ArtPazz - New game for AGA Amigas [WIP]

[saimo]

This month I started making a new little game for AGA Amigas (see background story at the bottom). It's fully playable and now it's mostly a matter of polishing it up.

It's a simple puzzle game where the player has to reconstruct a picture split in a number of tiles (the video clarifies the concept perfectly).

[ Show youtube player ]

Features:
* besides the 10 default images, the player can add more images by just dropping them into the appropriate directory (the pictures must be 320x256 pixels and have a depth of up to 64 colors);
* likewise, it is possible to add more music modules to the appropriate directory;
* up to 8 local players can challenge one another;
* joystick/joypad and/or keyboard and/or mouse are all supported; they can all be used at the same time; any single device can control the game entirely (in the joystick case, two buttons are required);
* works on any AGA Amiga;
* comes on an ADF image and is installable on any media.

The game will be free.

Note about the music module used in the video: it's called "shagma" and has been made by Jogeir Liljedahl; it will be replaced by a module made specifically for the game.

The background story goes like this...

In 1995 I made Puzzly, my third little game for Amiga (while, instead, I should have studied for the high school exit exam). It did not look good (although my eyes could not see that back then) and it had a very annoying feature that was even totally superfluous, but it was fun enough and I actually enjoyed it with some friends in a few of occasions. The game was written with AMOS Professional.
11 years later (2006), I worked on a project for the local department of the Ministry of Heritage. I had a technical role and I was surrounded by art experts. The project was called ART-PAST. It was so badly planned, the resources were so scarce, the salaries were so low and the demands on my colleagues were so huge that we soon ended up calling the project ART-PAZZ ("pazzo" means "mad"/"crazy" in Italian, and "pazz'" is the way it is spoken in our dialect), as those people were being driven mad and the overall atmosphere was totally crazy.
Now, 15 additional years later (2021), during a break from the writing of a novel, I found the perfect time for a small project like this. I rewrote the game from scratch using ALS, a graphics engine for AMOS Professional I released in October 2020 (rewriting the game using CSS, the ALS predecessor, is something I had been wanting to do for ages), keeping it as simple as I could.
I chose the name ArtPazz because the game might actually drive crazy, because "Pazz" (in Italian) sounds similar to "puzz" in "Puzzly"/"puzzle", because I threw some paintings in the mix and because it gave me one more reason to have a good laugh with some of the old friends involved in the ART-PAZZ... erm... ART-PAST project.

[klx300r]

cool

[BippyM]

What is it that makes it agao only? Is it the 64 colours?

[saimo]

Originally Posted by BippyM

What is it that makes it agao only? Is it the 64 colours?

Ye, but not just that: on top of the images,there's a layer with transparencies that brings the total to 256 colors.

[BippyM]

Ahh that makes sense looks like an interesting little game, and great to see it is free

[Coagulus]

Awesome. I have a similar game called Swapped Arts on Android which I'm currently trying to convert to Amiga too. Wish I could get the pics smaller. Yours looks fun and different to mine. :-) can't wait to play it.

[Photon]

I see this as Memory / Puzzle party game. Simple and working concept. Looks playable already!

Nice story also, coming back to the Amiga.

If you want feedback - number of tiles (from the video) are a bit few - it wouldn't allow many moves spread across a number of players. Maybe down to 20x16? Would be nice also with a number of moves limit (or better - fail at X number of wrong moves) - to make players give advice to each other what is right and wrong - co-op multiplayer

And we all know what is going to happen to replaceable images - p0000000rrrrnnn

[saimo]

@Coagulus

Originally Posted by Coagulus

Awesome. I have a similar game called Swapped Arts on Android which I'm currently trying to convert to Amiga too. Wish I could get the pics smaller. Yours looks fun and different to mine. :-) can't wait to play it.

Thanks, and good luck with your game!


@Photon

Originally Posted by Photon

I see this as Memory / Puzzle party game.

That's exactly what it is, indeed.

Simple and working concept.

Spot on. In fact, I won't add features that would make the game more complicated (the original was actually a bit more complicated). It's easy with this kind of games to get carried away, but I'm trying to resist the tempation.

Looks playable already!

Yes, the gameplay side of the game is actually complete already.

If you want feedback - number of tiles (from the video) are a bit few - it wouldn't allow many moves spread across a number of players. Maybe down to 20x16?

That's already possible and actually the minimum allowed, because otherwise the tiles become way too small (and at 16x16 they are indeed very small).

