Pro game artist looking for help.

[Michael Parent]

Hi everyone. I'm a life-long Amiga lover who learned pixel art on the Amiga (DPaint and Brilliance) who eventually became a professional game artist.

You can see my portfolio online here: http://www.holymonkeystudio.com/sprites.htm

Throughout these years of making games for mobile phones, GBA, DS, Iphone etc, I've never lost me dream of some day making the most stunningly beautiful (and actually fun to play) game for Classic Amiga's.

I'm enlisting help in not only eventually making a couple of full blown professional (and commercial) games for classic Amiga's, but to create a collection of super useful libraries and tools along the way. (I'm targeting CDTV and CD32 as the two major platforms )

I'm looking for some Amiga programmers with VERY STRONG knowledge of Amiga's amazing hardware and the tricks that game makers and demo makers have used for years.

Most specifically I'm looking for two things up front:

1) To have a program made that loads in tile maps, and allows the user t scroll around the tile map, and then designate vertical coordinates with little arrows at the side of the screen...these arrows would signify a vertical coordinate where some color indexes would be changed via the copper. The program would need to load tile maps, allow scrolling, allow the placement of these arrows throughout a tile map, and have an editor for editing the palette for that region as well as saving and loading palettes into that region (designated by the arrows)

2) A program and useable "library" (re-useable code) to use the repeating sprite trick to create a back play-field for a game. (as seen in some later Amiga games like Jim Powers)

I can offer small financial incentives for the creation of these tools etc...and hopefully we can get together bounties to make thing move along even faster...

The goal is not just to eventually make my dream Amiga games, but to empower all Amiga nuts like me to make the games they want better and faster.


Anyone interested in joining to finally create the ideal set of OPEN SOURCE tools to create super impressive Classic Amiga games, please contact me @

mail@holymonkeystudio.com and/or respond in this thread.

To help entice you,here are some still super rough mock-ups of some of the games I want to make:



I look forward to getting this rolling... It's a LONG TIME over-due.

PS. For those interested in helping to on a long term basis to help create my finished games, I plan on simultaneously creating versions of the game for PC, IOS devices, Android devices,X-Box Live and Mac using a cross platform dev tool that I'm already very comfortable with....My hope is we could generate enough income from these major platforms that we could release the Special, Amiga Only versions for free to the Amiga Communities...

thanks

[Predseda]

[Michael Parent]

Thanks,

That was hand drawn, hand palette optimized anbd hand dithered..all in Pro-Motion my cosmigo (on a PC but with the same ecact methods learned using Dpaint and Brilliance)

Another cool thing I should mention is that a bijillion years ago my brother and I mastered a method for a translucency/color tinting efect similar to the translucent effects seen on the Super Nintendo that works great on Classic Amiga's.

The best part is, not only is it no slower that drawing normal bobs, it might actually be slightly faster!

I'd posted a couple of example files at the AmosFactory a while back for those who are interested in how it works.. but one tese libraries start rolling, thats another trick I'll be sharing...and an effect that wil lbe featured in my Classic Amiga games.

[dlfrsilver]

Thanks for coming here Michael. You're an excellent graphist with no doubt.

I just hope that our best coders will have a look at your proposal

[Michael Parent]

Please direct them this way And anyone who is or knows active demo coders...those guys really know how to hit the hardware. I'd love thier help.

What better demo than an A500 game that rivals Castlevania Symphony of the night for the PS? With help, we can make it happen.

[Djay]

Great idea I hope coders can help you put...

I would really love a platform rpg

[Lobotomika]

MOTHER OF GOD

The guy who animated thor on DS is here!

[Michael Parent]

Thanks for the warm welcome...but I'm not THE guy that animated Thor...I only made a couple of animations for the Thor character (there was another artist who animated 99 percent of the Thor sprite), but I completely animated several other characters in the Thor game...so thats not too shabby

[Thorham]

To Michael Parent:

Are you perhaps interested in doing an Advance Wars clone? I'm currently working on my Advance Wars 2 conversion to be able to produce a good tech demo of it. Should be easy enough to do something more interesting with it (think Starcraft's three distinct species who all play very differently).

[Michael Parent]

Hi Thorham,

Unfortunately I have not time to make art for anything other than my own projects (besides the day job which absorbs most of my time and energy )

What I want to do is contribute ideas, organization, some tools and a little money to help everyones game projects including my own.

I know several professional pixel artists besides myself who might have time, but unfortunately, like myself they almost never have time for anything but paying jobs.. (its tough once there's a family to feed etc. )

Good luck with your project.

