Lost In Pixels

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Syrix Attract Screen (Crop), DM 2020

256 x 256 / Amiga OCS Dual Playfield Mode

Software used: Deluxe Paint III

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Title card for my Amiga slideshow. 8 colours. 

Still working on coding this in 68k Assembly!

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Kren's Awakening, DM 2021

320 x 256 / Amiga OCS Palette / 16 Colours / 80 Frames

Software used: Grafx2 / Photoshop / Processing (starfield programming)

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Some useful Amiga coding resources:

The Amiga Hardware Reference Manual

Assembler course for beginners (Aminet)

Crash course to Amiga assembly programming

How to code a sine scroll (in 5 parts)

Amiga Assembler Insider Guide

Interesting Amiga dev video journal by Graeme Cowie

Amiga hardware programming by Photon of Scoopex

Amiga game coding by Tomaz Kragelj (Youtube series)

The wonderful Codetapper site, which is full of useful insights into the coding tricks used by Amiga games

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Out Of The Woods, DM 2020

192 x 192 / Amiga OCS Palette / 32 Colours

Software used: Deluxe Paint III / Grafx2

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Portals I, DM 2020

320 x 256 / Amiga OCS Palette / 32 Colours

Software used: Deluxe Paint III / Grafx2

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The Scorpion's Garden, DM 2020

230 x 230 / Amiga OCS Palette / 26 Colours

Software used: Deluxe Paint III / Grafx2

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Fieldwork, DM 2020

264 x 200 / Amiga OCS Palette / 31 Colours

Software used: Deluxe Paint III / Grafx2

Another older Deluxe Paint piece, rejuvenated in Grafx2.

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This week I started building some in-game tilesets in Grafx2.

Whether or not Kren's Moon ends up being an Amiga game, I've set myself the challenge of working within the Amiga's hardware constraints whenever possible.

For this tileset I'm using 3 bitplanes (8 colours). One of the 8 colours is set aside for transparency if required.

The second image shows a background element created from four 64 x 64 tiles. The key to making something like this look organic is in the tile map (which you can see superimposed). Here I've staggered the tiles so that the repetition isn't too noticeable. It's there if you look for it but the staggering gives more of a random effect which is what we're going for with this rock wall.

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Deeper Space, DM 2019

142 x 112 / Amiga OCS Palette / 32 Colours

Software used: Deluxe Paint IV / Grafx2 / Photoshop

This was a section of an old unfinished piece, mid 90s. Something I'd started painting in AGA on the Amiga 1200. Unfortunately a lot of work from this period was simply abandoned. The jump from OCS to AGA was a mixed blessing. It meant higher resolutions, larger palettes and consequently A LOT more work to produce artwork using the same labour intensive pixel by pixel rendering methods. It wasn't until I started scanning in my pencil drawings and colouring them in the Amiga that I finally adapted to working fully within the AGA space.  

Anyway, I thought there was something worth salvaging in this composition. I converted this from AGA to OCS, redid the palette in Grafx2 and tidied everything up.

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Only Amiga Makes It Possible, DM 2019

320 x 256 / Amiga OCS Palette / 32 Colours

Software used: Grafx2 / Photoshop

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Logo for a game project, started in the mid 1990s. Deluxe Paint III.

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Photo: DM

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Working title for possible new game project.

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Sprite work in Deluxe Paint III running on an expanded Amiga 1000.

Photo: DM

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Lost In Pixels

This blog is a place to document my adventures in low resolution Amiga art and animation, dating from 1990 to the present day.