Would be nice also with a number of moves limit (or better - fail at X number of wrong moves) - to make players give advice to each other what is right and wrong - co-op multiplayer

This feature is already in place, too
The hand has two numbers printed on it (when multiple players play; in case of single player, the bottom one is not shown): the bottom one indicates the player number, the top one indicates the number of attempts a player has to place the tile. At the beginning of each players round, a random number between 1 and 4 is chosen as the number of attempts for each player.


@all

General update: after opening the thread, I added a little feature that darkens the last wrongly chosen tile; also, I decided to add a thumbs-up/OK hand for when a tile gets placed correctly, and a thumbs-down hand for when a mistake is made. This way, mistakes are more easily recognized also when music is playing (i.e. there is no sound feedback).

[Adrian Browne]

Nice- did you do the graphics yourself? I am an amateur pixel artist but always learning. If you need art for some other project let me know. I am eager to work on a game and have a full amiga 1200 set up here.

[saimo]

Originally Posted by Adrian Browne

Nice- did you do the graphics yourself?

Yes, but there isn't much graphics in this game: just the logo, the menu background, the hand pointer and the font (which I'm working on right now - the one shown in the video is only temporary and it's just the proportional topaz font I use as system font). The images are simply trimmed, scaled-down, colored-down conversions of the original paintings.

I am an amateur pixel artist but always learning. If you need art for some other project let me know. I am eager to work on a game and have a full amiga 1200 set up here.

Thanks for the offer, but I don't need help at the moment and usually I do everything myself anyway.

Humble suggestion: keep on pushing pixels, on studying pixel technique (and, if needed, the general concepts of drawing / visual arts) and on getting better and better in general; if you don't know already, join Pixelation and practice/learn there All the best!

[Adrian Browne]

Originally Posted by saimo

Yes, but there isn't much graphics in this game: just the logo, the menu background, the hand pointer and the font (which I'm working on right now - the one shown in the video is only temporary and it's just the proportional topaz font I use as system font). The images are simply trimmed, scaled-down, colored-down conversions of the original paintings.


Thanks for the offer, but I don't need help at the moment and usually I do everything myself anyway.

Humble suggestion: keep on pushing pixels, on studying pixel technique (and, if needed, the general concepts of drawing / visual arts) and on getting better and better in general; if you don't know already, join Pixelation and practice/learn there All the best!

Thanks- sure- yes I must try pixelation. Several have recommended it to me. Its fun

[nikosidis]

Looking fun Saimo
Keep on the nice work.

[Predseda]

Originally Posted by Photon

And we all know what is going to happen to replaceable images - p0000000rrrrnnn

Oh, what an idea! Now I want that game

[redblade]

The language file.
Will you just be reading a text file so that people can use their own language for each option or will it be hardcoded into the game?

Looks great

[saimo]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

Looking fun Saimo
Keep on the nice work.

Thank you!

Originally Posted by redblade

The language file.
Will you just be reading a text file so that people can use their own language for each option or will it be hardcoded into the game?

No, sorry. All the texts in the game are those few shown in the video: just a bunch of basic strings that anybody can easily understand.
(By the way: the original game did have language files, and this is one of the simplifications I went for.)

Looks great

Thanks!
On the graphical side of things, today I have designed a proper font, added two new hands shapes (that, besides improving the looks, give a better feedback to the player) and moved the numbers on the hand outside of it (as they had been until a couple of weeks ago).

[saimo]

Update: ArtPazz is (basically) done.

Changes since the previous post:
* added a few features;
* improved/fixed some code;
* touched up some graphics;
* made music (I might make some adjustments after listening to it with fresh ears, though);
* written manual (I need to re-read this);
* drawn icons;
* prepared distro ADF.



In the next days I'll make a new video, prepare a page on itch.io and then, of course, release the game

[saimo]

This new video shows how the final game looks and sounds like.

[ Show youtube player ]

The game will be available for free download from https://www.retream.com/ArtPazz (the link redirects to https://retream.itch.io/artpazz) soon. All that's left to do is to re-read the manual and add a few bits to it, and to prepare the ISO for the Amiga CD32 (I've just decided to offer this option together with the ADF image and the LHA archive).

[nikosidis]

Looking forward to try it out. Looks nice

[saimo]

@nikosidis

Thanks! I the final tests go well, you'll soon be able to have a go at it


@all

More testing revealed a few little issues - they're all fixed now.
Getting rid of them inspired me to make a few other changes:
* made confirmation dialogs appear where the hand is (instead of making them appear at a fixed position and moving the hand there);
* made attempts number graphically bigger;
* added fade-out effect;
* changed "select" and "success" sound effects.

Here's a new video showing the (supposedly) final game:

[ Show youtube player ]

[saimo]

Released! Just go get it from https://www.retream.com/ArtPazz - it's free