[Thorham]

Yep, if only if everyone always had all the time they needed to do anything they wanted, but sadly that's not the case.

Thanks for the encouragement

[Lord Riton]

I have all the time i want, but not the motivation, strange world

[Michael Parent]

Having what seems like all the time is in fact the greatest de-motivator...just look a the Evles in the Elrick stories! No fire to get something done if there's a million "tomorrows" to take care of it.

[Codetapper]

@Michael: Are you wanting to make these games for ECS or AGA chipsets?

1. A problem with 8 way scrolling Amiga games is that you can't easily have rectangular blocks which utilise different palettes particularly easily. If you are happy to impose extra restrictions such as any palette changes are a full screen width apart or are restricted to start-of-the-scanline changes it's much easier.

2. The sprite trick in Jim Power is pretty easy and is described on my website, but it imposes some pretty severe limitations if you use it. The main one being that the repeated background is only 32 pixels wide, and you cannot change any palette entries across the scanline as all DMA time is eaten up redisplaying the sprites.

You would also lose 3 colours in your palette unless you can restrict your graphics to not using those colours in that area of the map.

Jim Power cunningly has sections in between the background where there are no sprites and it just displays the background colour. That way extra palette changes can be made at that exact scanline.


Do you require these tools to be written and run on the Amiga?

[Michael Parent]

Hey Codetapper!

I'm very excited to speak to someone who seems to really know all about this stuff!

Yes, for ECS and AGA

as for 1, yes, I was planning on it being a full screen with away.

as for 2) thank you so much for the concise info!

I would like the tools to run on Amiga, Unless its easier for you to make them run on PC(?) So long as the exported data can easily be made to work on the Amiga.

Got some time to help me throw together a demo? if so, please email me at Mail@holymonkeystudio.com

Also feel free to continue the discussion here.

best regards,
Mike

[Michael Parent]

I just looked at your website Codetapper. You are my hero!

[Michael Parent]

PS. For my demo, I only require 4 color Sprite BG, with copper changes for those 4 colors during blank (no sprite needed) vertical lines...could I then have an even bigger repeating tile size than risky woods?

Or could I even simulate 2 layers with sprites? like each being 32 or 64 wide paterns at 3 color?

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Michael Parent

I'm looking for some Amiga programmers with VERY STRONG knowledge of Amiga's amazing hardware and the tricks that game makers and demo makers have used for years.

Most specifically I'm looking for two things up front:

1) To have a program made that loads in tile maps, and allows the user t scroll around the tile map, and then designate vertical coordinates with little arrows at the side of the screen...these arrows would signify a vertical coordinate where some color indexes would be changed via the copper. The program would need to load tile maps, allow scrolling, allow the placement of these arrows throughout a tile map, and have an editor for editing the palette for that region as well as saving and loading palettes into that region (designated by the arrows)

2) A program and useable "library" (re-useable code) to use the repeating sprite trick to create a back play-field for a game. (as seen in some later Amiga games like Jim Powers)

You know you can count on me for some of the work. The catch is my Copperlist knowledge is purely on-paper since I've never written a custom copper list.

My approach to the second problem would be to make "leaf subroutines" that will move the sprites around. This would require both latches, one for the start address and one for the return address. Then there will need to be 64 of such "leaf subroutines" since the mountain pattern is 64-pixels wide. These can be executed by the copper once for every row of pixels.

There is a way to reduce the number of leaf subroutines to 16+4 by routing the sprite data to the sprites in setup routines and just using the 16 offsets and sprite movements for the rest of the effect.

[Michael Parent]

sounds awesome.

I hope we can get a demo together in the near future.

[Michael Parent]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've posted a bit of unfinished pixel art here...free for anyone to use.

https://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/a...cade/index.php

It's in the 2d pixel art section.

[Predseda]

it doesnt work

[Michael Parent]

Sorry, the link is now fixed.

[Samurai_Crow]

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/am...ic.php?f=5&t=4 is the thread in question.

[Michael Parent]

Thanks Much, Samurai Crow.

[Boo Boo]

Ive checked out your demos and there very good I belive a similar affect is used and mentioned on Codetapper page James Pond: Underwater Agent intro screen.


Ive not had a chance to realy look over the code.
Im not going to get into what can be done and what cant in AMOS looking at the demo you can see for youself by what you or your brother have done so far - Did you ever think of continuing that demo into a game.
I might be able to help but dont want to let you down.

