Code a game comp - 8-BIT WARS - Jan 25th to Mar 31st 2019

[3DzForMe]

Thanks for the share Xerra,  as a DPaint IV AGA advocate, really appreciate it.

[MrmediamanX]

neat ... im currently using SpritePad 1.8 which does the job I guess.

[Derron]

@ C64 "oriented" entries:
https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/IFLI
https://www.c64-wiki.de/wiki/NUFLI

Both allow more colors than before - with NUFLI you can go non-flicker to 3 colors per 8*2 block while IFLI allows ... for alternating colors (which might flicker with bad timing) and gets rid (a bit) of the 2px-wide stretching by placing a "suiting" image a bit offset to the original one. Means your sprite can become less wide than needed.

In essence this means: you can use the 16 colors in 320x200. If you are doing less colorful sprites then "NUFLI" would be your base and with very colorful ones, IFLI.


bye
Ron

[Qube]

For you guys working on an entry and need to do your own graphics then you might want to take a look at:

http://multipaint.kameli.net/

..... It has Spectrum, Amstrad, C64 multicolour and hi-res modes and, I believe, it won't let you draw in colours that would not be possible on the real machine - ie: more than one colour per 8*8 block on a C64 in hi-res mode, for example. I've not yet confirmed this but it's worth a look.

Nice find - I can confirm that not only does it have the palettes and resolutions built in but it also matches the tech specs while drawing, for example if you choose ZX Spectrum then it'll recolour cells if needed as you paint.

[Imerion]

Hi everyone! I'm new here and heard about this awesome competition from another game dev related forum. I hope it's ok for me to join despite not having been part of this community before. It just sounded so much fun!

I am a bit too young to have been part of the 8-bit wars this competition is based on. For me the war was between Sega Megadrive and SNES (where I was on the Sega-side), but I did play a few C64 games when I was young too so I believe that is the one I'll choose. Having owned several Amiga computers make me feel a bit partial towards Commodore too.

Either way, it will be fun to follow this and hopefully join with my own entry!

[Qube]

I hope it's ok for me to join despite not having been part of this community before. It just sounded so much fun!

Welcome onboard - Sure it's OK for you to join in, more the merrier. Just so you know we've had new members join before and then go on to win the competitions so there's no bias in the voting towards the older members. It's all about the final game

[iWasAdam]

I've got free apps for creating, palettes, sprites and maps for download on windows/linux/mac
https://adamstrange.itch.io

If anyone needs these sorts of thing

[3DzForMe]

Thanks for sharing Adam, Fontmap looks good

[3DzForMe]

I'm making some 2D art for my Speccy game. I want to make sure the palette is spot on a speccy game, I'd hate to spend 20 - 40 hours (yeah, I know) making a speccy game just for it to fail to make the cut due to a pallette foible.

So.... my question is, can I use microsoft paint to some how figure out the RGB values of the Bix ZX PNG, I'm beginning to think I might need GIMP or Adams Font picker.

[EDIT] Downloading Adam's font /pallette program now, the UI design does look rather good - Adams pallette and font editor is very intuitive. I subsequently realised MPaint does not allow pallette imports - here:

https://lospec.com/palette-list/importing-palettes

GIMP for moi for pavor

[Qube]

So.... my question is, can I use microsoft paint to some how figure out the RGB values of the Bix ZX PNG, I'm beginning to think I might need GIMP or Adams Font picker.

Probably easier to just download the palette provided on the 1st page ( copied below for convenience ) and in GIMP use the colour picker to select the colour you want

ZX Spectrum palette :

[3DzForMe]

Thanks Qube, That's what I ended up doing 

[Xerra]

I discovered that Gamemaker - a system designed to make games - does not actually have any kind of import palette option, or even a way to save out custom colours so you can use them in another project. Daft, daft, daft.

Anyway, if anyone is using Gamemaker, then I've found the best way to make sure you keep to the target colours is to load as a Sprite the palette image that Qube's put on the first page for your respective 8 bit machine. I then open it for editing, use the pixel grabber to get the colour and then double click on the left button colour square to open up the palette editor. You can then store colour there in one of the 12 empty slots and then go back and do another one. I know there's 16 colours available - including black - but I tend to just pick the ones i'm going to use for the current image because I can't store all of them.

Changing colours in your current image just needs a double click on the square showing the left-button colour and you can pick what you need. Annoyingly these custom colours don't get saved out when you close the editor - or even stored in a saved project - so you'll have to redo it if you are doing more graphics later on. Someone at Yoyo should be shot for not putting in something as simple as this .....

Another thing to be careful of if you're using a scrolling system and overlaying information on a hud is sprites or background graphics going underneath it. Someone else mentioned this to me when they looked at my game and they were absolutely right. With tiles under the score there were times when I was breaking the colours within 8*8 blocks. I've stopped this now by just overlaying the scores and stuff on a red background. Well worth checking for this because someone's going to spot it. Derron probably. Hmmm, Derron definitely

[3DzForMe]

Bearing in mind the general indie's doing this, I'm sure everyone will be trying their utmost to adhere to the pallettes of their chosen eight bit ness. However, I propose that, should someone inadvertently exceed the pallette for their platform of choice, their 'points' (If they get any that is ;, my stuffs generally wooden spoon material:) are reduced in the following fashion:

1. 50 percent extra colours: Reduce entries final scores by 10 percent.
2. Double the pallette colours that should be used: Reduce that entries final score by 30 percent.
3. More than five times the Pallette for the emulated system: Reduce scores by 50 percent.

I know its all a bit of fun.... just my 10p. Only seven weeks to go guys and girls

One thing that surprised me recently, always though Microsoft paint had the same ability to save edited images as GIMP. Yesterday found out GIMP exports edited images in MUCH higher quality, there you go. Was wondering why my eight bit 2D images looked even worse than they should of done when loaded into my executable - Microsoft paint was lowering the quality. So GIMP for using custom defined pallettes easily, and producing better quality images - not that Spectrum format particularly needs Hi-Res. I vote the next compo is 16-bit wars, that should stretch it out to Amiga and ST, possibly even the PC.... Although back in the day, obviously, the Amiga was king. Derail from 8-bit, sorry.

[MrmediamanX]

So.... my question is, can I use microsoft paint to some how figure out the RGB values of the Bix ZX PNG, I'm beginning to think I might need GIMP or Adams Font picker.

Probably easier to just download the palette provided on the 1st page ( copied below for convenience ) and in GIMP use the colour picker to select the colour you want

ZX Spectrum palette :

yep totally what I did. that way I can't be at fault for any off gradients in color

[iWasAdam]

RGB values of the Bix ZX PNG

black = 0, 0, 0
blue = 0, 0, 255
red = 255 ,0, 0
magenta = 255, 0, 255
green = 0, 255, 0
cyan = 0, 255, 255
yellow = 255, 255, 0
white = 255,255,255

dark blue = 0, 0, 127
dark red = 127, 0, 0
dark magenta = 127, 0, 127
dark green = 0, 127, 0
dark cyan = 0, 127, 127
dark yellow = 127, 127, 0
grey = 127, 127, 127

Those are the exact colors, but on modern systems with different monitors, contrasts, systems, etc you will get slight differences. say +- 5

for floats just /255
for hex, do a simple convert