Would you pay for a new Amiga game?

[Anakirob]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Don't worry about Selur's comments viddi...

He constantly bashes Backbone games (and has been pulled up about it numerous times)

Well you can perhaps hardly blame someone for disliking Backbone and anything made with it, bit still I would think that Tales Of Gorluth 2 would still be worthy of the commercial release treatment, and for what it is being made in Backbone is quite an achievement. It's just not a game that I want to buy.

[DamienD]

Been busy with other things tonight so only now read the new posts.

Ok, enough is enough Selur... You've been banned from EAB before for your constant negative attitude / trolling and somehow managed to be reinstated after begging the moderators for forgiveness.

Since coming back to EAB and becoming a GM again, personally I've sent you at least 3 polite e-mails asking you to chill out a bit but it seems that everything falls on deaf ears.

It's now time for you to take a "well earned" break from EAB. This community really doesn't need people like you

Have a good long think about your activity here and maybe, just maybe, you may be allowed back (but don't hold your breath though). Bye!!!

[ptyerman]

I would definitely pay for any new "good" Amiga games that came out. It would have to be better than PD quality of course, as it stands there is more games "both commercial and PD" than I will probably get to play in my lifetime.
If it was a great game in the same ilk as Foundation or a Amiga version of something like Stardew Valley I would be happy to pay £20 for it, even £30 at a push.

[TheFoxSoft]

The response has been great in my opinion.
I open a new thread so we can discuss this further
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=86780

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

Thing is, doing proper pixel art (Think Bitmap brothers quality) is very time consuming and unless you are doing this full time you are going to cut some corners.
Gfx guys these days use Photoshop, paint in 24bit then do the palette conversion (down to 8bit or less) as a last step. It makes sense time wise, but you lose a lot of control over your palette and it almost never looks good.
Back in the day when I did pixel graphics, a lot of the time spent was to get a properly optimized palette. "Every color swatch motivated, no colors wasted" -mentality..

Well, you either do pixel art or you don't (I mean there's no need to cut corners). Usually painting in 24bit and then "downsampling" is guaranteed to provide you with a sub-par result (as you also mention) that would require much more work to get it into an acceptable (and usable) state than doing it the right way from the get go. This of course granted you'd like your result to really look and feel like pixel art (and not photorealistic or 3d rendered like).

That aside, you can still use Photoshop as a proper pixel art tool (as I do) by carefully selecting your palette and then drawing pixel by pixel, without using transparency/alpha at all (pencil tool, use clear cut fills with no anti-aliasing, nearest neighbor for resizes e.t.c.). I.e. the same way you'd do it on a classic Amiga paint program.

[clebin]

Originally Posted by Tsak

That aside, you can still use Photoshop as a proper pixel art tool (as I do) by carefully selecting your palette and then drawing pixel by pixel, without using transparency/alpha at all (pencil tool, use clear cut fills with no anti-aliasing, nearest neighbor for resizes e.t.c.). I.e. the same way you'd do it on a classic Amiga paint program.

Genuine question - wouldn't you find it easier to use DPaint or PPaint under emulation? Low-colour pixel art is exactly what they're designed for and they're matchless at it IMO.

Originally Posted by ptyerman

If it was a great game in the same ilk as Foundation or a Amiga version of something like Stardew Valley I would be happy to pay £20 for it, even £30 at a push.

I'm actually thinking of doing a Harvest Moon style game for Amiga, albeit with a twist. I've gone as far as making some graphics but it will probably be the project-after-next as I need to work up to something that ambitious.

[wXR]

Unless it comes in a box made with love, what is the point? It is 2017 and we don't need to do things this way anymore. Use Kickstarter, pre-fund your development costs/time, and don't expect to make a profit. Take these guys as an example:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...d-commodore-64

or this:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects...sega-genesis-m

Likewise, make a good case for yourself as a potential long-term developer by being active on social media (especially YouTube), and use Patreon.com to secure more regular funds.

[ptyerman]

@clebin.
That would be great! I will for sure anticipate that coming.

[Tsak]

Originally Posted by clebin

Genuine question - wouldn't you find it easier to use DPaint or PPaint under emulation? Low-colour pixel art is exactly what they're designed for and they're matchless at it IMO.

Well, in fact I do use DPaint & PPaint specifically under emulation and on my real Amiga. But I find Photoshop much more handy for the bulk of my pixel art work: being able to open multiple files, easy to grab and move around gfx from a file to another, being able to use layers, duplicate, combine & move stuff with a single click, easier to work with different file sizes and resolutions, tons of tools you can use, more versatile animation functionality e.t.c. Also Photoshop has a much more powerful and percise toolset for color reduction and converting images in case you want to go the 24bit way (which is extra handy for very specific tasks that would be either impossible or very difficult to pull off with traditional paint programs).

Having said that DPaint and the likes still remain great programs which can be useful even with todays standards but -seriously- there are not many things you can do with them that you cannot do (easier) with more modern applications. Exceptions to this general rule are:
- The dual screen zoom function (very handy for pixel art)
- Ability to save natively to ilbm formats
- Using native AGA and ECS color palettes (so if you work outside the Amiga os you need to watch out the colors you are using cause results may differ - though this is not an issue once you've settled with your palette)
- Ability to cycle colors for anims (as far as I know ONLY with Amiga paint programs you can do this currently though it's not something your everyday pixel artist will use). Btw here's an awesome speech at GDC about this [ Show youtube player ]

Anyway, sorry for the off topic -> back to prices & AAA titles talk

[nobody]

The absolute best pixel art tool is Cosmigo Pro Motion with Grafx2 a close second. They both are Deluxe Paint derivatives.

[clebin]

It's all subjective but I like DPaint/PPaint for the reasons that Tsak mentioned. It's also nice to have a secondary colour on the right mouse button and the palette being so accessible at all times. There are a lot of Mac apps that do distraction-free word processing and PPaint is the same comfortable, relaxing environment for me. Just switch off and lose yourself in the pixels. Layers would be nice though, obviously.

I admit I hadn't heard of Cosmigo, probably because it's a Windows app - looks really good though. Likewise the Mac version of Grafx was a bit slow and stuttery last time I tried it and I just didn't get into it. Sorry for continuing off-topic!