[Michael Parent]

Thanks for the compliments. It's too soon for me to start thinking about making a complete game... but I think we should keep expressing ideas to make the best game making tool set and libraries, keep swaping techniques, and when possible contributing to bounties so programmers can afford to spend the time to make this stuff really happen.

[pmc]

Can a diverse range of games that push the hardware to its absolute limit really be made using a standard toolset library?

I'm asking this as a genuine question because I don't know the answer.

The key phrase is "that push the hardware to its absolute limit". Often, to push the hardware to its limit, routines have to be custom written to be as tightly coded as possible. It's probably quite difficult (maybe impossible?) to produce such tightly coded routines that also lend themselves to catering to a wide range of general uses is all I'm thinking.

That, after all, is the issue with game creator applications - they cater to the general case but that brings the inherent weakness that the general case can't be folded into a particular specific requirement.

To re-iterate: I'm not knocking this project cos I think it's a great idea, just wondering, from the perspective of writing game code, about the practical possibilities is all.

[spoUP]

wow! fresh graphics!

[Michael Parent]

Originally Posted by pmc

Can a diverse range of games that push the hardware to its absolute limit really be made using a standard toolset library?

I'm asking this as a genuine question because I don't know the answer.

The key phrase is "that push the hardware to its absolute limit". Often, to push the hardware to its limit, routines have to be custom written to be as tightly coded as possible. It's probably quite difficult (maybe impossible?) to produce such tightly coded routines that also lend themselves to catering to a wide range of general uses is all I'm thinking.

That, after all, is the issue with game creator applications - they cater to the general case but that brings the inherent weakness that the general case can't be folded into a particular specific requirement.

To re-iterate: I'm not knocking this project cos I think it's a great idea, just wondering, from the perspective of writing game code, about the practical possibilities is all.

The idea is a collection of code and libraries...open source...so people can choose, use , and mix and match all these diferent hardware banging tricks per level/screen, per game.

The "proof is in the pudding".. I've already supplied the amiga comunity with the exact method of having translucent/tinting efects on any Amiga with zero slowdown compared to normal bobs...this can be used for ANY game on any Amiga.

The Sprite BG tricks whould be availible for anyone to use as they see fit...and customize when necessary...

It's making this knowlege accessable to everyone and allowing programmers who might otherwise not be knowlegeable enough or just not have enough time to incorporate all these cool tricks.

A large collection of cool tools and pre optimized tricks free for anyone to use AND CUSTOMIZE is even better for a game than one REALLY good programmer working from scratch. ESPECIASLLY of you wan't to make a game in a reasonable amount of time.

[pmc]

So, you're after descriptions of particular effects that can be achieved and the method by which each can be done as opposed to re-usable code libraries?

I suppose what I mean is: if I know about the repeating sprite background trick as used in Jim Power then I, as a coder, armed with that knowledge could set about implementing that as a method to display the background in my game.

However I think that's far different to a general purpose code library that does the repeating sprite trick for me. For example, how would that fit with my own particular game's custom copper list? Would I have enough DMA time with my game's specific requirements to implement the sprite trick? etc. etc. It would be quite difficult, in my opinion, to write a tool like that without making it quite general purpose which would probably restrict me in some way further down the line with my game if I really want to push the hardware to the limit within the confines of its own particular set of specific needs.

I could perhaps help with descriptions of how certain things might be able to be done with the hardware if that would help...

[Michael Parent]

There's no reason that both cases can't mutually co-exist is there? If there's documentation explaining techniques, code examples, libraries, and complete engines, that lets some users use exactly what someone else has done, and other more advanced users, mix, match and alter and optimize to their hearts content.

I will hopefully lead to general users being able to use and understand more of what the Amiga can really do, and even let advanced users make more cool things more quickly.

[pmc]

OK, thanks - I understand much more clearly the breadth of what you're trying to gather together now.

As and when things occur to me I'll try to contribute descriptions and / or code.

[Michael Parent]

Awesome. Thanks pmc

[discomeats]

I can only hope that this causes other folks who were on the fence about starting projects to get started where previously they might have been a bit scared of doing "programmer graphics" or something when there's truly skilled pixelers willing and able to do amiga graphics

[Michael Parent]

Exactly discomeats.

As a teaser update, here's some awesome news: An awesome Amigan by the name of Codetapper has already started adapting some of his previous code and tools to help not only make my art come to life as the actual demo, but will be sharing the code examples and tools with all of us once its finished (the demo, not the entire game)!

It's already shaping up nicely and the awesomeness of the tools is more than I could have ever hoped for.

Stay tuned for the actual demo...no real ETA because we're both working on it as we have free time.