Internal details of CoCo Banana

[Luiscoco]

I introduce myself, I'm Luis Fernández, one of the programmers of Coco Banana, I'm new to this forum, because my language is Spanish and it costs me a bit to converse in English.

I opened my account here, because this forum is very important to me, and I know there was a strong argument with Amiten, he is easily obtrusive and it bothers him to say bad things about his creature.

But leaving this aside, I would like to explain some details of this new game. with your permission

The Rowan engine and development team is another, I've only been in Amos for a couple of years, and this language has a series of failures that make it difficult to finish something correctly, I still have things to learn, but what I see, is that it is more difficult to deal with people than with "Amos" or with machines.

Up until now i've been part of amigawave and didn't like the experience. Now i'm with amiten and he has helped me a lot, although he has his temper

I think the game is improvable, but because of what was planned, it was decided to release it until this point.

The price was discussed and Amiten wanted to put it free. basically because the drawings are free of the network (mentioned above), retouched by him. Then and rather because of my situation in Venezuela and another member of the team decided to put some price to help us directly with money.

And it has certainly helped me, since collecting € 200 almost everything in donations before taking the game (not sales after finishing it) helped me to have a good time a couple of months. (in Venezuela we are devalued * 10 at least). But this is a strong price at the same time that it can break things.

With respect to the demands of the game, I think that Amiten puts them far above. He puts them so high that the game does not fail at all, but the game is still playable with much less, in addition to having options, that the same game automatically removes the first time, to play well on several machines. Try it, simply download the free demo game with a world with 20 screens including the face of bonuses and a final boss, and try it on your machine.

There are still versions for Amiga 500, I do not know if it could be, and the Hard Disk could also be removed, in addition to the CD32 version. At this point I can make many improvements, both in compression and speed. Maybe you could get a second improved version.

We will take notes of the suggestions in this and other forums. For my part, I have many ideas to improve it, but it has been very difficult to deal with everything.

Anyway, I think it's an advance to what was done with the Rowan engine and we will improve more in the future.

Thanks for the support and I love that you tell me the failures or for private to store them in order and see what we can do. I hope you could join more people to these projects and so they would come out better.

Thank you.

[sokolovic]

Bienvenido luiscoco,

nice message from you.

[kikems]

Hi Luis , welcome to EAB, the main international forum about Amiga.
Really I don't want to fight, but after your introduction I need write my personal opinion.
Ask for money in a game with stolen graphics it's not a good way in any retro community, it's my opinion and you know it since few years.
All people have their own economic, familiar, profesional or personal problems, but please not transfer our own problem to our hobby, and please, never try to use it as valid argument to justify why your team ask for money or use to try to make more sales.

Eric Hogan make a great post today in FB about how he view critics about games releases in the Amiga Community. I agree with Erick in all things but only when the game release it's free contribution for community.

I understand the amount of work that any game need, good or bad game, big or small game. When this games comes in free form as contribution for the community I think that's not important if use ripped graphics, sounds or any other things ( inside few limits of course ), and the community should be respect with this free contribution and take as is, a free contribution. But when the games comes comercial, first you should be do all you sell, and people can opine if game is good or not, cheap or expensive or any other thing about your product. At the moment you ask form money you jump to other place , the market of amiga games with other rules different than free contributions. I think you and your team want take beneficts of respect the work as free contribution but with the money benefics of comercial game, in this case you are wrong.

When I view your project at first time your team ask for money contributions to do the game ( only for bakers ) and if your team take few money the game will be code and release as free game, at this point your team ask for a contribution to do the game. Now the game finished and have a cost of 9 € in digital form and 19 € in physical edition, after 2018 your team announce and increment of 10 € on digital and physical edition. I not have any problem about your team ask for money but all this thing are very far from a free game shared with community.

Of course I can understand that all people can consider the value of their work in money terms, and the final users can make with his money all that they want, but with the same criteria all other users can opine ( with respect of course ) in forums like this. And my opinion is that a game with stolen graphics or other resources never be a comercial product. You should be ask for money only when your team make all the work or take and agreement with other artist to do it.

