C64 KillerWatt game - Amstrad WIP

Back in the day when I owned and enjoyed playing the Amstrad CPC464, one of my friends owned a C64.  Three games I remember playing on his machine were Dambusters, Boulderdash and Killerwatt.

Killerwatt's is a simple horizontal shooter that had nice smooth scrolling. 

For fun rather than a serious project it's nice to re imagine what it might of looked like.

Ingame concept coming soon :)

Ingame Concept

TITLE - WIP

The Last UFO - update May 2016

Its been a very busy last few months working on a few games, so sadly games that don't "as yet" have programmers don't get as much as attention.  The Last UFO game for the Amstrad is slowly coming together and I have finally resolved the interaction between player and enemy.  Bullets from both will now be homing, it will simplify the gameplay by not having to be positioned and facing the correct direction in order to shoot.  The only downside is you have to be fairly close to be able to shoot accurately as the bullets have finite distance :)

The Egyptian Level concept below is now converted to 16 colours (this is the maximum colours that mode 0 can have out of its 27 in total)

At the top is the tileset and to the top right you can see the colour palette.

Some Drawings in Pencil of some enemy ideas.

Below are some of the sketches converted into Amstrad Mode 0 pixels :)

This is the current sprite sheet, some are of course just placeholders for tiles that will be replaced with new ones. At the bottom are various collectables (in gold).  The palettes allocated for each level is shown on the right hand side.  Notice 12 colours are locked out for all other game collectables, player, score panel and title splash page and various effects. The last four colours beyond the dark blue are for foreground and enemies of that level.

Experimenting with Dan Fesslers HD index painting in Photoshop

Possibly a great way of generating indexed/dithered images for Amstrad CPC 
in Mode 1 or 0.

Goto Dan Fesslers great blog on more technical information on how to create images. (thankyou Dan)

The example Gradient Maps for Mode 0 (16 colours) and Mode 1 (4 colours)

A continued thread discussion is in the CPC forum


A further test (4 colours)

Amstrad 4 Colour (Mode 1) Testing

The Test below is converting a 320x256 - 24bit image into 4 colours.

There is an 8 colour version that is currently not possible to display on a CPC machine but closest matches the original.

The Last UFO - Amstrad Game WIP

The Last UFO, a game designed for the Amstrad CPC platform.

 Early Stages of the game with sample themed levels.

Some example sprites and animation frames.

This project will be put on hold for the moment as I have two other games with fantastic programmers that I need to focus on. :)  more info coming soon :)

Refining the Palette to only have 16 colours (updated: below has 14)

Some colours will be locked such as the ones that have the white line underneath.  These colours are used for the player, menu and background.

Earth Invaders - CPC - Mode 1

Handheld games such as Earth Invaders would be an excellent new way of creating games on the Amstrad CPC platform.  

This is a simple game where you dig holes and bury the aliens quickly.

Image Credit: http://www.handheldmuseum.com/CGL/EarthInvaders.htm


While this image below is not an accurate representation of the game
(don't have the CGL machine no longer),
it gives a good sense of what it might look like in Mode 1 (4 colours)

Of course there is no reason why we couldn't advance the design of the game further. A different viewpoint such as isometric might be a nice starting point.

The Last UFO - Amstrad CPC Game Concepts

I have always been a big fan of the game "The Covenant" for the Amstrad CPC.

Besides the unfortunate design flaw/conversion from the ZX Spectrum where you can't complete the game, its a very enjoyable game nonetheless :) 

The Last UFO concept above shows some early ideas. 
Potentially this would be not only for the 64k machine but will enhance for other CPC/Amstrad machines later.