New Amiga game WIP - Dizzy-type game (currently untitled)

[Graham Humphrey]

Hello all,

You may remember the game Downfall, written by me and fellow EAB members Mihcael (levels) and Preseda (graphics) last year with music and sound help from Reynolds, Wilshy and technical support and ideas from a cast of thousands. Well now Predseda and I are back with a new game under development.

As you can tell, it's not titled yet but it is going to be an adventure/platform thing in the style of Dizzy. It's a flip-screen affair and will contain the usual blend of puzzles and characters to interact with as well as plenty of platforming bits to negotiate.

Attached is a demo of the game engine so don't expect loads - there's little in the way of an actual game here so far. It's more a demo to prove the game elements do indeed function properly so to play it is a bit dull. There are enemies to avoid, water to drown you, a couple of placeholder characters to talk to and items to pick up (including one which you can give to someone).

To load the game, simply extract the archive anywhere and just run it as you would run most programs, simple as that. It shouldn't need any extra libraries or anything to run and should work on pretty much any setup.

Controls:

Fire - jump
Up - talk to characters, fire to skip through the text
Down - Bring up inventory, pick up/drop items (if you have three items you can't pick up anymore until you drop one, and if you wish to give an item to a character just simply drop the item on him).
P - pause
ESC - quit

Any comments/suggestions appreciated. I am aware of a couple of little quirks still lurking - you might find the inertia a bit much on the character currently and it can be very easy to jump after exiting the inventory but I will try and fix these things. You may find a couple of small other aesthetic issues as well but nothing game-breaking.

I have been writing this on and off (mostly off) since about November last year so I suppose the results so far might not seem much considering the amount of time I have been working on it but I've been juggling several priorities and hit a number of problems on the way.

Things that will be added:

- A more colourful backdrop
- Music
- CD32 pad support
- several levels with a storyline to tie it all in

Next plan is to design a 'proper' level purely for demo purposes. It won't be very big but it will be a good test of the game engine and what can still be added and changed. That is being slowly worked on and when it is eventually finished I will upload it for you all to see.

More updates as and when...

EDIT: Self-booting ADF now added as zip file so just pop it in and play.

[Predseda]

And consider the graphics as temporary

For your imagination, at present it is very simple

[ptyerman]

Great news. A new platform game for our Amiga's, wow!

[Ze Emulatron]

I only spied on the Remainder Software Facebook page yesterday and saw some progress had been made.

[Graham Humphrey]

I've just added a zipped ADF to the first post. It self-boots so if you don't fancy the hassle of extracting the lha file then, er, use that instead.

[sokolovic]

Great new ! I like the design of the main character !

You should check this topic, maybe it'll help you to make the game :

http://eab.abime.net/retrogaming-gen...-mediocre.html

[prowler]

Wow, freat news! Can't wait to try this! And nice, simple graphics again, too!

Good luck with this project, Graham and Predseda! And thanks for the zipped ADF (my emulator setup was lost with my recent hard disk crash, so I'll be using an A500 for now).

[clenched]

I'm liking this trend of keeping the hardware requirements within reason too. Good luck on the game. Consider me entered when the eab lemon bout comes up.

[Predseda]

We will need a lot of your feedback / support / suggestions to the start. The basic engine is working, but we need to read everything you want to upgrade / change just before we start to create the game itself. The same kind of support that we got last time when Downfall had been created and that encouraged us to finish it. It is the game from us for you, so do not hesitate to critisize or suggest anything. On Lemonamiga some people suggested bigger sprites, reduction of inertia or add characters / references from other Amiga games. Good ideas, I like them, we need all kind of feedback. I know at this stage there is not much to talk about as we only have very basic tech-demo, but each voice is welcome and of course, we will mention you in "thanks to" credits

And also: everybody who would like to contribute to the game with some work is ALWAYS welcome. Remainder needs you!

[Graham Humphrey]

Well put Predseda. Thanks to the people who have taken the time to try it so far. Any sort of feedback is appreciated and will encourage us to work on this game a bit more. Even if we don't use every idea suggested they are all gratefully received and it could lead to inspiration for other ideas too.

[sokolovic]

I'll try it as soon as possible.

Do you need some help for the graphs ? Maybe some backgrounds, I don't know is there will be some parallaxes but I'd love to help you out.

Is coded in AMOS or something ?

Anyway, good luck for this project.

[Predseda]

It is coded in Blitz basic. I think we could easily combine graphics from more people, the only restriction is we need to keep the same palette. At this moment we will create a demo level consisting few NPCs and need to draw few interiors (for example Hero's house). Graphics consists of tiles 16x16 pixels.

This is just a picture (not a level screenshot), that I created of already existing tiles:



Nothing is definitive, yet, so everything could be changed. Even the pallette and sprites. We have to deicide what will we do with that black background. Graham suggests some copper, similar to Downfall ECS one. This will need to dedicate one color from the palette to copper effect, but it could be the solution.

[Mrs Beanbag]

Looks good! Nice to see some new developments. Let me know if there's anything I can do.

Have you used all the hardware sprites up yet? If not you could put some of them in the background, too.

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks for the comments and encouragement everyone, it is really appreciated. Offers to help also gratefully received and are duly noted for if/when the time comes!

There is no parallax or any scrolling at all so no worries or concerns there. Technically it's relatively simple (or it should be). Obviously I want to make it look and sound nice as well as being a fun game to play but it won't be breaking any boundaries.

Hardware sprites... I haven't used any! Never really occured to me to be honest. In what way could I use them in the background do you think? Must admit I can't really think of anything at the minute.

[Predseda]

For example some clouds slowly moving in the sky? Or something like that?

[Mrs Beanbag]

I always use a hardware sprite for the main character, as a general rule. The sprites use the upper 16 colours of the palette so you can get more colours out of it without any extra blitter work, and the background palettes can change from one level to the next without affecting the sprite.

The main character there looks only 16 pixels wide so a hardware sprite would be ideal.

I also use sprites to overlay information such as score/energy, having a separate panel for this purpose is so old-fashioned. But since you can set their priority relative to the bitplanes various other possibilities are open, such as moving clouds in the background for instance, or the moon.

[Predseda]

Excellent post, Amy!!

[Graham Humphrey]

Interesting stuff, thanks!

It is probably a bit old-fashioned having a separate score panel but for this sort of game I think it's probably ideal and wouldn't really work otherwise. I will have a think about putting some clouds in etc as that might make it look a bit nicer, although I will probably not do that until later on when we have got our new level sorted out.

[viddi]

Great news!




...and nice gfx!

[Mrs Beanbag]

You might be right about the info panel for a dizzy-style game, but I'd definitely recommend using a hardware sprite for the main character. Will there be many other moving objects? Bad guys to avoid?

How will you store the data? I can share compression algorithms if you like.

I'm also a bit of a dab hand on the old ProTracker.