With this post really I'm only want that people think about the situation and criteria used today for free games and comercial games and this take a different way in the future. I'm only want that community grow, but not at any cost, grow with respect about the work of developers and some moral and logical rules.

[Dunny]

Ah, I was wondering when this would start after the previous thread got locked...

Charge what you want for the game - people will either buy it, or they won't.

And for heavens' sakes - teach that other guy how AMOS works. Saying that AMOS and Blitz BASIC produce the same results is about as wrong as you can get in these matters!

[sokolovic]

Why do you say "stolen" graphics ? If I understand what Luiscoco is saying, the GFX assets were free online at first.

Then you have to code everything which is, by far, the hardest task.
Many peoples can make decent 8/16 bit-style graphics with all the tools we have now but learning ASM or BASIC code for an outdated and complicated hardware (code that will be useless on any other machine), and then make en entire engine to run a game on this, this is much complicated nowadays.
This is what deserve to be paid, because this needs a vast amount of work and skill that is slowly fading away in the Amiga scene.

For the price tag, I haven't an opinion. The market will decide if it fair of not. But I think it's a bit rude and unfair (and untrue, furthermore) to say that using AMOS is using something like Backbone or RedPill and therefore you cannot ask a 9€ price for your game. (and that's also a bit rude to call RedPill a "shit engine", considering this is still under developpement, which is detailed in one thread of this very board). (A part from saying that, I've got a big respect for what DamienD is doing to motivate people to expand the Amiga gaming scene. Please don't expell me. )

One thing I'd say to Luiscoco is, for me, there is clearly a good progress in the engine used for Coco Banana VS Rowan one. Not only the game is more polished, use parallaxes, but it also runs on lower ends machine. So, in my opinion, the team deserve to be congratulated for that.

[kikems]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Ah, I was wondering when this would start after the previous thread got locked...

Charge what you want for the game - people will either buy it, or they won't.

And for heavens' sakes - teach that other guy how AMOS works. Saying that AMOS and Blitz BASIC produce the same results is about as wrong as you can get in these matters!

Really I think that with work and imagination it's possible make great games with any tool. Of course some languages or tools give you more options and performance than others. For example Tetris is a good game and no need hi-end languages to work.

[britelite]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Many peoples can make decent 8/16 bit-style graphics with all the tools we have now but learning ASM or BASIC code for an outdated and complicated hardware (code that will be useless on any other machine), and then make en entire engine to run a game on this, this is much complicated nowadays.

Let's be honest here, considering the vast amount of information and tools currently available, coding for old platforms is much easier now than it has ever been.

[kikems]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

Why do you say "stolen" graphics ? If I understand what Luiscoco is saying, the GFX assets were free online at first.

Yes stolen, because this free assets graphics comes from library for educational or use as free license, not to ask for money. All this assets have license to use for make training, educational or free products.

For this reason I think if the game release as free game and optionally have boxed edition for people who want contribute voluntary with the work of team or a simple button of "donate", will be best idea.

Other developers hard work to release games with all assets, code, music, sounds, etc... original, I think try sale games with stolen assets it's not a good idea and not respect to other developers that work hard.

[malko]

Originally Posted by Dunny

[...] Saying that AMOS and Blitz BASIC produce the same results is about as wrong as you can get in these matters!

+1. In my "back in time" opinion, not that AMOS was bad but, Blitz won by a wide margin .


Games made with Amos

AMOS was an extremely popular programming language for amateurs on the Amiga, derived from STOS on the Atari ST. Its command set and features made it tailor-made for making games, and many were made. AMOS was later challenged by Acid Software's Blitz Basic, with which even commercial games were made.

Games made with Blitz Basic

Blitz Basic, published by Acid Software, took over AMOS's crown as the premier game development language for amateurs on the Amiga in the nineties. It was used not only for a plethora of PD and shareware games, but also for a range of highly esteemed commercial releases, a feat few other game development languages have repeated.

