Nice some other Atari fans here Very nice GFX !!! This looks so good, can't wait untill the game is
finished. Wonder why they/we couldn't make suchs good looking games when the Atari was still "hot".

Btw my lips are sealed !!!
I also look for a bit of help here for my Men at War project

This is my first topic (and almost first article here), new member since today 

Small intro of what to expect and to see.

I have been pixeling for a long while in the past but due to other thing and changes things got dusty
in the corner for years, about 10 atleast. But I refound my old love for Atari's and started using it
again. I started a game once but it never came out of the pre-release state. It for the Atari Falcon
(the biggest brother of the Atari serie) an 68030 Motorola machine.

The game I am working at is made in a standard Basic language (so no assembler or C++) which works fine
on the Falcon. Runs very smooth in one screen refresh and has a rather high pace. It's a simple game,
a men to men shooter for 2 players. There are also moving parts to shoot at like bomb's or dangers pins
sticking out of the wall and so on...

Althought the Atari can use a standard 256 colors picture, I use 2 x 16 colors. 1 x 16 for everything
that's scenery and 1 x 16 for the players / bonus items and bombs. Why, because this way I can works
faster this way moving my sprites. I use the lower 4 bits for the scenery and the upper 4 bits for the
players. This way I don't have to use masking for the sprites at all and also the restore of my
background is skipped. Hope I don't get to technical now 

Anyway, here are the pictures I made sofar...





The first picture is a screenshot of the game in action. In total 32 colors are used.

The little men I didn't created them all by myself, they are a re-modeled version of the
robotz game. I liked them but the original were not as detailed plus movement was almost
non existing. They now walk (I play them from up to down (4 steps) and then start again).
Walking can be done in 8 directions. The bomb is just animated at the "flame" end which
isn't that good, still has some fixing ahead (tips ?)

The parts screen is how the several elements are made to make a playfield. Because I
can't use real sprite I do use an other technic. I look at colors, yeah I know sounds
strange, but let me explain:

Colors 0          (Black background) Can't really use it
colors 1,2,3      (Purple, ground, every thing you can walk on)
colors 4 till 12  (Colors used for tree's wall item's, they will stop you
                    or in other words you can't walk over)
colors 13,14,15   (Killers, if my routine detects you walking against an item
                   with that color you get killed)

Still following me ? So you can't use all the colors everywhere, like
the orange color to dither the floor isn't working because it would kill.
Pallet colors can be changed though, so the green can be bleu or what ever but
even it you changed the orage color to green that color would still be a killer.

I'm working on a scenery which is made of snow and ice but thats difficult because
I can't get it right. As soon as I have a reasonable first try I will post it.
Hope you all understand it all, I know it's a bit odd way to program but it works
great and the pre-release was a succes. But after 15 years I wan tot finish it
So a little help esp. on the gfx department is welcome...


C+C 


Some additional information (This forum editor is not okay to work with if the text is too long, bounces up and down like crazy btw)

Pictures are 320 x 200 (official they are .PI1 format but rebuild them to gif with Grafx2)
A playfield is 320 x 240 (standard VGA)
Blocks used are 16 x 16 pixels

Site work also in progress, www.xs4all.nl/~bonus

(Edit by Eyecraft: please avoid unnecessary double-posts)