some music, if we talk about creative work. Code... actually Iam digging 20 years old memories and typing some code from AMOS manuals and handbooks...

[SkulleateR]

looks nice ... sadly I´m not a skilled coder, just can get a HELLO WORLD to work

[Blackgoat]

arrrrr, nice to have some feedback. Here some ugly boss enemy WIP... do you think 68k amiga can handle such large object?

[Amiga1992]

Keep up the good work, I hope you find a coder to help you out. Don't limit yourself to AMOS, if you have not made any code for it, then let a coder with experience in Blitz or ASM step forward if they feel like doing so. Sticking to AMOS would make sense if you had a huge chunk of working code already made.

You need to work with a coder to further nail down the graphics, to work around real Amiga limitations. On your first pic for example I see you could have some color palette problems (that enemy tank has maybe too many colors). And remember you have to keep one palette throughout, so choose your colors wisely.

[Blackgoat]

Yep, momentally I rezignated for things like paralax scrolling, dual playfield etc. because I learned that ECS Amiga can have only 8 colors for each playfield in those modes... but everything, tank include, is made from just 32 colors. Lot of dithering.

[Amiga1992]

YEah but you can't have as many colors in each sprite as you want, usually. As I said, you need to talk with a coder and read up about Amiga graphics limitations, just having everything in 32 colors doesn't make it correct.

It's better to start with the right foot than doing a load of work that you have to correct later, a pain in the ass. Look at the graphics discussion in the latest pages of the Rygar conversion: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=70634&page=40

[Blackgoat]

hm, things getting complicated :-) ok, will try to learn something... thank you. Only one question: I do not rely on sprites much, because the are too small. Currently I am playing only with BOBs, sprites may be used for projectiles, explosions and common small enemies. Of course, now I do not know if more BOBs do not cause massive slowdown on real Amiga...

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by Blackgoat

Hello, just want some feedback and opinion about some graphic I made for my intended game. Until now, some work was done, and now it become not just fun, but also work, sometimes boring and difficult... So I need to know if it is not just pure vanity...

Everything worthwhile requires effort, so keep it up.

I second Akira's recommandation to read the Rygar's thread. There is a lot discussed there about graphics constraints which are valid for about every Amiga game so it is always good to know about them even if they can be quite technical.

The information is quite spread throughout the whole thread so it can be a bit difficult to read in one go but I think it is worth the effort.

You do not mention much about gameplay, have you already started to figure out some gameplay elements? The gameplay should probably be the first point to really elaborate before delving too much into graphics and/or code because many graphical and coding constraints will derive from it.

[Predseda]

Do not use colors 0 and 1 in your graphics. 0 you will need for transparency, 1 for fonts, at least.

[Adrian Browne]

Very nice sprite art.

[idrougge]

The classical console approach to large enemies is to make them background graphics and scroll the screen to simulate movement.

[Predseda]

Big moving objects are not much suitable to AMOS.

[Blackgoat]

Ok, look like its time to try to write some serious code... :-)
Some large enemies are intended to be part of tileset, instead of bobs or sprites. If will be animated only part (tank turret, boss head) it could work even in AMOS.

Thank for support, its nice that there are lot of people interested in old amiga, even in creating something new. Quite surprise for me. Are there any active coders? I think why is AMOS so loved by wanna-be game creators like me, and hated by everybody other. Is coding in other basic languages on amiga that much more difficult? And if Blitz basic is so much better, why there are (in past times and even now) tons of free resources for amiga AMOS and not for other languages?

[Blackgoat]

Predseda: I still dont know which color will be 0... I begin with black but later realized i need in background some high contrast color for easiest drawing

[idrougge]

Blitz is decidedly more difficult than AMOS. I'd say go with AMOS, and only transition to Blitz once you run into its limitations.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Blackgoat

Predseda: I still dont know which color will be 0... I begin with black but later realized i need in background some high contrast color for easiest drawing

Okay, but it is seen in your first picture: if you adjust colour 1, it affects DeluxePaint interface (and many other graphic system function that may come in your game), so reserve this colour for system use, typically fonts, and do not use it for anything else. And if you need for example black, do not use colour 0, because you will need it for transparent backgrounds (no matter its RGB values). Adjust any of the colours from 2 to 31 to RGB 0,0,0 and use it then. I can see from your pics you use mostly default Deluxe Paint palette, which is far from optimal.

When we were creating graphics for Chaos guns we enjoyed a lot of troubles fiddling the palette.

BTW I like your graphics style, reminds me games from 1989-1990.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Predseda

Big moving objects are not much suitable to AMOS.

Why not?