Hello, all,

i am looking for a pixel-graphic artist who is looking for a special challenge.

Specifically, it is about the game "Connect" which I developed, based on the game principle of "Hashiwokakero" and which is a hobby project. This project serves as an introductory project for a number of future games, which are not bound to any genre, though. The game itself is finished (business logic) and fully playable, as you can see from the screenshots and the private YT-link:

What this game lacks is decent graphics. And that's where you come in! With your artistic creativity and your sense for the right colours, this ugly duckling can become a beautiful swan. Together with my expertise in programming, we will create a little work of art!

But where there is light, there is usually also shadow. At the beginning I mentioned that I am looking for you, because you want to face special challenges. Here are some restrictions that need to be considered:

1. The game has been written for the home computer Amiga. The computer is a child of the 80's and had a lot of computing power back then. But today you can't get very far with 7 MHz. Because the game should work already on a simple Amiga 500 with 1MByte RAM.

2. You would have to stick to the very tight specifications:

- maximum 320x256 pixels (Pal), or 320x200 (Ntsc)
- 4096 colours are available in total
- a maximum colour palette of 32 colours per screen
- that means: 32 common colors for ALL(!) objects on the screen
- moving objects may usually have only 3 or 15 colors (from this 32 color palette)
- the more colors are on the screen, the slower the game
- the bigger the moving object, the slower the game
- the IFF file format...

3. You have about 600kb of disk space available for your graphics. The game should fit on only one floppy disk. But don't panic: If you stick to the specification from point 2, you have a lot of space in this project! The graphics used on the screenshots and in the video occupy only about 34kb.

4. Just as the environment will be new territory for you, I still have a lot to learn. Although I am a seasoned programmer with 25 years of experience, but today's "laws of nature of development" do not apply on the Amiga. Many things are different on the device and not comparable with the PC. Both of us will have to explore limits to see what works and above all what doesn't work. Please have as much patience with me as I will have with you. :)

I wrote that we are developing the game as a hobby project. This is only half the truth, because I would like to offer the finished product for sale. This will be done by digital download (boring). But much more interesting is the sale of game boxes. These are very popular especially for collectors. Especially if a lot of love has been put into the details (attractive cardboard packaging, good manual, fancy disk stickers, good game (!!!) etc.). I bear the financial risk completely! The profit, should one of them come out (which I don't think so), we will then share fairly half each. But as I said, it is primarily a hobby project... :)

To get ahead of the question: No, you do not have to work with Amiga tools. It is possible to translate standard graphics (PNG, Tiff, etc.) into the Amiga IFF format. In programming I have created my own tool chain, with which I program on the PC and transfer them to the emulated Amiga by pressing a button. In the graphics area it also looks good after some tests. I have found a solution, but it still needs some manual work at the moment.

And also to get ahead of the second question: No, it is not possible to create graphics with full colorfulness and then to calculate them down. You are a graphic artist, you should know how bad that looks. ;)

If I was able to arouse your interest and you feel like dealing with the topic, just get in touch. Of course I will answer questions in advance.

See you

Frank