Graphics artist wanted for new Amiga game

[Graham Humphrey]

Title says it all really doesn't it?

Anyway I'm working on a flip-screen platform game at the moment and I could do with a bit of help on the graphics front. I've got a basic game engine working OK at the minute and I'm getting to the stage where I'll need somebody to draw good graphics for my game as, to put it kindly, I'm hopeless! I would put more details but I'll wait to see if anybody is interested first, but if you're good with Deluxe Paint or Personal Paint then please consider helping me. Thanks!

I presume the game isn't going to be commercial. If it is the completely ignore this post.

I myself am crap at graphics, but can offer some advice.

There always seems to be talk of projects where musicians/coders/graphics people are needed but in most cases the game/demo or whatever is just a concept in somebodies mind or maybe even drafted on paper.

Therfor at present your post is likely to be ignored by the majority, 1 because your description is very vauge, and 2 because you are a new member and why would somebody help someone who they don't know and owe no favours with such a major undertaking. It's not like you are asking for a game request here - this is something that will take at least a few hours of someones time.

You could upload a basic version (if you have) of the game to The Zone or maybe even just put down some more detail here to show you are really serious about making this game.

If people like what they read/see (by that I mean the playability/scope for enhancement) then I am sure you will get overwhelmed with offers as we have many talented graphics people here.

I understand you might be unwilling to share the unfinished project, that I am fully aware of, but to be honest this is the only way I think you could get what you are requesting.

Other ideas are of course to find many of the free game sprites available on the web (OK, most are crap) or even rip the graphics from a fave Amiga game for now.

Don't take my post the wrong way, I am just telling things as I see them. Anybody developing anything on the Amiga these days deserves a pat on the back, and I see from your age that you probably weren't an Amiga owner during it's hey-day and I fully applaud you for even thinking about developing something for such a nice machine rather than go the Micro$oft/DirectX/PC Game Creator route.

Hope you find the help you need, hope some advice here was useful

[Marcuz]

i would help if i find game interesting. i'm a great drawer (i'm immodeste) but for sure there are graphic areas where i'm pitiful, like pixelart. i work by hand and then on photoshop, i can finetune then on amiga side paint progs. that said i ask you more detail and if i find it interesting and that i can effectively help you i agree for sure. please do not take me badly, i just want to chose as graphic takes already too much of my time.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by Jim

Therfor at present your post is likely to be ignored by the majority, 1 because your description is very vauge, and 2 because you are a new member and why would somebody help someone who they don't know and owe no favours with such a major undertaking. It's not like you are asking for a game request here - this is something that will take at least a few hours of someones time.

just to add, jim your post is very sounding, i felt the same many other times in there and also in other different areas of life (anyone has been asked sometime to help friends in some friend's project that would appears ill fated at best, i don't mean thatthis is the case). i would like to help though because i've already proposed similar things or i had offered help. it's fun at the best, so Graham, let's articulate

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks for your comments so far. If you want me to I'll upload my (very) basic four-screen demo at the weekend, not now because I'm at school and it wouldn't be allowed (and I don't have net access at home). Do you want it uploaded as an adf file or not?

As for game details, here's what I've got planned so far:

- 10 levels spread over 5 worlds that consist of up to 64 screens each
- 5 (so far) different types of enemies on each world
- Um, that's it at the minute

The idea of the game is to collect all the diamonds on each level, however there are only a few and are usually hard to get. There are also a lot of coins to collect, although these don't have to be collected, these will give a nice bonus at the end if you get them all.

If you want to know any more just ask.

Also this is actually my second project. My first game, Blobz (nothing to do with the old commercial game, I didn't even know about until someone e-mailed me about it!) is on Aminet if you want to try it (game/misc/blobz1.3.lha) (nothing like a quick plug ) although due to my inexperience (bad programming in other words) it will only run on machines with 2mb RAM, I think. You will also need a 68030 to get it to run at a (sort of) good speed. And you'll get to see how bad an artist I am!

There, that'll do for now. Sorry if I've gone on a bit here.

[Marcuz]

adf or lha is ok, as i use winuae and not the real thing: do you mean 320 screens? (64 * 5) is the level design already done? even so i think that's kinda huge for 1 man only. let see it on the weekend

edit: tryed blobz1.3: nice, but very heavy on resources despite the very flat and easy gameplay. additive too.

[Graham Humphrey]

Thanks for your comments about Blobz, much appreciated. I know it needs a lot of memory etc. to run, but it's down to very inexperienced programming more than anything else. My new game should be better though....

