G2F artist needed

[Wilhelm]

Hi, everyone!

 

After a long time without working on it, I decided to finish my little hombrew game project, Culmins. You may had seen it on Atarimania and some other sites on the net as a preview version.

 

The thing is I need someone who is willing to improve the graphics in the game, specially on G2F. I have a sample in this post to start modifying it.

 

This is the link of the preview version of my game:

 

http://atari.fandal.cz/detail.php?files_id=1592

 

Greetz!

Guillermo Fuenzalida.

[emkay]

Would a picture like this be fair enough?

I tried not to "destroy" the image while giving some more colors to it and I kept the border black.

[emkay]

hmm... wrong pic (it has some faulty pixels).

I appended the correct G2F.

 

 

Some question for the Levels...:

Are they based on one or more charsets?

Did you use all Player & Missiles?

Is the game doing something like scrolling, or are the graphics fixed at all?

[Wilhelm]

WOW! AMAZING!! AWESOME!!

 

My truly congratulations!

 

The level are based in one charset, it uses all the player, but not the missiles.

 

I'm not planning to make scrolling in the maps, with fixed graphics.

 

This was a great incentive to finish my project, thanks!!!

 

Guillermo.

[emkay]

Let's get a bit deeper into the program...

 

As far as I can get it, it is a very glacial world?

How much chars are used for the animation?

Are some chars still unused?

Is there enough time for one or more DLIs?

 

I think, it would be more fun to the eyes if you see a "true" glacial ground.

[+CharlieChaplin]

Heya,

maybe you want to take part in the ABBUC software contest 2005 ?!? Your game looks promising... greetings, Andreas.

[emkay]

You see a fast screenshot conversion of your game. I hope, you'll be inspired by this .-)

 

As you can see, there are 5 colors at all.

But with a "tricky" color usage, and switching from "simple" Charmode(lower right) to a Gamescreen with graphics-clusters(upper left)... it looks more than "quite" different.

 

A possibility to do so, is to use several charsets and put the "Sprite" data in all used charsets (so you wouldn't have to recalculate) and to build only the background-chars with different data...

 

On the other hand... when trying to use a full softwaresprite-movement, it would be possible to nearly double the colors.

[Goochman]

Nice work emkay

[Wilhelm]

the program uses 1 font, and 6 chars per character (including walls, houses, floor, culmins, etc.)

 

I have 9 different Culmins on screen, so I just modify the font on VBD, giving the animation you can see.

 

I would probably modify the program to use 2 fonts, so I would have more options, for example, more independent Culmins.

 

I'm planning to release it in cart format, so I would take advantage of the bank-switching. But this method is not allowed in the ABBUC 2005 contest, am I right?

 

Another thing: my source code was released on MAC/65 format, and uses a lot of ATASCII codes, so it's being a pain in the back to convert it into ATASM source code. Moreover, G2F converts the graphics into XASM format, so I'm having a little problem to append it into my source code. Any suggestions? (Sorry, I'm not skillful using XASM or anything that it's not Atari, hehehe)

 

Greetings!

 

 

Guillermo Fuenzalida.

[emkay]

the program uses 1 font, and 6 chars per character (including walls, houses, floor, culmins, etc.)

 

I have 9 different Culmins on screen, so I just modify the font on VBD, giving the animation you can see.

 

 

Does this mean:

 

3*6 (Border, background, floor.) +

9*6 (Culmins) ?

 

So 63 chars are used?

 

Or, are the different chars are used for the animation?

 

So 71 Chars are available for the floor?

[emkay]

If you would give some more detailed informations, I would create a "charset" which can be easiliy ripped off from G2F...

How does the charset look exactly and how much (and which) characters can be used?

The ripped raw data can be used as straight Charset-data, even if one don't know nothing about G2F.

[ZZTOP SOFT]

great change! beautiful colors! g2f excellent program, with this software the game looks terrific. I hope to see it finish very soon.

[deathtrappomegranate]

The "5colors" picture suggests the possibility of a really pretty game.

 

Sign me up for a cart if it can be done!

[Wilhelm]

the game uses completely the font, mainly for:

 

9 culmins

4 arrows

1 clock

1 floor

1 wall

3 signs (WILLY, KIWI, NETOL: programmer, graphics and music, in that order)

 

I can erase the signs so I can have 36 more characters to make the floor.

 

On the other hand, I can modify the program so I can use for the same floor code different characters on screen.

 

 

Greetz!

 

Guillermo.

[emkay]

the game uses completely the font, mainly for:

 

9 culmins

4 arrows

1 clock

1 floor

1 wall

3 signs (WILLY, KIWI, NETOL: programmer, graphics and music, in that order)

 

I can erase the signs so I can have 36 more characters to make the floor.

 

On the other hand, I can modify the program so I can use for the same floor code different characters on screen.

 

 

Greetz!

 

Guillermo.

 

 

 

How much animation steps (frames) are used for the culmins?

 

The 3 signs "Willy Kiwi, Netol" .... perhaps a new charset will help?

(Or, to save time, just change the range of the lower wall to graphics, so it is independent from the charset and it will save some cpu-cycles?)

 

What about saving chars by creating the "Arrows" as Bumpers. Building them with 2 chars for every direction, and instead of using them on the floor, mount them on the wall? for compensating the small Bumpers, they can be animated and push the Culmins with a boing sound?

It the bumper on the floor, it moves aside....animation... boing

 

Let's see, how much chars you(we) can get available for the floor, without charset switching by DLIs.

[emkay]

So I still don't know how far you will get with optimizing the game, so here's a "last" suggestion.

 

As you can see at the blue marked range, because the background is snowy/glacial, you can recognize the culmin easily. The culmin is blue, so it does fit more to the title screen.

To keep the moving culmin more in shape to its char-looking, what about keeping the black border (including mouth and eyes with the players, and to use a blue char underlay (wich means a 4x8 movement behind the PM)) ?

 

The red marked range shows a bit more "snowy" bricks and the ability to use "rocks" instead of bricks. Attached to the snowy-rock are three "bumpers", which can be build with on char. The hut is drawn a bit different too...

 

What do you think about it?

[Wilhelm]

I'll make some changes in the code as soon as I finish my university thesis, that is next week.

 

Thanks!