Originally Posted by britelite

Let's be honest here, considering the vast amount of information and tools currently available, coding for old platforms is much easier now than it has ever been.

+1 . "Just" need time... just ...

[DamienD]

Firstly, welcome to EAB Luiscoco and thanks for explaining your back story.

Quite an interesting thread this... kikems; you are saying that some assets / graphics used in Coco Banana have been stolen or were "free use" only?

Shatterhand wrote a post early this morning, it's not the first time there has been controversy over Amiten products which are / were being sold:

Originally Posted by Shatterhand

He does have an history. He overhyped sutff he tried to sell as demos that were just basic animations in the past, he tries to get views on his youtube channel by making "shows" about games he is doing that never materializes anywhere, the way he dealt with criticism with his "Dream of Rowan" game was abysmal to say the least (and, again, not a free game, but a pretty expensive one for current Amiga's standard), and I think the way he overmarkets his stuff may be annoying to many people. The perceived hostility may not be uncalled for.

[sokolovic]

britelite, maybe if you have already some coding skills.
But it isn't reflected by the vast majority of new sold Amiga production in the game field, without lacking respect to their developpers that are doing something I'm completely unable to do.
Without asking for games as polished as Mr Nutz, Kid Chaos, Shadow Fighter or Flink, we can clearly see that the vast amount of information and tools currently available seems to doesn't compensate the vast amount of time and skill needed to code a game using intensively all Amiga chipset capacities. (this said, indeed Powerglove, SkillGrid, Worthy and what I've seen of Reshoot-R seems on par with commercial releases of the 90's)

kikems, OK I can see your point.

[Gorf]

Yes stolen, because this free assets graphics comes from library for educational or use as free license

Do you have link to that library or page?

[britelite]

Originally Posted by sokolovic

britelite, maybe if you have already some coding skills.

No, it's definitely easier now

But it isn't reflected by the vast majority of new sold Amiga production in the game field

Yeah, but nobody is coding Amiga-games for a living now either. So you're still comparing stuff people are doing in their spare time to something that was done as a job in the 90's. The amount of time and money invested is quite different.

[kikems]

When people say .... I’d make this game in my free time.... and later the game release as commercial, simply it’s not true. When you ask for money you not use your free time yet, you invest your time . It’s a different concept.

[PortuguesePilot]

All of this would have been avoided if the game was free, wouldn't it? Even the "stolen" graphics part. Want to charge for your game? Then do a a game worth paying for. I'm not going to say anything about this but: I'm NOT buying CoCo Banana.

[nobody]

Kikems it's about time you back your statement that graphics are stolen. With evidence. Links with licence etc.

Or else apologize publicly.

[kikems]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Firstly, welcome to EAB Luiscoco and thanks for explaining your back story.

Quite an interesting thread this... kikems; you are saying that some assets / graphics used in Coco Banana have been stolen or were "free use" only?

Sorry I don't know what the correct word in english. Free use is not the same that take my work I share free and make money with it. All this assets have free access by internet for make training tutorials, free games etc... but have a CC license or similar agreement that not permit make commercial products with it.

"You can take this assets and use it FREE" should be respected from developers to users if we want grow as community in the right way.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by kikems

Sorry I don't know what the correct word in english. Free use is not the same that take my work I share free and make money with it. All this assets have free access by internet for make training tutorials, free games etc... but have a CC license or similar agreement that not permit make commercial products with it.

"You can take this assets and use it FREE" should be respected from developers to users.

Please provide a link!
Where are the assets taken from?

[kikems]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Please provide a link!
Where are the assets taken from?

Sorry this is not my task, if you try using google you'll find. Remember that Luis Coco say it in the first post.

"The price was discussed and Amiten wanted to put it free. basically because the drawings are free of the network (mentioned above), retouched by him. "

[nobody]

Where are the links with licence? For sure to make such a bold statement you have made a prior research I guess.

It wasn't my intention to jump onboard into this sh1t-storm anyway, i am just curious.