Graphician(s) needed for promising shoot'em up
 

Hi everybody,

since late 2004 I have been working almost without pause at a brand-new shmup (working title: "uniVERSUS") which, I hope, should appeal to many.
The point I'm at now is critical, as I badly need graphics. Since the game has four different kinds of graphics (backgrounds*, sprites*, cutscenes and terminal GUIs - *most urgent), the work can be done also by several graphicians (but, of course, no more than one pixeller per kind), provided they can make their styles match/blend nicely.
Anybody who wants and is able to seriously commit himself/herself to a demanding yet very interesting and promising project is invited to contact me privately (email: saimobvq%interfree:it). I will answer to each and every application and, of course, I will eventually choose those who impress me most and with whom communication is easier (obviously, people from my country have an advantage in this regard).

Now, I guess that such an announcement would be rather uninteresting if I did not disclose any other information, right? ;)

uniVERSUS is a vertical shoot'em-up which aims at being highly innovative while sporting, at the same time, a great "oldskool" style - in a nutshell, it wants to be a "retro-innovative" game.
It is created with passion, love, careful handcraftmanship and a touch of bedroom-coding insanity; it features fresh ideas never seen before in the genre; it is based on and enriched by complex techniques and mechanics, which, however, do not affect playability in a negative way as the gameplay is engineered to let the player always feel in command and truly enjoy the progress through carefully designed levels.
It targets both newbies and experts of this semi-forgotten genre and, even if the reasons will be inevitably different, it hopes to provide both with lots of pure fun.

uniVERSUS is intended to be released commercially for AmigaOS 4, Linux, MacOS X, Windows XP and possibly other platforms (with AmigaOS 4 receving a "special treatment" as a helping push in this difficult moment) - note that, although developed mainly on AmigaOS 4, uniVERSUS is constantly tested on other platforms as well, so this is not just wishful thinking.
Compensations of all the team members (me included) will be proportional to the amount of work done and to the sales income.

Those who aren't happy with just words (who can blame them? not me, certainly!) can surf to this site and download a WIP demo for both AOS4 and Windows. It is very important, however, to keep in mind that the lack of decent graphics and proper levels does not allow the demo to show the real potential, so I absolutely recommed to read carefully the enclosed design documentation.

Enjoy, and remember that my mailbox is ready to be crammed by your applications ;)
saimo

mail sent :)
btw, welcome on EAB

Will answer ASAP.
Thank you!

saimo

Hi again,

I'd like to inform you that the currently available version now features the following improvements with respect to that released at the time of the announcement:
* the spaceport is now 99% complete: spaceships can be built from the scratch, parts can be bought/sold/mounted/dis-mounted/re-mounted, etc.;
* there are new weapons and spaceship setups;
* there is a brand new scenario (Lithlet);
* joystick/joypad support has been added;
* finally there is a configuration utility;
* lots of internal improvements, bugfixes, etc.

You can download the latest versions from the website, where you can also find a new section showing many screenshots.

Unfortunately, development has slowed down considerably (practically stopped) in the last two weeks because of lack of collaborators - honestly, it looks like the project is going to die soon. I'd love if you could help in any useful way to keep it alive.

Cheers,
saimo

you know what ? some time ago (I guess more than a year) I read a post (here or a.org) of a guy making graphics for a game and looking for a coder :) I uploaded his concept work into the zone (razzor). The package also includes his contact address. I hope he's still interested in a project (his graphics are cool).

OK, I'll check it out (if I manage to find it).
Thanks!

edit: oh, well... I cannot access the zone... can anybody help, please?

saimo

hello,

there is the zone! button at the beginning of the page (on the right). simply click on the the zone! (at the left side of log out), to have access to the zone!

gfx is like alien breed amiga.

hope your project will never die :)

Sorry, I was not clear. I meant that access is forbidden to me. This is the error message I get:
Bear in mind that most of the graphics is temporary.

Thank you.
But hopes are low. Very low.

saimo

Hi saimo and welcome to EAB. Your game sounds extremely promising - look forward to it and hope you suceed in getting it finished! ;)

This tells you how to get into the Zone!:
http://eab.abime.net/faq.php?faq=vb_...ezone_faq_item

Thanks, very kind of you :)

/me blushes
Thanks again! It did work and I could download razzor's graphics.

BTW: razzor's art is very clean and professional, but far from what I need, as they are (partially) rendered, whereas I need hand-pixelled graphics. Anyways, I will try to contact him - and I will keep you posted as well.

saimo

Well, it's been quicker than I thought:

:(

saimo

What's it built in / on ?

100% C + libSDL (if I'll ever have a reason to implement the audio part, I will use SDL_mixer as well).

saimo