As for the screens, I meant 64 for each level, and as there are 10 levels = 640 screens! I know it's loads, but Blitz Basic obviously didn't like it as it kept saying I was out of memory, loading in a 35K map file when I had about 2.5M to spare! Anyway I've had to change it because of this, each level is now 32 screens each (max), still quite big for one person to do but a lot more manageable. I've got level one finished now, so I'll probably let you see that one.

Right that's it for now, I won't be on here again until Saturday, when I'll upload what I've done so far. Speak to you then!

[Codetapper]

It sounds like you are doing something majorly wrong if you are running out of memory for this task. The graphics file for the tiles should be pretty small and the map itself should just contain an index to a particular tile you want to draw on the screen.

For example, if the tiles are say 16x16 and you have 64 screens which are 320x256 pixels each then you need 20 tiles wide x 16 tiles high for each screen x 64 screens which would be 20480 tile pointers - if these are stored as words (ie. each tile is 16 bits) then you should only need 40k to store the entire map for each level.

I would check your code and make sure you aren't trying to allocate memory all in one hit for an enormous bitmap which happens to be big enough to display the entire level.

[Graham Humphrey]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

It sounds like you are doing something majorly wrong if you are running out of memory for this task. The graphics file for the tiles should be pretty small and the map itself should just contain an index to a particular tile you want to draw on the screen.

For example, if the tiles are say 16x16 and you have 64 screens which are 320x256 pixels each then you need 20 tiles wide x 16 tiles high for each screen x 64 screens which would be 20480 tile pointers - if these are stored as words (ie. each tile is 16 bits) then you should only need 40k to store the entire map for each level.

I would check your code and make sure you aren't trying to allocate memory all in one hit for an enormous bitmap which happens to be big enough to display the entire level.

No, I have two 320x256 bitmaps (for double-buffering). I load the entire map into memory - which should be about 40k of memory - but only display 20 tiles across and 14 tiles down at one time. I can't figure out what's going on, I'm obviously doing something wrong, but I halved the map size to 32 screens and it works fine, without modifying the code.

Besides, I don't think I could handle doing 64 screens for each level. 32 is good enough in my opinion.

[Graham Humphrey]

OK I uploaded the first level of my game to the zone (DK.lha). Anyone's welcome to try it out. I apologise for the appalling graphics! I would welcome any ideas for the game.

[Codetapper]

Firstly congratulations for having the guts to upload a game with terrible graphics but with a lot of the gameplay in it. This is the way things should be!

My suggestions:

- When you start, a few seconds of invulnerability (while flashing) would be nice
- When you die, disappear for a couple of seconds rather than instantly reappearing
- Some screens need to be modified so when you enter them from certain directions you do not die

Other than that it has the makings of being a nice enough little game. I wish you luck with finding a willing graphics artist! (If it was me, I'd think about ripping some graphics from other games, particularly for things like the ground)

[Ash]

I'd love to play this game but I can only emulate Amigas at this moment
Can someone pls be kind enough to make an .adf?

I don't have any WinUAE/Amiga access at the moment so I can't play - but I'd like to repeat CodeTapper's remarks about having the guts to post the good game with the crappy graphics.

Hopefully now someone with artistic ability will help....

Akira, didn't you always want to make a game?

I couldn't run it on WinUAE. I see the "accessing disk" screen for one moment, music plays and it's gone. Tested on a quite plain 3.1 setup and a complex 3.9 setup with jit. I'll try the real amiga.

[Marcuz]

same as Burseg here, and i can't test it on the real thing

Same with a real amiga :/
A12oo o3o/5o 32mb ram

[Codetapper]

I ran it on WinUAE no problem: Standard A1200 config with HD, unpack the game to RAM: then issue:

assign fonts: ram:diamondkingdoms/fonts add

Then run the program!

Another change I would consider - change the jump from a constantly moving up then constantly moving down into a sin wave so you jump upwards faster at the bottom. This might also make jumping easier as you tend to smack into platforms and fall down regularly - particularly on the first screen.

Thanks worked now, I copied the fonts instead and there was much rejoicing.

[Graham Humphrey]

@Codetapper: Thanks for your suggestions, there are some good ones there, I'll certainly consider them!

Sorry for the assign trouble, perhaps I should have mentioned the fonts?

I'm glad that people are taking the time to try this out, I really appreciate it, it certainly gives me more of an incentive to finish it. (not that I wasn't going to finish it, you understand!)

[BippyM]

Why not check to makesure the fonts exist and warn the user if they dont?